More African child discomfort

[Siegmund]

OK, so I read the recent threads about comparing the value of a sum of money vs. saving some number of third world children's lives.

Let me ask you another question.

Suppose you've decided that you are going to set aside a sum - let's call it $1000 again - to improve the quality of life for Africans. Great. Now, I'm going to give you a choice:

1) You can spend that money as Sklansky proposed, and ensure that a sickly baby will be treated for his diseases and, perhaps, grow up to have a productive life.

2) You can let the sickly baby die. Instead, you can spend that same money on a healthy but poor and hungry newlywed African woman, and ensure that she remains fed and cared for through her childbearing years.

By ensuring the babies aren't born sick, you dramatically increase their chance of long-term survival; and, in all likelihood, the cost of maintaining THIS woman's children's health to adulthood will be much lower than for that of the baby born sick in option #1.

In the modern USA, we live in a country where abortion is legal and putting sick dogs and cats to sleep rather than letting them suffer is common and even sometimes mandatory; but we believe that once a live baby is born, no price is too high to keep that baby alive. If a parent refuses to be driven into bankruptcy by hundreds of thousands of dollars to save his sick baby's life, his child is taken from him, the state pays the costs, and then seizes the father's paychecks for the next 18 years.

This is a new attitude. Even 100 years ago it was understood that almost every woman would lose half of her children in infancy. It was a fact of life; you mourned, you buried the baby, you got pregnant again a few months later, sometimes you even named the next baby after his deceased older brother. It remains a fact of life today among virtually all other animal species, and among humans in the third world.

But, oh, the names you will be called, if you stand on a street corner and shout, "Let all the sick African babies die!" We have no stomach for triage except on the battlefield.

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This is a new attitude. Even 100 years ago it was understood that almost every woman would lose half of her children in infancy. It was a fact of life; you mourned, you buried the baby, you got pregnant again a few months later, sometimes you even named the next baby after his deceased older brother. It remains a fact of life today among virtually all other animal species, and among humans in the third world.

But, oh, the names you will be called, if you stand on a street corner and shout, "Let all the sick African babies die!" We have no stomach for triage except on the battlefield.

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People 100 years ago also did all they could to save sick babies. There were just different "facts of life". Infant mortality rates change with tech advances not because of effort. Nobody let their sick child die of smallpox, they did all they could but 100 years ago you could not do enough.

Just out of curiosity....what are your thoughts on involentary euthanasia and killing genetically inferior infants?

[Siegmund]

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Just out of curiosity....what are your thoughts on involentary euthanasia and killing genetically inferior infants?

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Two comments for you.

One, you will please notice that the question I asked was directed at those interested in the "how can I save the most lives per dollar?" aspect of charitable giving, in the spirit of the Sklansky EV-of-donations vs. morals-of-not-donating threads. I would still like to see that question answered: I think many members of this forum like, in principle, the idea of getting the most bang for their buck when they donate to charity, and I wonder how comfortable they are with the idea that saving already-very-ill children isn't the way to do that.

Two, I haven't shared any thoughts on how best to spend charitable dollars yet, just as I haven't about euthanasia or genocide.

But since you asked about genetically inferior babies, let me share a personal experience. Some years ago my high-school girlfriend and I had a baby with Down syndrome. Like most Down babies he had a number of internal birth defects. He lived for eleven months, almost half of that time in hospital bed; when he was at home he still endured feeding tubes inserted, enemas given, and having oxygen lines taped to his face, as part of his treatment. Three of those trips to the hospital were, we were told, "last" trips needed before he'd have a normal healthy childhood. He finally outsmarted the doctors and died in his sleep, leaving behind two devastated families and about $200,000 in (insured, thankfully) bills.

Left to natural causes, he would have died in his mother's arms, naturally though not comfortably, at an age of three weeks. We would have been heartbroken by that, of course. But the pain to us (and, as a separate issue, the cost to society) would have been infinitely less than after a whole year of being given the false hope "just torture him one more time and it'll all be OK in the end," even when, in the cold light of day, the odds of that even being the case were infinitesimal.

If I ever should happen to meet the doctors who performed the life-saving surgeries done at three weeks and five months, I will gladly murder them in cold blood and sacrifice the rest of my life in prison, so that they won't be allowed to prolong that kind of anguish for dozens of other families.

I miss my son. But I saw the way the 20th century United States treated him - and I can say with all my heart it would have been better, for him, us, and society, that he not lived.

This whole area seems a little too 'grey' for me to say anything worthwile

For instance, if my goal is to try and maximize 'greater good', exactly was is greater good? How many pounds of rice distributed to starving people is worth a human life?

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sometimes you even named the next baby after his deceased older brother

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I don't know if it's true, but I also heard that they didn't even nambe the child until after a few years

Btw, you sound like you are 'out there', and I like it