Sarah Murnaghan, 10, Added To Adult Transplant List For New Lungs After Court Order

Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old with end-stage cystic fibrosis, has been temporarily added to the adult transplant list for a double lung transplant.

U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson granted the Murnaghan’s request on Tuesday, which will last until a June 14 court hearing. Though this ruling only applies to Murnaghan, Baylson has indicated that he would consider granting it to another child in similar circumstances if their case is brought to court before the hearing date. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did not intervene in the ruling.

The Department of Health and Human Services have a ruling that states that those under 12 years of age must wait for children’s lungs to become available for transplant. However, because it is much more rare for children’s lungs to become available than adult lungs, Murnaghan’s family challenged the ruling to better her chances for transplant.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey was pleased with Baylson’s decision. “I applaud today's ruling and am grateful to Judge Baylson for quickly issuing his decision on such an important matter. Now Sarah has a chance for a lung transplant, and I plan to keep fighting for her and others who deserve to be eligible,” he said in an official statement.

This decision has brought up concerns about fairness, as well as the risk of more lawsuits. “Unless the judge has reason to think the lung distribution rules are simply a product of age discrimination and nothing more – which seems highly unlikely – then this becomes a troubling instance of non-doctors deciding who is the best candidate to receive a lung or other scarce medical resource,” Art Caplan, the director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center Director, told NBC News. Sebelius, too, has said that medical decisions such as this should be made by transplant experts, as opposed to those not in the medical field.

Murnaghan, who is from Newtown Square, Penn., has been hospitalized at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for three months now. Her doctors believe that they can successfully perform the transplant with adult lungs.

Get Uinterview's FREE iPhone App For Daily News Updates here.

Get the FREE Uinterview iPad app here and watch our videos anywhere.