Broadcaster Summerall awaiting new liver

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&ncid=762&e=4&u=/nm/20040402/en_nm/people_summerall_dc

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Legendary sports broadcaster Pat Summerall has been taken to a Florida hospital to await a liver transplant, a family spokesman said on Friday.

Summerall, who entered a rehabilitation program in 1992 to deal with an alcohol problem, was hospitalized in Texas before being taken earlier this week to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, to await the transplant.

"Pat is open about the past and accepts that his alcoholism is the reason he is in the hospital today," his wife, Cheri, said in a statement.

"Although this month marks his 12th year of sobriety, alcoholism is a progressive disease, and the damage to his liver reached the point where a transplant is the only option for survival," she said.

My grandmother ended up with liver cancer. She was in her mid 70s, and her doctor did suggest putting her on the transplant list, but she said she'd rather not go through the procedure, and also she didn't want to take up a liver just to live a few extra years that could help a young parent see her child graduate from high school, given that she was pretty close to the average life expectancy for a woman born in her year, anyway.

(The cancer spread to her lungs and made the whole discussion moot.)

My grandmother was always very practical about that sort of thing. But that does make me wonder -- what does medical ethics and science have to say about transplants into older patients?