...yeah, I'd probably try and save them both and inadvertently let them both die. And this is why I'm not a doctor.
^^ For some reason, I laughed at that. I'd save Tuvok! But only because I'm probably the only Janeway/Tuvok shipper in the world. This post doesn't makes much sense in the discussion of things, so you can just excuse this post all together.
Well, we spent tonight watching Doctor Who, so "Critical Care" will wait for tomorrow. Would anyone pick Paris?
Good point. Because we'll always have Paris. So save Tuvok, and save the whales! Tuvok is there to protect the ship. Paris just flies it?! Chak does a decent job of that, the big doorstop.
After finally being allocated enough TV hours, I've finally seen... "Critical Care" I guess it's good that I'm not totally sure whether this is a polemic in favor of socialized medicine or a polemic against government-run health care. The story's pretty basic: the Doc is press-ganged into serving in a hospital on a planet that has resource restrictions. By making one set of patients having simple preventive treatment while the other doesn't have life-saving medicine, the deck is really stacked against the Allocator. What makes this episode shine are the comedy bits. The Search for Gar was hysterical, with Janeway looking alternately bored, frustrated, and annoyed. Her declaration that she already had a man--and Tuvok's reaction--were hysterical. The second is the scene where Neelix extracts a confession from Gar by giving him the shits. Hilariously awesome. Besides that, it was just a decent ethical-dilemma episode. Those two scenes, though, make it a real classic. I wish I had more, but it's late and I'm getting tired.
I enjoyed the ep. because it was Trek's look into the health system & the HMO. Only the rich can afford proper health coverage while those that need it more get nothing because they're status is lower. It's also a look at how doctors and the health care system have forgotten that helping the sick is more important than who you are or the all mighty dollar.
The episode raised a legitimate question--how do you decide who gets treatment when resources are limited? Unfortunately, it backed down from that serious ethical dilemma and reverted to a strawman argument (life-saving care vs. preventative maintenance).
I honestly don't know. Probably start with basic triage--attending to higher-need cases before lower-need ones. The problem is that there was no sense of exactly how much "stuff" there was to go around in the first place. Is there enough medication/resources to provide basic life-saving care for everyone, but no extras? The episode suggested there was an endless source of the medicine Tebbis needed, but it was being hoarded for preventative treatments for the lucky few. If that's the case, it's an easy solution--just provide the basics. Otherwise, you've got to somehow decide who gets to live. I think there's three ways to do it: 1. "Intelligent" decision-making, where the patient's "value" to society is "objectively" determined 2. A market decision--let whoever has the money pay for treatment; those in need who can't afford treatment may be able to appeal to a charitable donor (i.e., a humanitarian agency could buy a supply of medicine which it gave out as it saw fit) 3. A lottery--draw straws Each of those approaches has drawbacks, so I don't know which one would work best. I guess they're all unfair in different ways.
Isn't that what happened to Kathryn when she was a young Lt? She tried to save her Dad and her fiance and they both perished.
My problem is that the didn't frame the dilemma in a way that made it a dilemma. They just made it a choice between a superfluous use of an apparently never-ending supply of a medicine, and a life-saving one.
Whoa! Good point!!! I guess that's why she's not a doctor, either. She can't accept losing very well.
Well, everyone, I saw "Inside Man" last night, but I've got way too much going on to talk about it. Suffice it to say that it had a scene where I felt like the episode took a dump on me, and one of the greatest scenes I've witnessed in Voyager so far. I'll let you guess which is which. The big news is that there's going to be one more of us watching Voyager in the Shatnertage household. My wife delivered last night (two weeks early). I'm just getting caught up with some work stuff right now and thought I'd let everyone know. I'll be back in a few days. Both the baby and the mom are healthy and doing great.