Teen's Bad Grades Used As One Reason To Not Place Him On Heart Transplant List

This doesn't seem like a real story, but it is:

Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta estimate that without a heart transplant, 15-year-old Anthony Stokes will die within three to six months from heart failure. Yet despite his prognosis, they refuse to put Anthony on the transplant list, telling his family he doesn’t qualify due to “a history of non-compliance” characterized by “low grades and trouble with the law.”


“They said they don’t have any evidence that he would take his medicine or that he would go to his follow-ups,” Melencia Hamilton, Anthony’s mother, told WSBTV. Hamilton says that a transplant is the only option for her son’s enlarged heart.

In a recently issued statement, the hospital would not reveal any specifics about how they came to their decision, saying, “The well-being of our patients is always our first priority. We are continuing to work with this family and looking at all options regarding this patient’s health care. We follow very specific criteria in determining eligibility for a transplant of any kind.” The hospital wants to send him home with medication, presumably to die.

After a couple of days of horrendous press, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta now says they will put the teen on the list for a donor heart:

ATLANTA - A 15-year-old who needs a life-saving heart transplant is now on the waiting list.

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta had originally decided that Anthony Stokes, who suffers from an enlarged heart, was not a transplant candidate because of a "history of non-compliance", according to the family. Stokes' mother, Melencia Hamilton, insists that was never an issue. She said that Stokes had taken all the medicine administered to him.

The president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Rev. Samuel Mosteller, said that he and others met with the transplant committee. He said that the committee expressed concerns about Anthony's truancy from school and a previous stay at juvenile hall.

"They made a qualitative decision and we believe that there was some pre-judgment in there that caused them to do some things they shouldn't have done, we thought," said Mosteller.

The SCLC said that the hospital reversed course after Anthony's case hit the news and social media. Stokes' mother says the decision to place Anthony on the recipient list came from the very doctor who originally denied the teen the heart. Hamilton said that Stokes has now been placed on the 1-A list.

"His heart is critical where he'll be put on top of the list when a heart becomes available. If one is available now, he'll get it," said Hamilton. 

Incredible.

Just incredible.

Low grades, brushes with the law - no heart for you.

Go home and die.

Incredible.

Thank God the family and their supporters used the news and social media to get the story out.

Otherwise these people at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta would have kept Anthony off the list.

This is end game for the education reform movement.

Grades and test scores as the key to everything - including a needed heart transplant.