Replies

1. I'm not joking at all.

Then that says something about sad about the state of your moral development. I hope that you can learn to approach the issue of the valuation of human life with an open mind and heart.

2. My point is a legitimate one.

The utilitarian argument rationalizing the state-sponsored murdered of a conscious 8 year old boy is never legitimate. This is despite the best efforts of this argument's most famous advocates: sociopaths like Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.

3. There's nothing wrong or irrational about discussing legitimate points about the costs (financial and others) of providing medical care in difficult (likely futile) cases?

Once one steps over the line of quantifying the material worth of an innocent child, they have committed the grave ethical error of objectifying human life. Also, the "futility" of this case was maintained only by those advocating for murder. Even someone who is totally morally bankrupt should be able to see see the potential for abuse if the organization responsible for paying for life sustaining healthcare are the exact same people deciding who lives and who dies. Before long, nearly everyone will be considered "futile".

4. Please cite me one piece of documented evidence to support a claim that it is somehow "conservative" to provide medical care indefinitely to a patient under any circumstances?

No one here is advocating that "medical care (be provided) indefinitely to a patient under any circumstances". That fallacious strawman argument aside; libertarians, communists, and anarchists are all in agreement that human life is worth little more than what it can produce. Conservatives stand alone in their ideology of treating all innocent human life as sacrosanct and worthy of basic medical care, such as keeping this child on life support so his lung can heal. See my profile page for an example of such efforts from the author of modern conservatism. I hope that you can approach these responses with the charity with which they are offered.

This has nothing to do with the "worth" of anyone here. If you read the details of the article, you'll see that this is not a simple case of someone who is being fed and hydrated with a feeding tube, or is using mechanical means to support some basic life functions. The child is hooked up to machine that has taken over the function of his heart and lungs, which means this child would -- in all likelihood -- have already been declared clinically dead before this kind of technology existed. This is an intensive care treatment, which means (by definition) it is invasive, costly, and requires ongoing support of one or more organs. The very nature of intensive care is that since it can often effectively be used indefinitely to keep someone alive, it is only supposed to be used in cases where there is a likelihood of patient recovery. And yes -- this means someone must make an objective determination about the likelihood of a patient's recovery.

Again -- this is not about the "value of a life." It's about whether there is a legal or moral obligation to provide this kind of medical treatment ... which represents an expensive and limited "good" in cases like this ... indefinitely. While nobody likes to look at anything like this in financial terms, the reality is that financial constraints will often dictate courses of treatment in these cases. The doctors and medical staff aren't working for free, the hospital building wasn't constructed for free, the electric bills must be paid, and the life-saving equipment and drugs all cost money.

Any time you have a third party paying the medical bills, you've effectively surrendered a lot of authority to determine your preferred courses of treatment. And this holds true regardless of whether the third party is a government agency or a private insurance company.