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Jetsetters vs. Life

Canadian glitterati’s Oscar night globe-warming operations nearly cost seven transplant patients their lives. Globe and Mail: 

As a fleet of jets carrying Hollywood North types flocked to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, a true race-against-time thriller was unfolding off-screen.

The sudden death of a man in rural British Columbia last Thursday gave the B.C. Transplant Society mere hours to harvest the donor’s healthy organs and get them to operating rooms in Vancouver.

So, just as it had done 23 times last year alone, B.C. Transplant went down its list of 11 jets-for-hire companies across the country and in the United States to charter a $15,000 flight to shuttle its organ-recovery surgeons to the remote locale and back.

Only this time, it wasn’t going to be so simple.

“As a result of the Oscars going on in California, all of the corporate jets had been spoken for,” said Bill Barrable, executive director of B.C. Transplant. “We were in a situation where we could not secure a jet in the tight time frame that we needed to.”

Mr. Barrable said organs must be transplanted within four to six hours of being harvested, which also must be done relatively quickly for the organ to be functional in its new body.

Seven organs - and lives - were on the line.

Thinking on his feet, Mr. Barrable called his varsity football teammate from his undergraduate days at Queen’s University and good friend Robert McFarlane, chief financial officer and vice-president of Telus Corp., at about 5 p.m. to see if the company could lend its corporate jet for a good cause.

Mr. McFarlane was not available last night, but a spokesman for the company said there was no hesitation.

Within an hour, the logistics were finalized and the Telus jet, at no charge, was on its way to Vancouver to pick up the team of surgeons.

Two lungs, two kidneys, a heart, a liver and a pancreas were successfully harvested and transplanted into seven recipients shortly after midnight.

Haven’t those Canadian filmmakers heard of climate change? Sheesh. Not only are they trying to kill the planet, now they’re trying to kill innocent transplant patients. 

Topics: warmglob

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:46 pm on Tuesday, February 26, 2008

3 Responses to “Jetsetters vs. Life”

1. saltydog Says:
   February 27th, 2008 at 2:14 am

   Amazing how these things reach up out of reality to bite the sanctimonious on their silk covered butts. I hope the story got good press.

2. sarah rolph Says:
   February 27th, 2008 at 9:54 am

   The jets for the Oscars had been “spoken for.” Which implies that they hadn’t left the ground yet. But nobody bothered to call the Oscar-goers to see if they were interested in changing their plans. Instead, what came to mind? A serious business person. And the business didn’t hesitate. Yet Hollywood continues to make movies about cruel unfeeling business people and to push the fiction that socialized medicine will save us. What’s the lethal dose for irony? I think I have too much in my system….

3. saltydog Says:
   February 27th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

   Sarah, so true. One can find the same kind of actions from the greedy corporate bastards anytime there is a crisis. Think Katrina. It wasn’t the government who got critical supplies, especially water, to those who needed it afterwards: it was the hated Wall-Mart and other corporations who stepped up in a timely fashion while the government dicked around.

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