Should the NHS treat this man?

I would guess he would need years of rehab or personal care if he is unable to walk. The duty for these tasks should fall to his family to either pay for or provide themselves.
 
A lot of people would not be able to scrape the money together for private care, and be left to die slowly at home, with no NHS to ease their pain or perhaps give them the chance to overcome their affliction.
If your mother/father/sister/brother/spouse/close friend were diagnosed with lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking, would you applaud a decision to deny them treatment?

The honest answer, again, is no.

I personally would ensure that I did EVERYTHING I could to help this person to give up smoking (which would succeed if they really wanted to esp with good support). If they failed to do this then I would not support that they get treatment.

This attitude of 'oh well the NHS will sort it out' is the reason many people do not talk responsibility for their own health. The NHS breeds Neoteny!!!
 
One of my friends is always enraged by these things, he often starts ranting about Georgy Best drinking away his liver and then continuing to drink when he got a new one. I think treatment should be given if it's not at the cost of others. If it's things like transplants where one is unrepentant and will happily destroy their body again and one is likely to look after themselves then it's more beneficial to give to the latter patient.

If it's not a priority treatment and not a great drain then treatment should be given in some cases (possibly make them go private and pay for it in others).
 
One of my friends is always enraged by these things, he often starts ranting about Georgy Best drinking away his liver and then continuing to drink when he got a new one. I think treatment should be given if it's not at the cost of others. If it's things like transplants where one is unrepentant and will happily destroy their body again and one is likely to look after themselves then it's more beneficial to give to the latter patient.

If it's not a priority treatment and not a great drain then treatment should be given in some cases (possibly make them go private and pay for it in others).

Didn't GB buy his transplant liver and pay for the operation?

He was also - apparently - trying hard to quit the booze when he had the operation - he got back on the booze not simply because he was a cunt - but because he was very very sick.

I'm not necessarily defending him - certainly there were more deserving cases for his transplant organ - and you could argue that he didn't just kill himself but endangered the life of somone else by taking that liver.
But the guy was physically and mentally ill from his addiction, so personally I hesitate from throwing the same kinds of stones at a dead man as the tabloid press have done.
 
yeah he did pay and was private not NHS. He did use up a liver though, I heard he was trying to quit (what killed him was booze and immunosuppressant mix, apparently it did his kidneys in). Thinking about it I admit that his addiction is a disease and you can't treat him like an uncaring swine because it was addiction to alcohol that controlled his actions, not him. Compassion is more appropriate than judgmental attitudes. I have a few friends who are addicts and you HAVE to separate their addiction from them as a person. One of them in particular I was very close to (he's gone missing now), he's a nice guy, just his habit (mainly heroin in the end) controlled him and overrides his personality. He could appear quite selfish but in reality he wasn't, he was really generous but it was often masked by addiction controlling him.
 
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