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To: orionblamblam

No.
"Triage is a system used by medical or emergency personnel to ration limited medical resources when the number of injured needing care exceeds the resources available to perform care so as to treat the greatest number of patients possible."
What these doctors are doing is deliberately withholding medicine to hasten death.


9 posted on 05/05/2005 12:38:23 PM PDT by DesignerChick
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To: DesignerChick

Medical facilities and personnel do not have unlimited resources, with which to pursue every possible treatment for every patient who has a small chance of benefitting. The stories in this article are cherry-picked. Reality is that nearly all patients who have a chance of benefitting from relatively inexpensive care (e.g. antibiotics, cooling a fever, etc.) get it. But when people need very expensive treatment, especially with a low chance of success, it simply has to be rationed. Unless, of course, they can pay for it out of pocket, in which case, I doubt they'd have any trouble getting it.


15 posted on 05/05/2005 1:02:14 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
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To: DesignerChick

> What these doctors are doing is deliberately withholding medicine to hasten death.

Which is something that is common on battlefields (where these things are taken to their extremes). Someones guts are blown out, all you can do is shoot 'em up with morphine. You *could* wrap them with bandages and lavish 'em with antibiotics, but they'd be wasted, and not available to the fella who *can* survive. So, you deliberate withhold medicine. It can hardly be said to hasten death... withholding meds is not the same as administering poison.

That said, the stories in the article seem to be suspiciously far afield. But the *general* concept is entirely understandable.


18 posted on 05/05/2005 1:12:40 PM PDT by orionblamblam ("You're the poster boy for what ID would turn out if it were taught in our schools." VadeRetro)
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