1 Quadriplegic = Half a Human Life, 1 Teen = Fourteen 85 Year Olds
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
That is the assumption behind a benchmark some, including Peter Singer, are urging for inclusion in any overhaul of the U.S. health system. It's called QALY or Quality of Life Years and the U.S. government has already endorsed it by including substantial funds for research on the concept in the "stimulus" bill. Here's how Peter Singer explained it in the New York Times:
As a first take, we might say that the good achieved by health care is the number of lives saved. But that is too crude. The death of a teenager is a greater tragedy than the death of an 85-year-old, and this should be reflected in our priorities. We can accommodate that difference by calculating the number of life-years saved, rather than simply the number of lives saved. If a teenager can be expected to live another 70 years, saving her life counts as a gain of 70 life-years, whereas if a person of 85 can be expected to live another 5 years, then saving the 85-year-old will count as a gain of only 5 life-years. That suggests that saving one teenager is equivalent to saving 14 85-year-olds. the rest
Girl with Half Her Brain Missing Lives Normal Life: Researchers Amazed
posted by Pat Dague @ 11:04 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
It's amazing that anyone could equate the value of one quadriplegic to half a human life. Obviously, they're not quadriplegic. It's too bad the government doesn't work harder to tap into the value quadriplegics have to offer instead of figuring out ways to devalue them. I can understand why the New York would engage in proliferating such liberal views, I just wish they would finish going broke so they could be out of business. Since I found this blog on a site belonging to the Catholic Church, one might ask what they are doing regarding these developments other than simply publishing them. Just remember, tomorrow you could be a quadriplegic. See how you feel then.
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