26 Aug 2009 Unlike Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, I Would Save the Babies and Children First

Betsy McCaughey has an op-ed on Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.

I left the following comment on the Journal website:

I found it impossible to read Dr. Emanuel’s Lancet article (Jan 2009) without getting a chill. He asserts that we have a social consensus that the lives of 15- to 40-year-olds should be saved ahead of the lives of children 14 and younger. When was this consensus developed? He doesn’t say; he doesn’t point to focus groups or polling or wherever one goes to gauge public opinion (assuming the public is to be consulted) on such horrible things; he just says it and we are apparently to believe it (The Lancet apparently didn’t require him to provide support for his assertion). Yet, if this is so, why do societies not limited to our own parcel out flu vaccines to the most vulnerable first, with scant complaint? And why do so many (based on my admittedly small survey sample) seem to think saving children should be the priority, youngest first?

A century ago the notion “save the women and children first” was so accepted in western culture that one of the richest men in the world put his pregnant wife into a lifeboat on the Titanic and stepped back to be lost. We can accept that Betty Freidan has since killed the women but must the babies and children under 15 be lost as well?

As far as I am concerned, the further this man is away from government, the better. I don’t care if some conservatives say he’s a nice guy personally. I’m perfectly willing to stand back and drown, but no 40-year-old is getting on the proverbial lifeboat ahead of my elementary school-age kids.

Do any moms in America disagree?

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Labels: Government Health Care, Health Care, Media, Social Welfare