Some doctors don't agree with the legal approach.
"It would be very difficult that this system has to respond for individual pleas for help," Dr. Maraget Moon, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore said. "Every story is compelling. It's always tragic when someone doesn't get an organ -- that can't be a reason to change that approach," she said.
Moon, who is also a bioethicist at Hopkins' Berman Institute for Bioethics, told CBSNews.com that all lung transplant patients should be treated equally unless there's a medically-relevant difference in cases, and in this case there might be. As it stands, there's a 50 percent chance a lung transplant will fail in five years for anyone, she said. Someone with cystic fibrosis, who may also have other health problems like chronic infections, may have an even worse prognosis, she said. Pediatric lung transplants have only been performed in recent decades, Moon added, while adult lung transplants have been more well-studied. Therefore, she argues if there's more medical certainty that the lung has a better chance of succeeding in the adult, the decision should be based on that, she said -- and not on how effective parents are at getting publicity.
"That's dangerous," she said. "The notion we're wasting an organ for political or personal reasons, it's really distressing," Moon added.
But Moon understands the desperate nature of these cases. "Parents are doing exactly what parents are supposed to do," she declared.
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