Cross posted from my
blogIt's true the guy did give her a kidney but everything else appears to be a total lieBy Bill Peckham
I've held off on commenting on the
man wants his kidney back stories that have been widely discussed on not only CKD discussion boards and listservs but throughout the national media. It supposedly brings up questions of ethics and should we pay for organs. I don't think it does but I do know one thing:
You should never think that you know what happened in a marriage if you've only heard the story from one of the spouses.
HDCN links to
Dawnell Batista, wife at center of kidney case breakup finally tells her dramatic story published in the Daily News and sure enough it turns out
the guy is a lying liar and a gigantic jerk. When the lying doctor "told Larry King his reason for divorce was “infidelity.” He didn’t say it was his own." In fact the wife has an incredibly sympathetic story and it is an indictment of the media that they took this liar and his Howard Stern lawyer at face value.
The one part of the story that the highly believable Daily News story missed is that the lying doctor also impacted people far removed from his self centered universe. This idea that your donor could come back years latter and want your kidney will add another factor against in the calculus of accepting a kidney from a living donor. I am waiting for Larry King to have Dawnell on, as well as her corroborating friends so that the lying doctor can be properly held up to public ridicule and scorn.
While Larry is on the topic he should also have on his show someone from
Donate Life (
if it was up to me I'd call it Sustain Life, but whatever) to talk about living donation and why this one particular lying jerk shouldn't enter into anyone's personal calculus on whether to accept a kidney from a living donor.