Thread: Priorities
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Old 04-01-2005, 03:50 AM
gasgod gasgod is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 492
Default Priorities

The Terri Chiavo case, IMO, has shown that we don't have our priorities in order.

How can it be in the national interest to devote so much effort to 'save' a woman's life when she doesn't have a functioning brain? Wouldn't we be better off to spend the same effort where it might do some good?

Our capacity for providing medical care is not infinite. In my view, providing around-the-clock medical care for Terri is tantamount to denying medical care to those who could benefit from it.

In my opinion, those who assert that Terri could benefit in any meaningful way from the care she was given are driven by their own ideology, and not by any genuine concern for Terri herself. Terri had no capacity for meaningful life. Her brain was all but destroyed, and nothing could ever reverse that.

We can understand that her parents might want her life to be maintained. But why can we not see that the effort involved could be better spent elsewhere?

We cannot, and should not, try to keep everybody alive forever. Medical care should be rationed; those who can benefit the most should be accorded the highest priority.

To those who object that this is "playing God", I say that we have no real choice.


GG
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