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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (78829)	11/8/2003 1:29:19 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"hey, since the baby would be crippled anyway, lets kill it That would make terrible public policy. If you know anyone advocating it, please be sure to let me know. Did you by chance see ER this week? I had taped it and just watched it last night. The last couple of weeks they have been dealing with health care costs and the script has Dr. Kovac trying to stop the ER doctors from ordering excessive tests to for CYA purposes. It's good to see them tackling that. The other theme this week was a premature baby, 24 weeks. The woman had had many miscarriages and she was trying to hold this one in for a while, without success. When delivery was inevitable, she said to not resuscitate her son. As the story developed, apparently the hospital, and by implication all hospitals, had fixed rules on number of weeks, with 24 weeks being the cut-off for trying to save the baby. Dr. Kovac, who was on her side, mentioned another hospital rule and had another doctor weigh the boy before trying to save him. Apparently there is a cut-off at 500 grams, I think it was, and this kid weighed in at 508, so they brought him around. Dr. Kovac was hinting that the doctor weighing the baby should record it as under 500, but that doctor took the opposite approach. In the course of all this they mentioned the half million dollar cost just getting the baby out of the hospital. They also mentioned he had less than a five percent chance of living a life even close to normal. And the mother clearly didn't want him... The story ended with the mother staring at the kid. I wasn't aware that they had all those standards for when to try to save and when not.