First let us identify the meaning of Mental challenge. A Mental challenge is any disease or condition affecting the brain that influences the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and or relates to others and to his or her surroundings (www.themainplace.org/mentalchallenges.html)
Who are these ‘Mentally Challenged’ patients? Mentally Challenged patients are those who have mental impairments such as Retardation or Intellectual Disability, also known as Intellectual Development Disorder (IDD). Mentally retarded patients are identified to have lack of skills which is necessary to survive for a daily living. They also have an impaired adaptive functioning. They cannot communicate well, they have difficulty to learn social rules, there is an absence of self-help or self care skills in them.
There was a case before in the hospital of Philadelphia that brought national attention. There wasa two-year old girl who was admitted to the children’s hospital in Philadelphia and diagnosed that her kidneys are going to fail after a year. Her parents discussed this case with the Doctors of the said hospital and saddened by hearing that their little girl is not qualified for a kidney transplant because she is ‘mentally retarded’.
What role does mental impairment play in deciding who are qualified and disqualified to get an organ transplant? How does her mental retardation affect her eligibility to receive new and healthy organ? In my opinion, mental impairment should not play a role in this matter except for one, the permanent state of the patient’s disability. At the end of the day, we care about how successful the transplant is. How the patient’s body adapts the new organ and the most important of all is that it will lengthen the life of the organ beneficiary. A problem will only occur if the transplant will be unsuccessful. Why? Because of the scarcity of this expensive resources, medical practitioners would want to maximize the chances that the organ transplanted is...