baby allowed to die because parents are poor.

[Dragonsbane]

h4x: The quote was from Soviet leader and mass murderer Joseph Stalin, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic".

Bob: Personally, Bob, I would probably give someone that medicine if they were in bad enough condition...such as a life-or-death scenario...regardless of whether or not they could pay. However, that would just be so that they could survive long enough for me to call an ambulance. Business is business, but compassion is an admitted weakness of mine. Would you give a starving man food? I would, until he's well enough to get his own...because I don't need them becoming dependant on me.

Of course, if they couldn't pay because they didn't have a job, and needed medicine they couldn't get in order to survive, I would try to help them find one. There has to be something that can be done in a case like this.

[edit] Of course, that's completely irrelevant, as the problem isn't that the parents aren't rich. According to the article, the doctors treating the baby believe that further treatment is futile, other than to ease the child's pain and suffering. In other words, they can't cure her cancer and skin disease, just use up resources prolonging it.

[phil_]

DB, there's a big difference between giving people food and giving them medication. Bob's dad can't give away meds because people will abuse them. It is common for people addicted to powerful painkillers or other prescription drugs to fake symptoms convincingly in order to get the drugs they need. Well, it's common in ERs, anyway. I'm not so sure about pharmacies, but the same principle (and profit) applies.

Poor kid, but again, the ER horror stories I've heard since infancy keep me from being upset. Some kids just don't survive. Some can't. The doctors are medical professionals; they know what a hopeless case is much better than the parents do (unless the parents are doctors, but odds are they aren't) because the doctors have brought many more kids into the world than the parents have. In a better structured sentence, the doctors made their decision from experience, not from spite for the poor (if the parents even are poor).

Final note: this is getting media coverage. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be an article to link to.

[Bob The Mercenary]

DB: I know where you're coming from. But, my dad is the compassionate of the compassionate. I wasn't really talking about a situation where person A walks in carrying person B who is about to die unless they get pills. I've heard my dad say something like he will refer them to some other business or even the hospital. But, he has taken IOUs before.