"A man was struck by several vehicles - including an ambulance - when he ran from police and tried to cross the Southern Motorway last night." Source.
While the irony is almost amusing, we now have to ask why as tax-payers we have to fund this dimwits recovery and care to recover from his critical condition.
A condition that is entirely his own fault and incurred while both in breach of the law, and endangering the lives of all the people on the motorway.
Even more to the point why should those people in the public health system through no explicit fault of their own now have to wait on his care as he uses some of our most stretched and expensive resources to save his life? This is even worse than the stretch on our under-funded police force trying to save those that decide to cross in front of trains.
Tags: New Zealand, Darwinism, NZ
Friday, April 07, 2006
Why can't we let Darwinism take its course?
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7 comments:
Doctors save lives because it is the right thing to do, and the humane thing to do, regardless of whose life it is. It is not the quality of the person under the knife, but the quality of the person who holds the knife. When we decide to let people die, or rather, that we CAN let people die, we lose our humanity.
But we already make this decision.
We already allow people to die from treatable conditions due to resource allocations - and frequently these resource allocations are made on nothing more than the "critical degree" of the patient.
We might not like to think about the the fact that this happens, but the reality is that it does - and by pouring resources in critical cases like this we condemn more people to death and / or lives of pain.
I like this blog. Michelle would have a great point about doctors, if doctors were altruistic volunteers. Unfortunately, as your point about resource allocations gets into, the services of doctors are expensive, and consume a disproportionate portion of the resources of the vast middle calss. How? The rich easily afford them, and the poor do not pay, instead relying om the "humanity" taxed out of the rest of us. Michelle's general point is hard to argue with - of course being humane is good, but to what extent do resources need to be diverted from other productive endeavors to save the lives of knuckleheads like the one referenced.
Best regards - Steve
Perhaps michelle has a point. The people in this coutry who die quietly waiting for an operation at least share there last days with family.
This twat only had a bunch of police and some of the countries best medical practioners rushing around for him.
Give the poor man a break.
Sorry burt - can I get an emoticon for that last post; I'm lost as to whether it was serious or facaetious?
I agree with her principal. We cannot play god on who gets care based on what we percieve them to be. Their value to society is nebulis to measure and it's dubious to try.
BUT as you so correctly point out we already have a system in place that denies people access based on some criteria that is neither fair nor agreed on by the public.
So bugger it, if you were injured while commiting a crime - to the back of the queue.
If only our own humanity didn't get in the way of fairness eh? ;-)
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