A4 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2016

Grievingparentsstillinfavoroftransplants

Shelby back, Laurie Amick said.

I dont care about the money.
Ryan Slagle, who married Shelby
in December 2013, did not wish to
comment for this story. The Amicks
said they had his blessing to talk to
the Trib.
In September 2015, UPMC
acknowledged a problem with
fungal infections and shut down its
transplant program for six days.
The CDC opened its investigation.
Craig Amick said he felt
conflicted.
We said, OK, good, theyre shut
down, but then we thought, Oh
my, there are a lot of people out
there that really need the transplants, he said.
The Amicks stressed that they
wont stop supporting organ transplants.
I dont want people to be fearful
of transplant because of what happened to Shelby, Laurie Amick said.
The circumstances were different.
There are a lot of success stories
that come from transplants.

SHELBY FROM A1

UPMC came with a stellar

reputation in the transplant field,
backed by the legend of Dr. Thomas
Starzl, known as the father of
organ transplantation.
We did a lot of research, and we
truly believed UPMC was the place
to go, her mother, Laurie Amick,
told the Tribune-Review during an
interview at her home.
The long journey of getting listed
for the surgery can be retraced
through Facebook posts. On Feb.
13, 2015, Shelby posted a letter from
UPMC informing her that she had
been added to the waiting list.
Its official! Shelby wrote.
Woa.

Feeling great

On May 3, 2015, Shelby wrote on

Facebook: Hello, everyone! Yes, I
did receive the call tonight. I am on
my way to Pittsburgh as we speak.
Please remember, there is a possibility this can be a false alarm,
and it may not! Also, as I am very
excited/freaking out, please pray
for the donor family right now.
They are losing a loved one tonight.
Family will be updating as much as
possible. GOD IS IN CONTROL!
A day later, Shelby received a
donor heart from an unknown
woman, which is the norm with
transplants. She was making a full
recovery, sitting up, talking and
texting, according to her mother.
Her parents, Laurie and Craig
Amick, rarely left her side.
She kept saying, Im walking
out of this hospital on July 4,
Laurie Amick said. She was definitely on the road to recovery.
She told her parents the new
heart tickled and felt great.
She had never had a normal
heartbeat before, her father said.
I would have to say Shelbys transplant was going to be a success. It
was beating strong.
The positivity and celebratory
attitude descended into a string of
complications that culminated in
a tragic ending. Her parents say
the downturn began soon after
May 24, 2015, when UPMC doctors
transferred Shelby into an isolation room in the cardiothoracic
intensive care unit. She died about
a month later.
UPMC declined to comment
beyond a statement it issued last
month.
We extend our sympathy to the
family of Mrs. Slagle and appreciate their graciousness, UPMC
spokeswoman Allison Hydzik said.

An unexplainable infection

Shelby had developed a fungal

infection, the same kind that killed
a woman eight months earlier and
would kill a man eight months
later. All three transplant patients
were housed in the same room,
known as Bed 3.

Always remembered
ANDREW RUSSELL | TRIBUNE-REVIEW

The Ohio home of Craig and Laurie Amick is filled with photos of their daughter, Shelby, who died last year.
It was just night and day, a
pretty fast downslide, Craig
Amick said. To me, it was, Oh my
gosh, what the heck is going on?
Nobody knew what was going on.
About two weeks later, doctors
noticed a bedsore on her back side
that had some sort of infection, the
Amicks said.
It got progressively worse, her
mother said. Eventually, she had
to go to surgery every day. They
would take out more tissue and
removed most of her buttocks. The
infection had gotten so deep. It had
eaten down through the skin, the
muscle and started to get to the
bone.
By mid-June, the family started
to realize Shelby would not survive.
It was the most horrific thing
I have ever seen in my life, Craig
Amick said. To sit there and
watch your child be eaten to death
by infection was ... He did not finish the sentence.
Doctors soon mentioned the word
rhizopus, a form of mold that
was eating through Shelbys body.
At the time, nobody knew how or
why she had acquired the infection.
Shelby existed on a breathing
tube and could no longer talk. Her
mother bought her a small whiteboard from the hospital gift shop.
For a few more days, she could
write notes.
She wanted somebody to scratch
this, her mother said between
tears. Or she wanted somebody to
rub her feet. She was hot. She was
just trying to meet basic needs.
And then, it got to the point
where she couldnt hold the pen.

Sometimes, she hallucinated.

She was just out of her mind
toward the end, Laurie Amick
said.
On June 19, she was able to send
her mother a text message.
Mom, I think Im dying, she
wrote.
She did not close her eyes for
days. I dont know if she was not
able, Laurie Amick said. She just
laid there and stared, and she had
this coloring in her eyes. I wanted
so badly for her to sleep.
A week later, on June 26, 2015,
Shelby was gone.
She died a horrible death, her
mother said. Im glad it did not go
on, because at a certain point, it
just became too much.

Mold crisis ensues

Shelby was treated in the same

room of Presbys cardiothoracic
intensive care unit in which at
least two other transplant patients
with fungal infections received
treatment before dying. Tracy
Fischer, 47, and Che DuVall, 70, of
Perryopolis, who died in February,
also stayed in that ICU room.
A fourth, unnamed patient who
contracted a mold infection died in
September 2015 at UPMC Montefiore. A lawsuit on behalf of a fifth
transplant patient, Daniel Krieg,
who died at Montefiore on July 9,
contends a fungal infection contributed to his death.
The room in question at Presby,
known as a negative-pressure
room, is intended to house patients
with an infectious disease so any
air they might infect does not

Proposal still in early stages

flow to other areas. The ventilation system, which is designed to

pull outside air into a room, could
increase infection probability for a
transplant patient taking immunosuppressant drugs.
A Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention report in December
advised UPMC not to house transplant patients with compromised
immune systems in negative-pressure rooms. UPMC said it would
comply. The report was issued
after three transplant patients who
contracted fungal infections at
Montefiore or Presby died within
a year. DuVall, the fourth patient,
already had been sickened. He died
two months after the CDC issued
its report.
We went there because of the
reputation that they have for being
a great transplantation team,
Laurie Amick said. We never
thought to question the facility.
She had high praise for the nursing staff and doctors who treated
Shelby.
The physicians and the nursing
staff were pretty amazing, she
said. The doctors who cared for
her were very attentive. We had a
bond with the staff.
Shelbys husband, Ryan,
agreed to a $1.35 million lawsuit
settlement in August, according
to Franklin County, Ohio, Probate
Court records. Fischers family
settled for the same amount in Allegheny County Court of Common
Pleas. DuValls lawsuit, filed by his
wife, is still in the court system.
To be honest, it could have been
52 trillion dollars, it doesnt bring

CHINA FROM A1

include a medical treatment

facility, a fitness center and
gym and housing for veterans
and their families. In addition
to medical and rehab services, the center would provide
counseling, family support,
job training and other transitional services, the article
stated.
Ben Stahl, executive director of the Veterans Leadership
Program of Western Pennsylvania, said he had heard nothing about the project.
But theres definitely a
need for transitional services
for veterans, and the scope
of that is proportional to the
number of veterans here.
Western Pennsylvania has
nearly 250,000 veterans in the
Pittsburgh area, he said.
Allegheny County has the
largest veteran population in
the state with 106,384, while
Westmoreland has 32,024.
Officials with the Pennsylvania American Legion said
nothing on the scale Goldsmith has proposed exists
anywhere in the state which
is home to nearly 1 million
veterans, one of the largest
populations in the nation.
Theres definitely a need
for that, said Pennsylvania
Legion department adjutant
Kit Watson. There are not
enough services for the vets
who are just being discharged.
And transitional services are
important. There are people
who have been in the military
for so long that its not an easy
transition to civilian life.
Watson said the project
could be beneficial depending on who does it.
It remains unclear where
Goldsmith would get funding for the project and who
would run the center if the
plan comes to fruition.

are imposed everywhere.

A whole range of privileges would be denied,
while people and companies
breaking social trust would
be subject to expanded daily
supervision and random inspections.
The ambition is to collect every scrap of information available online about
Chinas companies and citizens in a single place and
then assign each of them a
score based on their political, commercial, social and
legal credit.
The government hasnt
announced how the plan
will work for example,
how scores will be compiled and qualities weighted
against one another. But the
idea is that good behavior
will be rewarded and bad
behavior punished, with the
Communist Party acting as
the ultimate judge.
This is what China calls
Internet Plus and critics
call a 21st-century police
state.
Harnessing the power of
big data and the ubiquity of
smartphones, e-commerce
and social media in a society where 700 million
people live large parts of
their lives online, the plan
will also vacuum up court,
police, banking, tax and
employment records. Doctors, teachers, local governments and businesses could
additionally be scored by
citizens for their professionalism and probity.
China is moving towards
a totalitarian society, where
the government controls
and affects individuals
private lives, said Beijingbased novelist and social
commentator Murong
Xuecun. This is like Big

SUBMITTED

Details
Visit veterans
sunrisecenter.com to see
a video for the proposed
rehabilitation complex
envisioned for the former
SCI Greensburg.
Repurposing prisons has become a daunting challenge in
many communities across the
country as states faced with
declining prison populations
have closed facilities and put
them on the market.
In the Building & Construction article, Goldsmith said he
considered about 10 possibilities for the Hempfield site before a former Uniontown man
suggested a veterans center.
Public records show Goldsmith this year took out a
$650,000 open-ended mortgage
on the prison property. State
officials previously said it
cost about $2 million a year
to maintain the shuttered facility.
The medium-security prison that once housed 960 inmates and employed a staff
of 360 closed abruptly in June
2013.
Goldsmith purchased the
prison at auction in February
2015 for $950,000 and later titled

it to Verdant Holdings LLC.

The county assessed the
property at $3.3 million,
bringing township, school and
county taxes to $330,000 a year.
Court records show a proposed settlement of an assessment appeal from Verdant
that would reduce the sites
assessed value to $188,000 for
2016 and $164,000 for 2017.
Although Goldsmiths company seeks property-tax relief, Kopas and Anderson said
Jecker made no mention of
financing plans for the proposed veterans center.
The United States has spent
15 years in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and there is no question
the country faces an increasing need to provide the kind of
services Goldsmith proposes,
said Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel.
Economic development,
jobs thats what its all
about. And what a wonderful benefit if they could help
the vets. They have a vision,
but they have an awful lot of
wickets to go through, Anderson said. Its a win-win-win
all the way around if these
guys can pull it off. And Id
love to see them do it.
Debra Erdley is a Tribune-Review
staff writer. Reach her at 412-320-7996
or derdley@tribweb.com.

Ben Schmitt is a Tribune-Review staff writer.

Reach him at 412-320-7991
or bschmitt@tribweb.com.

Communist Party plays judge

PRISON FROM A1

A conceptual rendering shows Greensburg Veterans Sunrise

Center in the former SCI Greensburg prison in Hempfield.

After attending Kent State University for two years, Shelby took
a job as an early childhood teacher
at Nationwide Childrens Hospital
Daycare Center in Columbus. She
absolutely loved children, according to her mother.
Part of that is because she was
tiny and full of life, they could
relate to her, Laurie Amick said.
There was a natural match there.
They loved her.
She and Ryan planned to start
a family after her transplant. She
planned to return to work.
Waiting on the transplant list
gives me hope, Shelby wrote in a
blog post. Hope that I can continue
to plan my future with Ryan and
that someday we can buy our first
home. Hope to have children and
start a family. Hope that we can
grow old together.
Shelbys presence can be felt in
every room of her parents home:
pictures of her happy face on the
refrigerator, kitchen counter, bulletin board and dining room. In the
living room, theres a larger photo
of Shelby and her broad smile on
an end table.
Laurie Amick, an information
technology manager, wakes each
day at 4:30 a.m., pours her coffee
and talks to the photo before getting ready for work.
She sits on the couch, peering
through a window above the fireplace at the early-morning stars in
the sky.
I feel like shes up there
looking down on me, she said.
Its comforting.

This is like Big

Brother, who has all
your information and
can harm you in any
way he wants.
MURONG XUECUN
BEIJING-BASED NOVELIST AND
SOCIAL COMMENTATOR

Brother, who has all your

information and can harm
you in any way he wants.
At the heart of the social
credit system is an attempt
to control Chinas vast, anarchic and poorly regulated
market economy, to punish
companies selling poisoned
food or phony medicine,
to expose doctors taking
bribes and uncover con men
preying on the vulnerable.
Fraud has become ever
more common in society,
Lian Weiliang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the countrys main
economic planning agency,
said in April. Swindlers
have to pay a price.
Yet in Communist China,
the plans inevitably take
on an authoritarian aspect:
This is not just about regulating the economy, but also
about creating a socialist
utopia under the Communist Partys benevolent
guidance.
A huge part of Chinese
political theater is to claim
that there is an idealized
future, a utopia to head towards, said Rogier Creemers, a professor of law and
governance at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Now, after half a century of Leninism, and with
technological developments

that allow for the vast collection and processing of

information, there is much
less distance between the
loftiness of the partys ambition and its hypothetical
capability of actually doing
something, he said.
Assigning Chinas people
a social credit rating that
weighs up and scores every
aspect of their behavior
would not only be a gigantic technological challenge
but thoroughly subjective
and could be extremely
unpopular.
From a technological
feasibility question to a political feasibility question,
to actually get to a score, to
roll this out across a population of 1.3 billion, that
would be a huge challenge,
Creemers said.
The Communist Party
may be obsessed with control, but it is sensitive to
public opinion, and authorities were forced to backtrack when a pilot project
in southern China in 2010
provoked a backlash.
Some of the penalties
showed the partys desire
to regulate its citizens private lives participating
in anything deemed to be
a cult or failing to care for
elderly relatives incurred
a 50-point penalty. Other
penalties reflected the partys obsession with maintaining public order and
crushing any challenge to
its authority causing a
disturbance that blocks
party or government offices
meant 50 points off; using
the Internet to falsely accuse others resulted in a
100-point deduction. Winning a national honor
such as being classified as
a model citizen or worker
added 100 points to someones score.