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Comment by jimboyoungblood | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it would be fair or accurate to attribute it to post partum depression. The challenges Sam and his wife faced were/are extraordinary.

From the comment by "fr_of_sams" (http://www.nydailynews.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=84311):

Their children were twin girls. Born over one year ago. Severely premature: 24 weeks gestation. Severely disabled. Require 24-hour nursing care for their entire lives. Cannot eat, and will be on feeding tubes for the rest of their lives. Constant medical treatment and medical crises. Maybe someday they will walk. Maybe not. They will never really talk. The financial pressures on this couple were severe: they had already used up all insurance benefit limits, and burnt through their own personal savings with their retirement savings following rapidly...

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"Their children were twin girls. Born over one year ago. Severely premature: 24 weeks gestation. Severely disabled. Require 24-hour nursing care for their entire lives. Cannot eat, and will be on feeding tubes for the rest of their lives. Constant medical treatment and medical crises. Maybe someday they will walk. Maybe not. They will never really talk. The financial pressures on this couple were severe: they had already used up all insurance benefit limits, and burnt through their own personal savings with their retirement savings following rapidly. We should put the blame for Sam's death where it belongs. We have the technology to keep little girls like that alive. We have a society that pretty much insists upon doing so. But we put the financial and organizational and emotional burden entirely on the parents. We allow insurance companies to cap benefits, and we have no social system for rescuing people from these straights until they are literally homeless and bereft"

Sometimes the ancient Roman practice of exposure seems almost humane.

No it doesn't. But, refusing to keep people on perpetual life support and letting them pass on (not making them die) surrounded by loved ones is human.

Actually, they're pretty identical. In both cases they die of starvation. At least with exposure you have a chance of freezing to death (depending on what time of year it is), which is a better way to go.

Now his wife is left to care for two high-need children, grieve for her husband, and figure out a way to pay for it all one day (maybe). Looks like he made the challenges facing his wife even more extraordinary now.

That's one way to look at it.

Another way is to look around yourself and ask whether perhaps there's just a little something fucked up about a society that would force this couple to go bankrupt financially and emotionally because their peers will send them to a life of misery in prison if they refuse to keep two completely handicapped and malfunctioning children on feeding tubes for as long as is medically possible. Children so young that they, thankfully, are not even aware of their own miserable prison of an existence.

Most of the inhabitants of this planet unfortunately suffer from mass-delusion. We have not yet advanced spiritually or intellectually enough to grapple with these kinds of situations. When a society insists on keeping someone or something "alive" at great cost and for no purpose other than to satisfy their own neuroses, something is deeply wrong, and some people decide, "To hell with it all."

"... a society that would force this couple to go bankrupt financially and emotionally because their peers will send them to a life of misery in prison if they refuse to keep two completely handicapped and malfunctioning children on feeding tubes for as long as is medically possible."

Except that it is quite lawful and moral to let them die, and is routinely done. From what I've heard, what generally happens in cases like this is one or more family members flip out and become obsessive crusaders for endless medical intervention. Their loyalties and motivations are understandable, even if their loss of perspective has appalling consequences. It would be interesting to know which of the parents were the medical crusader(s) in this case.

It's not necessarily society's fault. I don't think you understand how far a mother (and the occasional father) will go to save their children's lives.

It can be very hard for people to let their loved ones go, society be damned.

As someone who is considered sane, with no known issues of depression, and a parent, I can say unequivocally that under no circumstance would I let a child die, regardless of circumstances. Finances, mortgage, whatever don't factor for a second into that decision.

Once you have a child, you realize this world isn't about you, and absolutely all you have left when you pass is your offspring and those who you impacted in life.

This is a tragedy but in no way should they be condemned for trying to save their offspring. Everything is not black and white as you would like to believe it is, and even if it defies your logic, there is definitely more than one perspective here.

From the NY Post article:

"His wife had recently given birth to preemie twins, the sources said.

"They were in some kind of argument over caring for them and all of a sudden, in the middle of the argument, he jumped over the 16th-floor balcony," a source said."

This was a spur of the moment impulsive thing. It wasn't some sort of calculated plan to cause his wife distress.

Given how unimaginably hard caring for premature, permanently-disabled twins would be I don't think it's fair to take him to task for not being able to cope for one tragic instant.

Holy shit, that's awful!

My wife and I are new parents, and the one, one thing that kept us sane some nights was the hope that one day we'd be able to talk to our daughter and see her grow up healthy and happy.

A friend of mine described parenting as: "the highs are higher and the lows are lower". Sometimes a lot lower.

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