Warnock: Dementia Patients A Waste
Some Brits are shocked at Baroness Mary Warnock's latest quote regarding the significant burden placed on Alzheimer's caregivers and her call for euthanasia for the demented.
The St. Louis Examiner reported that she said, "Elderly people with dementia are 'wasting' the lives of those who have to care for them."
Not only are they wasting lives, says Warnock, but they are also wasting resources. Not exactly warm fuzzies from the Baroness. Yet, in a socialized health care system every dollar spent on one person is a dollar not spent on another. Thus, years spent in a demented state means that tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on a demented patient are not spent on essential preventive and life-saving services for children, young adults, and the middle-aged who have a chance of leading longer, healthy, fulfilling lives.
Thought about that way Warnock's argument doesn't seem so harsh. Is Baroness Warnock's position cold-hearted? No. It's practical.
Summer Johnson, PhD
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Can't she be both cold-hearted AND practical? The two certainly aren't mutually exclusive.
- by Chris MacDonald on Sep 24, 2008 at 4:56 PM | link
A lot of things are practical without being moral. China taking organs from executed prisoners to transplant into its citizens is "practical" but it is not moral and I say this as someone on the transplant list for a cadaver kidney. If we have come down to what is practical as the sole basis for decision making we are in sad way.
- by Alison Hymes on Sep 24, 2008 at 6:16 PM | link
I doubt that those who actually care for those patients feel that their lives are being wasted. It beats sitting in front of a TV all day and not getting a paycheck, at the very least. And many, hopefully most, of those caregivers do feel that they are doing something worthwhile. Caring for the helpless is a very human thing to do.
- by Laura(southernxyl) on Sep 26, 2008 at 6:19 PM | link
Furthermore, if this kind of practicality is the logical and inevitable outgrowth of socialized (think how ironic that word is) medicine, then that's one more reason to fight it at all costs.
- by Laura(southernxyl) on Sep 26, 2008 at 6:21 PM | link