Social factors are medical factors, though. Anti rejection drugs aren’t cheap, so a person’s insurance or wealth becomes a medical factor. Surgical wound dressings don’t change themselves, so the absence of a willing and able support person to change them (and again, insurance or wealth to purchase them) is a medical factor. Organs ready for transplant don’t keep long, and follow up visits are important, so access to transportation is a medical factor.
That’s without even touching the issues of medication and diet adherence.
I really, truly, honestly don’t. If I were, say, a 80 year old man who was eligible for a liver transplant but I knew that doctors had to choose between me and a teenager in the same situation, I’d say give the organ to the kid. This goes double if I’m an alcoholic who knows I probably wouldn’t quit drinking. The kid’s life is more valuable than mine because he still has his whole life ahead of him. He can grow up, see the world, have kids, all things that I, as an 80 year old, will have already done. And we’ve all got to die sooner or later. While my family would be saddened (I would hope!), his would be devastated. Giving the liver to me in that situation would be an unconscionable waste of life. Your position genuinely baffles me.
No life is more valuable than any other. If we accept otherwise, then that logic leads us inevitably to dark places that it’s better for our civilization not to revisit.
Don’t you strongly support the death penalty? How can you simultaneously believe that some people have forfeited their right to life while it is impossible for other people to do the same?
It is impossible for an innocent person to forfeit their right to life. There exist certain crimes that one can commit against another human being which are of such an egregious affront to life and civilization that executing them is the only fitting punishment.
For the record, I have, on one occasion, said that I believe a person should kill himself - on the grounds that he had committed a crime for which he deserves to die, but for which he is not at risk of receiving the death penalty.
So you’re uncomfortable with deciding what person might have the best shot at survival, or get the most quality of life, but you’re certain that you have the moral authority (and perfect knowledge) to decide who is innocent and not innocent.
**Smapti, **I get the impression that you want a world that lives by ideals, but this isn’t an ideal world; it’s a world with lots of harsh choices. Having people shed decision-making responsibility doesn’t change that ugly reality and in fact may make it worse.
The medical establishment lacks the constitutional ability to create or interpret law. The judiciary possesses both.
We as a civilization cannot afford to be allowed to make those harsh choices. The last time we went down the route of trying to decide who was more worthy of life than the other, it ended with eleven million innocent people gassed and incinerated.
The whole gist of this story is that the kid, by his own actions that led to his death, proved that the original doctors were correct in not putting him at the top of the transplant list. His criminal history (at the age of 15!!) was just one of the several factors that led to their decision, and as it turns out the one that led to his premature demise.
Someone else was denied that heart, due to the media circus that portrayed the doctors as unfeeling, even racist, child killers. The doctors were right, and their difficult decisions should not be overturned by the court of public opinion.
And yet that same judiciary seems to ensnare the wrong people pretty frequently. Why do the same people (I’m not saying this includes you) who say that government cannot do anything right also trust said government to kill the correct people, via police action, execution, and war?
Godwin! You lose!
Though, since you brought it up, were the victims of the Holocaust more valuable than the 1/2 million to 2 million ethnic Germans who died when they were cleansed from central and eastern Europe after WW2?
Were the Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians murdered by the Ottoman Empire more valuable than the Turks, Arabs, and Kurds who died at the hands of Armenian militia, the Imperial Russian Army, the Greek Army, and other Balkan forces?
Were the Bosniak victims of Serbian atrocities more valuable than the Serbs who lived in rural areas without television cameras to record their suffering at the hands of Bosniak raiders?
I’m just glad Smapti isn’t in charge of making everyone else’s end-of-life decisions for them. There would be a hell of a lot more needless, pointless pain and misery if that were the case.
Just to be safe, I think I’ll unearth my advance directive and make sure it says exactly what I want done, or not done.
