# Is life-saving medication a "luxury"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 21, 2005, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490 "2005-03-21T00:12:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/81 "2005-03-23T13:38:57Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > I had assumed that you meant that the government should be involved in actually doing the research in the first place. A true recipe for disaster. > > I apologize. > > However, I’m still sticking to my guns in saying that drugs are a luxury in the same sense that education and food is a luxury. The definitions of “luxury” are: > > 1. Something inessential but conducive to pleasure and comfort. > 2. Something expensive or hard to obtain. > 3. Sumptuous living or surroundings: lives in luxury. > > I’m focusing on number 2. These things are hard to obtain. They are luxuries. > > Now, if one is incapable of earning, then society has an obligation to weigh the necessity (is it truly life saving like an antibiotic, or is it viagara that is not essential. What about Paxil? Many would call this lifesaving.) of providing the luxury. I consider definition 2 an offshoot of #1. Take an informal poll and I believe the overriding property of a luxury most people have is that is non-essential. Second to that is that it is probably expensive. Expense alone does not equal luxury. But I’m sure there are some out there that will play stupid word-games, as follows. A car nowadays is a mostly considered to be a necessity; a Rolls Royce is a car, therefore a Rolls Royce is a necessity and not a luxury. BS - I won’t even dignify that with a counter-argument. BUT- There is a drug that braeks up blod-clots during heart attacks and/or strokes (forget which). It is the only drug that has this life-saving property. It is expensive as hell. But it is not a luxury. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/82 "2005-03-23T14:24:21Z")
I recommend looking up risk analysis. Bascially when a persons ability to pay for their needs is surpasses, and society has funds to make up the difference, there has to be some order to who gets what. If society has enough money to pay for everyone then there is no problem. If it doesn’t we have to have some means to determine who we can save and who we can’t - this is where we live. That life saving medicine might end up costing $100,000 to save that one life. That same $100,000 might be used to make some upgrades to a dangerous streach of road that should save 5 lives per year. It is very compasionate to have the media make stories about how this person is going to die because he can’t afford some medicine, and this may get that person the meds, but it reality it has taken money away from that road improvment project and extending one person’s life for the cost of 5 lives per years. Taken a bit further you are taking 5 lives which are most likely productive members of society and killing them off (per year) to substain a person who seem to be not a productive member anymore, so you hurt your ability to pay for others in the future. Also there is no drug that will stop death. Some may extend life but that does not make it a necessity. The extention of life beyond natural limits can be considered a luxury. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/83 "2005-03-23T14:50:32Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > There is a drug that braeks up blod-clots during heart attacks and/or strokes (forget which). It is the only drug that has this life-saving property. It is expensive as hell. But it is not a luxury. TNKase, and I know people who were involved in its invention (though I had nothing to do with it). Listen, I’m not saying that I don’t have a special responsibility to help save lives with drugs by providing them to the most possible people. What I take offense by is people coming in and calling those of us creating medications “greedy” because we expect to be able to feed our own families. I do not OWE society free, or discounted drugs, and you do not DESERVE them. If they are provided at a discount of market value (and MANY are, and I agree that they should be when possible), that is evidence of drug makers being magnanimous. I take offense to the fact that the people who are providing the drugs, and working their asses off to do it, are being maligned for being greedy by the people demanding freebies. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2005, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/84 "2005-03-23T16:54:01Z")
It’s probably not even phsyically, let alone economically, possible to give everyone all the medical treatments they want or “need” anymore. There simply aren’t enough doctors and there may never be. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/85 "2005-03-24T01:08:38Z")
> [@spingears](#): > > … > In days past there were always those that could and were willing to provide assistance to those in need. Ah, the “good old days” syndrome. No, there weren’t. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/86 "2005-03-24T01:11:40Z")
I’m sorry, are you actually saying that charity never existed in the past until the government stepped in? Surely not. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/87 "2005-03-24T01:15:28Z")
No, it existed. The assertion was that in the past, before governments took on the job, there was \*always \* enough voluntary charitable assistance for everyone who needed it. There wasn’t. There probably still isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/88 "2005-03-24T01:24:20Z")
Quite. But if you will note, he did not go any farther past the facts than you did. That is, his overgeneralization (he did, after all only say that people existed to give help. He never said that everyone who needed it got it) was no worse than yours. There is some debate as to how effective private charity was in previous ages. It varied quite a bit, and unfortuneatly, comparisons are quite difficult. Lifestyle changes and technology changes make it very difficult to judge how bad things were in bygone eras. Suffice it to say that while it is certainly not true that charity took care of everyone’s needs long ago, neither was there rampant starvation in the streets for the most part. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/89 "2005-03-24T01:29:11Z")
Read some Charles Dickens. Then realize that while the specific people and events described are imaginary, the society and the situations were realistically portrayed. All I’m saying is that there is a mode of thought that in some undefined past everyone took care of everyone else. Such a golden era never existed or, if it did I have never seen any credible evidence of it on anything more than a very limited and local scale. ---
**Author:** ![pervert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbe5ce/32.png) [@pervert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pervert)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2005, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490/90 "2005-03-24T01:52:52Z")
Well, again, I agree that there never was a time when everyone’s needs were entirely and fully fulfiled. But as far as using Dickens as a historical reference, go and dig up some statistics on starvation. What you might find is that the population increased at a brisk pace through that very period. I suggest that this would have been difficult if mass starvations were the norm. Also, you might find that many almost fuedal systems had not been done entirely away with. This is what I meant by saying that comparisons to the past are notoriously difficult. It is simply inappropriate to blame people for not helping each other enough when they had only recently given up slavery. [You might also peruse this paper.](http://upload.mcgill.ca/economics/ferrie.pdf) It suggests that economic mobility (the rate at which persons in one income group move to another) was quite a bit higher in the late 1800s and early 1900s. _The analysis performed here has revealed a substantial decline in geographic and occupational mobility between the historical samples and modern samples (both the NLS and PSID). Wealth mobility has also changed over the last 150 years, though in a more subtle manner: movement from the bottom quarter of the wealth distribution to the upper half is now less common than it was in the past, but more modest movement from just below the median to just above it has improved._ Also I’d note that some of Dicken’s stories have rather happy endings. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-life-saving-medication-a-luxury/295490.md?page=4)