In my view the liver thing has gotten nowhere near the amount of coverage Mickey Mantle's did. And Mickey was just as widely respected and even hero-worshiped as Jobs. To me these are closely comparable cases. My memory may be distorted, but it seems to me that there is some zeitgeist shift.

I have a friend who cannot get a kidney transplant. His kidneys are failing and he is on dialysis and without a transplant his life expectancy is less than five years, but he is considered a poor prospect and can't get his name on a waiting list.

What Stallman said was uncharitable and mean-spirited. This I am not so sure. Livers are more precious than kidneys and to waste one is a really huge deal. (I do not know enough about medicine in general or Jobs case in particular to know about the accuracy of that wastage characterization.)