Only 33 more years before he's eligible for the Presidential ticket!

What got me about this clip is how everybody went on about how miraculous this thing is, and what a wonderful blessing from god.  In an earlier time it wouldn't have been possible to keep this thing alive and allow it to take parental attention away from the normal children in the family.  Keeping this thing around is a waste of medical expertise, the taxpayers money, and it keeps the parents from focusing on the children who would benefit from parental attention.  This thing has less potential than one of my plants.  The decent thing would have been to cut their loss.  The parents should have aborted it if they knew before the birth, or had the hospital staff keep it warm, and dry after its birth without massive medical intervention in order to let it die quickly.  They had already made commitments to their older normal children which as far as I'm concerned they have breached.

Here's a trick question:  Who's the more worthwhile human being, a brain-damaged, dying baby who is able to bring out love and compassion in those around him and will leave the world a better place because they have lived, or a highly intelligent, dying old man who vomits hate and venom on those around him and will leave the world a better place because they have died?  Fnord?

thefriendsofeddiedoyle wrote:

Here's a trick question:  Who's the more worthwhile human being, a brain-damaged, dying baby...

I get what you're saying, but that baby is not brain-damaged.  That baby does not have a brain, just a brain stem.  Fnord is right:  all the resources that have gone into keeping that brainless body alive--all of it, in terms of money, time, medical efforts, pharmaceuticals, the emotional strain on the people involved, and the marginalization of the needs of the other members of that family--have been for nothing at all.

Tall Paul wrote:

Only she is able to say if the effort was worth it.

Only she...and her other children who've experienced only God knows what kind of psychological scars...and her mother and all other family members who've helped her...and whoever paid out what had to have been a shit-ton of money...is able to say if the effort was worth it.

No, seriously, I see what you're getting at, and it is a thoughtful position.  I am not denying the spiritual benefit--to an individual, to the immediate community, even to our species as a whole--of caring for a species member who is not perfectly healthy and needs assistance to survive.  It marks us as human beings, who can consider ourselves superior to a pack of hyenas or a termite mound or what-have-you.

It's just that in THIS PARTICULAR case, they might just as well have poured all that care, time, money and emotional investment into a potato, or a fibroid tumor.  This is not a baby, despite the superficial resemblance.  It is a by-blow, a literally brainless growth which unfortunately developed far enough along to be able to work its lungs without mechanical aid. 

I feel terrible for any mother who loses a child, but this scenario is just grotesque.

thefriendsofeddiedoyle wrote:

And it's only very recently in human history and in societies not under stress that we have been able to care for the weak.

There are examples of fucked up prehistoric people who survived their fucked-upness.  Maybe not having a brain was too much for early people technologically, but we have always been manipulated by our capricious emotions.

thefriendsofeddiedoyle wrote:

phoQ wrote:

There are examples of fucked up prehistoric people who survived their fucked-upness.

Let's not rush too quickly to assign altruistic motive to those who kept this little person around.  Personally, I think they just used him for dwarf tossing.

True, let's get our priorities straight here. This bundle of joy ain't a potted plant or an oven mitt with a pulse, we're talking Job Creation!

Last edited by choad (2011-10-06 12:22:30)

I say kill it.  Survival of the fittest.  If I had a horror like that as a child, I wouldnt spend a penny on the survival of it.  I would rather go on a nice child-free vacation...

thefriendsofeddiedoyle wrote:

Namibian muppet beast look-alike dies.

A fund was being set up at U.S. Bank to help pay for the family’s funeral costs

The same old story...