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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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No one wants to kill the baby. They withhold care and not even on cost base, but because there is no benefit.

If you are refusing to hand it over to someone who wants to give them care, how is that not killing them? If you're in an ambulance, is it ok if I block your way to the hospital?

If that care is almost certain to be ineffective, then it's not, regardless of the good intentions of the would be saviour. Suppose my baby was dying and a charlatan offered to exorcise it of the demon that was surely killing it. It would not be murder for me to ignore this claim, or the claims of anyone else who proffered some dubious miracle cure.

Again, I am yet to hear anyone make the claim that the care of the Vatican hospital is qualitatively different from that of the UK system, so if they're charlatans, so is the UK healthcare system.

I am also yet to hear anyone claim that the kid cannot be kept alive for a while longer, people are only claiming that it's ultimately futile. While it maybe true, it is also true that actively preventing people from delivering the child to a place that offers to keep the child alive for a while longer is equal to murder.

The UK healthcare system at least had the decency to desist when it became obvious that the treatment didn't work or, if the diagnosis was made later, couldn't work. A charlatan is someone who knows that their cures don't work, and very much keeps plying them after that becomes obvious.

While I certainly support the right of the parents to take their child to the Vatican hospital since it's not on the dime of the UK taxpayer (beyond presumably airfare and the logistics of getting them there), I still only have disdain for those who demand that a life worse than death be continued at any cost.

And I don’t think anybody claims that the parents or the UK have the obligation to continue treating the child indefinitely(certainly the majority opinion of theologians in the Catholic Church does not require medical treatment to continue when there is no chance of recovery- although it does require ordinary caretaking[feeding, diaper changing, etc, but not ventilation]). However the parents have the right to make medical decisions for their own children, especially when making the ‘wrong’ one doesn’t make the kid worse off or cost more money(because the Italian government is paying for it).

It's not the government's right to feel disdain that's in question, it's their right to get in the way that is.

What makes a charlatan a charlatan is claiming to have miracle cures, not being unable to produce them (which is true of all of them). That said, I don't know if the Vatican is making this claim, so I couldn't say if they are charlatans or not.

The Vatican hospital has one of the top icu’s in the world, so I don’t think the treatment plan being vetoed is ‘I dunno, will incense and holy water work?’

It seems like what’s actually happening is that UK government bureaucrats- probably someone in the NHS’s cost effectiveness department- doesn’t like being reminded of not owning other people’s children.

If there was actually a credible plan to treat this baby, it would be produced. But so far all I've heard is to keep the baby alive in the hope for a miraculous recovery.

Such a bureaucrat would have no power to issue an injunction. Injunctions like this are handed down by judges, not NICE, which doesn't have power to do anything of the sort or even intervene in individual cases.

Would it be murder to stop you from trying it at gunpoint, were you so inclined?

No. Obviously, it is not murder to prevent someone from performing an exorcism. The premise is faulty, that an offer to save someone's life instantly creates an obligation not to do anything to interfere, regardless of how incredible that claim is.

I disagree. I think prisons have a duty to allow for medical care and that armies that close humanitarian corridors are guilty of war crimes.

Bad analogy. Anyway look at the facts - the baby is with major brain damage, needs constant life support, it may not survive the trip, the logistics of the trip themselves are not trivial, and that care is terribly vague. All of the first were could be taken out of consideration if there was some serious data on the last. It is not blocking the way to the hospital, it is blocking the way to a quack.

Your analogy is the bad one, the Vatican hospital aren't quacks.

Everything you brought up is also irrelevant. Can I block your way to the hospital, if I'm sure you will die anyway? That's what your arguments boil down to.

In that case they are - otherwise they would have provided details what magic they would do that the UK doctors won't. No but I can block your way to the torture chambers - and invasive treatment without chance of improvement is exactly that.

IIRC the Vatican hospital(which are not random quacks but a very highly ranked institution in a first world country) wants to try an experimental procedure that the NHS won’t authorize because it’s very expensive and has a low chance of working. It’s fair for the NHS not to want to do it, but it doesn’t seem like they should be able to stop the parents from taking their child to a hospital that wants to do the procedure.

In the article itself is mentioned that the Vatican hospital is quite short on details about what this procedure is.

If the Vatican hospital is a torture chamber, and what they're doing is no different than what the UK hospital did at this point, than the UK hospital is a torture chamber, and all people involved in it must be punished.

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