debug: So you're saying you think it's a good thing to have more sick or deformed people in the populace?

I'll be sure to let you know when I have an autistic kid, especially if he becomes a "sauvant" like you who can't spell savant. If I send you the bills for his medicine and special care and schooling, I'm sure you will be happy to pay them, right?

How do you choose who is sick or deformed? Who is going to make those guidelines?

And of course, it's my duty to keep everyone alive, right? I'm a superman of course, I can do that.

When my mom had cancer, I helped as much as I could, and our insurance covered as much as it could, and she is alive today. Should my sisters (who have a higher chance of cancer now), just be killed off to prevent tainting this supreme gene pool you aspire too?

And about that spelling mistake on 'savant', I live in Canada, and I am too damn used to adding in 'u's' to random words.

Puffwamcdooey: The parents should fight as hard as they can to keep her alive, but they should not be given a free ride. If the kid lives, the genes that caused the parents to fight get passed on too. If the kid dies, then the bad genes she inherited outweighed the good. Being able and wanting to euthanize your kid right off the bat probably isn't a good idea on a species survival level. But being given a free ride is a bad idea too.

And I totally agree with you. I'm not advocating a free ride, just arguing against people who want to 'weed out' the child.

Rational Exuberance: glaurunge: I guess you've never heard of such a thing as a 'market failure.'

Nope. Never heard of asymmetric information, moral hazard, free rider problem, adverse selection...nope, never heard of any of those causes of market failure in insurance.

The government has a role to play in insurance - but if it goes to far, it system starts to fall apart from the weight of excess regulation. Which we are very much on the path to.

What other product do you get a tax advantage from buying from your employer versus buying yourself? Only health care has this. That's not market failure; that's government failure.

It's only a government failure in the sense that the current system is so wasteful and inefficent compared to a system under universal coverage.

katdaddy: My son was born with a rare heart defect. After two successful surgeries, he wouldn't eat anything from a bottle. We chose to have a feeding tube put in. Eventually, he started taking the bottle as usual then quit. He goes in cycles. The feeding tube is much quicker and less messier than a bottle. It also makes it very convenient to give him all of his medicines. I suggest this family look into the feeding tube.

Wow... How old is your son now? I had a friend whose daughter had a heart defect and they actually worked on her heart before she was born. She had a couple of other surgeries after birth and she is fine now and a very pretty young lady.

shirtsbyeric: I think it's terrible when a cop gets in a situation he can can't Tase his way out of.

ftfy...

Even with the rice, pears and formula she still projectile vomits. I hope to God she grows out of it. Now the baby is showing symptoms too.

I believe the insurance company is out of line. This is not a supplement. Without it she wouldn't survive. The child is here and she is alive and happy. No question in my mind that the insurance company should spring for the formula until the kid can pay for it herself at 18.

Now forcing feeding tubes down Tay Sachs and related diseased babies is kind of sick. They're brains are mostly gone as well as hearing and sight. They never could walk.

I hope this teaches the parents NOT to reproduce anymore.

INSURANCE, n.
An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.

INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house -- pray let me
insure it.
HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so
low that by the time when, according to the tables of your
actuary, it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have
paid you considerably less than the face of the policy.
INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no -- we could not afford to do that.
We must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.
HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford that?
INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time.
There was Smith's house, for example, which --
HOUSE OWNER: Spare me -- there were Brown's house, on the
contrary, and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which --
INSURANCE AGENT: Spare me!
HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay
you money on the supposition that something will occur
previously to the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In
other words, you expect me to bet that my house will not last
so long as you say that it will probably last.
INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it
will be a total loss.
HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon -- by your own actuary's tables I
shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
would otherwise have paid to you -- amounting to more than the
face of the policy they would have bought. But suppose it to
burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
insured?
INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our
luckier ventures with other clients. Virtually, they pay your
loss.
HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their
losses? Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before
they have paid you as much as you must pay them? The case
stands this way: you expect to take more money from your
clients than you pay to them, do you not?
INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not --
HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well
then. If it is certain, with reference to the whole body of
your clients, that they lose money on you it is probable,
with reference to any one of them, that he will. It is
these individual probabilities that make the aggregate
certainty.
INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it -- but look at the figures in
this pamph --
HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!
INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would
otherwise pay to me. Will you not be more likely to squander
them? We offer you an incentive to thrift.
HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is
not peculiar to insurance, but as a charitable institution you
command esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a
Deserving Object.

/Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary
//Get it here (new window)

Rational Exuberance: He's not wrong. If we had price transparency in the medical industry prices would drop dramatically. Even a small change - like insurance payouts being payed to the claimant and not the provider (think about it - does your mechanic get money from the insurance company directly too?) would force some price transparency and competition.

Capitalism can save health care - we have a much too micromanaged health care system at present.

*applause*

At a buck fidy a can, if she makes it another 15 years, she'll be a cheap date, right?

Catracks: This is not a supplement. Without it she wouldn't survive.

I'd just like to point out that without food, no baby would survive...

toobsok: Grackel: Some morons know enough to make an educated decision prior to having said daughter.

Care to elaborate? Are you saying that they should not have a child based on the mere chance she might have this disease?
If you were in that child's shoes, and someone said, "sorry buddy, but it's not efficient to keep you alive, so were going to kill you now.", what would you say?

My entire point is people are so quick to make a judgement on a human life that they will never have contact with. Get out of your basement and get some experience before making tough guy comments.

"make an educated decision prior to having said daughter..."

This would be my elaboration. Regardless of what I say, ITG or not, a damn fair portion of my money goes to someone elses kids, or parents, or even them. Be it through my insurance premiums (I have never had a wreck), my taxes paid to schools (I don't have kids), state taxes paid into a Welfare/WIC/Medicaid medley (I live by myself, not in a basement), and Medicare. It is far less about ITG than just a general lack of caring for those that can't take care of themselves.

Not to be off subject but I just read posting rules and well they are full of fail.

Don't repost deleted content/links.
Don't post NSFW (Not Safe For Work) images or unlabeled NSFW links.
Don't post graphic images or links to graphic content.
Don't post repetitively.
Don't threadjack.
Don't encourage others to perform illegal acts.
Don't post hate speech.
Don't post broken images/links.
Don't post private/contact information no matter how easily obtained.
Don't troll/harass other Farkers.
Don't troll/harass Fark or its maintainers.
Don't discuss bans in the threads.
Don't try to make the thread discussions all about you -aka Attention Whoring.
Don't post TotalFark content/links on regular Fark.
Don't attempt to hack, flood, DoS, DDoS, or otherwise compromise Fark.
Don't abuse the submission queue.

Which one of these do I not see everyday.

/none

Am I the only person who--when they read articles about all these kids with weird immune disorders--thinks about the fact that when/if society breaks down, the gene pool is going to get a hell of a lot cleaner? The better we get at keeping these kids alive, the more these genetic anomalies will propagate, and a few generations down, there's going to be a lot of very sick people running around and creating more sick people.

WTF can be done?

katdaddy: My son was born with a rare heart defect. After two successful surgeries, he wouldn't eat anything from a bottle. We chose to have a feeding tube put in. Eventually, he started taking the bottle as usual then quit. He goes in cycles. The feeding tube is much quicker and less messier than a bottle. It also makes it very convenient to give him all of his medicines. I suggest this family look into the feeding tube.

It may be convenient for you, but I know of a family with a kid that was on a feeding tube so long that he didn't know how to and refused to eat by mough.

Fark the feeding tube unless you want it to be a lifetime sentence.

People saying that the fact that she needs medication to stay alive means she shouldn't stay alive is ridiculous. This medicine is invented for a reason.

The people that have zero compassion and think that these children will just raise their insurance premiums or whatever should be worried about their own children raising taxes by being forced into foster care because they - as parents- are too immature to care for them mentally!

nesler: Am I the only person who--when they read articles about all these kids with weird immune disorders--thinks about the fact that when/if society breaks down, the gene pool is going to get a hell of a lot cleaner? The better we get at keeping these kids alive, the more these genetic anomalies will propagate, and a few generations down, there's going to be a lot of very sick people running around and creating more sick people.

WTF can be done?

There's this thing called science that often leads to breakthroughs in medicine, both preventive, and reactive.

BeatenHorse: @loudnoises: I feel bad for the little girl. It must really suck to be allergic to all food. Until today I never knew it was possible to be allergic to all foods. Does anyone know how long someone can live with this problem?

As long as medical science chooses to keep them alive? She obviously can't survive without medical care.

The issue here is that she's three years old.

This isn't someone developing a life-threatening illness at 25, or getting cancer, or being critically wounded. She was effectively doomed from conception.

re: the Steven Hawking argument. Treatment for ALS is almost strictly palliative. Drugs for its treatment were only recently developed. Steven Hawking got very, very, very lucky.

So who's to say when (and I do believe in a "when") the drugs to treat her condition will be developed? Should we let her die today, if possible? Would you like to be the one to personally turn off the tap?

/A little compassion
//goes a long
///farkin' way

USA! USA! USA!

Land of the free to watch young children die so I can put more gas in my SUV!

USA! USA! USA!

Shadowknight: You people must not have kids. Also, not very medically adept. A lot of kids have severe allergies as infants, and need a specialized formula. As they grow, they can and in many cases do get better to the point of living a very normal life.


This bears repeating. Children very often present with severe allergies that lessen then disappear as they grow older. The doctors of the kid in question don't even know whether she'll have this lifelong.

Generally I agree with the "let 'em die" contingent, but only in cases where brain function is severely impaired. This kid could live a productive life and fully contribute to society - she just has to eat special food. She doesn't have to live in a bubble or have her diapers changed six times a day for the next sixty years, or even attend special schools. She just has to learn to be responsible for her eating habits...just like everybody else.

Errata: Replace "They're with "Their."

nesler: Am I the only person who--when they read articles about all these kids with weird immune disorders--thinks about the fact that when/if society breaks down, the gene pool is going to get a hell of a lot cleaner? The better we get at keeping these kids alive, the more these genetic anomalies will propagate, and a few generations down, there's going to be a lot of very sick people running around and creating more sick people.

WTF can be done?

Well, if we can keep them alive long enough for them to reproduce with current advances in medicine, in a few generations, we'll probably have the technology and medical advances sufficient to cure them of their disorders and illnesses and fixing those genetic anomalies.

mongbiohazard: Euthanization at infancy is far more merciful and humane.

See below.

Bender The Offender: Some unoriginal internet tough guys in this thread. Yeah, we get it, you're edgy and controversial because you can say cruel ignorant stuff on the internet. I'm sure a 3 year old's suffering somehow diminishes the pain and misery of your existence. We all get it. The same jackasses make their presence known in every thread where basic compassion or decency are in question and show just how badass they are by taking the sociopath route. Do you think anyone is impressed with you? Do you think making idiotic comments will somehow alleviate the voretex of suck, loneliness, and despair that is your existence? It won't. You might get 5 minutes of attention from people who want to rub your nose in the excrement you spew, treating you like the animal you are because negative reinforcement is the only way people of your intellectual development are able to learn (and you guys tend to prove just how ineffective that technique is). Then, you can gleefully masturbate because your existence, as a festering tumor on the ass of philanthropy and common decency, has been validated for another 24 hours. I feel you're psychologically broken beyond fixing. Just like a horse with a broken leg, your life is nothing but pain and misery and like a rabid dog, you try to infect everyone you come in contact with. I'm sorry you have to continue to exist. It's a shame we all have to be punished (yourselves included) with your ongoing gas exchanges.

THIS.

Catracks: I hope this teaches the parents NOT to reproduce anymore.

I doubt it. It seems like every time I hear of a couple that both carry some recessive gene which makes their kids have hellish lives, the couple will keep pumping out kids thinking, the next one will be fine and then we'll stop.

Bender The Offender: unlike this girl, $1200 a month in formula won't cure what's gone wrong with you

Just a small point I feel compelled to clarify: the formula doesn't cure her. It just keeps her alive. She's still utterly FUBARed, as far as her health is concerned.

Catracks: I believe the insurance company is out of line. This is not a supplement. Without it she wouldn't survive. The child is here and she is alive and happy. No question in my mind that the insurance company should spring for the formula until the kid can pay for it herself at 18.

As someone else pointed out, no child can survive without food. It's just that this child can only eat very, very specific types of food. At what point do food allergies become so severe that nutrition becomes the responsibility of the insurance company? There's a pretty wide range of severity, so...where's the line?

Also, the fact that the parents went ahead and had a second child blows my farking mind. It's quite simple--if it's clear that you have some serious flaws in your genome, don't farking reproduce. Adopt for Christ's sake, instead of bringing a bunch of farking crippled children into the world.

/I'm kind of an asshole, aren't I?
//sigh

toobsok: And about that spelling mistake on 'savant', I live in Canada, and I am too damn used to adding in 'u's' to random words.


OK, we'll let it slide...but it should be savaunt, anyway. It's more French that way.

/Just my 2 cents
//I like that word...Savaunt...Savaunt...sounds like a quaint village somewhere...

Debug... gets the Internet Tough Guy award for today.

Bender The Offender: altoids85:
Take a good look in the mirror, and then repeat what you just said.

Aww, sorry I hit a nerve champ. You're more than welcome to point out where I've expressed a flippant and utterly heartless approach to the suffering of toddlers/transplant listees though. I'm sure you'll have that for me any day now. I hope I've made you feel a little worse about yourself, because unlike this girl, $1200 a month in formula won't cure what's gone wrong with you.


What has gone wrong with me? Do tell.

I think the girl should be kept alive, in case you have assumed otherwise.

I just thought your post came off as very hypocritical. As you offered nothing to the discussion but to ridicule other people in order to feel better about your own self, and put down others. Something you condemned at the same time and in the same post.

Approves of this thread.

/would've used Adolph, but that's just so tired nowadays

onomatopoeon:
So who's to say when (and I do believe in a "when") the drugs to treat her condition will be developed? Should we let her die today, if possible? Would you like to be the one to personally turn off the tap?

/A little compassion
//goes a long
///farkin' way

Worked so well for Terri Shiavo.

Suicidal_Elmo: There's this thing called science that often leads to breakthroughs in medicine, both preventive, and reactive.

An array of disorders that each afflict a very small percentage of the population (such as one in ten thousand children in this case) probably aren't real high up the chain, as far as funding for research goes. It'll be a while. Also, we tend to be overly optimistic when it comes to treating diseases and disorders of various sorts...25 years later, we can keep AIDS patients alive, but not treat them. Cancer, we very good success rates with some forms, but certainly haven't cured it, especially the nastier, faster forms.

I just don't feel very positive about this stuff in the long run.

schmez: This kid could live a productive life and fully contribute to society - she just has to eat special food. She just has to learn to be responsible for her eating habits...just like everybody else.

This is a good point.

So, if the insurance company is classifying this as a "food supplement", I'm sure they'd be happy to identify what other foods it's supplementing. Right?

The profit motive needs to be removed from the healthcare industry.

debug: toobsok: Ok you morons who say she shouldn't live, what happens if it was your daughter? What would you say then?
What about cancer? Should we refuse chemo, radiation, and surgery just because they will probably die anyways?
We have the technology to keep her alive, so why not do it? This isn't the goddamn 1800's.
Whoever says they should let her die is an ignorant fool who has had no experience with these kinds of situations and should not offer any opinions on the matter.

Why? How about this line from the article...

The disease was rarely seen before 1995 but now about one child in 10,000 has it.

That is what happens when defects like this are permitted to remain in the gene pool. Take a look at the increase in number of Autistic children over the last 20 years too while you are at it. Instead of weeding them out and having a generally healthier and more robust population, you end up with more feeble, sick, deformed or abnormal people.

That's why.

You know who else wanted to "weed out defects" in the gene pool...?

Look at all the insurance supporters.

Clearly, what you need to do is remove yourself from coverage, and let whatever eventually ails you run its course. After all, you wouldn't want to burden the profit pool everyone else has to chip into.

New Moon Rabbit: Wow... How old is your son now? I had a friend whose daughter had a heart defect and they actually worked on her heart before she was born. She had a couple of other surgeries after birth and she is fine now and a very pretty young lady.

He'll be 16 months next week. We didn't find out about the defect until just hours after birth. He had two surgeries at two months old to replace valves and just had a third two weeks ago.


Catracks: It may be convenient for you, but I know of a family with a kid that was on a feeding tube so long that he didn't know how to and refused to eat by mough

Fark the feeding tube unless you want it to be a lifetime sentence.

That's something we are concerned about. We see a speech therapist once a week who works with him on his feeding issues. We usually offer him a bottle at every meal so he at least has the opportunity to try. As far as the medicines go, though, it's much easier to give it to him through his button than by mouth.

glaurunge: It's only a government failure in the sense that the current system is so wasteful and inefficent compared to a system under universal coverage.

Who said anything about keeping the current system? I fully admitted that it is crap, and is a mashup of bad regulatory policies that force some perverse incentives.

You can have universal coverage and still have a market for insurance. If health insurance can't work, then we might as well scrap all other forms of insurance, because they are based on exactly the same principles. You don't have to scrap it an go single payer - while it might be better than the current system, it's not the best we can do.

EatHam: I would like to point out to that woman that Elecare costs about $400/mo, assuming 6 14oz cans every 2 weeks, which is reasonable.

That's about 8 ounces a day for a kid that can hardly eat anything else, dude.

I disagree with you.

fanbladesaresharp: Worked so well for Terri Shiavo.

To be fair, that's a totally different situation. In the case of Terri Shiavo, we're talking about somebody who could never function on her own in society...or even function at all. Half of her brain was liquefied, for Christ's sake. She essentially died when the brain damage occurred.

Weaver95: I think that's called 'eugenics'.

You have a point there. But I think it's a fairly positive form of eugenics, if there can be such a thing. But really, do you continue to have kids if you know there's a serious risk of them having very nasty genetic disorders?

With the insurance situation and formula costs, I would vote to put in a feeding tube. At age three, Mom could blend regular food with milk or cream and provide the child with adequate nutrition at minimal cost. Hopefully the kid will grow out of it. I have known people that had strokes or or other esophageal problems who feed themselves the same way via feeding tube their entire lives. Hopefully Mom is getting a break on child care so she can work three days per week. Around here, you're looking at $60-100/week per child

fanbladesaresharp: onomatopoeon:
So who's to say when (and I do believe in a "when") the drugs to treat her condition will be developed? Should we let her die today, if possible? Would you like to be the one to personally turn off the tap?

/A little compassion
//goes a long
///farkin' way

Worked so well for Terri Shiavo.

Do you think that even could have happened in Canada?

fanbladesaresharp: onomatopoeon:
So who's to say when (and I do believe in a "when") the drugs to treat her condition will be developed? Should we let her die today, if possible? Would you like to be the one to personally turn off the tap?

/A little compassion
//goes a long
///farkin' way

Worked so well for Terri Shiavo.

And the treatment for a mostly-liquefied brain is...?

Weaver95: well...based on this article, you're covered by insurance up to the point where the insurance has to pay off something expensive. THEN they drop your ass.

Yeahhhh, this is a long-running trend. I won't argue that. But again, where exactly is the line?

Weaver95: nesler: Weaver95: well...based on this article, you're covered by insurance up to the point where the insurance has to pay off something expensive. THEN they drop your ass.

Yeahhhh, this is a long-running trend. I won't argue that. But again, where exactly is the line?

I told you - we're covered until we end up on the wrong end of the balance sheet. Then you lose your coverage and get to die a painful death.

it's ok tho - the insurance company profits won't be affected! So there's that.

Well of course a socialist like you would say that!

/damnit, couldn't type that with a straight face...
//that was a funny ass thread, I wish I could've been a part of it

danielsangeo: fanbladesaresharp: onomatopoeon:
So who's to say when (and I do believe in a "when") the drugs to treat her condition will be developed? Should we let her die today, if possible? Would you like to be the one to personally turn off the tap?

/A little compassion
//goes a long
///farkin' way

Worked so well for Terri Shiavo.

And the treatment for a mostly-liquefied brain is...?

Still compassion, in all its forms.