Axtremus

Nov 18 2012, 09:20 AM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 09:10 AM

This is why we actually have a duty of care in medical ethics to provide essential things for patients who are unable to care for themselves: nutrients, hydration, oxygen, care of wounds and alleviation of pain. we do it because they can't.

We can pay for them when they can't, too.
Single-payer universal healthcare FTW!

John D'Oh

Nov 18 2012, 09:30 AM

The thought of being stuck in a body that can't communicate for 6 solid years and being conscious strikes me as absolutely horrific.

John D'Oh

Nov 18 2012, 09:30 AM

Well, if I'm ever in this situation, I hope somebody uses a nice soft pillow. I was reading about Israel Sharon, who a doctor claimed was effectively dead, but whose son claims is responsive after 6 years in a coma. To be honest, I hope for Sharon's sake that it's the doctor who is right. The thought of being stuck in a body that can't communicate for 6 solid years and being conscious strikes me as absolutely horrific.

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Are you actually looking for the point at which you can ethically treat a human being as a mere thing? It seems to me that is what you are doing -- which means you know what the stakes are ethically.

John D'Oh

Nov 18 2012, 09:56 AM

Allowing somebody who has not communicated for years after suffering a major stroke to die peacefully by switching off the machine keeping them alive is morally the same as starving a baby to death?

No, if it's all the same to you, I don't think I'm going to bother trying to explain why that is wrong. We all know I'll only end up asking for the pillow.

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

So my parallel is apt -- it just seems to be uncomfortable for you, which is presumably why you can't entertain it.

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Your biomachine is radically isolated as a self functioning system -- it is an independent "island" (insula, whence isolate) -- like an atomic unit (radical) that only interacts with others according to the laws of physics.

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there is no difference between two people and two bricks

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Bricks are inanimate, biomachine are animate. But all bricks are also radically isolated in the same sense that all biomachines are.

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Even with your addition of specific , it doesn't matter in the least. You are free to predict and act upon what to get your mother for her birthday that she might want -- you have no moral right to deprive someone of something by some statistical recourse to what you predict they might want. You can predict all you want -- you still can't get to a point of moral certainty.

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

My father's corneas are in Africa.

Moonbat

Nov 18 2012, 10:32 AM

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Your biomachine is radically isolated as a self functioning system -- it is an independent "island" (insula, whence isolate) -- like an atomic unit (radical) that only interacts with others according to the laws of physics.

Radically isolated as a 'self functioning system'? An 'independent' island?

... uhh... wuh...whut?

Do you mean that we obey the same laws of physics as other phenomena? Is that the meaning of these strange statements?

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there is no difference between two people and two bricks

whut?

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Bricks are inanimate, biomachine are animate. But all bricks are also radically isolated in the same sense that all biomachines are.

Radically isolated bricks? How many radically isolated bricks does it take to build a house and do said houses come with radically isolated draught ex

uders?

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Even with your addition of specific , it doesn't matter in the least. You are free to predict and act upon what to get your mother for her birthday that she might want -- you have no moral right to deprive someone of something by some statistical recourse to what you predict they might want. You can predict all you want -- you still can't get to a point of moral certainty.

Certainty is for the omniscient, the rest of us must make do with the most accurate statement we can given the limited information available to us. The aim is not to deprive anyone of anything - it is to do our best to act in accordance with the wishes of the person involved - what is hard to understand about that notion?

somebody else's sock

Nov 18 2012, 10:40 AM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

My father's corneas are in Africa.

Corneas can be harvested after cardiac death; other organs cannot.

How do you feel about heart, kidney and lung transplant? Would you refuse to be a recipient?

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 01:09 PM

somebody else's sock

Nov 18 2012, 10:40 AM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

My father's corneas are in Africa.

Corneas can be harvested after cardiac death; other organs cannot.

How do you feel about heart, kidney and lung transplant? Would you refuse to be a recipient?

If someone has an end of life directive, that is their business.

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OK, so you evidently don't understand the cartography of the ethical terrain that you think we should all occupy. All I can do is show you landmarks and show you how to read a map. The rest is up to you

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What is most peculiar is that you intuitively realize the bricks really are radically isolated, and require a mind to make a wall or a house. But you've a priori excluded that. On their own, they just sit there without relationship. No mortar (which is why in the parlance of William of Durand, charity is the mortar that bonds us together).

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There is no more essential possession than life itself.

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The point is, as I evidently have to reiterate since you didn't get it the first time, "you have NO way of knowing anything about what another specific biomachine 'wants' unless they explicitly communicate it to you. "

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So despite your claim that you can make some guess as to what they want, and that give you moral authority to kill them, you cannot know if they would rather be peacefully at rest in a hospital bed being taken care of by others

Moonbat

Nov 18 2012, 04:45 PM

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OK, so you evidently don't understand the cartography of the ethical terrain that you think we should all occupy. All I can do is show you landmarks and show you how to read a map. The rest is up to you

You're not pointing at a map Ivory, you're pointing to at an eight old's drawing of Batman. That isn't a mountain range, it's one of his ears.

Klaus

Nov 18 2012, 03:56 PM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 01:09 PM

somebody else's sock

Nov 18 2012, 10:40 AM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

My father's corneas are in Africa.

Corneas can be harvested after cardiac death; other organs cannot.

How do you feel about heart, kidney and lung transplant? Would you refuse to be a recipient?

If someone has an end of life directive, that is their business.

You avoid the question.

Would you accept such an organ for you, or a child of yours?

Also, according to your own definition, the donors were not dead, hence you should consider this a kind of assisted suicide and be totally against it!

Moonbat

Nov 18 2012, 04:45 PM

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OK, so you evidently don't understand the cartography of the ethical terrain that you think we should all occupy. All I can do is show you landmarks and show you how to read a map. The rest is up to you

You're not pointing at a map Ivory, you're pointing to at an eight old's drawing of Batman. That isn't a mountain range, it's one of his ears.

Leave it to me - I have a gps enabled phone and it's locked to 4 different satellites (it also has a direct wifi connection to a small budgerigar that sings sweetly in the night, and also a large owl and a fox... possibly some badgers)

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What is most peculiar is that you intuitively realize the bricks really are radically isolated, and require a mind to make a wall or a house. But you've a priori excluded that. On their own, they just sit there without relationship. No mortar (which is why in the parlance of William of Durand, charity is the mortar that bonds us together).

I've a priori excluded the radical isolation of bricks? OK.

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There is no more essential possession than life itself.

Profound. Mind if I have ago?

'Happiness is often a rebound from hard work.'

'You will have unexpected great good luck.'

'Enjoyed the meal? Buy one to go too.'

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The point is, as I evidently have to reiterate since you didn't get it the first time, "you have NO way of knowing anything about what another specific biomachine 'wants' unless they explicitly communicate it to you. "

Totally, I mean when I see an elderly person struggling with their suitcase on a long flight of stairs, I don't think "hey I think that person might want someone to offer them some help with that!" no no I don't think anything like that because I have absolutely no way of knowing what they'd want. Not as they haven't explicitly stated it and without that we can't know anything. You'd need some kind of miracle to work that **** out! After all it's equally likely that they'd want to someone to push them down stairs or start trying to eat their shoes! Absent explicit communication we just can't know anything. Normally I ask everyone I pass whether they'd like me to start beating them with the fish I carry around with me, I mean hey if I don't ask them I have absolutely no idea what they'd want. It's amazing but by a extraudinary statistical fluke I've always had "no" or "err get the fsck away from me freak child" but hey with each new person I meet it's another 50:50 shot right?

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So despite your claim that you can make some guess as to what they want, and that give you moral authority to kill them, you cannot know if they would rather be peacefully at rest in a hospital bed being taken care of by others

You don't have the moral authority to force feed someone in a nightmarish situation in order to keep them alive when they'd rather die.

John D'Oh

Nov 18 2012, 05:58 PM

Moonbat

Nov 18 2012, 04:45 PM

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OK, so you evidently don't understand the cartography of the ethical terrain that you think we should all occupy. All I can do is show you landmarks and show you how to read a map. The rest is up to you

You're not pointing at a map Ivory, you're pointing to at an eight old's drawing of Batman. That isn't a mountain range, it's one of his ears.

Oh, that was nasty.

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we have a lot of people who have awoken from long term comas -- perhaps you should ask them if they'd rather be dead if you're really interested in statistical predictions.

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 06:32 PM

It's amazing how really smart people completely lose it when their world view is challenged and they can't even maintain a reasoned discourse.

Amanda

Nov 18 2012, 07:22 PM

Ivorythumper

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we have a lot of people who have awoken from long term comas -- perhaps you should ask them if they'd rather be dead if you're really interested in statistical predictions.

What do you mean by "we have..."?

Seriously. Are you speaking of a particular facility or country or what?
I sure can't picture such patients in this country. Not in any great numbers. In our local hospital, I rather suspect, that depending of age, they would be allowed to die if any specially costly medicine or treatment were required to sustain them - unless, of course, they (their estate) had the resources to pay for all that.

And as determined by their medical POA, if they'd thought of that.

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 06:15 PM

Klaus

Nov 18 2012, 03:56 PM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 01:09 PM

somebody else's sock

Nov 18 2012, 10:40 AM

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 10:11 AM

sue

Nov 18 2012, 10:05 AM

So, I'm curious, IT, what's your stand on organ donation?

My father's corneas are in Africa.

Corneas can be harvested after cardiac death; other organs cannot.

How do you feel about heart, kidney and lung transplant? Would you refuse to be a recipient?

If someone has an end of life directive, that is their business.

You avoid the question.

Would you accept such an organ for you, or a child of yours?

Also, according to your own definition, the donors were not dead, hence you should consider this a kind of assisted suicide and be totally against it!

That is not avoiding the question -- it is properly answering it. It is none of my business if someone wants to off themselves and give me their kidney, anymore than if I get an inheritance from a relative who commits suicide.

BTW, you have this bizarre penchant for assuming and categorically stating what my moral obligations are in very specific cases, which completely ignore the complexities of relationships, hierarchy of goods, human freedom and charity. I wonder if you live your own existence with as much self judgment as you demand of others?

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I wonder if you live your own existence with as much self judgment as you demand of others?

ivorythumper

Nov 18 2012, 08:43 PM

Amanda

Nov 18 2012, 07:22 PM

Ivorythumper

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we have a lot of people who have awoken from long term comas -- perhaps you should ask them if they'd rather be dead if you're really interested in statistical predictions.

What do you mean by "we have..."?

Seriously. Are you speaking of a particular facility or country or what?
I sure can't picture such patients in this country. Not in any great numbers. In our local hospital, I rather suspect, that depending of age, they would be allowed to die if any specially costly medicine or treatment were required to sustain them - unless, of course, they (their estate) had the resources to pay for all that.

And as determined by their medical POA, if they'd thought of that.

We = humanity. You can google all about it. The news occasionally covers it. There is some evidence that sleeping pills can actually work to awake people from long term comas. I don't know why any of this should be surprising.