this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024

15 points (80.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35706 readers

2424 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Trolley problem Pt. 2: A cancer hospital, limited funds, patients of various ages and conditions. Should there be a universal answer? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'd assume we want everyone to survive and carry on with their lives equally. Yet, if we can't, there's a choice of distributing our doctors' time and equipments towards some of patients rather than others.

Policies deciding that choice in general, if implemented, naturally smell like death. That'd organically lead to some marks for a cut-off, the obvious one is the age - like excluding 70+ patients from active treatment and supporting them as they are instead, while prefering younger folks, because they have more projected lifespan ahead of them (AND MORE VALUE TO THE REGIIIIME!). Then, there is a game of chances for recovery. Then there are biases against lung, stomack or skin cancer patients who neglected their bodies themselves etc etc etc. And we don't even touch the problem of these policies being sexist, racist or otherwise based on unscientific grounds.

But if not over-generalized policies that can mark some categories as not-worthy patients, we'd then assume the power to decide is in the hands of individual doctors who do have the problems in the last paragraph, but with individual power to decide as well as individual responsibility for that (but they can ask patients themselves if they want it?).

My question is: should we even seek a universal answer to that dillema? What is the beacon to navigate us here, balancing general policies and individual responsibilities? How'd we personally judge a party who'd make such decision (+ if we are their patient and we don't want to die)?

I've tried my best not to suggest any answer and not to instigate any sort of an infight, but if it's not ok, please delete it.

top 9 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

I believe it's called medical triage, and it's a real problem. Usually, in first world countries it's more between top notch care (Immunotherapy, Hadrontherapy), regular care, and pain management.

For cancer, it would be taken by specialised hospital on a multi disciplinary team based on what they can do, and the expected life quality/expectancy afterwards (a 75 year old having to wear a diaper sucks, but the same at 30 is worse)

Note also that the way, they do it in the US based on who can pay what is even worse. Your life isn't more important if you can put your winter apartment in Aspen for rent this winter to pay for your treatment.

Triage is also a classic one in Emergency. If you watch the Netflix documentary about Paris 2015 shootings, they interviewed one of the doctor who was doing field triage. One of these ninja are cutting onion moments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

My question is: should we even seek a universal answer to that dillema?

The answer is No. We should let the doctors decide, and they already do it, as a group, country-wide. They have set policies, and they teach and explain the rules to new doctors.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We already have an answer to this, it's literally how hospitals work in every Universal healthcare country. It's generally decided on using a base of the factors you mentioned, plus a few more (like the resources available in the region). Doctors also generally get a say as a group at the hospital, they all take ethics classes at school for a reason.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

To add further to this idea of managing death, the government does this all the time for other industries too.

For example they balance speed limits for cars (deaths vs utility for transportation)

They set maximum allowed concentrations of harmful chemicals in food and water (100% vs Good enough)

The list goes on and on.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

For example they balance speed limits for cars (deaths vs utility for transportation)

In North America they do a shit job of this particular balancing act

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do they? What would you prefer to see?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Much slower speed limits as well as physical traffic calming measures to limit how fast people are comfortable going on streets in cities. Currently the way it's handled is mostly by trying to optimize for car throughput. There is no consideration to the safety of pedestrians or cyclists, nor really of the risk to drivers at higher speeds in a collision. North American cities are so drunk on car-centric approaches to urban planning that they can't comprehend how to build cities that are actually conducive to human life anymore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

And how much would lower speed limits cost the economy?

How many dollars per human life saved would you like?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Lol

Sure it would save lives, but millions would be late!

-Homer Simpson