Did Steve Jobs' wealth buy him a faster liver transplant? It certainly helped -- and the Apple CEO's odyssey showcases some of the problems with organ donations in America.
The 54-year-old Jobs lives in California, where precious livers are hard to come by. To improve the odds of getting a transplant, he relocated to Tennessee, where the competition for vital organs is much lower. Last year, only 45 people in Tennessee were removed from the waiting list because they died or became too sick to transplant. In California, 449 people -- 10 times as many -- did not survive, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS.
What Jobs did is perfectly legal. Surely, thousands of other Americans needing life-saving livers, kidneys or lungs would do the same in a heartbeat.
But unlike Jobs, few patients can afford to move to another state to improve their chances. Nor can they afford to register at multiple transplant centers -- each charging a fee -- and then fly across the country at a moment's notice to the first regional center at which an organ is available. This, too, is legal -- and much more efficient with a private jet.