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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

People are a little more willing to spend someone else's money on less-than-worthwhile pursuits than they are to spend their own. As long as the customers aren't bearing the cost, everything they buy will have a similarly inelastic demand. Healthcare for distressed infants is certainly not an example of inelastic demand where people have to pay for it themselves; even food for healthy infants (a much smaller, and much more cost-effective, expense) doesn't show inelastic demand.

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> Healthcare for distressed infants is certainly not an example of inelastic demand where people have to pay for it themselves

Are you kidding me? If it was a question of saving my child's life, I'd spend every last cent I had and then go sell a kidney.

I gave you an example. Mothers uncertain of their ability to raise an infant will abandon it to die (this is traditionally called "exposure"). It's a practice at least as old as humanity. And it conclusively demonstrates that the demand for infant care is not inelastic; these mothers aren't killing themselves trying to preserve their nonviable children. Rather, they're killing the children so that they don't die themselves in the effort to save a doomed child.

"So that they don't die themselves" != "because they are unable to raise an infant"

If you take this view:

> If it was a question of saving my child's life, I'd spend every last cent I had and then go sell a kidney.

there is no distinction between being unable to raise a child, and being unable to survive the attempt. If you survive, the child will get raised. The only way to fail is by dying (or killing the child).

I think your example conclusively demonstrates that people in radically different economic and cultural circumstances have different attitudes towards their children. This is a completely fair conclusion, but has very little bearing when reasoning about health care for infants in modern neonatal ICUs, especially infants with rich technologist parents.

At some point you'd run out of organs to sell, and the child still might die, sad as that may be. :/

I don't really understand how anyone can lump a real child with whom you have years of shared experiences, who you've loved and taught and who has a personality of its own in with a lump of cells that's yet to have a coherent thought.

I'm assuming you'd be annoyed if you had a hand or foot amputated?

And they're just lumps of cells that have never had a coherent thought.

Did you really think my argument was that anything that is a lump of cells that has never had a coherent thought has no value?

I can understand a sense of loss in losing an infant at birth. You make plans for the child and are excited to meet the person they will become. It's a miscarriage. A similar loss is learning that your spouse can't get pregnant in the first place. It's not the same as losing a child of 3, 6, 12 or 24.

Just correction a misconception here. The human brain "boots" on the 18th day after conception (you can set your watch to it). It is obvious on echo pictures that coherent thoughts are present on the 21st day after conception (e.g. if awake, most kids are aware that they're being pictured and attempt to find and play with the source of the sound, I think that qualifies as coherent thought).

It is quite obvious on the 23rd day that fetuses are swimming around and exploring their environment purposefully. They are at least as alive and coherent at that time.

The reason for this is that your DNA does not contain a plan for a human being. It contains a plan for a bilobite (an very old and presumed extinct form of life), and a way to transform a bilobite into a trilobite, a trilobite into something that resembles a fish, that fish into something very similar to a frog larva, and so on and so forth until you get a human. Other species have the same evolution in the womb/egg, except it diverges at some point.

The fish has a working brain (and it is unknown whether the trilobite does, it grows active neurons), generally referred to as a neural tube. That brain is working during the whole gestation period.

Thanks, that's very interesting. Whether it's a fish brain or frog larva brain or something more, though, my point is that it's not yet intrinsically worth protecting as human life. Its worth is all potential. Consider: how much would would this life be worth if brain development stopped at this point? For a newborn or earlier, the answer is not much.

I am strongly "pro choice" - i would allow abortion on demand upto 21 weeks and after that with medical need. I think the way we deal with children who have very poor quality of life and very little chance of living beyond a few months after being born is really poor.

None of this is incompatible with saying that the "clump of cells" is precious and worth preserving, and that parents should have support before, during, and after pregnancy to help this child.

That's reasonable. Again, my original comment was comparing the "clump of cells" to an older child.

>It is quite obvious on the 23rd day that fetuses are swimming around and exploring their environment purposefully. They are at least as alive and coherent at that time

Um well it isn't a fetus at 23 days its an embryo...

This is not true:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_15

> You make plans for the child and are excited to meet the person they will become. It's a miscarriage.

You often interact with children in utero before they are born. Also, at about 4 - 5 months (it'll vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) a miscarriage becomes a stillbirth and requires a birth and death certificate.

And while I have not lost a child at 3/6/12/24, I have lost a child at 6 months into a pregnancy, and it was quite probably the worst experience of my life - worse than my experiences during this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake - and I was trying to dig crushed people out from underneath rubble.

Births are (these days anyway), normally a joyous event wherein a new life comes into the world. A stillbirth is the polar opposite - especially if the baby died sometime before the birth was induced.

>Healthcare for distressed infants is certainly not an example of inelastic demand where people have to pay for it themselves

I take it you don't have a child?

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