An analogy that makes me mad

[TequilaGirl 0]

Will you please post the article you are basing this thread on cause I cannot find it.

[cgross 1]

Honey, I am working on it. If I recall it was on MSNBC (TV). I an searching for the source.

THe Question I asked though is:

IS THIS MORALLY CORRECT? NOT LEGALLY, BUT MORALLY?

[Craig 0]

Not responding to anyone in particular and maybe I am missing somthing here but... OK, the girl would have died without the operation. Now did anyone tell the mother that her daughter would live if she had the operation? The way I see it if I was told myself, or a loved one, need a transplant of this magnitude or any major surgery for that matter, that there are risks invloved. Death happens to be one of those risks. I really don't think that there are many surgerys that are "routine".

[flyingferret 0]

Okay, I can see this thread blowing up. Several things: cgross, for the most part I agree with you. Lets clarify a few things:
a)post the links for your sources, particularly the ones about the mother reacting spitefully. That will avoid 50 posts debating intentions
b)I think what cgross is most upset with, it not whether or not she sues, but rather that the decision was made to grant her a transplant for free while our citizens die!

Now, let me share my thoughts. Illegal immigrants are ILLEGAL, it is sort of inherent in the definition. That does not mean their life is worth anyless. I fully agree that human life cannot bear a price. However you cannot apply that unilaterally to everyone, there are just not enough resources. Sadly, someone has to choose. It IS that simple, you cannot save everyone. I do not think that girl who died was anyless valuable than anyone else. However it appears that Lauren Averitt should get the same consideration. I feel personally that my tax dollars should go to help citizens of this country first! Then obviously if there are leftovers, help the world. But you see the obvious flaw there....we dont have enough money to help our own.

I think the girl who died was given a supreme gift, a gift which many people never get! Think about this! Many people never get the transplant, and the die! Their soul leaves this planet. Hindsight is 20/20, the girl may have rejected the organs anyway. She was not guarenteed to live! However, she was given a gift, and the doctors tried. I don't believe for a minute they did not. Like someone pointed out, I think we should wait and see if the blame lies on the doctors, they dont pick the organs.

If you were in freefall, and due to some magical already dead fellow jumper you had the chance to deploy his 50 year old Navy round reserve, condition unknown, would you take it? Yeah, you would, because you are seconds away from death. If it did not work, would you want your wife to sue the 'buddy' that let you try it?

I think the whole situation is despicable, no matter what side of the fence you are on. But...and here is the really said part, so please even if you vehemently disagree with me, read the below:

I went to the donations.org site because I do feel compassion for Lauren Averitt. I had some money for tithes and offering (which if you are not familiar is the relegious solution for caring for your community, you give back 10% of what God has blessed you with). Anyway, I had not given some of it and I felt this was an excellent cause. I went to the site to choose her name, was awestruck when teh dropdown menu appeared. There are tons of people on that list. Stop and think about it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. These are all people waiting for death. Why had I choosen Lauren? Simply because the publicity allowed me to know her name. But I cannot help them all. I cannot judge any of them. So, I must do my duty, and try to help, and know that if everyone tries we might cover it. Either way God see the heart of the giver and knows we cannot help everyone. That is why I feel we cannot be held accountable for charity.

The question is what will we choose to give? What is it worth? I know we, as a community, have raised more than than Lauren needs to keep a fellow jumper in her home. Where any of her financial problems due to bad choices? Is there something that we could find fault with in Lauren? Probably yes to both. But does either matter???? Or will me choose to give to better someone's life? Or is owning a parachute a qualification?

--
All the flaming and trolls of wreck dot with a pretty GUI.

[rocketfeuille 0]

Regardless of whether or not her organs were salvageable, it is an outrage that the mother would sue! It's ridiculous! Maybe if she were a legal resident and taxpayer, I wouldn't mind so much, but she's not. And furthermore, that an American citizen would be treated in such a manner while a non-resident gets the spa treatment is preposterous.

[misskriss 0]

I am sure the mother did not decide to sue on her own. I bet anything she was approached by attorneys who told her that her daughter was killed by negligent doctors and that they should pay...etc, etc.. why are "we" always so hasty to judge when we really don't know the situation ..

[happythoughts 0]

A death of a child is a vulnerable, angry time. A parent wants someone to be responsible, they want their child back, they wish they could trade places... lots of room for manipulation there.

[cgross 1]

THank you for your balanced views. I am happy to see someone step back and thoughtfully look at both sides.

I am at work right now, and can not go willy nilly through the internet looking for the sources, but will when I get hme. I posted this in the hope of opening some eyes as to what is going on. Conservative or liberal, it doesn't matter. There is saomething wrong with this whole situation.

You are also right to notice the only reason you now know Lauren is because I put her name there.

In response to many people, a life is worth no more than another. This is true, but when you use my $$$, I should have at least a little say in where it goes.

I for one do NOT give any money to charity. Not after 9/11, not after seeing where a lot of it went, but hey that is my choice.

I only posed one question, and that had to do with morallity. Some one asked if it was my kid would i sneak into a country illegally. Yes I probably would, but I would not sue when the shit hit the fan. She had her chance, and the doctors tried. SHit happens.

Unfortunately a good deal of people feel they are entitled something when things turn out for the worst. This is what bothers me. This woman should be thanking the Hospital, and the American taxpayer for the Chance that her dughter may have been saved, but instead she is sueing.

[ERICCONNELLY 0]

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There is NO REASON why an American is more deserving of a treatment than a non-American. This goes for every single country. If I was a doctor and I had to choose between Einstein and someone who achieved nothing and is in my country illegally, I would use a coin. I may hope it will come up Einstein, but I will follow what the coin says. NO human life is worth more than another, except in extreme cases of the other person being a thief/murderer/rapist, and even then it's a tough choice.

That is total bullshit. I am not god, nor do I want to play one but to deny that some people are more worthy of care is just plain dumb.
It is also not relevant in this case. Nationality doesn't really enter into this equation but some people don't want to make those choices and shouldn't, some do want to make those decisions and shouldn't and some want to make those decisions and SHOULD.

The difficulty is knowing the difference.

This dificulty DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE DECISION SHOULD NOT BE MADE. Flipping a coin, leaving the decision to god or otherwise avoiding the painfull decision to make a chioce is a COP OUT.

However I know I wont change your mind so I will offer this. At least apply the same level of decision making to the rest of your life - flip a coin when you Vote, that way you will be right at least 50% of the time.

[tb62871 0]

I am not unsympathetic to anyone losing a family member but...
This woman was in this country illegally. This makes heer a criminal end of story. She must be deported. Then if she can get back into the country legally we can consider any legal issues that she may want to address.

--TB
Welcome my friends to the show that never ends.

[billvon 3,099]

>but to deny that some people are more worthy of care is just plain dumb.

So who, in your book, is less worthy of care?

[TequilaGirl 0]

Well to be honest - I can't answer your question without knowing the information you posted is 100% accurate.....which is why I want to see the article you keep referring to.....especially since part of what you posted is not true.

[ERICCONNELLY 0]

My personal decisions are my own and every situation is different but here are a couple.

Car crash involving drunk driver (person #1) and 12 year old. driver hits kid then smashes into XXX. Both are severely injured and will bleed to death if left alone. You are first on the scene and can save one of them. Do you flip a coin?

I don't think so Bill and neither would I.

How about two individuals (same blood type, ect.) that need a liver transplant to live. One is a surgeon that got Hepatitis working in a trauma unit, the other got the same disease from abusing IV drugs and has been in and out of rehab many times.

I wouldn't flip a coin here either.

I don't think most people would.

Human nature being what it is, we also etnd to help those we are most comfortable with (family, friends, same cultural ID) first.

Take situation 1 above with your son, your neighbors son and the drunk. All will die but one. Who do you save?

I will save MY son. I will cry about the others later.
\

Edit to add...

Specific to this situation. I think the transplant should go to the person most likely to live as a result of the operation. I won't pass judgement on the first transplant (the wrong organs) but giving a girl that was already very likely to die even with a transplant a set of organs that very likely could have saved that life of another is wrong in my eyes.

sometimes you have to triage.

[flyingferret 0]

Agreed. The fallacy that we owe something to everyone on Earth has been a bane of the United States since the social revolution in the 60s. No everyone can win. Sad to say, but someone will make the choice. Not you or I maybe, but someone will. It is so politically incorrect to make a decision today with qualifying it 10 different ways first. "i dont want to sound racist/sexist/conservative/liberal/etc/etc, but....." How many opinions doe we preface with that statement? We are afraid to make decisions...but life cannot exist without them. The lack of decisions and taking responsibility for them is the root cause for our economy, war on terrorism, etc, etc. Yes it is a complicated issue, I know. So dont have a knee-jerk reaction to this post.

But as it applies to this thread: life involves choices. Maybe not easy ones, but looking away and spreading good vibes will not make them go away.

The mother and daughter were illegal
They were given a great gift of compassion
The gift was even greater because the legality of residence was overlooked
The mother is now more upset that our medical system made a mistake, and not grateful for the fact that if gave her a chance.

Typical story with the US, we feel responsible and compassionate. So we attempt to help. Then people scream at us, sue us, burn our flag, throw rocks, and blow up crap, because we did not have the divine insight to foresee the perfect path. Fine, then lets learn, and choose carefully where our help goes. The legal system has made it so we have no other choice.

To further the analogy above, I would save my son. But for another reason than you might think. Did you know the Red Cross advises you VERY strongly to get witnessed consent from an accident victim before administering first aid? Why? because of good samaritan lawsuits. Furthermore, did you know that if you begin to administer first aid, you are legally liable if you do not continue until the paramedics arrive? For those reasons, the ungrateful supported by the judicial system has left me no other choice than to make choices about who will live.

--
All the flaming and trolls of wreck dot with a pretty GUI.

[AggieDave 6]

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Typical story with the US, we feel responsible and compassionate. So we attempt to help. Then people scream at us, sue us, burn our flag, throw rocks, and blow up crap, because we did not have the divine insight to foresee the perfect path. Fine, then lets learn, and choose carefully where our help goes

Well said!

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[billvon 3,099]

>Car crash involving drunk driver (person #1) and 12 year old. driver
> hits kid then smashes into XXX. Both are severely injured and will
> bleed to death if left alone. You are first on the scene and can save
> one of them. Do you flip a coin?

Honestly I think I would try to help the first injured person I came to and hope other people showed up to help the other victim. If I had perfect knowledge of the crash beforehand i.e. knew that one was drunk AND at fault, which car each victim was in. that they both would die without my care but one would live with my care, and that the third participant (driver of the car that was struck) was a non-issue (either dead or fine) then I'd help the kid first.

I've never been involved in an accident where things were that clear-cut, though - I often end up taking care of the guy that ends up dying since he's the worst injured and I'm often the best trained, at least initially. It would have been 'better' had I ignored the guy who was going to die anyway and concentrated on one of the survivors, but there's no way to know that beforehand.

In any case, I think you have to make a distinction between an emergency situation and a stable situation where everything is known beforehand. In the case of transplants, if it were up to me, I would base the decision upon:

-which recipient was most likely to be helped by the transplant (i.e. a chronic drinker who needs his second liver transplant will likely be helped less than the doctor who got hep from a needle stick.)

-which recipient is in most dire need of the transplant (someone who will likely die within 10 days gets priority over someone who will last a month)

-which recipient is the closest tissue match

I would not base it upon nationality or suspected guilt or citizenship status or ability to pay, because I don't feel like I should decide someone's life or death based upon those criteria. But that's just me.

[Push 0]

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Car crash involving drunk driver (person #1) and 12 year old. driver hits kid then smashes into XXX. Both are severely injured and will bleed to death if left alone. You are first on the scene and can save one of them. Do you flip a coin?

Drunk driver in this case has performed a negligent murder. As I said before, one respects the worth of a life unless that life is in an obvious manner dangerous to others. The drunk driver dies, because he caused the accident, and he killed. This is not a random occurance.

If he was not drunk, I would help the 12 year old girl because her life is still mostly ahead of her, and because she was a completely innocent participant. It is mostly bullshit that crashes are "shit happens". To the other driver, this is pretty much a coin toss. He was unlucky enough to hit a 12 year old.

Again, this is not a random occurance between two people that you have no real way to evaluate.

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How about two individuals (same blood type, ect.) that need a liver transplant to live. One is a surgeon that got Hepatitis working in a trauma unit, the other got the same disease from abusing IV drugs and has been in and out of rehab many times.

Again, a question of pure numbers. See above. It is the opposite side of the least damage principle. Here you can predict the benefit to a reasonable degree. The decision is based on NOTHING except the fact that the surgeon can, in all likelihood, save more lives than the drug addict. If I did not know, I would not decide.

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Take situation 1 above with your son, your neighbors son and the drunk. All will die but one. Who do you save?

I will save MY son. I will cry about the others later.

Coin toss. You were the first on the scene. He was your son.

Please detail the criteria by which one should judge the worth of one life over another. Also, please detail the methods by which you would make sure that the elements that you are using to evaluate these people accurately represent their individual worth.

If you are saying that your criteria is your own, then you simply represent one of those coin tosses. Some other person can have the opposite criteria and be on the same moral ground as you. Which one arrives first? Toss of a coin.

I do not think that this is the easy way out. I believe that following the predetermined rules of society is the easy way out. Try following this in the real world, and see which way is easier. I have not yet met a person who can do what I described exactly. I myself have (thankfully) not been put to this test yet, but I'm confident that if I ever find myself in a situation like this, I will fail. Thankfully, such situations where the evaluation is forced to be completely random, where you have to toss a coin, is very rare in day to day life.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[Push 0]

Here's a good example of the same-worth principle. My economics professor gave me this, it is not a life and death situation, but it illustrates the point quite well.

You are the cashier in a toystore. You sell extremely popular dolls. So popular that you have only one left. In line in front of you is one of the ugliest little girls you have ever seen in your life. She has a face that only a mother could love, and doesn't look like she has any friends. She looks stupid, dressed badly, by all account she is probably poor, overall repulsive. Near the counter there is a small, cute, well dressed girl, who is counting out pennies and sobbing at the one doll left. She obviously doesn't have the money, but she definitely looks more deserving. She looks like she has friends that can share the doll, that it will add to her emotional growth that will later give her a good education, a good family, etc.

Which girl gets the doll?

If you said the deserving one, consider this. You later find out that the ugly girl has no friends, no family, no money. She works on the street in some grocery store and sleeps in a garage. She has saved that money up for months, and now she wanted to take this one chance to feel like a normal, proper human being. If you would have given her the doll, she may have had the courage to get out of the gutter, but now she continues her miserable existance. The cute girl is a spoiled brat, she threw the doll away the next day.

If you chose the ugly girl, maybe you were right and she didn't deserve the doll at all.

So how do you choose? Stick to the money.

Except that money in this case is a very pathetic way to evaluate. A doll will not kill the person, a bad liver can. In life or death matters that come suddenly, where the amount of money required is enormous and the time given to collect it is very small, money is a very skewed decision factor. A lung transplant is just not something that you save up for and prepare for.

But then how do you evaluate people?

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[Push 0]

So because you provided help voluntarily, you are absolved from negligence? "Lets see if this works. Oh well, she's dead, too bad for you. Back to Mexico now".

I'm not saying I approve of the good samaritan lawsuit culture, but sometimes people need to be punished. Why can't she ask for justice? Because she isn't American? And if she was, would that make it better?

If the doctors were not overly negligent, the lawsuit will fail. If they were, justice was served, no? Surely, as an American, you would find that a good thing.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[RevJim 0]

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Take situation 1 above with your son, your neighbors son and the drunk. All will die but one. Who do you save?

I will save MY son. I will cry about the others later.

Now take that same situation and make your son the drunk. How does you opinion hold now? Do you save your son, who happens to be drunk, or try and save the others?

OK, how about your neighbors son and someone you don't know have an accident. You neighbors son you know, and want to treat first, but he's the one that is drunk.

Or, how about an accident where both people are drunk? Hell, they both broke the law! What would you do? Leave them both to die?

It's your life, live it!
Karma
RB#684 "Corcho", ASK#60, Muff#3520, NCB#398, NHDZ#4, C-33989, DG#1

[wildblue 7]

Anyone ever hear that song "Lifeboat"?

it's like incest - you're substituting convenience for quality

[ERICCONNELLY 0]

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But as it applies to this thread: life involves choices. Maybe not easy ones, but looking away and spreading good vibes will not make them go away.

Agreed. This was the point I was trying to make.

[ERICCONNELLY 0]

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Now take that same situation and make your son the drunk. How does you opinion hold now? Do you save your son, who happens to be drunk, or try and save the others?

I'll bite.

I would still save my son. That's my set of values.

As I said, my values are different than yours are, I'm sure, but I will not deny that I have to make decisions everyday based on MY framework.

I just hate the self rightous (sp) that pretend they don't have to think or decide about anything.

[harryskydives 0]

I like the analogy. 2 people also died that did not receive transplants instead of this illegle. At what point do we ignore our laws and give away to people that wont give back. Read the book Invasion.

Don't run out of altitude and experience at the same time...

[Push 0]

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I just hate the self rightous (sp) that pretend they don't have to think or decide about anything.

The decision not to decide is a decision, especially when made conciously. Not only that, sometimes it is the difficult decision. You can say "I saved my son because that is who I am". And what will I have to say? "I saved my son because I am a weak asshole who cannot do what he believes is right"?

My grandfather was a surgeon in Russia, and had to make coin tosses because they did not have enough supplies to save everyone. He had a little white book every year with the names of people who died because of his decisions. Part of the Hyppocratic (sp?) oath is that no one life is worth more than another. Did I mention he acted as a field medic in WWII? Thankfully I have been spared those kinds of things so far, but his stories give you some idea.

Ask anyone who lived by that code if it's the easier way out. You may find the answer surprising.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.