(There is bad, then there is worse! - a heartbreaking story)
by Sheri Fink, Special to ProPublica Dec. 15, 2010, 3:18 p.m.
Late last August, 41-year-old Amos Phillips arrived by ambulance at Tygerberg Academic Hospital near Cape Town, South Africa. His kidneys had failed. He was confused, struggling to breathe, and desperate enough to ask doctors to end his life.
The same month, a 43-year-old widow with three children was also treated at Tygerberg for kidney failure. The patient, Karen MacPherson, desperately wanted to live. She said she had been plagued by high blood pressure, a risk factor for kidney disease, since her children
