But....the human stories are the whole point of this, no? I just finished the article and it shows clearly(to me) that there are patients who suffer horrible consequences of having those transplants and the system just mostly.....doesn't care? Like one of them says - he can't afford a $100 uber to the hospital, so the hospital just writes him down as non-compliant. So in the medical stats behind this he's probably recorded as healthy and happy, since he doesn't even turn up to his appointments anymore! As one of the surgeons is quoted later "most patients are happy and don't complain" - that's the entire point of this article, maybe they don't complain because they can't or they feel like they can't. If they are being wheeled around to be shown publicly as the pinacle of human surgery they feel like they can't go and say "actually this isn't working for me".

Again, it just sounds like the fault of the system, mostly the American non existent healtcare system. When my dad was treated for cancer using an experimental treatment at a leading oncological hospital in warsaw, he had all his travel costs covered by the hospital. But it sounds like in US insurance companies are just not interested in actually helping these people, I guess it's cheaper to let them die from complications?

>>when what I really want is to learn something about the medicine

I think you can learn - the fact that for some procedures the interest in outcomes ends with patient survival and not with long term prognosis. I imagine it's not universal, but the article describes specific cases of specific people. They are essential to the story.