Reply #166: No. You just need to pay more attention to what you are responding to. [View All]

[Frodo]

"Quality of life" in this example is not a "what quality of life WILL it have" it's an (inappropriate) assesment of the current value of his/her life. The elderly person in question is deemed unworthy of the cost/effort involved in bringing him back for a few months of pain.

I wasn't saying that it was quite what you were saying with the infant issue - I was extrapolating for southergirl where the error you are making has led some other countries.

You're not saying the 21wk child won't have a very good life so we can get rid of it - you're saying (not that it isn't equally disturbing) that it ISN'T "life" at all. You are incorrect on many levels and (has been said) have obviously never seen these poor kids.

Your idea weigh HEAVILY on current science and the assumption that it has reached the peak of it's path in this area. Virtually every time that assumption has been made in the past the scientist has been wrong (and I'm not speaking as some Poli-Sci major who fancies himself a scientist). History is full of examples of people who assumed everything that could be discovered already had been.

If you really do have a background in logic (and not just a "Intro to Logic" course at the community college) then you know that such courses fall into the "Philosophy" department and philosophy would make pretty clear that "this is/is not life" is not really a decision for a doctor.

Not too many years ago doctors defined the death/life barrier as "breathing". Then they started saving people who had stopped breathing. Then for quite a long time it was "heartbeat"... until they started saving people whose heart had stopped. Today we use brain activity (and not just any brain activity - or the firings at 6wks would defeat your theory)... will that stand in 100 years? Plenty of things are "life" without having brain activity.

Just as importantly. You equations assume that the barrier from life to death MUST necessarily be the same as the barrier from non-life to life. There is no reason (other than convenience) to assume so. There is a difference between "here lies George - he was alive a minute ago and now he's 'gone'" and something that did not exist at all that now does.

And, of course, it leaves out the "essence" that (apart from any religious belief) people think of as a "soul". There is no measure one way or the other of that.