[HN Gopher] Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig's he...
___________________________________________________________________
Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig's heart beating
soundly
Author : otoolep
Score : 428 points
Date : 2022-01-26 01:22 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.irishtimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.irishtimes.com)
| jb1991 wrote:
| Now I know that I will stop eating pork.
| yob22 wrote:
| yitchelle wrote:
| For a layman like me on medical matters, it seems very strange
| that a pig's heart is used. Would it more logical idea to use a
| primate, our closest "cousin"?
| eps wrote:
| Read the article.
| Schinken_ wrote:
| Pigs are not too far off when it comes to the overall body. I
| believe the idea to use a pig's heart is one off availability
| (and maybe ethics). A ton of pigs are slaughtered each and
| every day, we already use several parts of a pig's body (which
| is a good thing, waste as little as possible). If we can
| successfully use it's heart for transplantation, even better.
| This means there is a good supply of hearts to be used.
| ColinWright wrote:
| That's pretty clearly explained in the article.
| gavinflud wrote:
| "While it is true that pigs are less compatible with humans
| than monkeys, they can be genetically manipulated to produce
| organs less likely to be rejected on transplantation. Pigs
| quickly grow to full size, produce larger litters and can be
| more easily reared by biotechnology companies."
|
| They do cover this point.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Pigs have a lot of physiological similarity to us (thus why
| fetal pig dissections are often done in high school/undergrad
| biology). Plus there are fewer ethical concerns around using an
| animal we already use for food.
|
| I imagine there's also a consideration for ease of raising.
| These pigs had to be kept separate from others and tested
| frequently for disease because of having some aspects of their
| immune system weakened to reduce rejection risk. This would
| probably be easier to do ethically for pigs compared to
| primates.
| taf2 wrote:
| This is great news! I am very hopeful there is no reject in a
| year ... hopeful for him and his family
| dmead wrote:
| wepple wrote:
| I assumed "victim" referred to the pig, but I believe this is
| in reference to the fact that the heart recipient stabbed
| someone, leading to their death:
| https://nypost.com/2022/01/13/historic-pig-heart-
| recipient-w...
| anonymousiam wrote:
| The article says; "Almost 22 years later the first ever
| xenotransplant has finally taken place."
|
| They seem to have forgotten about this baboon-to-human heart
| transplant from 1984.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae
| dqv wrote:
| A podcast called Straight Talk MD talks about several different
| weird transplants like this in this episode:
| https://pca.st/episode/1628074d-b415-477b-b1f6-81c9d81fc261 (
| _For Fame or Money? The Dark Side of Ten Amazing Medical
| Firsts_ on Straight Talk MD)
|
| Of note is the disastrous synthetic heart in the 90's. I was
| surprised that such a thing was attempted.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Optimally the synthetic kidney is more successful
|
| https://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/news/2021/09/kidney-project-
| succes...
| netfl0 wrote:
| This is friggin crazy.
| [deleted]
| kdtop wrote:
| Yeah, that caught my eye. I did a little research and the first
| xenotransplant of any kind was somewhere about 1838 -- of a
| cornea from a pig
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684730/)
| drenvuk wrote:
| I'm a full on speciesist. let's do more of this. since we're
| already eating them I feel like this even a more reasonable usage
| of their lives. can we do kidneys next please? we can basically
| shut down most dialysis clinics after that.
| asdff wrote:
| The adage "use the whole buffalo" has never really died out in
| terms of meat processing. There's a lot of good product in an
| animal and you can find buyers for all of it. There's the
| obvious stuff like hotdogs, sure, but even stuff like the blood
| is also important. Fetal bovine serum, a supplement for cell
| culture media, for example comes from the slaughterhouse and is
| extremely important for biomedical research.
| pkaye wrote:
| They did so a pig to human kidney transplant recently however
| it was on a brain dead man as an initial test. Probably soon it
| be on a living patient. As a person on a kidney transplant
| waitlist, it given me some hope for the future.
|
| https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-pig-to-human-transpla...
| spoonjim wrote:
| That's completely fucked up that they did non consensual
| medical experimentation on a brain dead man.
| tiagod wrote:
| What's your source that states it was non consensual?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Might as well then also get consent from cadavers to do
| autopsy lmao.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Don't we actually do that? By getting consent before
| death?
| aqme28 wrote:
| Why do you say it's non-consensual? He donated his body to
| science.
| capableweb wrote:
| Calm your horses. His body was donated to science by the
| family, I'm sure they knew what he wanted and did just
| that.
| bobthechef wrote:
| croisillon wrote:
| And the next step would be to eat the humans who've had an
| animal transplant, sounds all good and logical to me.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| That is such a ridiculous comment, I had a mighty chuckle.
| moffkalast wrote:
| If you replace a human organ by organ with one from a pig,
| is he still the original human? Ship of piggus.
| sjg007 wrote:
| We basically have at least as many or more bacteria cells
| in us than human cells so are we actually a microbe?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I'm vegetarian and have no issue with using animals for medical
| purposes like this. It's one thing to kill for pleasure as in
| fur, cosmetics and food, but quite another to kill an animal to
| save a human life. I am pretty sure even most vegans would be
| happy to accept an animal death to save their own life, even a
| pet.
|
| Similarly, I guess, I was vegan but I had to stop that diet as
| it caused severe health problems for me.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Once you kill the pig for its heart and kidneys, you might as
| well eat it. Better than letting the nutritional value of the
| meat go to waste.
|
| That wouldn't be a lot of pigs, true, and a pork chop of that
| origin would be pretty expensive.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Nothing in an animal for slaughter goes to waste, they're
| too expensive for that.
|
| I mean the value of various parts like organ meat varies by
| what it's used for, but eventually everything is used up. A
| lot of offal ends up in animal feed, for example. And their
| hooves end up in keratine supplements for the gymbros.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| These are genetically altered pigs with human genes
| inserted, though. I can see some people being uneasy
| about consuming them, either from moral or pragmatic
| (possible pathogenicity) point of view.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Perhaps I'm somewhat of an atypical veg, but I am okay with
| that - although I personally wouldn't as I no longer like
| meat.
|
| I also would not ban meat consumption if I was a dictator,
| but I would enforce extremely high ethical standards,
| carbon neutrality and proper management of agricultural
| effluent. I suspect that would make a pork chop pretty
| expensive too.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| The next logical step is to breed pigs with organs that
| especially suit humans, maybe with some genetic engineering to
| optimise them. I really can't see anyone needing an organ
| complaining that they're GMO.
|
| As long as we treat animals well while they're alive (and why
| wouldn't you, you want high quality low stress organs) then
| there's really no limit here, morally.
| siva7 wrote:
| As long as we treat humans well while they're alive (and why
| wouldn't you, you want high quality low stress organs) then
| there's really no limit here, morally.
| mapme wrote:
| Wouldn't you need to kill the animal in the prime of its
| life, causing a moral issue?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Food animals are killed in adolescence for far less noble
| reasons.
|
| I'm a vegetarian.
|
| Grow me a goddamned lung pig.
| mapme wrote:
| I understand your view and agree with what you've said,
| however, the primary point was that there are moral
| implications if you intervene in another life so it is
| not a moral freebie.
| drenvuk wrote:
| Pigs reach slaughter weight at about 6 months[0] and the
| lifetime of a domestic pig is 15 to 20 years. Their
| breeding age is 8+ months. So we kill them before they
| reach the prime of their life most of the time. Killing
| them at their prime might be less of a moral issue than
| what we do currently.
|
| [0]https://modernfarmer.com/2016/05/raising-
| pigs/#:~:text=Most%....
| mapme wrote:
| That is an interesting comparison to other reasons why we
| kill animals, however, the point wasn't a relative moral
| comparison to animal slaughter for food purposes but that
| it's not zero cost morality wise to kill an animal in its
| prime.
| drenvuk wrote:
| It's not zero cost morality wise to kill anything at any
| point in their lifetime; from bacteria, to worms, to
| flies, to pigs each has its own weight on a person's
| conscience be it nil or hefty. I mean that. But a pig is
| not human so it's acceptable to me.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Would you feel the same if cats were the only animal
| whose organs could be harvested?
| gambiting wrote:
| Absolutely - why wouldn't you? Serious question.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| If you were the cat, I bet you'd feel differently.
|
| That's as serious of an answer as I can give. It's the
| same reason I never neutered my cats, since it felt like
| a mutilation.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yes, but if I were a cat I wouldn't lick my own anus and
| yet cats happily do that - my opinion on what I would or
| wouldn't like as a cat is not really relevant.
|
| My point is - we are not cats, and cats aren't humans.
| They deserve good treatment, respect and all the love
| they can get - but at the end of the day they are not
| humans and should not be treated as such.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| How would you clean your anus if you were a cat?
|
| Suppose a cat had fingers, and basic language ability.
| Would you still feel the same way?
|
| Suppose we didn't slaughter the other five proto-human
| species (Neanderthals et al). Would you still feel the
| same way?
|
| The line gets blurrier the more you think it over.
| likeclockwork wrote:
| I reject the notion that you can clean anything by
| licking it.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Friction and liquids? Seems pretty much like the wet wipe
| used to clean my countertop - only a different friction
| material, and a different liquid solvent.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Suppose a cat had fingers, and basic language ability
|
| It would no longer be a cat.
|
| That's why "If you (a human) were a cat" is a problem,
| b/c you need to say what level of human/cat this hybrid
| creature is imagined to be.
|
| It's like that joke: "Behold! The dog with two heads! and
| two bodies!"
| salamandersauce wrote:
| My mom thought that way until we ended up with 5 more
| cats. The prospect of 20 more cats didn't quite appeal to
| her either.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Yes, I would be OK with killing any number of cats to
| save any human's life.
| op00to wrote:
| One million cats to save Putin?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Yes.
| thih9 wrote:
| > it's acceptable to me
|
| Your earlier comment mentioned morality without
| qualifiers; here you refer to your own morality; this
| seems more accurate. Note that there are people who
| refuse to eat or otherwise harm animals and they cite
| moral reasons too.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I don't think life length is an issue, the pig doesn't know
| how long it will live so there doesn't seem much scope for
| suffering.
|
| It comes back to the question if never being born at all is
| better than some (domesticated) life at all.
| roywiggins wrote:
| That's what they've done here, this are GMO pigs designed to
| be more compatible with human biology.
|
| > The heart transplanted into Mr. Bennett came from a
| genetically altered pig provided by Revivicor, a regenerative
| medicine company based in Blacksburg, Va.
|
| > The pig had 10 genetic modifications. Four genes were
| knocked out, or inactivated, including one that encodes a
| molecule that causes an aggressive human rejection response.
|
| > A growth gene was also inactivated to prevent the pig's
| heart from continuing to grow after it was implanted, said
| Dr. Mohiuddin,who, with Dr. Griffith, did much of the
| research leading up to the transplant.
|
| > In addition, six human genes were inserted into the genome
| of the donor pig -- modifications designed to make the
| porcine organs more tolerable to the human immune system.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/health/heart-
| transplant-p...
| zo1 wrote:
| Wow, great info. Very low-key and subtle, but the future is
| arriving slowly, one pig gene modification at a time!
| nottorp wrote:
| I now wonder if this guy will have to pay licensing costs
| for the copyright on the genes the rest of his (admittedly
| freshly prolonged) life...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Depends on whether he's going to use his heart to create
| more GMO pigs.
|
| I mean if you buy a book that's it. You don't get a
| license to redistribute, but you get an unlimited license
| to read and use the book for whatever. That's how
| copyright law works.
| Pxtl wrote:
| In TFA that's actually what they describe - the pig was
| genetically engineered to reduce rejection and to control the
| growth of the heart to stay human-sized.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| And then the next step is to do research showing that pigs
| that are happy, stress free, and eat a good diet produce
| organs that are better for transplant. If so, this might be
| one of the most ethical animal industries.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Maybe we could grow happy, stress free and well fed human
| beings. Then we wouldn't need so many transplants in the
| first place.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Ah, but the human is more economically productive than
| the pig, particularly when taken as a cohort, and
| healthcare and happiness are expensive - and there is
| therefore a point of diminishing returns for increased
| happiness and health.
|
| It makes more sense to allow a certain portion of your
| population to die of preventable causes than to make them
| all happy, as the current net goal is economic
| productivity, not human happiness. This is demonstrated
| aptly by the lack of socialised healthcare in much of the
| world, and where it does exist, the relative paucity of
| resources provided.
|
| So, while I agree in spirit with what you posit,
| capitalism and the value axis it brings has to die first.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The problems of aging would creep on them _later_ , but
| it isn't as if happy, stress free and well fed people
| stay healthy forever.
|
| Aging is a process that affects everyone, the only thing
| that you can influence a bit is speed thereof.
| account42 wrote:
| But happy, stress free and well fed pigs are probably
| cheaper.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or they could take a page from the semiconductor industry
| and replace human hearts with 128 genetically modified
| mouse hearts in an array.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Oh we can, there was this guy in Germany that failed art
| school, he had a couple mates, they figured that with
| good genes, training and education they could...
|
| You see where this is going, right? Oh, what you describe
| actually might fit the book Brave New World as well.
|
| Anyway yeah I know what you mean, this is why things like
| education, well-paying low-stress jobs, housing, health
| care, access to food are so important. They encourage an
| overall healthy and happy population without imposing on
| them.
|
| But the US is a bit of a shithole in that regard; low
| paying jobs, food deserts, financial worries, crippling
| debts to pay for a lifestyle that people can't afford but
| need, etc. The country and its policies are self-
| destructive, and, dare I say it, a kind of economic
| eugenics - if you're too poor to afford health care
| you'll be removed from the gene pool.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > You see where this is going, right?
|
| Yes, a slippery-slope argument that all gene manipulation
| leads to eugenics.
|
| Here's the counterpoint: The Nazis (and eugenicists /
| race-scientists in general) used the authority of
| science, but didn't actually do good science (and slipped
| in a lot of stuff that was pure ideology); so actual
| science is automatically different.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It would be better if you got to keep the meat rather than
| letting it go to waste. Then you could indulge in autophagy
| by proxy.
| gpm wrote:
| If we're genetically modifying the pigs to be more like
| humans, I wonder if there would be health risks with
| eating the meat - specifically from prions. Similar to
| those that come from eating humans. Admittedly probably
| negligible until we modify them a heck of a lot more than
| we are right now (if they do theoretically exist).
| gambiting wrote:
| Prions don't appear from thin air - and you can already
| get deadly prions eating meat, the reason why you don't
| is the same why you don't get all kinds of deadly
| diseases from meat - it's (usually) well regulated and
| any outbreaks are immediately culled. A pig genetically
| modified to be "more like a human" wouldn't spontaniously
| get deadly prions.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Pigs are already similar enough to humans that there are
| major risks from parasites; I don't think the small
| modifications we've seen so far would significantly
| increase prion risk.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Apparently they have recently granted permission for
| these (type of) pigs to be sold for meat so those who
| suffer with alpha-gal syndrome (and are thus allergic to
| regular meat) can eat it. So I'm guessing by not.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I _think_ the ones approved for consumption don 't have
| the full set of genetic modifications used for this
| transplant, they just have the alpha-gal change.
| [deleted]
| tjader wrote:
| The pig kidney and heart recently transplanted have already
| been genetically engineered. So far it's only to avoid
| rejection, but other modifications are likely on the roadmap.
| lvass wrote:
| Speaking from a country with ongoing human organ harvesting, this
| is absolutely amazing, everyone involved in this deserves an
| enormous amount of praise.
| [deleted]
| nikkinana wrote:
| amelius wrote:
| Did he become a vegetarian?
| [deleted]
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Is it now cannibalism if he eats bacon?
| dmead wrote:
| I have a cow valve and I say yes.
|
| pass me the steak.
| free-malloc wrote:
| This is why I'm here. Thank you.
| [deleted]
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| I am not a vegan but this is unethical
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| How? Is inserting animal parts into your body via your mouth
| fine but not via a hole in your chest? Both sustain life, both
| mean the pig lives relatively comfortably as a domestic animal
| for a while. Surely that's better than never been born at all.
| Pxtl wrote:
| If you're not a vegan and you're against this you're letting
| your squeamishness override your ethics. If an animal is worth
| killing for the convenience and taste of a meal, it's worth
| killing to save a human being with a transplant.
|
| Your objection sounds like squeamishness, and in that case I'd
| avoid looking at medical procedures in general.
| unobatbayar wrote:
| Not unethical because the pig signed the Terms & Conditions.
| roberto wrote:
| Congrats, yours is the last comment I read in HN.
| unobatbayar wrote:
| How come?
| cirrus3 wrote:
| I bet you'd take one tho if your other option was certain
| death. Or if your child needed it and it was the only option.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Maybe I can add some nuance as a vegan (I'm vegan btw, and I
| use Arch btw). I think that it's amazing that this is possible,
| but where it seems unethical to me is that there still are many
| other ways we could route heart transplants from willing
| humans. I think the only way I'd find this ethical is if the
| pig died from natural causes. But that probably complicates
| using the heart. If a pig is killed for food and then the heart
| is used for this, it still wouldn't be ethical to me, because
| it's plainly not ethical to kill another being for one's
| benefit in a situation that is not purely for survival
| (everyone's favorite deserted island). A heart transplant _is_
| a situation of survival, but again - we should continue to
| explore human donors first.
| burkaman wrote:
| > The patient, David Bennett, a 57-year-old Maryland
| handyman, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would
| work but he was dying, ineligible for a human heart
| transplant and had no other option, his son told The
| Associated Press.
|
| > There's a huge shortage of human organs donated for
| transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to
| use animal organs instead.
|
| > Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery, said the
| patient's condition -- heart failure and an irregular
| heartbeat -- made him ineligible for a human heart transplant
| or a heart pump.
|
| - https://apnews.com/article/pig-heart-
| transplant-6651614cb9d7...
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Animals eat each other alive in the wild, they kill on a whim
| for the pettiest of reasons.
|
| Dying at the hands of another animal is as natural a cause as
| you can get. Because we're human we don't treat animals badly
| while alive, that where our ethics come in.
|
| Obviously if there enough hearts to go around no one would be
| looking at pigs.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| We generally consider killing something to be treating it
| badly.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| I don't know who 'we' is, but society in general
| disagrees. People eat meat with a clear conscience.
| pkaye wrote:
| As a vegan what is your view on testing drugs on animals and
| do you refuse to use those medicines?
| chana_masala wrote:
| I was hospitalised for a month and didn't ask any
| questions, because I couldn't - I was dying. But if I had
| more capacity I would have requested vegan options. Once I
| came to I did refused any non vegan hospital food - which
| meant I only ate plain boiled potatoes.
|
| So I was grateful for the medicines I received then that
| may have been tested on animals or may have had animal
| ingredients. But I still advocate and prefer medicines to
| not be tested on animals and to not contain animal
| ingredients. I think we have a vast amount of untapped
| technology that could avoid that.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| I don't get what is so difficult for people to digest in
| discussions like these. Someone says something like "I
| try to do the best I can to minimize the unethical
| treatment of others," and it's a tidal wave of angry
| finger pointing and fallacious appeals to nature.
| eixiepia wrote:
| > "I try to do the best I can to minimize the unethical
| treatment of others," and it's a tidal wave of angry
| finger pointing and fallacious appeals to nature.
|
| Maybe because the vegans people have met, are the
| obnoxious ones that want to push their eating disorder on
| everyone else, so they just point out the hypocrisy when
| appropriate.
| jrh206 wrote:
| I've met plenty of reasonable vegans. I wouldn't consider
| them to have an eating disorder. I eat meat.
|
| When I've engaged with discussion about this with them
| (usually because I asked), I've found their arguments
| personal and convincing.
| krisoft wrote:
| I don't get what tidal wave of angry finger pointing you
| are talking about. All I see is curious people discussing
| the topic in a civilized manner.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| I'm curious how you'd extract a human heart from a willing
| human donor without killing the donor. I'm also curious how
| you'd similarly prepare the human donor in any way to
| meaningfully reduce the chances of rejection, like genetic
| modification.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Organ donors
| chana_masala wrote:
| Am I reading this wrong? Isn't this how you'd do it?
|
| > As of 2018, the most common procedure is to take a
| functioning heart, with or without both lungs, from a
| recently deceased organ donor (brain death is the standard)
| and implant it into the patient. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplantation
| epgui wrote:
| The point is that there's a gigantic gap between supply
| and demand, and a lot if not most of the supply goes to
| waste because you can't stockpile hearts. They need to be
| harvested from a compatible donor and very quickly
| transplanted. The odds of finding a compatible match are
| not great.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I disagree. This brings us back to tribal times; kill the
| animal or starve, or in this case, kill the animal or die of
| a heart attack.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Maybe you could at least address the points I gave instead
| of plainly ignoring them and repeating the same argument? I
| already addressed this - we _aren 't_ in tribal times. We
| can even grow organs in the lab. We can also coordinate
| complex routes to securing organ donations. There are so
| many available options. And again, if a heart from a pig
| that died naturally could be found, I'd be all for it. I
| think it adds a more to control than already a trans
| species heart, but that'd be my ideal.
| yosame wrote:
| So there's a shortage of human organs in general
| (especially heart and lungs), which means we need to get
| them from somewhere.
|
| Using complex routes to secure organ donations isn't a
| great option, because the viability of organs decrease as
| time goes on, so there is an effective limit on how far
| they can travel. It also doesn't help people who are
| currently ineligible for organ transplants, because their
| current scarcity means that only prime candidates can get
| them (otherwise it would be wasteful).
|
| We could change the organ donation system from opt-in to
| opt-out, but I get the impression that wouldn't be as
| ethical from a vegan point of view. That also doesn't
| help the afformentioned distance problems.
|
| Lab grown organs could be a great solution that would
| actually be better than animal organs, but they're not a
| viable option yet.
|
| Basically, if we had good options other than
| xenotransplantation, I would probably agree that it's
| unethical to use their organs. However, we don't have
| better options right now (especially ones that can scale
| to treat everyone that needs an organ), so in my opinion,
| xenotransplants are better than nothing.
|
| (Also as a side note, a pig that died from natural causes
| wouldn't be viable for organ transplantation. The pig
| needs to be physiologically alive for the organs to be
| viable, and it needs to be genetically modified to not
| have animal proteins that the immune system can detect).
| thehappypm wrote:
| There is a shortage of organs. There are not enough. Lab
| grown is not an option yet.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Anyone care to emphasize why this opinion should be down voted
| so heavily ?
|
| It's ok to now breed animals for parts; However if someone
| questions the ethics of that, it's bad? Ridiculous...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If you agree it's okay to breed animals for nourishment ("not
| a vegan") then why would it not be okay to breed them for
| organs?
| corobo wrote:
| > Anyone care to emphasize why this opinion should be down
| voted so heavily
|
| Because they don't say anything. They announced their belief
| and wandered off. Post could do with a "because" and another
| sentence or two
|
| Can't speak for everyone ofc but that was my reasoning.
| Nothing to do with the opinion my side, standard downvote
| behaviour for contentless comments
| bamboozled wrote:
| Do you require an explanation for why that might not be the
| correct thing to do?
| corobo wrote:
| Nope. I'll vote how I feel like voting. You may do
| likewise :)
|
| If a single downvote matters, it doesn't matter
| dvt wrote:
| It's a typical reddit-level-effort comment. These and
| annoying puns get automatic downvotes from me. Maybe a bit
| shortsighted, but I solely use HN for highbrow intellectual
| discussion, debate, and insight. The only reason I'm so
| protective of this kind of discussion is that HN is literally
| the only venue left.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Because they aren't questioning the ethics of this, they're
| stating their opinion on it without giving any reasoning why
| they feel that way.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Sounds like you should be a vegan! If this is unethical to you,
| why eat animals?
| henryw wrote:
| This reminds me of the movie The Island where they cloned people
| as organ backups https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/.
| Valgrim wrote:
| If you want to explore the concept further, I suggest you watch
| the movie "Never Let Me Go" (2010). The premise is very
| similar, apart from the fact there's no secret or conspiracy
| about it, children are just grown to become sacrificial organ
| donors, and since it's socially accepted, there's no way out of
| it.
|
| Fair warning: it's pretty depressing.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I've said this before here and got downvoted for it, but
| bioethicists as a profession are responsible for more death than
| pretty much anything else I can quickly think of.
|
| People are dying from heart disease all the time, very often in
| predictable conditions. Literally millions every year.
| Statistically this means we should hear about such failed
| procedures many many more times than we do now - there is
| literally no downside from doing this much more often, and a
| strict upside: a chance to live longer and a definite advance in
| medicine leading to other lives saved. Sure, it may mean more
| stress for a dying patient, but quite a few would prefer their
| death have some meaning. But they can't chose this because it's
| not "ethical".
|
| Moderna had the mRNA vaccine for Covid ready in about 3 weeks.
| This means the tech was already there - I'd really like to see an
| argument where we had three major companies create mRNA vaccines,
| only one failed (harmlessly!) but we shouldn't have used this
| technology a few years early. mRNA tech is incredibly versatile -
| it should have applications from curing cold to curing cancer.
| But no, we needed a pandemic and 10 months of testing to start
| using it, because it wasn't "ethical".
|
| We knew from month 1 that the young and healthy are not hit hard
| by Covid. Mortality in those groups was always comparable to flu,
| more or less. But we didn't do challenge trials. We wasted ... I
| have to take a break from typing, tbh, I'm overwhelmed. We wasted
| almost a year while literal millions died while wondering if
| Covid is transmitted by touch, aerosols or airborne when we could
| have fixed this in two weeks with a bunch of 25 year olds. We
| spent half a year before even realizing masks help, and we still
| don't know for sure how much and what's the difference between
| each kind. We had Omicron - we knew it was different, we had good
| reason to think it's not significantly worse from the start, but
| we still had a _lot_ of questions. But two years from the start
| of the pandemic we STILL didn't put a bunch of healthy volunteers
| through a completely harmless study to find out things early.
| Because it wouldn't have been "ethical".
|
| This isn't ethics we're talking about. It's pure and
| unadulterated cowardice. We as a society shy away from doing
| things which we _know_ would save more lives in the aggregate
| because we'd have to risk causing much less harm, but harm which
| we'd be directly responsible for. Joe from the street would be
| excused from making these decisions, but when you deal with the
| people directly charged by the society from making these
| decision, it's just failure to do their job. And in a
| supermajority of case we're dealing with volunteers anyways.
|
| If you feel like reading more about how stupid the whole system
| is: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _only one failed (harmlessly!)_
|
| They (CureVac) failed because they started trials too late, and
| by then the Delta variant was going around and caused the
| numbers to not look as good as Pfizer and Moderna's. v If you
| look back, it's a real shame, because Pfizer's and Moderna's
| Delta numbers are no better than CureVac's.
|
| [Also, speaking completely anecdotally, but I'm in that
| clinical trial and thus a recipient of 2 CureVac shots and 2
| Moderna shots. I have yet to catch Covid despite taking nearly
| zero precautions and a lot of high risk contacts. And yes, I
| get tested _constantly_. There might be something more
| interesting yet to discover about this.]
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Ethical protocols are useful to have to prevent genuinely bad
| stuff from happening but they are indeed over used to instead
| limit legal and political liability; which is not the type of
| "bad stuff" most people would care about but which is something
| that gets expensive quickly if you are a multi billion dollar
| corporation in the business of converting government funding
| into profit (aka. a Pharmaceutical company). The only bad
| outcome they really care about is of a financial nature.
|
| When ethics devolves into morals and religion, it gets worse
| because in that case the "bad stuff" is somebody feeling
| offended/insulted and when that conflicts with potentially life
| saving new treatments; that in itself might be considered a bad
| thing (unethical?). Ethics has this way of contradicting
| itself.
|
| When you weigh two bad outcomes, the rational thing to do (the
| least bad thing) might not be the ethical thing to do but some
| people (me) would still consider that the right thing to do.
| When letting people die that want to live (an important caveat)
| is more ethical than doing something to prevent that, something
| is very wrong. Also letting them die when they actually want to
| is considered unethical by some.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| I respectfully disagree. It is patient's right to refuse any
| medical procedure.
|
| A mere suspicion, impression that doctors are not treating life
| and health of this particular patient with all sainctity will
| do a lot more harm than good.
|
| I mean, life is precious, doctors should know this best and act
| like it is. Recklessness even in words will do a lot of harm. A
| lot of credit will be lost if standards slip even a little bit.
|
| I know this very well because people around me are not
| vaccinated yet because they are _suspicious_ of Sputnik-V. Yes,
| this is reality where I live. People are suspicious and
| refusing a life-saving procedure.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| This is risking another rant, but I'll hold. Keeping things
| short - authorities lied their asses off for the whole
| pandemic, and this is what (legitimately) destroyed trust.
| People are a lot less stupid than usually given credit for -
| sure, they can't always do the research themselves, but they
| do know to look around and orient them in complex situations.
| And it got pretty obvious pretty soon that the official
| message was not about the truth, but about getting the
| "correct" response. Which turned out to be a lot less precise
| and correct in practice. So yeah, now you get people
| mistrusting vaccines because you can't get them to trust
| anything.
|
| The longer response would be that public institutions should
| be forbidden to use Simulacra Levels over 1 (https://www.less
| wrong.com/posts/qDmnyEMtJkE9Wrpau/simulacra-...)
| _dain_ wrote:
| >It is patient's right to refuse any medical procedure.
|
| The problem is not that they can't say "no", it's that they
| can't say "yes".
| andrepew wrote:
| I don't think the OP disagrees with you.
|
| The patients who don't get the experimental treatment didn't
| refuse the experimental treatment -- they were never offered
| it at all which is the problem.
|
| The ethics and regulatory red tape kills any hope for such a
| treatment before patient consent is even a question.
| burglekutt wrote:
| 100% agree. I think the unsolved meta problem here is large-
| scale game theoretic stalemates where we all lose in grand
| ways, and yet nobody can bust out of their local incentives.
|
| To do so successfully would require thousands of unacquainted
| people to coordinate changes (against their backdrop of
| incentives) simultaneously.
|
| Governments are made for this but after a certain size and
| complexity, their people get stuck in the same frontier of
| stuck incentives.
|
| A horribly-written but salient book about this is "Inadequate
| Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck":
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B076Z64CPG
| Chris2048 wrote:
| One word: inequality.
|
| When people don't feel they are equals in society, the whole
| "for the benefit of all" sounds pretty cynical.
|
| Also, some governments have a poor record for taking
| responsibility (e.g. looking after veterans), or making others
| take responsibility (DuPont), so the people who _do_ come off
| worse don 't necessarily expect to be taken care of.
| threshold wrote:
| Is this compassionate use or experimentation on a dying patient
| for the future benefit of the rest of us? I'm fine with the
| latter, if consensual. But only if we call it what it is.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| It is quite clear since the first article on this topic that
| the recipient is very aware of the potential and risks. If I
| may say, he sounds like he geeks out about it. He had
| previously received a pig heart valve which kept him alive a
| long time. This probably affects his perceptions positively
| too.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| If the patient gets to hug his kids a year from now, he would
| probably consider it compassionate use.
| threshold wrote:
| He won't. Although I'd love to be proven wrong. Similar
| experiments lasted weeks
| teekert wrote:
| That is what a clinical trial is. There is now other way.
| Although with organs-on-a-chip we are working on at least
| getting the animal testing stages confined to a minimum. Over
| time we may reduce the risk to first recipients of new tech
| using these new technologies. Perhaps even digital models may
| at somepoint start playing a role. But until we have digital
| models, this is what we have. And it does seem to work well in
| this case.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yes. No matter what the treatment might be, someone always
| has to be the first human it's tried on.
|
| Even if we did have good digital simulations, someone would
| still have to be the first human to get it "for real". That's
| just the nature of things. Someone has to be the first
| patient of a new heart surgeon. Someone has to be the first
| person to hire a newly-minted PE to design a bridge that
| might fail and kill thousands. And so on.
|
| We mitigate these risks to the best of our ability by
| ensuring rigorous training of doctors and PEs, and stuff like
| animal testing and computer simulations, but someone still
| has to be first.
|
| It sounds like this patient was well aware of the risks, and
| opted to get the procedure since otherwise his death would be
| a certainty.
| albrewer wrote:
| The guy would have died pretty soon without the procedure. If
| the choice is between dying for sure in a few weeks, or maybe
| dying in a few weeks but maybe not dying for another few
| years.... I'll take the 2nd option.
| dtech wrote:
| It's a way to potentially prolong a terminally ill patients
| life with an experimental technique, potentially advancing
| medical science in doing so. I fail to see why this should be
| cast in a negative light.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| From everything I read it was consensual. But that raises a
| larger moral question. Is it really consent if you're about to
| die? I think that almost anyone given the choice to either die
| or get a pig heart will choose the latter, there's a good
| chance you will die if you get the transplant but there is a
| 100% chance that you will die if you don't.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I don't think that is necessarily true - people reject
| potentially lifesaving treatments all the time for many
| different reasons. Yes, the desire to live is very strong in
| us, but it's not infinite.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Since it's consent to do the best option available and he
| wasn't put into the position of needing the help by the ones
| offering it I don't think it's much of a moral issue. Usually
| the moral problems come when less than ideal alternatives are
| proposed or people are forced into a situation where they
| otherwise wouldn't have had to choose. I.e. conflict of
| interest stuff from the ones proposing to get consent to try
| to help.
| ovi256 wrote:
| First generation transplants are always both. David would have
| died soon without this (he's quite likely to die soon with it
| too, unfortunately, if this goes anything like other first of a
| kind transplant receivers). Desperate people accept desperate
| measures, and the hope that it may teach us how to save others
| helps too.
| nixnax wrote:
| userbinator wrote:
| I wonder how long it'll last, given the pig it came out of was
| probably already an adult, and pigs live far shorter lives than
| humans.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Can't they just keep replacing it every ten years?
| _qua wrote:
| It's difficult to do repeat surgeries in the chest.
| K5EiS wrote:
| Just install a window and some valves for easy replacement.
| Maybe you could even hot swap pig hearts.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Ok Tony Stark
| cute_boi wrote:
| Easier said than done.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Woosh
| scohesc wrote:
| If Apple can make magsafe for their laptops, then the
| medical industry can make magsafe for your heart - hot
| swappable hearts, a simple procedure! :P
| jessriedel wrote:
| It's an important question, but the typical donated human organ
| only lasts ~10 years, which doesn't have much to do with the
| donor's age.
|
| https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/how-long-do-transplanted-...
|
| Donors are usually 35-50 at time of donation, so way more than
| 10 years away from average life expectancy. The donated organs
| fail for other reasons.
|
| There are many examples of donated organs living past 100
| (years since donor's birth) even though the number of humans
| who live that long is quite rare.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3731752/The-woman...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200625-the-woman-with-a...
| exabyte wrote:
| Don't get talk about people "feeling" the person from whom they
| received the transplant inside them? If so, how would a pig
| seem?
| fooker wrote:
| There is an Indian movie which beautifully explores this
| concept.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1773764/
|
| Worth watching with subtitles if you do not understand the
| language.
| exabyte wrote:
| That trailer seemed pretty bad
| Chris2048 wrote:
| People talk about a lot of things. God, ghosts, karma. No
| evidence it isn't anything other than psychological.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > phycological
|
| Let's leave the algae talk out of this!
| thegabriele wrote:
| From the article: "[pigs] they can be genetically manipulated to
| produce organs less likely to be rejected on transplantation."
|
| Is this true? How would these manipulations be carried out?
| Rallen89 wrote:
| This video is a good overview of the whole thing
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d8svvqX1c0
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is also becoming more common in drug research. It is fairly
| common to adapt animal genomes to be closer to that of humans
| so that the drugs will work in similar ways.
| albrewer wrote:
| There's a sugar that most animals produce but humans don't[0].
| These pigs have been genetically modified to not produce that
| sugar, the thought being that that's what's responsible for the
| xenotransplantation rejections[1].
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/alpha-gal/index.html [1]
| https://www.healio.com/news/primary-care/20201214/fda-oks-ge...
| moffkalast wrote:
| Doctor: "Now, most hearts couldn't withstand this voltage ...
| but I'm fairly certain your heart..."
|
| Pig: "What was noise?"
|
| Doctor: "The sound of progress, my friend."
| phnofive wrote:
| Discussed here fifteen days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882912
|
| Not a huge update but an interesting discussion of FDA approval;
| can the FDA actually stop or sanction experimental procedures
| like this?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| >can the FDA actually stop or sanction experimental procedures
| like this?
|
| They explicitly permitted this operation, by means of
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/expanded...
|
| _Sometimes called "compassionate use", expanded access is a
| potential pathway for a patient with an immediately life-
| threatening condition or serious disease or condition to gain
| access to an investigational medical product (drug, biologic,
| or medical device) for treatment outside of clinical trials
| when no comparable or satisfactory alternative therapy options
| are available._
| jostmey wrote:
| Yes, the FDA will insert itself to regulate medicine wherever
| it can. For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate
| diagnostic tests as medical devices.
|
| It's funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the
| government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues
| mlinhares wrote:
| All you need is a conservative talking head to kickstart
| resistance to that as well, they just have to figure out a
| way of making money out of it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some of us realize it's straight up politics, but we have no
| power. It's not a choice, but a reality we live with.
| mlindner wrote:
| That's actually why we're against it. Once they have the
| power it's basically impossible to recall it. There were many
| lines in the sand in the past and they keep being crossed.
| Klinky wrote:
| It's funny how susceptible Americans are to medical
| misinformation. The FDA is a necessity.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It's funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the
| government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues
|
| If they knew the extent of it they probably wouldn't.
|
| I don't know where you're from but I'm sure the people there
| show equal apathy on some subjects.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> to regulate diagnostic tests as medical devices.
|
| Like MIR machines? Like blood labs? Like home pregnancy
| tests? Without the FDA's regulation of medicine we would
| quickly be back to snake oil and cocaine in everything. It is
| bad enough that drugs stores are allowed to sell water as a
| "homeopathic remedy". The snake oil people are out there
| waiting for deregulation.
| baldfat wrote:
| I have a weird muscle disease that is treated with just
| taking over the counter L-Carnitine. The issue, vitamins and
| supplements are not regulated. So, I will try to take a new
| brand and after a few days my symptoms will come back because
| the pills don't have the L-Carnitine like it says and there
| is no one to make sure it does. It will cost me four to seven
| days of pain, and no one is held responsible.
|
| My best guess is one in a thousand actually needs them so the
| 999 have a placebo effect and the 1 suffers. I told my
| neurologist, and he couldn't even prescribe them for me
| because that isn't a thing. So now I buy all I can find that
| works and hope they don't stop making it.
| lakdowjd wrote:
| Have you considered skipping the shady middleman altogether
| and just ordering the pure stuff directly from a
| manufacturer?
| treeman79 wrote:
| I had to spend thousands to go through a dozen medications
| for medical issues. Eventually turned to supplements in
| part because it was much easier to experiment.
|
| I have a couple meds and treatments I've been begging
| doctors to try, but they aren't aware of them so refuse to
| consider.
|
| Go onto any support forum and you'll find countless tales
| of doctors not listening or not knowing current info on a
| condition.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You'll also find tons of people who swear by their home
| "witches brew" medication. People who are just feeling a
| placebo. Or people who think they have the forum's banner
| illness but actually have something totally different and
| much more benign. They heal over time naturally, but
| attribute it to gum root jelly concentrate.
|
| I've been there a few times before. And while inevitably
| monkeys popping random pills will find something,
| separating the signal from the noise takes time and
| studies. The things that doctors pay attention too.
|
| Disclaimer: Yes there are out of touch doctors and yes
| random medicating has lead to amazing discoveries.
| pvaldes wrote:
| If there are two brands exposed to the same market rules
| and one cost half the price there is a fair possibility
| that will contain less amount of the expensive active stuff
| and more of the cheaper ingredients. Technically is still
| carnitine, but one can have 90% of carnitine and the other
| just a 60%.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Do you have any proof the supplements don't have
| l-carnitine? You should get a lawyer if so, that is an easy
| case against the supplement maker imo.
| jolux wrote:
| The whole supplements industry is like this. The best you
| can do is get one that's USP certified.
| ruste wrote:
| That sounds severe enough I'd consider it worthwhile to pay
| a lab to run spectroscopy on a range of supplements just in
| case, or consider hiring a lab to synthesize a batch I
| _know_ will meet my needs. The first option is probably a
| lot less pricey than you'd expect.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Is that a recent push? I used to work for a company producing
| a diagnostic test, and it was being regulated as you said.
|
| But what is the issue with that? Failures in diagnosis kill
| people very regularly. It should be regulated.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Private companies also rely on the state for liability
| reasons as we just now saw with the vaccines. I believe
| overall this is a good idea to have high expectations for
| medical procedures as it does not inhibit progress.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > regulate diagnostic tests
|
| If only there hadn't been a major high profile collapse of a
| fraudulent diagnostic test company recently.
| neuronic wrote:
| The hostility towards FDA on HN is incredible. I wouldn't
| trust some VC funded startup bros with anything related to
| medicine _at all_ without having passed every single
| regulatory board tangentially related to whatever they are
| doing, even more so after Theranos.
| 4bpp wrote:
| It's not like "enforce more" vs. "enforce less" is the
| only axis along which the behaviour of a government
| agency can be tweaked.
|
| For an extreme example, imagine you had a court system
| that picks 100 people at random to execute each year
| (most of whom are naturally innocent). Then, you have a
| crime wave. Would you say that the solution to this
| problem would be that the courts need to be _tougher_?
| ... _more lenient_? Both seem quite obviously wrong:
| being more lenient would solve the problem of innocents
| getting executed but do nothing about crime, being
| tougher would only trivially solve the problem of crime
| near the limit point where everyone is executed. However,
| being _hostile_ towards such a court system seems quite
| appropriate.
|
| Likewise, I don't think Theranos is sufficient evidence
| that the FDA needs to simply be _stricter_ , nor is the
| difficulty of getting approval for pig hearts sufficient
| evidence that the FDA needs to be more lenient. Instead,
| taken together the two imply that the FDA needs to be
| more specific at blocking the bad therapies and allowing
| the good ones - in other words, it simply needs to get
| better at its job. Is this not something we can demand of
| the government?
| malfist wrote:
| But the FDA isn't executing 100 people (or corporations)
| per year. FDA isn't even indiscriminately halting
| progress. Your argument has no premise.
|
| The FDA regulates with cause and investigates all new
| medical products before they can be brought to market.
| They don't willy nilly approve some and nix others.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > it simply needs to get better at its job
|
| The issue here (and with regulators in general) is that
| in general "being better at their job" means going into
| more depth to determine whether an approval is warranted,
| which means expending more resources on investigation. I
| don't know that I've ever seen any overlap between the
| people who think the regulators do a bad job at
| regulating and people who think we should be funding the
| regulators more thoroughly.
|
| All that not to mention that when a regulator like the
| FDA starts going into more depth in its investigations of
| an industry, that industry's firms start spending more
| money on either complying with or deceiving the
| regulator, risking a downward spiral of wasted resources.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Getting regulation "just right" is a complicated process,
| people differ in their risk tolerance, and it isn't clear
| to me at all that "more powers to X" is always the right
| answer.
| dnautics wrote:
| There are a wide range of options between startup bros
| and government. For example, in the US, a lot of
| electrical component standards and testing are managed by
| the UL, which is a nonprofit ngo.
|
| Maybe something like "a UL for drug approval" might be
| worth a go.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The market for counterfeit and unregulated chargers and
| electronics on Amazon/Alibaba (most all of which are UL
| marked) and fires related to the above suggests that the
| UL doesn't really have any teeth.
|
| It's possible that medical approvals would be less prone
| to this sidestepping of independent regulators, since
| much of the spending is proxied by insurance companies
| looking to maximize profits and minimize BS spending, but
| I have very little confidence that such a system would
| function.
| dnautics wrote:
| There's also a wide range of things between the UL and
| FDA.
|
| Besides, if it's counterfeit, then it's not actually UL
| marked, so I'm not sure what your argument is.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Besides, if it's counterfeit, then it's not actually UL
| marked, so I'm not sure what your argument is.
|
| Consumers can't tell the difference between devices that
| are fraudulently or legitimately marked with the UL logo,
| and the UL doesn't appear to be able to do anything about
| the prevalence of fraudulent uses of the UL mark.
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| I don't sense hostility outside the typical vocal
| minority. Having straddled the FDA-regulated world and
| the libertarian-leaning internet cultures through the
| aughts and teens, my experience is that the internet
| libertarians are simply ignorant of how the FDA actually
| serves us. Pretty typically libertarian--freedom as long
| as nothing gets more dangerous. Kind of like rebellious
| children.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| The fda is responsible for keeping hearing aids at insane
| prices my entire life. They serve as the gatekeepers for
| a cartel of once manufacturers, now IP holders (pure rent
| seekers,) who have successfully used the US government to
| exploit one of the most overlooked and vulnerable classes
| of people. Almost everyone loses hearing when they're
| older.
|
| When you live with hearing loss, it leads to social
| isolation and embarrassing situations, depression, and
| all the usual attendant disasters in people's lives.
|
| The hearing cartel has used their wealth to create a
| pseudomedicine so as to brand their salespeople as
| doctors, and infested almost every state with bureacrats
| who determine policy and direct licensing and
| enforcement.
|
| Hearing aids that are priced at $5000 or more are
| produced at scale for less than $5 per unit. It'd be
| trivial to turn most modern headphones into hearing aid
| equivalent technology, but there is a regulatory moat
| surrounding real time audio enhancement that will cause
| the fda to shut down any attempt to augment regular
| hearing, let alone allow the hearing impaired the ability
| to operate what amounts to a stereo equalizer.
|
| The fda does engage in legitimate business, but that's
| insufficient to justify the costs paid by people who get
| screwed when the FDA is exploited for profit.
|
| I currently pay for "hearing aids as a service" and lose
| $200 a month for the privilege of hearing. I pay what
| amounts to extortion money for my disability. Because my
| loss is classified profound, none of the Obama era
| loosening of hearing aid restrictions help. It's lip
| service that acknowledges the problem but leaves 95% of
| it unsolved.
|
| Libertarian shmibertarian, I think I'm entitled to not
| get specially fucked because my ears don't work. I think
| it's sick that I feel grateful that I can afford hearing
| as a service when it should be something covered by
| insurance, or something I can buy for the same cost as
| premium earbuds.
|
| Government shouldn't be involved in hearing aids, except
| in the consumer protection arena. The fda has no business
| enabling the exploitation of disabled and vulnerable
| people, but hearing aids are just one area they happily
| strong-arm the public on behalf of cartels and industry
| lobbies.
| searine wrote:
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Pretty typically libertarian--freedom as long as
| nothing gets more dangerous. Kind of like rebellious
| children.
|
| Or, as this guy[1] put it, like house cats. "convinced of
| their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a
| system they don't appreciate or understand."
|
| As a former Libertarian who luckily grew out of that
| phase, I love this analogy.
|
| 1: https://twitter.com/jspauldingphoto/status/14615069981
| 183303...
| DrAwdeOccarim wrote:
| Yea, that's a good one!
| sjg007 wrote:
| HN had a huge sophomoric Randian streak years ago.. It
| seems to be maturing as I assume the users age.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's easy to be Randian when you're young, don't have
| dependents, and are in good health.
|
| One of the things I always liked about HN (even years ago
| HN) is that it seemed to feature a diversity of age
| ranges. Which brings some nice perspective.
| admash wrote:
| I wouldn't trust startup-bros either, without regulatory
| oversight. That being said, the hostility towards the FDA
| is not without basis (see below). Though I would argue
| that much of that hostility it due to it doing too
| little, rather than too much.
|
| Why is the FDA Funded in Part by the Companies It
| Regulates?
|
| https://today.uconn.edu/2021/05/why-is-the-fda-funded-in-
| par...
|
| Hidden conflicts? Pharma payments to FDA advisers after
| drug approvals spark ethical concerns:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-conflicts-
| pha...
|
| Gaps, tensions, and conflicts in the FDA approval
| process: implications for clinical practice:
|
| https://www.jabfm.org/content/17/2/142.long
|
| Revisiting financial conflicts of interest in FDA
| advisory committees:
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0009.120
| 73
|
| (edit: more links)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Why? Because citizens want an expert-staffed and
| functional regulatory body, but aren't willing to pay the
| tax necessary to fund it, at parity with private sector
| salaries.
|
| The root of all government problems is "We trust you to
| make decisions that impact a large amount of monetary
| value, but also pay you less than the amount of money
| flowing through you, and also pay you less than private
| industry would be willing to."
|
| Which... sets up an interesting dynamic.
|
| There are a lot of selfless saints out there. But there
| are also a lot, not. And so internal processes and
| regulations pile on top, in an attempt to curb the worst
| of corruption.
|
| Can we make the system better? Eh... maybe? But it's
| important to remember that a lot of features that look
| insane are actually reactive solutions to problems
| inherent in the system.
| all2 wrote:
| > Why? Because citizens want an expert-staffed and
| functional regulatory body, but aren't willing to pay the
| tax necessary to fund it, at parity with private sector
| salaries.
|
| The FDA (and the CDC and others) and pharma sectors trade
| people all the time. There is a revolving door between
| the two. Medicine isn't the only place this happens. It
| happens in telecomm, military, manufacturing, and so on.
|
| We have experts at all levels. Those same experts may or
| may not have patriotic tendencies. They are placed for
| their knowledge of their respective industries. They may
| also have a financial ax to grind.
|
| Is there a conflict of interest? Only if the appointee
| was appointed by the other party. I argue that the
| apparent conflict of interest is only surface level. In
| the US we don't have "capitalism", we have "crony
| capitalism" that is verging on technocracy (rule of The
| Science and unelected bureaucrats).
|
| > The root of all government problems is "We trust you to
| make decisions that impact a large amount of monetary
| value, but also pay you less than the amount of money
| flowing through you, and also pay you less than private
| industry would be willing to.
|
| The kinds of people who make those decisions are paid
| very well, and if they make it out without media
| incident, they are nearly always guaranteed a job in the
| industry they used to regulate.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Is there a conflict of interest? Only if the appointee
| was appointed by the other party. I argue that the
| apparent conflict of interest is only surface level. In
| the US we don 't have "capitalism", we have "crony
| capitalism" that is verging on technocracy (rule of The
| Science and unelected bureaucrats)._
|
| There is no such thing as capitalism separate from
| democracy, with a government that performs many
| functions.
|
| It's not crony capitalism or technocracy. It's just
| normal capitalism in a democracy. Same way it has been
| since the founding of the United States.
|
| > _The kinds of people who make those decisions are paid
| very well_
|
| Are they? GS tops out at around $170k
| https://www.generalschedule.org/ . And S/ES at around
| $220k https://www.federalpay.org/ses/2022 .
|
| That's a good salary. But it's not necessarily something
| I'd feel comfortable going to sleep with, knowing they
| had a finger on the scales of millions of dollars, if
| there weren't watchdog and mitigation measures in place.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the US we don't have "capitalism", we have "crony
| capitalism"
|
| The real world system for which the term "capitalism" was
| coined, was, is, and always has been crony capitalism;
| the idea of a non-crony capitalism is a utopian fairy
| tale that was invented to justify real-world capitalism
| which has never resembled it.
| umanwizard wrote:
| On the other hand, countless lives would have been saved
| had we started using the Covid vaccine before the FDA got
| around to authorizing it. Those VC-funded startup bros at
| Moderna really could have moved a lot faster without the
| government's interference.
| [deleted]
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Regulations are written in blood, then the blood darkens
| and people forget why we have regulations.
| drran wrote:
| Regulations should be transparent, with link to original
| cases and deduction process documented. We are not
| telepaths.
| Loughla wrote:
| You can look up any and all regulations online. Then you
| can read the transcripts of public comments regarding the
| regulations. You can find relevant court cases online.
| What else do you need?
|
| Nobody does that now, for the most part, why would they
| do it if there were a hyperlink attached to the
| regulations themselves? Who actually reads the text of
| regulations in the general population? I have zero data,
| but I'm willing to bet it's virtually no one. Specialists
| with a vested interest sure do, and they will probably
| already know relevant cases or thought processes.
|
| Edit: This was written in a very US-centric way, because
| it is in response to something originally about the FDA.
| drran wrote:
| Finding of all that information requires a lot of time
| and dedication. In my country (Ukraine), a lot of
| information about law development process is available
| online. For example: http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/w
| ebproc4_2?id=&pf3516=509... . It contains notes with
| explanation about why law need to be changed, but it hard
| to follow. Some information is available online, some in
| docx files, some in a random database, some on a video,
| some is not available at all.
|
| The process is not fully transparent. It means that it's
| easy to create two laws, which are contradicting each
| other, or modify laws against their original purpose,
| etc., because it's hard to see consequences when the law
| is not transparent. For example, our ex-president
| Yanukovich just replaced Constitution on president site
| with an older version. Yes, it's online, but it took 2
| years(!) until people noticed that and start to revolt.
|
| In software development, we have test cases, which must
| be passed. In law development, we have nothing like that.
|
| In my county, we read laws fairly often, because they are
| easy to get, but most of the time people prefer to read
| <<commentary>> -- a book about law with comments and
| cases.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Well, they are? You just need to look them up. It seems
| you expect others to drip or force feed you these
| regulations or something.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Too often it seems it's blood of the lobbyist who slipped
| and fell on ice while carrying a suitcase full of
| benjamins.
|
| Your quip is an easy one to make but there is very
| clearly no shortage of entities who peddle goods and
| services seeking, often successfully, to influence
| lawmaker so those goods and services are legally required
| despite the benefit to society being marginal if even
| measurable.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| If there was indeed a way to pull back the scope and power
| granted to the government I think a lot of us Americans would
| love to hear about it. The way it is, it seems like the US
| government is an unstoppable machine that will grow until it
| destroys itself.
| 0xedd wrote:
| One of the amendments is supposed to shield you from
| tyranny. But, going down a less risky path, I'd vote (no
| pun) for migration. My parents migrated away from a country
| that trades in humans to this day, in full view of the gov,
| and i can't be thankful enough.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I don't think the American governments biggest problem is
| it's scope and power: I think it's biggest problem is
| inefficiency due to corruption (regulatory capture, etc).
| It seems to me that the biggest obstacle to fixing this is
| that many Americans see this as an inevitable character of
| government rather than something specific to their system,
| and thus spend their time trying to reduce government
| (ironically making it even less effective by hobbling it
| with silly restrictions) rather than fixing it into a well
| functioning system.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| The two are interrelated -- regulatory capture doesn't
| make sense if there's no power to capture. So one must
| first grow the size and power of government through other
| means, then capture/influence that power. This cycle has
| been going on for a long time.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > It's funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the
| government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues
|
| You're implying that all ~332 million Americans are a
| homogenous and single-minded mass. Please stop generalizing,
| it's not a good look.
| e-clinton wrote:
| Everyone who isn't an HCP "surrenders" medical autonomy since
| not everyone pretends to know better than the experts.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate
| diagnostic tests as medical devices.
|
| I assume you mean COVID home tests and things like that? Call
| me strange, but if I buy such a thing then I'd like to make
| sure it's held to some standard of accuracy and safety. I do
| not have the resources or knowledge to find this out myself.
| Most people don't, and you can't just rely on "internet
| reviews" or the like.
|
| _Someone_ has to do this, and while the FDA and government
| authority may not be perfect, they 're the best we've got,
| and we can at least _somewhat_ hold them accountable through
| the democratic process (which also isn 't perfect, but better
| than anything else we've got).
| malfist wrote:
| Right? Like why shouldn't they regulate diagnostic tests?
| Do you expect the free market to do it?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'm surprised by the popular take on this. Hasn't HN spent
| the last 3 years lamenting how the FAA ceded too much
| regulatory power to industry?
|
| ... because this is where it starts. The answer to "there
| are regulatory inefficiencies" is _not_ "get rid of
| regulations" or "allow industry to self-regulate."
| oneepic wrote:
| Would have been interesting to hear what the feeling was like 2
| weeks later (ie lethargic? walking alright? breathing well?) TFA
| only says he's alive "with his new heart beating soundly", which
| could mean a lot of things.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| I think two weeks after heart surgery is never fun... A few
| days ago I noted that recovering from having your sternum
| broken open takes 6-8 weeks to be able to resume daily basic
| activities under the best circumstances.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Two weeks after the surgery he probably still has plastic
| hoses sucking fluid from his thorax and he can maybe sit up
| with assistance.
| sagarun wrote:
| The doctors want you walking (with help) as soon as possible
| after a heart transplant, unless something is horribly wrong.
| thehappypm wrote:
| When I was in high school we video chatted with a heart
| surgeon while he was doing heart surgery. It was an insane,
| incredible thing to see.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > A few days ago I noted that recovering from having your
| sternum broken open takes 6-8
|
| Can also confirm. I received CPR which cracked some ribs. I
| had to sleep in a chair for the first 5 weeks because lying
| down flat and getting back up again was so painful. Sneezing
| and coughing were excruciating until I found the trick of
| 'hugging' oneself just before to reduce chest movement.
| kingsloi wrote:
| I was amazed at how soon I could pick up my baby after her
| 4 heart surgeries. Obviously, it was a bum scoop as opposed
| to picking her up under the arms (never had that luxury),
| and she was medicated, but literally 3-5 days after
| surgeries, we're back to having skin-skin. Maybe it's
| because their bones aren't as strong as an adults and
| there's more flex, but still, really took me by surprise.
| Even hours after surgeries, her diaper/nappy needed to be
| changed, so the nurses/I/we would carefully do it, but it
| was really eye-opening considering she just had major open
| heart surgery.
| __s wrote:
| Relevant:
| https://www.upmc.com/services/transplant/heart/process/after
| discusses the usual timeline after a heart transplant. tl;dr 2
| weeks in he likely still feels like shit
| kamaal wrote:
| My dad took weeks(like more than 2 months) to back to being
| some what confidently ok'ish with things after his coronary
| artery bypass graft. He needed physiotherapy. His knees were
| weak and he needed a knee replacement only an year later. But
| in the after math of bypass surgery I had to hold his hand and
| make him walk, even feed and took him to rest room personally,
| I would even bathe him.
|
| It took like ages to let him confidently use the toilet on his
| own. And I'd always keep the toilet door open 'Just in case'.
|
| The Knee replacement a year later was obviously more brutal
| given the bypass was only an year back and we were peak in
| COVID times. He was infected, and I had sleep on the road as I
| caught it too(couldn't go home out of fear of infecting the
| family). Pretty much saw hell in bare form during that(weeks in
| anxiety, walking in COVID wards and suffering every single
| minute), and of course that recovery took months, as the drugs
| they gave him caused a huge spillover of issues.
|
| It might just be that as a I child I felt more for my father.
|
| But let me tell you major surgeries like bypass grafts, or knee
| replacements are nightmarish experiences, even more more so in
| the COVID times today.
|
| P.S: This is in Bangalore, India.
| bawolff wrote:
| Does the genetic modification mean immunosuppresents aren't
| required? If so, that sounds like a major step forward.
| eric4smith wrote:
| A good test. The guy is older and wanted to remain alive, despite
| the wishes of his family. And pigs are so close to humans anyway
| -- which is why I have the theory of why humans love bacon so
| much.
|
| Best wishes to Mr. Bennett, and hope that whatever happens, it
| will be a good leap for humanity.
| [deleted]
| BreakfastB0b wrote:
| Human Bacon, the final frontier. How long until you can buy
| Beyond Human burgers?
| geocrasher wrote:
| You may enjoy the first story in the compilation of Clarke
| stories called The Wind From The Sun:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wind_from_the_Sun
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| Bitelabs, a startup purportedly launched to deliver celebrity
| salami, made that joke in 2014.
| throwanem wrote:
| Hufu had a product in 2005:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hufu
| Someone wrote:
| > And pigs are so close to humans anyway -- which is why I have
| the theory of why humans love bacon so much.
|
| Are you claiming (most/many) humans are closet cannibals? I
| don't agree with that.
|
| Also, pigs aren't particularly close to humans, genetically. In
| biological classification they even are in a different order
| (even-hoofed ungulates) than humans, who are primates.
|
| = I don't think that theory makes sense.
| tester756 wrote:
| What if he had kids now?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| They transplanted a heart, not testes.
| [deleted]
| benatkin wrote:
| His victim's family (yes, really) doesn't like that he was the
| first to get a heart transplant.
| https://nypost.com/2022/01/13/historic-pig-heart-recipient-w...
|
| PETA doesn't like that anyone got a pig heart transplant.
| https://www.peta.org/media/news-releases/first-heart-transpl...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| My understanding is that given this was the first time this was
| tried, there was a strong possibility that the patient would
| not survive. Instead, the manner of their death would inform
| the doctors for the next person they tried it on.
|
| Given that their chance of survival is so slim, choosing to use
| a person for whom such small odds give more information to
| science, rather than do moral good by helping this person
| survive, seemed a reasonable tradeoff.
|
| Is this too cynical a read on the choice they made?
| carrolldunham wrote:
| Why are these points of view (especially the first) worth
| noting? They are quoted saying the heart 'should have gone to
| someone more deserving'. Yes, the precious, rare pig heart. It
| would be more fitting to look on this guy as a Guinea pig, so
| if he is a bad guy to you, who better to use?
| burrows wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the details of this case, but I can
| imagine that the time and expertise of physicians capable of
| doing the surgery is scarce. What do you say to the claim
| that, "The time and resources including the surgeons and the
| pig heart should be put to use helping a more deserving
| person."
| carrolldunham wrote:
| I already said: First time surgery that might not work is
| an experiment as much as a treatment. Hypothetically
| dialling the risk level up - just a matter of degree, still
| - we'd find ourselves regarding this operation as his
| sacrifice for the greater good.
| burrows wrote:
| > I already said: First time surgery that might not work
| is an experiment as much as a treatment.
|
| I don't think changing the name of what happened from
| "treatment" to "experiment" tells me anything new. If
| another person with a roughly identical health status but
| without the violent history is also willing to accept the
| pig heart, then the decision must be made to use the
| scarce resources to treat Ed or the "non-violent" person.
|
| > we'd find ourselves regarding this operation as his
| sacrifice for the greater good.
|
| I agree that people may be talking about the transplant
| and Ed differently had he died on the table.
| drewbug01 wrote:
| The idea that a prior criminal record - even a violent one -
| should disqualify you from medical care is just vile.
|
| And in any case: seems like the man served his time.
| tclancy wrote:
| It's The Post, kind of their thing.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| >"The key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick,
| regardless of who they are," said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics
| professor at New York University. "We are not in the business
| of sorting sinners from saints. Crime is a legal matter."
|
| This is so simple and newspapers trying to make it into a
| matter for debate is actually compromising that.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Is there a limit to this impartiality? Should we have saved
| Hitlers life with a breakthrough transplant?
| unmole wrote:
| > Is there a limit to this impartiality?
|
| No.
|
| > Should we have saved Hitlers life with a breakthrough
| transplant?
|
| Yes.
|
| It really is not complicated: Doctors are not in the
| business of judging their patients.
| siva7 wrote:
| It's not that simple. Doctors judge, at least in their
| own mind and that influences survival decisions.
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| > Doctors judge, at least in their own mind and that
| influences survival decisions.
|
| That isn't intentional or desirable though. It's a flaw.
| Doctors are people and people are imperfect.
| corobo wrote:
| What happens if you decide to not transplant because of
| their past but it turned out they were wrongfully
| convicted?
|
| To the top of the transplant list immediately pushing
| others down or "ohh.. awkward. we'll treat you fairly from
| now on"?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| If he follows the same protocol and gets considered under
| the same criteria, yes.
|
| Doctors making moral judgements and withholding treatments
| based on their patients lifestyle has a pretty ugly
| history.
| xupybd wrote:
| I would suggest the following limit, unless the state has
| already sentenced to death.
|
| We have a justice system to make these calls. Let the
| doctors treat everyone and the justice system decide who
| lives and dies.
| deelowe wrote:
| This. All these arguments over ethics miss the point.
| Doctors shouldn't be placed in the position of making
| morale decisions. Their job is to render care and given
| the grave consequences of malpractice, we should always
| expect them to do so to their fullest abilities. FULL
| STOP.
|
| Let the legal profession handle how to deal with
| criminals. Punishment and medical care have no place
| existing together.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I have some bad news from you about where anesthesia data
| came from...
| bsder wrote:
| It is even simpler than that.
|
| Someone who has served their time in prison and is now
| released is considered to have paid their debt to society.
|
| You may think, as I do, that this man served nowhere near
| what he should have for the crime he committed. However, the
| law has been followed and he is no longer in prison.
|
| If the people the New York Post is targeting think that he
| should still be punished, then he should still be in prison.
| The _problem_ is that the type of people clamor for these
| people to stay in prison _also_ are at the forefront of
| refusing to pony up the money to pay for that prison.
| MisterMower wrote:
| My experience has been that the kind of people that want
| longer prison sentences for folks like this are more than
| willing to tolerate higher taxes to pay for them.
| ianhawes wrote:
| Let's not pretend that the budget of prisons has any
| bearing on a man that was dutifully convicted and
| sentenced by a judge.
|
| The bigger issue IMO is that the killer never paid any of
| the monetary judgement against him to the victims family.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I do not want to sound like a person who would deny ex-
| prisoners medical care (I wouldn't), but legal disabilities
| even today do not end with your release from prison.
|
| For example, felons in the US are banned from owning guns
| even after they served their time.
|
| Do you consider that good or bad?
| [deleted]
| bsder wrote:
| > For example, felons in the US are banned from owning
| guns even after they served their time.
|
| I'm not a big fan of that, but I would prefer that it
| reflect the harm done from the crime and the statistics
| surrounding recidivism.
|
| A simple drug possession offense should not warrant
| banning you from voting or guns when you are done. If you
| were convicted of an armed robbery, maybe the guns should
| be banned.
|
| I really don't like the idea that once you're done with
| the justice system it continues to punish you. Once you
| are done with it, you should be done--especially if the
| crime was "victimless" (ie. something like drug
| possession where the only harm would be to yourself).
|
| This becomes a significant issue in, for example, sex
| offenders. Some places have so many restrictions on sex
| offenders that, for all intents and purposes, they cannot
| comply with probation and cannot function in society.
| Well, if you're going to do that, at least be honest that
| you are simply "executing them on the cheap and out of
| sight" and either keep them in prison or execute them
| explicitly.
|
| This is one of the problems with low-level drug
| convictions--the "felony" conviction becomes a poor man's
| "social discredit" system. And most of us from Western
| democracies understand pretty solidly why "social credit"
| systems are pernicious.
| burrows wrote:
| > The key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is
| sick, regardless of who they are.
|
| The victims family is saying "Our principle is that people
| who stab Ed should not get a heart, therefore David should
| not get a heart." The doctor is saying "Our principle is that
| we don't use the patient's past violence or convictions to
| determine whether they should get a heart or not, so the
| stabbing doesn't disqualify David."
|
| Neither party can offer a valid argument as to why their
| principle is true, because both of their principles are
| normative.
| graderjs wrote:
| The weird thing about saying "Do not save those who took
| another's life" is that you are saying, "The person took a
| life. That's bad. We should punish them for the bad thing."
| Then saying, "Let's take their life to punish them." (not
| saving a life you could being essentially the same as life
| taking, to me, here).
|
| To me, you are undermining your view that life-taking is
| bad, by engaging in it yourselves. To me, this is a
| paradox. You seem to be standing up for your belief in the
| badness of life-taking, by doing something against those
| who do it, then you do something which goes against the
| very thing that you are trying to protect--which, to me,
| makes it seems like you are merely pretending to protect.
|
| So, to me, their moral claim (?) that they are somehow
| "better" than this life-taker, and therefore have a right
| to say/do this life-save withholding, is completely
| undermined by their action of said withholding (or proposal
| to do it).
|
| On the other hand, my ape-brain very much endorses the
| logic of revenge and sees no problem with an eye for a eye.
| It will teach people a lesson, let them know they can't
| mess with us, and let them know there are consequences if
| they try. Hopefully, my ape brain says, that will make us
| safer and rest easier, in future.
|
| But the logical/rational part of me trying (but maybe
| failing) to consider this from an ethical or moral point of
| view, says, "Nah, that doesn't work."
| kazinator wrote:
| Confining a person is bad. But we imprison someone who
| did that. Thereby, to show that freedom taking is bad, we
| engage in it. To me, this is a paradox.
|
| r/im14andthisisdeep
| vidarh wrote:
| Well put. Apart from the lengthy threads here regularly
| on how flawed the very notion of free will that's
| necessary to even justify this focus on vengeance, I
| absolutely agree with you that if you're going to argue
| for vengeance and have a moral leg to stand on you better
| at least not argue for such an outcome.
|
| I like to point to this page from Franquin's Idees Noires
| (finally in English as "Die Laughing", only a few decades
| late) [1], which makes much the same point as you. (The
| whole book is very much worth it if you like dark humour
| - it's a crime it took so long for it to get translated
| to English given how many other languages it's been
| translated to decades ago)
|
| Translated the speech bubbles are roughly:
|
| "The law is clear: Every person who voluntarily kills
| another will have their head cut off. Let the executioner
| do their job."
|
| "Over here, my friend."
|
| "And so a good deed done..."
|
| "Sorry, but the law is clear: Everyone who voluntarily
| kills another..."
|
| [1] https://i.pinimg.com/474x/c5/3c/45/c53c451e1fea4fd04e
| a6cf674...
| nautilius wrote:
| So, thieves cannot be fined for their crimes (take their
| money after they took someone else's), kidnappers cannot
| go to jail (take their freedom after they took someone
| else's) - because it would undermine, what exactly? That
| makes no sense.
| graderjs wrote:
| Well it makes sense to me. Your reading is a little bit
| uncharitable. Seems almost like you didn't make any
| effort to understand it, and just rather pretend that
| it's stupid...Sigh. But I suppose I could have helped you
| by saying the other part which I think about this:
|
| That's why the legal system is so important. We need a
| way to do these things, that's not about individuals
| getting revenge. So...you kill Alice, then society takes
| it up with you, through their legal/punitive officers--
| rather than Alice's family.
|
| But even so...that doesn't fully resolve it for me, the
| paradox I see there.
|
| But at the same time, I get your point of view. I mean,
| what that means we can't punish anyone? Because we don't
| want to seem bad, by pushing back against the bad people?
| Are you saying we just turn the other cheek? That's
| crazy.
|
| Yeah, I get that...But I think it's important...You do
| some crime, and I say, "I have to get back at you". But
| no, I'm the one that has to be moral. Individuals have to
| be moral. The state doesn't have to be moral in the same
| way. But we can't let that spill over to individuals
| otherwise everything collapses.
|
| I mean, I'm not saying I can resolve this right here--and
| your strong reaction to what I said, indicates that I
| have raised a complex, subtle point that's not easy to
| resolve. People face stuff like that, it's difficult, so
| they react strongly, or emphatically, like you did.
|
| So I think we need the state, the organs of the state, to
| be able to enact this violence on our part (take their
| money, their freedom, their life--maybe? I'm not sure
| about the last one). Then we can afford to be moral and
| live up to that, and that's good overall. It's not
| perfect but then what other options do we have?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| You're exactly right. In fact resolving this paradox and
| avoiding the chaos of blood price for crimes committed
| are part of the themes of every system of law since
| Hammurabi's code.
| graderjs wrote:
| Thanks a lot, that's really kind. It's great to feel my
| struggle with is backed by thousands of years of other
| people struggling with it. And your comment helps me feel
| interested to read more into it! Thank you! :)
| Stupulous wrote:
| I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but I'm
| throwing it out there.
|
| In a consequentialist, utilitarian moral system, revenge
| cannot be a moral good on its own. If a universe where
| one person gets hurt is worse than a universe where no
| one gets hurt, a world where two people get hurt must be
| worse still.
|
| So if you're utilitarian, you believe in justice as a
| means to prevent crime. Punishing people can act as a
| deterrent, imprisoning people can separate them from
| would-be victims, and rehabilitation can prevent future
| crimes.
|
| Some people aren't consequentialists, but retributivists.
| They believe that deserved punishment is innately good. A
| universe that is fair is one in which those that cheat
| are issued handicaps to balance that out- think the
| reckless driver who gets pulled over frequently enough
| that it doesn't buy them any time in the long run. A fair
| universe is morally preferable to an unfair one. This
| also makes sense, though it's somewhat at odds with the
| utilitarian perspective.
| graderjs wrote:
| Well this has been a surprising explosion of positivity
| here on this thread. Some of these comments, look at you,
| thank you!
|
| That's interesting. And I don't know much about that, but
| your comment is going to help me look into that, when
| it's time for me to do so: consequentialists,
| retributivists, and utilitarianism. Thank you :)
|
| It's an interesting, seemingly two valid perspectives
| that are in contradiction. Thank you! :)
| [deleted]
| nautilius wrote:
| Seems almost like you didn't make any effort to
| understand what I wrote. Sigh.
|
| My interpretation is not uncharitable, it's precisely the
| same argument you are making, and, to me, it makes no
| sense - as shown by my examples. Clearly, you have no
| problem with fines for thieves and prison for kidnappers,
| and why should you - so you agree with me.
|
| I think the resolution to the problem of 'punishment' is
| exactly the one you point out at the end: we hand over
| the monopoly of violence to the democratic state.
|
| Thus the point you're making is wrong: the problem is not
| at all whether we punish by exactly the same measure that
| we're punishing for. The simple truth is that the death
| penalty is a qualitative very different kind of
| punishment (which I find barbaric, just for the record).
|
| Edit: I don't really see where I react strongly or
| emphatically. I'm just pointing out that your logic does
| not hold up.
| graderjs wrote:
| Really? But I just said this:
|
| > But at the same time, I get your point of view. I mean,
| what that means we can't punish anyone? Because we don't
| want to seem bad, by pushing back against the bad people?
| Are you saying we just turn the other cheek? That's
| crazy.
|
| > Yeah, I get that...But I think it's important...You do
| some crime, and I say, "I have to get back at you". But
| no, I'm the one that has to be moral. Individuals have to
| be moral. The state doesn't have to be moral in the same
| way. But we can't let that spill over to individuals
| otherwise everything collapses.
|
| I mean doesn't that look like I'm making an effort to
| understand your POV? That's exactly what I'm doing? What
| does that look like to you? How did you take that?
|
| ---
|
| Second thing:
|
| > My interpretation is not uncharitable, it's precisely
| the same argument you are making
|
| Well I'm saying it is uncharitable. I think you think
| that it's the same, but maybe you don't see how you've
| misinterpreted.
|
| In my first post (GP?) I don't mention the state. Now,
| it's understandable if maybe you thought I was talking
| about that (use of possibly ambiguous "you", or "their",
| or "yourselves" to refer to who I was saying claimed they
| could punish like this), but to me I was clearly replying
| to the ancestor phrase "The victim's family is saying:"
| Maybe that was not clear, but I thought it was. Sorry,
| maybe that was what confused you?
|
| So, in that context where I am talking about it (what I
| said up there), the context is: when people say they want
| to respond in the same way. That is different to the
| point you're making, I think. I think you're saying, that
| I'm saying:
|
| "We don't have a right to punish people, because if we
| do, we are not moral. And we shouldn't punish people in
| the same form as their transgression."
|
| That is what I'm saying...but I'm also genuinely trying
| to explore it and being more modal than, "well it is 100%
| like this." I'm just saying what I said up there.
|
| But I think your mischaracterization is that your meaning
| is maybe like this:
|
| "You are referring to the state. You are saying the state
| cannot punish people because it would undermine its moral
| position somehow. This is obviously nonsense. You are
| wrong. Because then we do not punish anyone. Also, what's
| really wrong with punishing in the same form? It's not
| even a point. Also wrong."
|
| Let's leave aside the "same form" thing because that's,
| probably, you know, something else. But I just think your
| mischaracterization is to mischaracterize or
| misinterpret, the who of what I'm talking about. And that
| part's understandable maybe--ok?--because I didn't make
| it explicitly clear. But what you're saying I'm saying,
| is not exactly the point I'm making, and it is
| uncharitable because it doesn't seem to try to see it
| from the point of view where it could be true...your
| mischaracterization throws out the stuff I'm saying about
| the seeming moral paradox, and reduces the modal
| exploratory aspect to an absolute one, ignores the part
| where I'm making an effort to consider your PoV, and
| seems to deny that considering this as a moral problem is
| a valid consideration. Also, saying "You have no problem
| with punishing" is a complete mischaracterization,
| stripping off the subtlety of what I'm trying to explore,
| which is that, to me, these things are moral issues like
| I said above.
|
| I mean one basic point is, if what you're trying to do is
| prove me wrong, then having to misinterpret and reduce
| what I'm saying in order to prove it wrong, is
| invalid...it doesn't touch what I'm saying. So you've
| only proved wrong, if you have, your misinterpretation of
| what I'm saying. And sort of validated what I'm saying
| and the difficulty of proving it wrong, by avoiding
| dealing with it.
|
| Now maybe you don't see it like that, and I get it. Maybe
| you just genuinely think your interpretation was totally
| valid, and I'm just shifting the goal posts to avoid
| being pinned down by the formidable pincers of your
| immaculate logic...or some stuff like that, whatever. Or
| maybe you are doing it deliberately...or maybe it's just
| a blindspot and you don't realize you're doing it? Maybe?
|
| For me the far more important point tho, is about how
| people interact in discussions, not the proving wrong.
| And it just seems like you're saying, what I've said is
| all invalid and wrong. It kind of hurts. Because it does
| hurt. And also because I'm dealing with the topic
| genuinely, and curiously. And it just feels like you just
| want to prove a point, and you don't care who you
| misinterpret, like you don't care how you misinterpret
| what someone says into some form you can say "it's wrong"
| because it seems you only care about saying "it's wrong."
| rather than about hearing or dealing honestly and
| respectfully with what someone is saying.
|
| I mean you could have just said, "Well maybe it's right,
| how could this guy be meaning in a way that's right? What
| could they be trying to say here that's not the obvious
| rebuttal I can make or what I might be misinterpreting?
| Maybe they're more subtle than that?" Because when you do
| that, you know, mischaracterization and say "you're
| wrong", I feel a bit sad, because it seems like you're
| saying, "This person is stupid." Because you're assuming
| the stupidest interpretation, the one that obviously
| doesn't make sense. Is that what you think I'm saying?
| Why do you need to look down on me?
|
| And I just think that's a bit sad. I'm engaging
| genuinely, but it seems you just wanna prove someone
| wrong...and you don't care who you hurt? I was a little
| scared to reply you because I got the feeling you might
| do that...but, I gave you a chance.
|
| I picked up the strong reaction in your first answer, and
| I felt scared you would try and just do that, and you
| did. It was a feeling, but some points in the text you
| could link it to are: "undermine what exactly? [[ your
| point about undermining is invalid, there's no complexity
| here ]] That makes no sense." It was my feeling about
| your intention but those words are even pretty strong to
| me. I get that maybe you don't see that...sad to say, but
| I think that not seeing it might be obvious. Maybe you
| can think about how that might come across...
|
| ---
|
| Third thing: I mean if you want to take some overly
| literal editorialized misinterpretation of what someone
| said, and pretend it's their logic that doesn't make
| sense, rather than your interpretation (because I guess
| that helps you feel smart(er?) for seeing the flaws in
| their logic, but it's a little unfair and twisted to
| foist your perverted misinterpretation on what they say,
| just to get your rocks off by feeling they're wrong and
| you're smart, right?), I mean it's actually not that
| difficult to do that...so how does it feel,
|
| "My interpretation is not uncharitable...so you agree
| with me...Thus the point you're making is wrong"
|
| I mean I can do that, and be like, "Gotcha. If I'm wrong,
| but I agree with you, then you're wrong too?"
|
| Clearly a more simplistic misinterpretation than your
| more subtle misinterpretation, but of the same kind, and
| seemingly the same intention. The thing is, that kind of
| stuff, doesn't lead to interesting or fun conversations,
| I think...because then we got to waste time maybe going
| back over like, "i didn't mean that," "you didn't mean
| this", it's a time saving effort if you just respond to
| the strongest position. And even if I didn't mean that
| strongest position, then maybe I can rise to it (I mean--
| you see me as capable of that, right?) then we could have
| had a more fun and interesting conversation, right? but
| to do that you have to surrender the temptation of seeing
| someone else as stupid, and what they're saying as wrong,
| so you can feel smart(er)? because if you don't surrender
| that temptation, it's just for you then, it's not a
| contribution to the community. maybe you feel as if your
| contributions will not be appreciated, so you fall back
| to this. getting your jollies in this "taking" way (and
| in this current context, kind of immoral, because nobody
| took anything from you at the first, at least not
| here~~not saying you had an easy time online tho...but
| does that mean you keep being unkind/uncharitable?).
| because when you do that, it hurts, because you're
| devaluing what other people are saying. I hope you see
| that, or reflect on it, and maybe try to be better to
| others...please.
| nautilius wrote:
| Ah, I see where you're confused by your own writing, but
| I'd be happy to spell it out slower, so that you can
| understand [0]: you write "I get your point of view", and
| you mistake _making_ that statement with the factuality
| of it.
|
| And let me help you with another thing you are confused
| about [0]. So, in essence your argument is that I am
| wrong because I am answering to what you wrote rather
| than what you thought you wrote or wish you wrote, and
| that's what you call 'uncharitable'.
|
| The main problem with your 'argument' is that you make
| absolute statements, but then are not able to back them
| up, getting upset when someone points that out. It's
| simple engineering practice to check how things hold up
| at the limits. Not 'punishing' someone with the same
| thing they did does not hold up in the limits of simple
| wrongdoings, e.g. taking away some property. What this
| should tell you is not that you require a more charitable
| interpretation and special rules for the fringes to
| rescue your argument, but maybe that the overall logic is
| flawed. And it is: as I wrote in the other comment, the
| simple truth is that the death penalty is a different
| beast altogether.
|
| [0] What's with that condescending tone with all your
| replies? Can you not simply make a statement that stands
| on its own two feet?
| vidarh wrote:
| Note that graderjs is not saying that there could not be
| other morally justifiable reasons for calling for the
| death of someone.
|
| What they were saying is specifically that arguing that
| someone who takes a life should be punished in a life
| ending way because of the severity of taking a life is
| undermining _that_ argument 's own central claim of the
| severity of taking a life by at the same time arguing for
| ending a life.
|
| Your analogies are flawed for two reasons:
|
| 1. there are other justifications for punishments that
| may (or may not) be valid. One argument may be that it is
| preventative, for example.
|
| 2. in neither example would most people argue that we're
| imposing a particularly extreme sentence _because_ the
| action was particularly extreme, and this is central to
| the argument made by graderjs.
|
| In the case of the theft example, if anything we'd tend
| to argue a fine is not a very serious punishment. In the
| case of kidnap, we argue for serious sentences because of
| the seriousness of the crime, but a prison sentence would
| not be seen by most people as equally cruel as the
| uncertainty and fear and trauma imposed on both the
| victim and their loved ones, and most people would argue
| that the prison sentence is not just a response to the
| seriousness of the crime committed.
|
| Some people might nevertheless find it hypocritical to
| argue for prison sentence on the basis of the seriousness
| of kidnapping, and its their right. But that in itself
| does not make a prison sentence unjustifiable _even if
| you agree with them_ , because you may have many other
| arguments, such as e.g. risk of reoffending, or signal
| effect to others.
|
| The point is in other words not that a given punishment
| _can 't_ be justified, but that if you choose to argue
| that something is particularly severe and then in the
| same breath argues for inflicting that same thing on
| someone _because_ of that perceived severity, you 're
| undermining _that_ argument.
| nautilius wrote:
| The analogy is not flawed because the comments you made
| are precisely my point: it's not a general, fundamental,
| moral conundrum -- it's that the death penalty is its own
| special beast. Graderjs argues from a general perspective
| using the example, but not limiting his arguments to, the
| death penalty. And then, as you and I point out, it
| simply does not hold up. It's the _severity_ that makes
| it stand out, not the overall act of 'are we moral if we
| do the same thing'.
|
| Graderjs also makes no argument about other
| justifications of 'punishment', and, again, I'm with you.
| Note that I often write 'punishment' in quotation marks.
| I don't believe (and the numbers between countries
| support that) that revenge is a productive reaction from
| a society.
| vidarh wrote:
| I think you read way too much into the comment that is
| not justified by the actual text of the comment.
| unmole wrote:
| Fines and jail sentences are imposed by courts. It would
| be weird for a grocery store clerk to overcharge a
| convicted thief after they served their sentence.
| nautilius wrote:
| We're talking about the morality of the reaction, not
| about who imposes it. GP argues that it's morally
| fundamentally wrong to react to some else's 'misbehavior'
| by imposing the very same action as punishment.
| vidarh wrote:
| Graderjs comment does not say they are morally
| fundamentally wrong.
|
| They say that _the specific argument_ that life-taking is
| bad is undermined by arguing for life-taking.
|
| This does not preclude _other_ arguments for why life-
| taking may be bad, nor other arguments for why it may be
| justified in specific circumstances.
|
| Note that graderjs' very own comment gives examples of
| other possible arguments for "eye for an eye":
|
| > It will teach people a lesson, let them know they can't
| mess with us, and let them know there are consequences if
| they try. Hopefully, my ape brain says, that will make us
| safer and rest easier, in future.
|
| As such it's very clear that graderjs is not making any
| sort of claim to absolute morality, but addressing the
| weakness of a specific line of argumentation.
| graderjs wrote:
| Well maybe not wrong fundamentally...but it calls into
| question your stance against the thing you end up doing.
| froh wrote:
| Thanks for basing the ethical explanation so succinctly
| on the respect from life. Rarely do I find it put in such
| a clean and simple and accessible way. Connecting it to
| the ape-brain level urge for revenge is the icing on the
| cake.
|
| From there I comfort myself with two thousand years it
| took a truly global institution to fully completely and
| no more strings attached reject capital punishment, the
| CCC, Catholic church law, closed the last loopholes
| allowing capital punishment only very recently.
|
| We need to be patient with some nations to get there...
| Patient and persistent. As you were with your comment.
| Thanks again!
| graderjs wrote:
| Wow, the positive comments here are really, nice. Thank
| you! Yes I was rather proud of that as well, I thought it
| deserved a bit of love--so thank you for sharing! :)
|
| It's nice to get that here after slugging it out with
| someone who's seemingly misinterpreting what you're
| saying, so thank you for that support :) xx
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that the stabbing victim didn't
| die. It sounds like the stabbing had long term health
| effects, though.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The stabbing victim was wheelchair bound and later died
| from a stroke directly related to the stabbing.
| sersi wrote:
| When evaluating principles, the trick is to extrapolate
| from each principles what society would be like if they
| were followed.
|
| The first one "Our principle is that people who stab Ed
| should not get a heart, therefore David should not get a
| heart." means that there is no rehabilitation for ex-cons,
| that doctors have the power to condemn people to death
| based on their past by refusing a life saving procedure and
| that in the case of new research like this one, doctors
| cannot have access to the best candidate.
|
| Extrapolating the second principle means living in a
| society where the judicial system decides the punishment
| and people pay their due afterward, potentially reducing
| recividism. It means that when doing an experimental
| procedure that requires very specific candidates, the
| doctors have to pass on an ideal candidate delaying
| discovery.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _People who commit crimes should not get a heart_ can be
| transformed to _Only people who have not committed crimes
| should get replacement hearts_. The problem is, who hasn 't
| committed crimes? Which crimes count? Who decides?
|
| That question makes the more-topical issue _When the ER
| fills up, should unvaccinated people be treated by
| administering carbon monoxide in the hospital parking
| garage?_ look trivial to resolve, in comparison.
| stult wrote:
| Seems pretty damn simple to me. If you wouldn't put
| someone to death for a crime, you shouldn't deny them
| medical care in a manner that will kill them for the same
| crime. It's functionally and legally the same as putting
| them to death. Withholding necessary medical care is the
| same as withholding food, water, air, or shelter.
| creato wrote:
| We deny people waiting for organ transplants medical
| treatment regularly. there simply aren't enough organs to
| go around. In the case that people are _already_ having
| life saving organs withheld from them, it makes sense to
| prioritize.
|
| I think people have the ethical issue in this case
| backwards: the reason this guy got this transplant is
| because it was an _experiment_. We effectively used an
| ex-con as a guinea pig. (Personally, I 'm fine with that,
| he was fully aware and consented, it was his only
| chance.)
|
| If this guy had died due to the experimental heart
| failing, we'd probably be seeing a bunch of op-eds about
| our moral failure to prevent exploitation of a vulnerable
| (ex-)prison population.
| stult wrote:
| > We deny people waiting for organ transplants medical
| treatment regularly. there simply aren't enough organs to
| go around.
|
| Yeah. There is no shortage of pig organs which is kinda
| the whole point. Rationing limited care is different than
| denying perfectly available care simply out of
| retribution. I thought the context made that distinction
| rather self-evident.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| There is definitely a shortage of transplantable pig
| hearts. This is the first such heart ever.
| krisoft wrote:
| There is shortage yes in the sense that the heart didn't
| come from just any pig. It is a specific, modified breed
| which made the procedure more likely to succeed. The
| donor pig was also probably raised in more sanitary
| conditions than most other pig would be.
|
| There is not a huge supply of these transplantable pig
| hearts at the moment. But if the procedure proves to be
| viable and the long term consequences make it favourable
| we can scale up transplantable pig heart production.
|
| The reason we are not transplanting pig hearts to
| thousands of patients right now is not because of any
| such supposed shortage though, but because the procedure
| is not proven yet. The experiment in question is set out
| to provide data to help answer that question.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think we disagree about anything real.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > If this guy had died due to the experimental heart
| failing, we'd probably be seeing a bunch of op-eds about
| our moral failure to prevent exploitation of a vulnerable
| (ex-)prison population.
|
| On the contrary, you're probably massively overestimating
| how much the society at large cares for convicted felons.
|
| The sad reality is it's not a lot.
|
| Which is why I doubt we'd see a single op-ed about it.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > We deny people waiting for organ transplants medical
| treatment regularly.
|
| Yes, but not for their moral failings. We deny care for
| health reasons, as generally speaking the goal is to
| optimize for additional healthy years of life.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| In the vaccination example: it is based on triage. Which
| is based on predicted outcome and resources available.
|
| If you have one hospital bed and two COVID patients that
| are looking like they will die if they don't get admitted
| you treat the one with the greater chance of survival.
| Being vaccinated is predictive of a higher survival
| rate...
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Neither party can offer a valid argument as to why their
| principle is true, because both of their principles are
| normative.
|
| The majority of ethicists agree that normative statements
| can express true statements.
|
| But the positive/normative distinction is also not
| important here: medical ethics is a prescriptive and
| lexical ethics, one that you _must_ follow if you are to
| practice medicine. It 's not interested in what any
| individual does thinks should or shouldn't be the case: you
| _do no harm_ and you always render treatment in accordance
| with your means.
| burrows wrote:
| > The majority of ethicists agree that normative
| statements can express true statements.
|
| What do you think is a good candidate for such a
| statement? My impression is that arguments must proceed
| from axioms, positive axioms aren't helpful because the
| statement is normative and normative axioms just
| reproduce the issue.
|
| > medical ethics is a prescriptive and lexical ethics,
| one that you must follow if you are to practice medicine.
|
| What is the meaning of "lexical ethics"? Google didn't
| return anything helpful.
|
| I believe the essence of the claim you are making is
| that, "There is a powerful enforcement body that will
| only permit doctors to practice medicine if they do no
| harm and render treatment in accordance with their
| means." I think this a positive claim about human
| behavior, a proposition potentially belonging to the set
| of sociological or historical facts.
|
| I suspect the family is talking about the way things
| ought to be, "Heart transplants should go to good
| people". And you are pointing out that the doctors are
| responding with a positive claim, "That's not what we do
| here."?
| woodruffw wrote:
| > What do you think is a good candidate for such a
| statement?
|
| Here's an intuitive one: "you shouldn't kick puppies."
| Most people think that expresses a true statement (not
| that "most people" is itself indicative of truth value).
|
| In terms of my own ethics: "act only in a way that you
| can will be universal law." Of course, not everybody
| agrees with that one, but I think it's an awfully good
| candidate.
|
| We can talk about if and how those proceed from axioms,
| but I suspect that'll be a long thread :-)
|
| > What is the meaning of "lexical ethics"?
|
| Sorry: lex is in lex, legis, "law." Medical ethics don't
| concern themselves with normal moral objects or even
| moral laws in the deontological sense; they are
| _literally_ a book of rules that doctors (broadly) are
| not allowed to disagree with.
|
| So yes, I think it's correct to read the doctors'
| responses as a positive claim: they're pointing out that
| it's a category error to appeal to their (potentially
| true!) moral beliefs.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > a book of rules that doctors (broadly) are not allowed
| to disagree with.
|
| They're allowed to disagree, as long as they still follow
| them.
| woodruffw wrote:
| You're right, sorry. "It doesn't matter whether they
| disagree" is a better way to put it.
|
| Dura lex sed lex and all that.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Most people think that expresses a true statement
|
| Worth pointing out that truth is a pretty complicated
| word in this case. The statement is intuitively true in
| the sense that it is a command that ought to be followed,
| but it's not a factual truth statement in an empirical
| sense. Likewise often truth statements or commandments
| are reframed emotional stances, say "you should not look
| at porn!" expressing simply disapproval.
|
| Lay ethics discussions conflate truth claims a lot so
| it's hard to draw any conclusions from it. Also there's a
| deep cultural aversion to argue that moral statements
| have no truth value, despite it being a common
| philosophical position.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The majority of ethicists agree that normative
| statements can express true statements.
|
| Well, yeah, it would kind of be silly to be an ethicist
| if you didn't believe that, and even if you were it would
| be contrary to self-interest to admit to it. It's like
| polling astrologists on the reality of planetary
| influence on personality and personal fortunes.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Not particularly! There are ethicists who believe all
| sorts of silly things, if you think "self-defeating" or
| "undermining" qualifies as "silly." For example, there
| are plenty of ethicists who think that moral statements
| are really just preference statements, putting "killing
| is bad" on the same epistemic level as "I don't like
| peanuts on my sundaes."
|
| This all works out because it isn't actually contrary to
| their self-interest: academic philosophy doesn't care
| whether your position undermines some grounding claim,
| because there's no universal consensus around that
| grounding claim to begin with. You'll find plenty of
| moral philosophers who think that morality is a purely
| preferential mental phenomenon; they don't mind admitting
| that because there's still plenty of interesting work to
| be done if that's the case.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| The first argument is a slippery slope. What crimes
| disqualify you from getting a heart? How much repentance do
| you have to go through the get qualified back? Who judges
| that?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| You'd can't just have a list of disqualifying crimes.
| You'd need to balance things out a proper social credit
| score.
|
| With an indirect death penalty attached, yes. Can't think
| of how this could go wrong at alllllllllllll
| MisterMower wrote:
| The guy should have got the death penalty for attempted
| and arguably successful murder (the victim later died of
| a stroke directly attributable to the wounds he received
| from the stabbing). 10 years for stabbing a guy multiple
| times to the point of putting him in a wheel chair is a
| slap on the wrist.
|
| Funny how a lot of problems work themselves out when
| swift justice is delivered. This whole thread doesn't
| exist in that alternative, more just world.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| In the article I see a few pictures of the guy with his
| large, seemingly happy family. Getting rid of the
| opportunity for that to happen would be like creating
| another tragedy from the ashes of the first. I don't know
| where you're from, but in America a lot of folks share
| your view. But our use of the death penalty hasn't
| eradicated crime. So then one has to wonder if the
| possible benefits are worth the price.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > with his large, seemingly happy family
|
| If we take that into account, then do loners without
| friends/children/family not deserve the same
| consideration?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| They definitely do in my view. But if you were facing the
| death penalty as a part of a jury trial they might feel
| differently, character witness statements matter to some
| degree.
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean one of those principles generalize, the other does
| not. I would argue making medical decisions based on ad-hoc
| principles is unjust.
| skissane wrote:
| > Neither party can offer a valid argument as to why their
| principle is true, because both of their principles are
| normative.
|
| Can you offer a valid argument for the truth of your own
| principle, that it is impossible to offer a valid argument
| for the truth of any normative principle? I think your own
| position is a normative principle, and hence your position
| is self-refuting.
|
| To call an argument "valid" is to make a normative claim;
| it is to claim that a rational agent _ought to_ accept it.
| To call an argument _invalid_ is to claim that a rational
| agent _ought not_ accept it. Rationality has as much
| _oughtness_ as morality does, and hence is a normative
| discipline just as morality is.
| burrows wrote:
| Thank you for prompting me to reevaluate my position.
|
| Initially I claimed, "There are no valid arguments for
| normative claims.", I would like to amend my claim.
|
| Def: An inferential system is a tuple of axioms and
| inferential rules.
|
| Def: An argument is a non-empty ordered sequence of
| statements. The last statement is called its conclusion.
|
| Claim: If an inferential system produces an argument for
| a normative claim, the system is either inconsistent or
| permits inference from positive statements to normative
| statements or the argument proceeds from normative
| axioms.
|
| Proof. Suppose S is a consistent inferential system and
| that A is an argument in S from S's axioms to a normative
| conclusion. If S has only positive axioms then A makes
| inference from positive to normative statements. QED
|
| Corollary: There are no arguments for normative claims
| that don't proceed from normative axioms in consistent
| systems that don't permit inference from normative to
| positive statements.
| skissane wrote:
| You are saying that, a valid deductive argument with a
| normative conclusion must either have a normative
| premise, or else rely on a logic whose inference rules
| permit normative statements to be inferred from non-
| normative ones.
|
| I agree with you there. But you haven't explained how
| this (obviously true) statement is relevant to the
| original discussion, about the morality of providing
| life-saving medical treatment to perpetrators of serious
| crimes.
| burrows wrote:
| > But you haven't explained how this (obviously true)
| statement is relevant to the original discussion, about
| the morality of providing life-saving medical treatment
| to perpetrators of serious crimes.
|
| My original point was in response to the claim that "the
| key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick,
| regardless of who they are". I took this to be an ought
| and wanted to point out that its truth isn't established
| anymore than the ought indicated by Ed's family, and that
| in fact there would be serious difficulties with
| establishing either one for the reason given by your last
| post:
|
| > a valid deductive argument with a normative conclusion
| must either have a normative premise, or else rely on a
| logic whose inference rules permit normative statements
| to be inferred from non-normative ones.
|
| But also I think that this poster makes a good point that
| the doctors are actually making a positive claim.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30081152
|
| > To call an argument "valid" is to make a normative
| claim; it is to claim that a rational agent ought to
| accept it.
|
| I think I had in mind a textbook definition I had read.
|
| An argument is called valid if it is impossible for the
| premises to be true and the conclusion false. And then we
| say that an argument is sound if it is both valid and has
| true premises.
|
| Which seems like a useful pair of definitions, and in
| that context I was confused about the terms.
|
| I actually haven't ever thought about or heard of this
| idea of 'when is a rational actor committed to accepting
| claims'. But yeah, seems interesting to me.
| skissane wrote:
| That textbook definition of "valid" only applies to
| purely deductive arguments. Outside of mathematics, most
| arguments humans make have a significant non-deductive
| component (inductive and/or abductive). So, unless we
| assume that moral reasoning is closer to mathematical
| reasoning than to the kinds of reasoning we normally use
| in the sciences and humanities-a very dubious assumption-
| the formal concept of "validity" you are invoking has
| rather limited relevance to morality. That's why I read
| your statement as intending "valid" informally rather
| than formally, since in its informal sense the term is
| not restricted to purely deductive arguments; and
| informally it is very much a normative concept (formally,
| I think it has multiple formal senses, some of which
| contain more normativity than others)
|
| I think your overall point is, you are expressing
| scepticism about claims to know the truth of some
| particular moral proposition, grounded in a more general
| scepticism of the possibility of any moral knowledge at
| all.
|
| I think that kind of general moral scepticism is
| (usually) a form of normative scepticism. The big problem
| I see with normative scepticism, is that attempts to
| argue for it logically and rationally turn out to be
| self-refuting, because logic and rationality are
| themselves normative concepts. Furthermore, if one
| understands knowledge as having a normative component,
| normative scepticism collapses into radical scepticism
| (there is no such thing as knowledge), which obviously
| ought to be rejected.
| burrows wrote:
| > That textbook definition of "valid" only applies to
| purely deductive arguments. Outside of mathematics, most
| arguments humans make have a significant non-deductive
| component (inductive and/or abductive). So, unless we
| assume that moral reasoning is closer to mathematical
| reasoning than to the kinds of reasoning we normally use
| in the sciences and humanities-a very dubious assumption-
| the formal concept of "validity" you are invoking has
| rather limited relevance to morality.
|
| I don't have any sense for the various properties of
| inductive arguments. So to the extent that moral
| arguments are inductive, I have nothing to say. Thanks
| for pointing out that I'm assuming moral arguments must
| be deductive. Any recommendations for an introductory
| text on inductive arguments?
|
| > That's why I read your statement as intending "valid"
| informally rather than formally, since in its informal
| sense the term is not restricted to purely deductive
| arguments; and informally it is very much a normative
| concept (formally, I think it has multiple formal senses,
| some of which contain more normativity than others)
|
| Understood.
|
| > I think your overall point is, you are expressing
| scepticism about claims to know the truth of some
| particular moral proposition, grounded in a more general
| scepticism of the possibility of any moral knowledge at
| all.
|
| Yes, that is my point.
|
| > I think that kind of general moral scepticism is
| (usually) a form of normative scepticism. The big problem
| I see with normative scepticism, is that attempts to
| argue for it logically and rationally turn out to be
| self-refuting, because logic and rationality are
| themselves normative concepts.
|
| This is the first time that I've heard of normative
| epistemology, which I gather is what you are talking
| about. One thing I will say though, thinking about this
| seems smoother than thinking about normative morality
| because (I think) I don't have as many childhood memories
| of people telling me what I ought to think compared to
| those of people telling me what I ought to do.
| skissane wrote:
| > I don't have any sense for the various properties of
| inductive arguments
|
| You can easily find a lot of resources on this topic, but
| I can't think of any to particularly recommend. To give
| my own high-level summary, there are three main types of
| logical arguments:
|
| - Deductive arguments: from the premises, the conclusion
| necessarily follows. If the premises are true, and the
| argument is valid, the conclusion _must_ be true. These
| are the kinds of arguments found in mathematical proofs,
| and classical syllogisms such as "All men are mortal,
| Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal"
|
| - Inductive arguments: from many particulars, infer a
| generalisation. If all swans so far have been observed to
| be white, it is reasonable to conclude that "All swans
| are white" - and the more observations you make, the
| stronger the conclusion becomes - but that conclusion can
| never be certain, only probable, because maybe tomorrow
| someone will discover a black swan, proving the
| conclusion to be false after all-which is of course what
| actually happened, when Europeans came to Australia and
| found swans which were black. (Also, confusingly,
| "mathematical induction" is a type of deductive argument,
| not induction in the logical sense.)
|
| - Abductive arguments: from a situation, infer the truth
| of its most plausible explanation: If I walk into a room
| and find toys spread all over the floor, I am going to
| conclude that our four year old did it. Now, maybe some
| crazy stranger broke into our house, threw toys
| everywhere, then left - not absolutely impossible, but
| far less likely than it being our four year old.
|
| The big difference: in deductive arguments, if the
| argument is good, and the premises are true, the
| conclusion _must_ be true; in non-deductive arguments,
| the argument can be good, and the premises can be
| completely true, and yet the conclusion can still be
| false. A deductive argument which produces a false
| conclusion from true premises is by definition a bad one;
| a non-deductive argument which produces a false
| conclusion from true premises can still be a perfectly
| good one, provided that unfortunate outcome is
| improbable.
|
| The natural sciences use all three, but rely heavily on
| induction and abduction. Historians primarily use
| abduction - induction works best for repeatable events,
| whereas many of the events historians study are
| essentially unique and unrepeatable (World War II was in
| many ways a unique event in human history, nothing quite
| like it had ever happened before, even World War I was
| different in many ways, and if World War III ever happens
| it is going to be very different again).
|
| I think a lot of moral reasoning must be non-deductive,
| because deductive arguments generally deal with
| certainties, whereas it is quite natural for people to
| say about moral issues "I think it is probably wrong but
| I'm not 100% sure". I think moral reasoning often
| involves some degree of induction - if you repeatedly
| encounter particular situations which offend your
| conscience, you are likely to adopt a moral principle
| which condemns whatever those particular situations have
| in common - generalising a principle out of particular
| cases, which is essentially what inductive reasoning is.
| But, as in all inductive reasoning, you can never be sure
| that there will not be some case which might convince you
| that your generalisation needs an exception - a moral
| black swan.
|
| > This is the first time that I've heard of normative
| epistemology, which I gather is what you are talking
| about.
|
| Yes, exactly. A lot of the concepts traditionally used in
| epistemology appear to be normative. For example, in the
| classical definition of knowledge as "justified true
| belief", justification appears to be a normative concept
| - a belief which is justified given some evidence is a
| belief which one _ought_ to hold (or, at least, one is
| _permitted_ to hold) given that evidence, a belief which
| is unjustified given some evidence is a belief which one
| _ought not_ to hold given that evidence.
|
| > One thing I will say though, thinking about this seems
| smoother than thinking about normative morality because
| (I think) I don't have as many childhood memories of
| people telling me what I ought to think compared to those
| of people telling me what I ought to do.
|
| I think a lot of people grow up exposed to conservative
| religious approaches to morality, which they often
| experienced as being pushed on them inflexibly and never
| with any convincing justification-and it is unsurprising
| many such people become attracted to the idea that
| "morality is subjective". However, I wonder, is that
| "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"? Most of these
| people would feel strongly that genocide, slavery,
| apartheid, torture, child abuse, theocratic
| totalitarianism, etc, are immoral - yet, having accepted
| "morality is subjective", those moral positions they
| endorse must be just as subjective as those which they've
| rejected. Subjective morality weakens their own moral
| positions. Indeed, once you believe that morality is
| subjective, you can no longer claim (in any objective
| sense) that anyone else's morality is wrong, including
| that of various religious conservatives - the most you
| can consistently say about their morality is that you
| don't like it - but why should they (or anyone else) care
| about what you like?
| bawolff wrote:
| Not being able to use emperical evidence to prove a
| normative claim is a very common (albeit not universal)
| belief. Probably because nobody has really convincingly
| done so in thoussands of years.
|
| > To call an argument "valid" is to make a normative
| claim; it is to claim that a rational agent ought to
| accept it.
|
| Idk, it could just be a claim that the argument can be
| expressed in a logical system, combined with the
| normative axiom that rational agents should only trust
| arguments that can be validly expressed in such a formal
| system.
|
| Regardless this seems to be missing the forest for the
| trees. Nobody has put forth any arguments for either
| position that are emperical in nature. Is there really a
| practical difference between impossible and possible but
| nobody knows how?
| jlawson wrote:
| The practical/empirical argument would essentially be to
| extrapolate out what the world will become like if we
| spread X or Y normative belief/practice.
|
| You can argue that one will lead to a preferable world
| than the other.
|
| Of course, we may have different preferences, so we may
| not agree even if we agree on that extrapolation. But
| often basic human preferences like not wanting to be the
| victim of unprovoked public violence do align.
| skissane wrote:
| Consider this (meta-)moral principle: For some moral
| proposition P, if universal human obedience to P would
| lead to human extinction, then P is false.
|
| Example of application: Consider "It is always immoral to
| have children". Obviously, if humanity universally obeyed
| that principle, human extinction would inevitably and
| quickly follow. Therefore, that principle is false. From
| which obviously follows: "It is moral to have children
| (at least sometimes)".
|
| Now, I would propose we accept that meta-moral principle
| as an axiom. To me, and to many others, it seems self-
| evidently and intuitively true. Who seriously doubts or
| denies this axiom? Well, most of the people who doubt or
| deny it, do so not due to its specific content, but due
| to a philosophical objection to accepting any moral
| axioms at all. The number of people who are happy to
| accept moral axioms but would refuse to accept this
| particular one appears to be rather small. It seems as
| good a candidate to be an axiom as any other. So why not
| accept it as an axiom?
| skissane wrote:
| > Idk, it could just be a claim that the argument can be
| expressed in a logical system, combined with the
| normative axiom that rational agents should only trust
| arguments that can be validly expressed in such a formal
| system.
|
| The term "valid" has both formal and informal senses. I
| agree some of its formal senses are non-normative, but I
| think its informal uses have a strong normative element.
| The original comment to which I was responding wasn't
| very clear about in what sense it was intending the term,
| but when people aren't clear, it is not unfair to assume
| they mean a term informally rather than in some specific
| formal sense.
|
| > Regardless this seems to be missing the forest for the
| trees. Nobody has put forth any arguments for either
| position that are emperical in nature. Is there really a
| practical difference between impossible and possible but
| nobody knows how?
|
| What is the proper role of empiricism in human knowledge,
| including moral knowledge? You seem to be making some
| assumptions here which you are not making explicit.
|
| If one accepts moral sense theory - that moral intuitions
| are a form of empirical knowledge - then we can have
| direct empirical knowledge of the truth or falsehood of
| moral propositions.
|
| If one accepts pragmatism - that beliefs can be justified
| by the pragmatic benefits of believing them, and that
| pragmatically justified beliefs can constitute genuine
| cases of knowledge - then empirical evidence can be used
| to establish the pragmatic benefits of a moral belief,
| and hence (indirectly) to establish its truth.
|
| One may believe that some axioms are self-evidently true,
| and that one's knowledge of the truth of those axioms is
| innate rather than empirical - in which case, if one
| accepts that for non-moral axioms, how about accepting it
| for moral axioms as well?
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >The doctor is saying "Our principle is that we don't use
| the patient's past violence or convictions to determine
| whether they should get a heart or not, so the stabbing
| doesn't disqualify David."
|
| >Neither party can offer a valid argument as to why their
| principle is true, because both of their principles are
| normative.
|
| I'm pretty sure someone mentioned that the Dr's pov is that
| the doctors don't punish crime. Someone else does that. If
| they have a crime worthy of death, someone else determines
| that and administers that punishment. The Dr's stay out of
| that conversation.
| vidarh wrote:
| Exactly. If the law was changed to allow judges to impose
| "denial of transplants" as a punishment, then one might
| consider that a good or bad thing, but in that case it
| would be the courts not the doctors who makes the
| determination, and the legislative who'd be ultimately
| responsible for the rule existing.
|
| As long as there is no such law, it's not for doctors to
| impose such restrictions.
| foo92691 wrote:
| "The New York Post (NY Post) is a conservative[8] daily
| tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The Post also
| operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com,
| and the entertainment site Decider.com."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post
| ekianjo wrote:
| repiret wrote:
| Well there is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_
| of_controversies_involv...
| SEJeff wrote:
| Most posters who use the phrases "newsflash" or "wake up"
| are not posting in good faith.
| benatkin wrote:
| I try to avoid NY Post, but sometimes forget. Still, it's a
| true story afaik.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| What was the purpose of posting this?
| [deleted]
| jessriedel wrote:
| The NY Times and Washington Post also had silly articles
| that presented this as a serious debate.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't remember WaPo's article, but the NYT article that
| I read didn't mention any ethical issues _or_ the
| recipient 's past[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/health/heart-
| transplant-p...
| jessriedel wrote:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/Jess_Riedel/status/14817962098
| 156...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/13/pig-
| heart...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/health/pig-heart-
| transpla...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Thanks for linking that. I hadn't seen that article, and
| I'm disappointed to see them highlight his past in that
| manner.
| davidw wrote:
| The https://twitter.com/DougJBalloon tweets write
| themselves. "This felon was given a pig heart. Here's why
| that's a problem for ..."
| cguess wrote:
| It's the NY Post, they're a rag on the same level as The Sun
| in the UK.
| refurb wrote:
| But are they wrong?
| mlyle wrote:
| > This is so simple and newspapers trying to make it into a
| matter for debate is actually compromising that.
|
| Even if one were to consider moral character when allocating
| organs in general: the researchers needed someone who was
| sick and likely to die, _ineligible for human organ
| transplant_ (here, because of severity of condition), and not
| so sick that there was no chance of success or useful data.
|
| So, we're already picking someone who doesn't meet the normal
| rules.
|
| And, of course, considering moral character when allocating
| organs probably isn't a great idea.
| lisper wrote:
| Considering a person's criminal record is not the same as
| considering their moral character.
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| >Considering a person's criminal record is not the same
| as considering their moral character.
|
| Although some might argue that there was a certain
| correlation between the two.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/anthony-stokes-
| tee...
| enchiridion wrote:
| It probably happens more than you think. Organs are doled
| out based on a rating system as evaluated by a small review
| board
|
| In the case of ties, the question of who "deserves" the
| organ is relevant to the board members. Uncomfortable but
| true.
|
| Also doesn't really apply here as this guy had a last ditch
| experimental operation. The family in the article just
| wanted revenge.
| bertil wrote:
| The organ board base their decision on likelihood that
| the receiver will benefit from the transplant (for a long
| time), so some habits that are medically relevant are
| taken into account: smoking, drinking, taking drugs, and
| when AIDS was a concern, having sex with people who might
| transmit it. All those also come a moral judgement so
| many people assumed that the board was making a moral
| judgement. They are not: having other conditions
| complicating the process is relevant; being old too.
| Being a crimimal is morally relevant but doesn't come
| into the judgement of the board.
|
| For lack of a better word, they are maximising the
| duration of the organ.
| enchiridion wrote:
| Yes, most of the time that's true, and just about
| everything you mentioned can be boiled down to a single
| number.
|
| Genuine ties do happen though, and at the end of the day
| the board is human.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Yeah, the Post complaint (echoed elsewhere) is basically a
| call for having a social credit score that can say "you're
| not a good person, so we're not going to let the doctors
| save you."
| renewiltord wrote:
| We already have that laundered through something else.
| Like if you're a drinker you won't get a liver.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| That is not a universal statement[0]. They may get lower
| priority in many cases, but MELD[1] or a similar model is
| used to determine who gets priority for liver transplant.
|
| [0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/destigm
| atizing...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_for_End-
| Stage_Liver_Dise...
| mlyle wrote:
| That's not a moral judgment: that's a judgment about
| whether you're likely to not wreck the new organ and have
| a good outcome.
| _delirium wrote:
| That's a common rationalization for the moral judgment,
| but without evidence. "Recent studies have shown similar
| survival rates among individuals who undergo LT [liver
| transplant] for ALD [alcoholic liver disease] and those
| who undergo LT for other chronic causes of end-stage
| liver disease." [1]
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30018475/
| [deleted]
| mlyle wrote:
| As your link says, there's an association between
| sobriety and liver transplant outcome.
|
| As your link also says, in most areas, you can receive a
| liver for ALD; there's just a 6 month sobriety rule.
|
| So we know:
|
| - 6 months of sobriety increase odds of ongoing
| subsequent sobriety
|
| - Sobriety improves LT transplant outcomes.
|
| Many believe, without strong numerical evidence either
| way:
|
| - 6 months of sobriety before procedure improves outcome
| of LT transplantation.
|
| Fewer believe:
|
| - A 6 month sobriety requirement is an unnecessary
| impediment to transplantation.
|
| Your paper says:
|
| "An interval of sobriety prior to LT is very desirable
| from a medical point of view. Abstinence may markedly
| improve liver function"
|
| i.e. in many cases, if people could stop drinking, they
| might not even need the liver!
| rob74 wrote:
| ...and the next step would be "we're not going to treat
| you for Covid because you're not vaccinated".
| achow wrote:
| This is not same.
|
| The non vaccinated are actively choosing to be a danger
| to people around them.
|
| It is like actively carrying concealed unlicensed gun
| which can silently and anynomously fire at people.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _This is not same._
|
| > _The non vaccinated are actively choosing to be a
| danger to people around them._
|
| > _It is like actively carrying concealed unlicensed gun
| which can silently and anynomously fire at people._
|
| What about giving a life extension to someone who stabs
| other people?
|
| The recipient of the heart transplant, David Bennett,
| actively chose to be a danger to people around him.
| achow wrote:
| Yes. Why not stick to that topic. Why to conflate by
| bringing in vaccine one?
| jlawson wrote:
| I think you're confused on what the word 'actively'
| means.
| achow wrote:
| 'Actively' seems to be accurate for the scenario when one
| is choosing to make body conducive to incubate virus, or
| already incubating them (albeit unknowingly if
| asymptomatic).
|
| [Edit] And if you meant active in context of 'Active
| shooter', then still use of the word active is not wrong.
| Virus laden body is like carrying a concealed gun which
| is on 'auto pilot', it is actively spraying bullets; it
| IS active all the while.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| I can't think of a single person I know that hasn't
| ducked down to the shops to pick something up when they
| have the flu. By your definition, they are actively
| attempting to cause harm to others - which is an
| interesting take.
| op00to wrote:
| I haven't "ducked down to the shops" when I'm ill. It's
| not that hard to keep necessities around.
| sersi wrote:
| Even before covid, I would always wear a mask if I had a
| flu and would try as much as possible not to go to shops
| or pick up anything. A lot of people I know do the same.
| rob74 wrote:
| I'm vaccinated myself and basically I have the same
| opinion as you. But David Bennett also actively chose to
| stab someone seven times in 1988 - "only" leaving him
| paralyzed, but probably with the intent to kill him? Ok,
| he probably served time for that and it was a long time
| ago, so judicially you can consider him rehabilitated. My
| argument was that once you refuse to treat (former)
| criminals, that's a slippery slope. And apparently I was
| right, since some here seem to consider people who choose
| not to get vaccinated worse that violent criminals...
| op00to wrote:
| Worse? No. The unvaccinated are far more likely to get
| sick or die as a part of any medical procedure right now
| just because of the base risk of COVID in hospitals. If
| you can't take the first step to protect yourself and
| others, there's not much health care providers can do to
| change your mind.
| [deleted]
| onion2k wrote:
| That's different because there's no moral judgement in
| that position. If you refuse treatment for a condition,
| even a preventative one, then there's no moral imperative
| to offer a different treatment later. Doctors did their
| best to save you, but you didn't do your part. That's on
| you.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. Everyone deserves the same
| level of care.
| [deleted]
| jagger27 wrote:
| Everyone deserves care. It's unpleasant to think about
| giving emergency care to people who actively refuse
| preventative treatments at the cost of canceled
| appointments and surgeries for non-COVID patients.
| Triaging really sucks.
| onion2k wrote:
| They're getting it. Everyone is offered the vaccine. If
| people choose not to accept that care then what happens
| afterwards has to be assessed and prioritized on a case
| by case basis. If there's an ICU bed and two patients,
| one who's a Covid patient who refused to protect
| themselves and the other someone who has something not
| preventable, the second one should get priority.
|
| Ideally there would be two beds, and everyone would get
| the care they need, but reality means choices have to be
| made. Refusing a vaccine should send you to the back of
| the queue.
| jlawson wrote:
| Absolutely not, that's not how it works.
|
| You won't be denied tramua treatment for a gunshot
| because your doc told you to stop playing with guns.
|
| You won't be refused heart medicine because you didn't
| stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years
| earlier.
|
| You won't be denied ER treatment because you were drunk
| when you crashed your car.
|
| There is no rule where we have to treat all patients
| equally (including mass murderers) except those who
| didn't accept n earlier-offered treatment or who did
| something that caused their own medical condition (i.e
| which probably includes most medical conditions).
|
| Medical care is not an exploding offer.
|
| Honestly - shame on you for trying to sneak in an absurd
| exception just so you can abuse the medical system to
| hurt people you don't like. That's not what hospitals are
| for.
| ako wrote:
| Your examples are not the same, you're presenting cause
| and treatment. The parent comment discussed one treatment
| over another: refusing preventive treatment over curative
| treament.
|
| Problem is that there is not enough capacity for curative
| treatment only. In this case it would make sense to
| allocate some hospital capacity for people without
| vaccination, and more capacity for people that have been
| vaccinated (maybe in the same ratios as population
| vaccination).
|
| And also allocate some hospital capacity for people with
| other diseases so they're not impacted by the fact that
| some people refuse vaccination.
| mlyle wrote:
| I think if we really ran out of health care capacity, it
| might make sense to prioritize people who took
| preventative measures over those who didn't.
|
| Especially with COVID: if you're at the point of triage
| and rationing resources, you need to consider likely
| outcomes, and people with the vaccine presenting at
| hospital are more likely to survive than those presenting
| without.
|
| It seems like we're not going to bump into those limits,
| though, so it's moot.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| > people with the vaccine presenting at hospital are more
| likely to survive than those presenting without
|
| In my opinion, that logic is flawed.
|
| The currently available COVID-19 vaccines vastly reduce
| the likelihood of developing severe symptoms from a SARS-
| CoV-2 infection. They also somewhat reduce the risk of
| getting infected in the first place.
|
| So, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 makes you far
| less likely to need to be hospitalized, should you
| contract the virus, which apart from of course being
| beneficial to yourself also helps with keeping the
| healthcare system from being overwhelmed.
|
| However, if you've already been hospitalized, it is
| because you've developed severe symptoms, which in turn
| means that, in that situation, for you, the vaccine has
| failed.
|
| At that point, all other factors being equal, your likely
| outcome is no different from that of a person who hasn't
| been vaccinated. Therefore, using vaccination as a
| criterion for triage (which - like you said - is all
| about rationing resources, not passing judgement) doesn't
| make sense.
|
| Now, it could very well be possible that being vaccinated
| improves your outcome even once you've already developed
| symptoms sufficiently severe to require hospitalization.
| However, I'm not sure there's conclusive evidence
| suggesting that is indeed the case.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Now, it could very well be possible that being
| vaccinated improves your outcome even once you've already
| developed symptoms sufficiently severe to require
| hospitalization. However, I'm not sure there's conclusive
| evidence suggesting that is indeed the case.
|
| Current data seems to show that fully vaccinated people
| who require hospitalization have hospital stays that are
| 33% shorter and are also about 33% less likely to die (
| _despite_ having more comorbidities on average than
| unvaccinated hospitalizations).
|
| So, if you have one bed left, and can put either an
| unvaccinated or vaccinated person in it-- all else being
| equal-- the vaccinated person is less likely to die with
| hospital care, and is more likely to free up the bed for
| someone else soon.
|
| (We don't know, though, if you deny hospital care to both
| what the death rate for each would be-- here's where you
| have to guess. If you assume both die without hospital
| care, then you should give the bed to the vaccinated
| patient).
| onion2k wrote:
| _It seems like we 're not going to bump into those
| limits, though, so it's moot._
|
| Only because people who got the vaccine are significantly
| less likely to require hospitalization though. At the
| start of the pandemic there was a very real possibility
| that we'd actually run out of ICU beds and ventilators.
| Much of the 'flatten the curve' effort was to protect
| healthcare services.
| onion2k wrote:
| _You won 't be refused heart medicine because you didn't
| stop eating bacon when your doctor told you to 5 years
| earlier._
|
| Yes, you would. Doctors refuse to give people treatment
| until they've lowered their weight, reduce their
| cholesterol, given up smoking or drinking, or increased
| their level of exercise _all the time._
|
| There is no point giving someone life-saving medical
| treatment if it isn't going to work because of some other
| factor. That's a waste of time and money. In _every_ case
| the patient has to show that they 're willing to do their
| part. Medicine is not just popping a few pills or turning
| up for surgery. There's effort required in order to get
| better.
|
| In the case of Covid, having the vaccine is part of that
| effort. Someone who hasn't tried to improve their long-
| term health by, for example, giving up smoking, and
| someone who hasn't tried to improve their long-term
| health by having the Covid vaccine are basically the same
| - they're both putting their health at risk
| unnecessarily. Doctors should consider that when they're
| prioritizing treatment.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| If a collapsed lung from a gunshot wound was contagious
| you sure would.
|
| If having your head split open in a DWI accident was
| contagious you would.
|
| Like 99% of the arguments against vaccination this isn't
| nearly as pithy as you think.
|
| After seeing what going through the initial wave of COVID
| in a medical provider in the ER did to my mother I could
| not care less about how many loopholes in efficacy people
| want to tout.
|
| Vaccines help reduce severity in some capacity. If you
| can be vaccinated (and not everyone can), and you chose
| not to because you know better, ask your YouTube doctor
| of choice to patch you up.
|
| Honestly - shame on you for treating self-preservation as
| some sort of moral judgement against people someone
| doesn't like. People don't like to risk their lives for
| people who won't help themselves.
| vasco wrote:
| You seem to have very strong views on this and I don't
| but as a natural follow up from your arguments, how do
| you propose we deal with the obesity crisis under the
| lens of people who don't self preservate and have all
| sorts of cardiovascular issues and bring healthcare costs
| to unbearable highs for everyone else?
|
| To be clear my position is that you should treat
| everyone, fatties, smokers, antivax, whatever, merely
| because I don't know when I'm going to find myself in one
| of the "wrong" groups and I'd like to get treatment then,
| so I think they should get it too.
| kaybe wrote:
| The data I saw suggested these people are actually
| significantly cheaper in total for society since they die
| so much earlier. YMMV depending on the details of your
| social system of course.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| This is not that complicated:
|
| Is a heart attack going to infect your provider?
|
| Is neck cancer going to infect your provider?
|
| We have a vaccine that significantly reduces the odds of
| putting our healthcare providers at risk and becoming
| part of the group of people crippling our ability to
| provide emergency medical care... if you don't take it
| not because you're ineligible, but because you've decided
| you know better, you should not be a priority.
|
| And really this is _already_ how it works. When ICUs get
| overwhelmed, people with COVID who code might not get
| resuscitated.
|
| The massively increased risk to the provider combined
| with the chances of recovery mean you will just die:
|
| https://www.cdha.nshealth.ca/system/files/sites/documents
| /co...
|
| -
|
| And I guess saying I have strong feelings supposed to be
| some backhanded ad hominem? I mean clearly you have
| strong feelings as well, writing tirades about the
| "fatties", the difference between us is what I write is
| based on reality
| vasco wrote:
| I understand your point about infectiousness I think it's
| good and I agree.
|
| My comment was as a follow up to your statement:
| "Vaccines help reduce severity in some capacity", there's
| a lot of behaviors that reduce severity in some capacity,
| and doing those would translate in lots of time savings
| and less pressure on the healthcare system in the same
| way as the vaccines do, the vaccines just have the extra
| "bonus" of being able to infect healthcare workers, so
| their negative effects compound. But if your argument is
| about first principles, any sort of self preservation has
| the same problem. So I was just commenting on that.
|
| You're right the bit about feeling strongly was probably
| a subconscious dig, sorry about that, but I was amused at
| the "shame on you" and had a moment of weakness, my bad.
|
| Also I didn't intend much with the fatties, I find it
| eandearing and have been a fatty myself at times in my
| life and have many I like, if that offended I'm sorry and
| I wish I hadn't used the term, but that's life and these
| are just internet comments.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| > People don't like to risk their lives for people who
| won't help themselves.
|
| That's an entirely reasonable position that I can
| understand - my advice to those people would be to avoid
| careers in which they are required to risk their lives
| for people who won't help themselves.
|
| There's a good reason I'm not a police officer, doctor,
| fireman, etc. The risk/reward payoff in those careers is
| far, far too low.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| What on earth are you blathering about?
|
| Comparing armed police sent in to deal with possibly
| armed suspects... firefighters who get sent into
| infernos... with doctors.
|
| The risks doctors normally face from one patient to
| another are identical, so it was nonsensical to say they
| were risking their life _for a specific patient_.
| Especially since we 've known how to protect from
| _normal_ bloodborne and airborne pathogens for a long
| time. The difference is COVID had no vaccine and
| treatment was limited at the time, it was repeatedly a
| death sentence.
|
| That's why COVID already forced a rethinking of how far
| we expect providers to go to save someone: https://www.ah
| ajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.120.006...
|
| There's a good reason you're not a doctor, let's leave it
| at that.
| op00to wrote:
| I'm all for providing telemedicine to those who choose
| not to be vaccinated against COVID (compared to those who
| medically can it be vaccinated). But letting them into
| health care facilities? Nah, get your shots and come
| back.
| corobo wrote:
| There was an episode of Star Trek Voyager that had this
| system in place, ep 7x5 Critical Care
|
| Naturally it was corrupt
| yboris wrote:
| Side-comment that doesn't apply in this case, but worth
| mentioning: "regardless of who they are" seems like a shitty
| blanket principle to have. For example, hospitals are
| overstuffed with COVID patients means regular patients die as
| a result. In many cases, "The overwhelming majority of the
| patients had COVID-19, and 98% of those needing acute
| critical care were unvaccinated." This means people who
| choose to not take the vaccine are causing others to die. So
| the unvaccinated should be thrown out when a patient in need
| comes and no beds are available.
|
| https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/health-care-
| pri...
| bostonsre wrote:
| It's a slippery slope.. I think the uneducated are less
| likely to be vaccinated and it doesn't seem right to refuse
| service to someone because they believed something that was
| incorrect. Say there were people with mental handicaps that
| fell in this camp, it would be even worse.
|
| And where do you draw the line for who gets help for stuff
| unrelated to covid? Having a do no harm type moral code
| seems like the best way to navigate and avoid the minefield
| of deciding who deserves care in what circumstances.
| account42 wrote:
| Even simpler: By refusing treatment based on choices
| stemming from mistrust of the system you are validating
| that mistrust.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Counterpoint: it's not the uneducated that don't
| vaccinate, it's the cynical - and the "educated" are
| often ignorant of all the ways it's reasonable to be
| cynical because they haven't been screwed over as much.
|
| At the end of the day, understanding the benefit of a
| vaccine requires trusting information, and I think that
| information, and trust, has been compromised. You could
| equally hate on anyone deciding that smoking was bad for
| you, not long ago, because of how thoroughly compromised
| the "science" around it was.
| yboris wrote:
| Consider a hypothetical scenario: there is a fire in the
| woods and the government says "do not go into the woods".
| People _choose_ to go to the woods and return as burnt
| victims. Hospitals _should_ help these individuals, but
| if they fill up 100% of the hospital beds and we need to
| turn people who got hurt due to accidents who then die,
| the fault is on those who _chose_ to go into the
| dangerous woods.
|
| It _may_ be the case that implementing a policy of
| vacating beds of burn victims is too challenging, but
| that doesn 't undermine the "should" in the "we should
| vacate beds of voluntarily hurt when accidentally hurt
| need the beds".
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No, it really shouldn't. I'll be the first to say that
| unvaccinated people are morally bad, and their actions are
| harmful to wider society.
|
| But, and this is a really important but, the way to punish
| that behavior isn't to deny them care in the hospital. For
| a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that not
| every unvaccinated person is unvaccinated by choice. But
| more generally because applying any sort of moral standard
| to who lives and who dies in an emergency gets incredibly
| murky incredibly quickly.
|
| If you want to punish people for failing to get vaccinated,
| I'm all for it. But do so outside of a hospital.
| decremental wrote:
| Why are so many vocal advocates for the covid vaccine such
| demons? Is the rhetoric surrounding the covid vaccine so
| toxic that it turns otherwise normal people into people who
| are so hate filled, or are such hate filled people simply
| predisposed to being influenced by such rhetoric?
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Why are people like you so hyperbolic? How is anything
| that the OP said demonic? The unvaccinated are literally
| causing people to die besides themselves. There is
| nothing hate-filled about that.
| app_gorilla wrote:
| what are you talking about? Are you under the impression
| the vaccines prevent transmission of COVID?
|
| at best, the vaccines reduce your personal chance of
| hospitalization and death.
|
| for those at risk from COVID, take the vaccine. But
| pretending you're assisting your community by doing so is
| ridiculous and unfounded in data. "Fully vaccinated"
| people appear MORE likely to catch and spread Omicron 90
| days post-vaccination.
|
| Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.2
| 0.21267966v...
| dijonman2 wrote:
| The unvaccinated are harmless, full stop.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > The unvaccinated are literally causing people to die
| besides themselves. There is nothing hate-filled about
| that.
|
| As a soon to be triple vaccinated healthy adult I wish we
| could soon admit that we do this for our own good and to
| not be away from work.
|
| By now it is very clear that about the only thing the
| current vaccine does against Omicron is lessen the
| consequences for the individuals who take the vaccine.
|
| I still recommend it but it won't save anyones life
| except those who take the vaccine.
| yboris wrote:
| Lessening the consequence of a COVID infection results in
| lesser chance of having to need a hospital bed. Whenever
| you use a hospital bed during a time of 100% occupancy,
| you cause one person who needs a bed to not get it, which
| _can_ and _does_ (on average) result in more harm and
| death.
| corobo wrote:
| It's your standard us vs them scenario. Humans love us vs
| them scenarios, we're a tribal bunch
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| The vaccine narrative is collapsing, and people are
| desperate for answers and to find someone responsible.
| They were promised high immunity from infection and close
| to 100% immunity from hospitalization/death. Real-world
| stats paint a completely different picture and people are
| desperate.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > hospitals are overstuffed with COVID patients means
| regular patients die as a result
|
| as a result of what? Failure to isolate COVID patients?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, the Zeitgeist of the social networks is "destroy the
| sinner mercilessly and crush him into dust" plus "whoever
| does not take part in that crushing or even advocates for
| mercy is suspicious himself". And too many journalists are on
| their social network accounts every waking hour, so it seeps
| through.
|
| I suspect that quite a lot of people would support denial of
| medical care to sinners. For example, the sentiment of
| "triage against the unvaxxed" seems to be pretty strong.
|
| (For the record, I am fully vaxed but do not support
| mistreatment of people who believe in conspiracy theories.)
| bertil wrote:
| What you see on social networks is a reflection of who you
| choose to follow and engage with. I use social networks to
| engage with people who actually make those decisions and
| they do not encourage any of that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, we are talking about journalists ("blue dots"), and
| their choices are their matter ...
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/tw
| itt...
| bertil wrote:
| Denying medical care is made either by individual health
| care professsionals or, in cases that require more
| consideration, health services ethics commity. I'd be
| surprised is anyone stating what you said would keep
| their medical license, let alone would be allowed to sit
| in a commitee.
| kazinator wrote:
| Dude looks more like 77 than 57. Life-long stress, I'm
| guessing.
| [deleted]
| ahevia wrote:
| Read the article. Sadden he took such drastic actions & that it
| led to someone's suffering for so many years until their
| eventual death, but he served his time in jail. Isn't that how
| we repay criminal debts in society? Not a very good argument to
| deny anyone life saving care after they served their
| sentencing(or because for their past actions for that matter).
| If the family believed the sentencing wasn't accurate that's a
| different matter
|
| Glad Doctors don't discriminate based on past actions of an
| individual. Would be a very dystopian society if we did.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I understand the family though. The unfairness is heavy.
| zwirbl wrote:
| The unfairness of a terminally ill person that's not
| eligible for a regular heart transplant receiving an
| experimental treatment that might just as well kill him,
| but in the long run might save many more? Or is it the
| unfairness of never being able to escape ones past?
| agumonkey wrote:
| The social implication can be as incredible as we all
| imagine, it's still unbearable for the family involved.
| mannykannot wrote:
| > If the family believed the sentencing wasn't accurate
| that's a different matter.
|
| It probably depends on what you mean by 'accurate'. They
| almost certainly do not believe this person has repayed a
| debt to the victim, the victim's family or society in
| general. Phrasing the issue as one of repaying a debt is
| problematical when it is beyond the means of the perpetrator
| to make amends.
|
| Note that this is not an argument for the doctors doing
| anything different. All else aside, it is in the best
| interests of society as a whole that they should select the
| most medically-suitable candidate available for this
| research.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Considering the situation, a very important medical
| experiment but over a socially sensitive patient, would it
| help to keep the guy anonymous ?
| ehnto wrote:
| There isn't even a consensus on what prison is actually
| for, so this discussion is doomed to be ambiguous and
| fruitless. Is it punitive, is it rehabilitation, is it
| about separating danger from the rest of society, or is it
| some kind of morale debt collection?
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't understand what people are arguing, he didn't even
| get a real heart that could've potentially gone to "a more
| deserving person". He literally got something that no one
| else would've gotten. The only reason they agreed to do this
| experiment on him is because he was about to die and he
| agreed to be part of an extremely risky surgery that he very
| likely would've never wake up from.
|
| I could see him being all over the press being annoying for
| the victim's family, but I don't see this as him being
| rewarded with anything. What he got is one of the worst
| option, though the fact that he's survived this far makes it
| better in hindsight. Then again 2 weeks means nothing, let's
| see if it actually lasts.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > was charged with intent to murder and openly carrying a
| concealed weapon, among other charges.
|
| I know what a concealed weapon is, but what is 'openly carrying
| a concealed weapon'?
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I'm carrying a concealed weapon right now. (It's a S&W .380
| M&P.) I have a card in my wallet that makes this completely
| legal in the state where I live, and in 35 other states. I'm
| always amazed at the culture clash between the anti-gun lobby
| (including the press), and people who choose to exercise an
| important constitutional right.
|
| A gun is just a tool. It can be used for both good and bad
| purposes.
|
| Also, the NY Post article says; "To some families, it's an
| outrage that a person convicted of a violent crime would be
| awarded an organ others so desperately need. But doctors
| often disagree and there are no laws prohibiting someone with
| a criminal history from receiving a transplant."
|
| Elsewhere in the same article, it says; "A jury found him
| guilty of battery and carrying a concealed weapon but
| acquitted him of of intent to murder. Washington County
| Circuit Judge Daniel Moylan called the stabbing a case of
| "extreme violence" and sentenced him to 10 years behind
| bars."
|
| The facts of the crime are not given, but apparently a jury
| did not believe he intended to kill, and since the victim did
| not die right away, there was no killing to prosecute.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| Given your expertise, maybe you know, what is 'openly
| carrying a concealed weapon'?
|
| In particular, 'openly'
| anonymousiam wrote:
| There is "open carry" and "concealed carry", but I've
| never heard the usage you are asking about. I suppose
| that if one had a knife sheathed and attached to their
| belt, but was wearing a jacket that concealed the knife,
| that might qualify.
|
| I know of people who were legally openly carrying a
| firearm and got convicted of carrying a concealed weapon
| because of a jacket. The laws vary by state, so such a
| thing is possible in some states.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That's great, but none of it answers the question.
| rory wrote:
| The knife had a fake mustache and googly eyes glued on as he
| waved it around, so people didn't realize it was a weapon.
| silisili wrote:
| Believe it or not, in some jurisdictions you can have a ccdw
| license and are fine to carry concealed, but it is illegal to
| carry said weapon openly.
|
| I don't like the wording of that charge(if it even really
| exists), but that's all I can come up with.
| teewuane wrote:
| Not to invalidate that person and family's feelings, but it was
| from 1988, not recently.
| nappy wrote:
| This comment is a great example of why social media doesn't
| work. Factual, cited, but totally irrelevant to anything around
| the technology. It's the top comment because it brings up the
| controversial elements that spur more comments, and it's in a
| positive feedback cycle from there.
| ridaj wrote:
| I see many answers arguing that doctors treat everyone the same
| regardless of their criminal past. That's ethically right, and
| the victim's family doesn't have to like it either. PETA
| doesn't have to like it either. My grandmother doesn't have to
| like it either. Maybe the victim's family would've been happy
| that he got the transplant if that had caused him to die; maybe
| PETA would be happy if pigs got transplants from humans.
| Thankfully it doesn't really matter what the victim's family or
| PETA thinks of it.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Reading all the responses to this on social media is both sad
| and mildly entertaining. The level of hypocrisy combined with
| fever and sensitivity everyone has been worked up into over the
| past few years, when anything even slightly complicated or
| nuanced comes up everyone is jumping almost panicked to figure
| out the "right" position is.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Well they are literally named "People for the Ethical Treatment
| of Animals." It shouldn't be surprising that they are not in
| favor of killing animals for replacement body parts.
|
| I'm not either, but at least this was a case where the
| personally arguably "needed" it. Usually we treat animals like
| garbage just for fun.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > PETA doesn't like [...] anyone
|
| FTFY. PETA is a shit organization.
| buryat wrote:
| a pig deserves a pig's heart
| benatkin wrote:
| A literal pig.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I was in jail with someone who had been given a life sentence.
| He needed a kidney transplant. He said there had been a lot of
| talk about giving a kidney to someone who was going to die in
| prison. He got the kidney transplant while he was locked up,
| and then he was later exonerated of the crime in an appeal.
|
| I'm glad that he wasn't refused the kidney transplant simply
| because he was incarcerated, although I'm sure it happens.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| This is why we'll never have a rehabilitative justice system.
| We don't deserve it.
|
| He was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to 10 years behind bars,
| probably served less so it's likely that he's been a free man
| for 25+ years.
|
| It's been over 30 years since the incident. Give the man a
| break.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Some want vengeance in place of justice.
| Loeffelmaenn wrote:
| I think it's more that justice means something different to
| different people. I think that vengeance can be justice.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Why do you think that?
|
| Lets say a man goes to prison for 25 years for murder,
| and upon release the victim's husband kills him. The
| victim's husband gets revenge, but is it just?
|
| Justice shouldn't be subjective, imo.
| Loeffelmaenn wrote:
| I of course think that example is not just. However I
| think there a certain crimes like mass murder are beyond
| being forgivable. It's where I think the only just thing
| is vengance.
|
| Also justice can't be objective. Put n people in a room
| and ask them what is just and you'll get n different
| answers.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| There's actually no suitable punishment for mass
| murderers/war criminals/terrorists at all. There's no
| righting the wrongs they have caused. There's no
| rehabilitation. There's no real punishment.
|
| When push comes to shove, how many of them even expect to
| get out alive? Is death penalty really just in such a
| situation?
|
| The US just puts them in ADX Florence where they are
| tortured mentally (complete isolation, no end in sight,
| basically no human interaction at all). Which is probably
| what they deserve, but it's still torture.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| Justice, by definition, necessitates objectivity.
|
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice/
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Ugh PETA, always have to butt in just to keep themselves
| relevant.
|
| For the first one, I can totally understand what the victim's
| family must be going through, but doctors aren't (and
| shouldn't) be in the business of making moral judgements on who
| should and shouldn't get to live. There is an established
| process in place for organ transplants (time on the wait list,
| viability of the transfer) and that's all that needs to be
| followed.
| giantg2 wrote:
| He's still serving his sentence, right? At least he's being
| useful as a guinea pig. Maybe it's selfish, but at least it's
| data that will help the next person.
|
| Frankly, I could care less what the family thinks. If they
| feel so strongly, then they should advocate for some
| legislative change. Most families would kill if given the
| option, and also the luxury of having someone else do it for
| them.
| foota wrote:
| Doesn't sound like it, it was 24 years ago according to the
| article, and they had a ten year sentence.
| benatkin wrote:
| Right, he injured someone and shortened that person's
| life, but the justice system didn't know about that last
| part until long after he was sentenced. So it's not
| surprising that he's been out for a long time.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I mean it doesn't affect the time they did.
| dagurp wrote:
| 34 years
| meowface wrote:
| [deleted because I didn't articulate this well]
| tclancy wrote:
| How would you ever remove human bias from such a system?
| This is a non-starter.
| ehnto wrote:
| Right, imagine someone convicted of possession of
| marijuana. There are still plenty of people who consider
| marijuana on par with hard drugs and serious crime. In
| their eyes, someone convicted of possession may as well
| be on par with murderers.
| meowface wrote:
| For the record, my original comment before I deleted it
| was exclusively referring to cases of deliberate violent
| crimes, with a caveat that it should probably be
| restricted to just homicide.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Punishing someone for a crime is the responsibility of the
| justice system. You are saying hospital administrators
| should basically be able to hand out death sentences at
| their discretion, which is a bizarre line of thought.
| corobo wrote:
| > to me it honestly seems pretty reasonable if hospitals
| were to lower the priority of people who've been convicted
| of serious, deliberate violent offenses (where "serious"
| can be rigorously defined based on charges/sentences),
| given the very limited supply and high demand. Perhaps even
| restrict it to cases where the victim died, like this one.
|
| Why would anyone want to add complexity to triage would be
| my knee jerk wonder, it's supposed to be a quick process
|
| Would the hospital need to wait for the legal system to get
| back to them before treatment can begin? How would you know
| if the patient has committed a crime without waiting?
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| > Ugh PETA, always have to butt in just to keep themselves
| relevant.
|
| This is literally what they are all about. It's like
| complaining that the IOC keeps whining about athlete doping
| just to try to stay relevant.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I originally downvoted you but then removed the downvote
| since what you write is correct and not trollish.
|
| That said I have though about it more than once, simulation
| in the head style and a world were PETA wins turns in to a
| uglier world in most cases.
|
| Note: this is specifically about PETA, some other animal
| rights/welfare organizations are somewhat reasonable.
| josefrichter wrote:
| Haven't you learned anything from M.A.S.H.?
| benatkin wrote:
| Would M.A.S.H. teach me to put the peta link first?
|
| Just kidding, I think I know what you mean.
|
| I think the main problem is not the life saving but the good
| publicity the guy gets. I'm not going to publicly agree or
| disagree with either article right now, though - I'm
| conflicted about each of them.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Excuse my"rough language" but I find PETA people stupid, aburd
| and straight up dangerous. Those bastards want to leave a human
| being to die because they care about an animal. Fuck you.
|
| Look. I am a Muslim. That means, by religious scriptures, we
| are programmed to avoid pork. why? Simply because "god told us
| to avoid pork". No other thing. Abstain from eating pork and
| people follow that.
|
| Now, when it comes to saving a life, those religious
| considerations do not stand because a life is at stake. Same
| for " consuming wine is prohibited" but if alcohol is necessary
| as a medicine, its allowed because the intention is not to get
| drunk but to get treated. That is important.
|
| Now, when it comes to using a pig heart as a replacement, I am
| pretty sure no resonable person, from any religion would have
| problems with because the end goal is to save a human life.
|
| These PETA people are keeping themselves relevant by being the
| dissenting voice that nobody has to listen. Yeah, if PETA or
| their supporters are reading this, again, fuck you. Let us save
| lives and your organization can watch us do it.
| bigyellow wrote:
| Wow, this is one triggered ego! "I'm more important than
| animals because I said so!!!". Hilarious watching you throw
| this little tantrum.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yeah.. pretty much. i did not say "I'm more important than
| animals because I said so!!!". i said "humanity is more
| important than animals". there is a difference. if you
| can't see that then the joke is on you
| giantg2 wrote:
| "...and a tremendous waste of resources that could be used to
| fund research that might actually help humans."
|
| Hey PETA, source?
| cyral wrote:
| ..but, this does help humans? (Or at least one so far).
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| PETA hates anything that makes animals useful to humans. It
| could solve world peace and they'd be arguing that surely
| there's a better way.
| bigyellow wrote:
| Why do animals need to be useful to humans to justify their
| existence to you?
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| I don't think peta would consider it "world peace" yet.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Was it not clear I was talking about a hypothetical?
| zem wrote:
| if there's one thing peta knows inside and out it's being a
| tremendous waste of resources
| Hnaomyiph wrote:
| I'm surprised to see such irrelevant and sensationalized
| information being pushed to the top of the comment section of a
| hn post. Does a crime that happened 34 years ago, and a
| sentence served for said crime, hold any at all relevance to
| the medical breakthrough posted here? Does a questionably-
| ethical nonprofit's viewpoint matter on said medical
| breakthrough? No to either.
| goodguyamericun wrote:
| I just want to say huge respect for Dr Mohammad who despite his
| faith decided to do what is right. It might not be well known but
| most muslims are raised with strong beliefs, even in educated
| countries (eg 85% in Pakistan support sharia).
|
| God bless Dr mohammad
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Yes, how wonderful that a medical doctor would make an
| exception over his superstition. Truly a man of science!
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Is there a need to be condescending about his beliefs,
| especially when what we're hearing of them is based on
| conjecture?
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The recipient is a non-Muslim, so no Sharia-related problems in
| his case.
|
| AFAIK it is not forbidden for a Muslim to touch pigs, only to
| eat them. Pigs and dogs are impure, but you can perform
| ablution afterwards. Muslims normally own hunting and guarding
| dogs. That would actually be a common problem for Coalition
| soldiers in Iraq when they tried to enter a village by stealth
| - lots of barking.
|
| "This impureness nevertheless doesn't imply that one might not
| touch a pork, but that one might need to wash his hands and
| maybe even re-do the ablution to be able to pray after touching
| it."
|
| https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/48791/is-it-haram-...
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| I understand why pigs are "impure" (parasites in the meat),
| but why dogs?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| "Dogs are pets" is one of those cultural background
| assumptions that can be pretty jarring when you realize
| it's not a universally held belief. There are pretty large
| chunks of the planet where dogs are mostly unwanted pests
| at best.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Muslims use dogs as pets, so it's not argument here.
| lolinder wrote:
| In Judaism at least, and I'd assume the same translates to
| Islam, "impurity" is understood to mean "ritually impure".
| It doesn't necessarily mean there's a specific scientific
| reason to avoid the meat, just that God asked them not to
| partake.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, ritual impurity is forgotten in modern West and
| hard to describe to a modern non-religious person.
|
| It is not the same as "being unhygienic", though it
| overlaps to some degree. (Faeces etc.)
|
| An interesting example from Judaism is "Tzaraath", which
| means skin disease, but it could also afflict _houses_.
| Today we do not know for sure what it even meant. Mold
| infestation? Maybe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzaraath#Affliction_of_hous
| ing
| pvaldes wrote:
| This rule was written in an age when rabies was a big
| problem. It has a lot of sense to avoid scavenger dogs and
| pigs in those places in the past. Now we have developed a
| solution to this problem but, as is included as part of a
| religion is a fossil rule that can't be changed. We have
| still many of this rules around.
|
| Science welcomes change when we find a better way to do
| something. Is assumed that humans can be wrong and learn.
| Religion will fiercely oppose change because god can't be
| wrong by definition (and nobody has the authority to fix
| it). Ideology will oppose also changes that see as a
| menace, but can be more flexible.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Pigs are no more impure than dogs, fwiw. That belief is
| merely a result of having been raised in a culture that
| arbitrarily chooses to love dogs and cats and hate most
| other animals.
|
| Dogs can be infested with parasites just as easily as pigs.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| Well, but I don't think they eat dogs.
| causality0 wrote:
| I don't know how many Muslims you're friends with but I
| wouldn't assume without some indication that this was difficult
| for him. There is a huge variety of beliefs in a population of
| over a billion adherents. Most of the ones I know have no issue
| with, for example, picking up a pack of bacon from the store as
| long as they're not the one expected to eat it.
| werds wrote:
| Im sure it is morally justifiable to people of any religion,
| when performing the procedure is the only chance the patient
| has to continue living.
| pasabagi wrote:
| > sharia
|
| Can anybody offer some insight into what people mean by that? I
| know that in the 19th century, sharia was basically just a
| legal tradition, that drew on Islam (just as western legal
| traditions draw on Christianity, or eastern ones Confucianism).
| Is it more extreme these days?
| tptacek wrote:
| No. Sharia means different things to different people. Think
| of someone who calls themselves a "practicing Catholic", and
| then think of what that might mean to a non-Catholic hearing
| that. Do they eat meat on Fridays? Do they attend church
| every day? Do they protest health clinics? There are
| practicing Catholics who do all of these things and none of
| them.
|
| Unfortunately, the word has been seized on in western culture
| to refer to the legal beliefs of militant Islamism. But
| that's not at all what it means to most Muslims.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| Porcine heart valves are largely accepted by Islamic scholars
| in situations where there are no alternatives available.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Abortion is largely accepted by Catholic scholars if there
| is, otherwise, a high risk of death. That doesn't mean all
| Catholic medical practitioners would carry out such an
| operation. I don't think the respect is misplaced.
| bobthechef wrote:
| That is absolutely false and made clear in the Catechism
| (though abortion is, fundamentally, not a matter of faith,
| but of ethics, contrary to popular misconception). Abortion
| understood as the intentional killing of the unborn child,
| even in the case of high risk of death, is always gravely
| morally illicit and falls under murder. Even in the given
| circumstance, it would violate the principle of double
| effect.
|
| Now, what _is_ morally licit is not abortion, but also by
| virtue of the principle of double effect, a procedure
| intended to save the mother 's life that unintentionally
| and as a side effect results in the child's death. For
| example, it is morally licit to extract the affected tissue
| with the implanted embryo during an ectopic pregnancy. This
| extraction will result in the death of the child, but the
| death was neither intended nor was the death of the child
| the means by which the mother's life was saved nor is
| saving the life of the mother a lesser good than the life
| of the child (though in this case, both would very likely
| have perished if this condition had been allowed to
| continue). Note that the situation must be proportionally
| grave, meaning you could not licitly perform such a
| procedure if the risk to the mother was not proportional
| (like experiencing headaches because of the pregnancy). In
| those cases, proportional care is permissible.
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