The UPMC kidney transplant story of a person infected by a diseased organ, about which I wrote in July, entered a predictable chapter yesterday with the filing of malpractice lawsuits. I imagine some will say, "You see, this is why they should not be transparent about the underlying systemic causes of the error." I would say, "Not so. Without sufficient transparency about the causes, and by simply blaming two clinicians, the chance of something else going wrong in the future is elevated. The lawsuit will rise or fall on its own merits. It is better to derive something good from the learning opportunity presented by the incident. But that can only happen when it is openly discussed and evaluated in a wider forum. Also, you have a moral obligation to inform other transplant centers about the string of events that led to this conclusion."
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