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First day in school. Are we in Germany 1933?

63 replies

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:18

(I believe my post will be removed, as there is no democracy here and all think like one, but I cannot keep silence anymore).

First day in school (online) after holiday. DD got the following problem to solve (and kids widely discuss it on a chat):

In a hospital ward there are four terminally ill people. Three need medicines that are not in stock and cannot be provided. Without the medicines they will die. The fourth will die anyway. The three can be saved with organ transplantation: first with heart, second with lungs, third with liver. What should be done: (a) nothing and then all four will die. (b) kill the fourth and transplant his organs to other three.

Have you seen the movie “Life Is Beautiful” 1997? In fascist Italy the school children were given a problem: ‘How much will the country save if they stop feeding the mentally ill?’

So our children in school are hinted with the following: the government will not lift a finger in order to produce masks, ventilators, protective equipment etc. We don’t need to think about this. We just need to decide: who will die and who will live. Whom to connect to ventilator and whom do disconnect. Whom to send to intensive care and whom to send home to die.

If this is not fascism then what is this?

The government and the prime minister did not lift a finger to close airports, to trace and isolate infected and to test people when the epidemy was already ravaging in four countries: China, South Korea, Japan, Italy. The government did nothing to produce ventilators, masks, hand gel, protective suits. How did South Korea and Japan manage to completely stop this? Why in Germany 4,500 dead and in UK 16,000?

Why the criminal government and its prime minister are not investigated and not sent to court for sabotaging the struggle with the epidemy, for the treason to their people, for 16,000 dead?
Why instead of saying that “We will struggle for every ill person and we will do anything to save lives” the prime minister says “Oh, you need to prepare yourself to loose many of your relatives and friends”? and why that prime minister ignores five meeting in a row of the COBRA (Emergency Cabinet)?

Why do we need, like the North Koreans, to clap to NHS - where doctors and nurses are not provided with basic equipment and die from the infection, whilst in other countries healthcare workers have all they need? Why do people clap to them like to clowns who dance under the circus dome without any protection?

Is human life valued at all in this country or we just need to say “Oh, I am so sorry that people die”? “Oh, it’s such a shame there are not enough masks”. “Oh, it such a shame people crowd outdoors without masks spreading virus and contributing to the death toll”.

But what can be done? Our country is so poor. We have no enough budget. We cannot produce masks. It is too hard for our industry. We cannot produce ventilators. We cannot produce virus test kits. We cannot produce hand gel. Our police is unable to dispense crowds. Out policemen don't have masks, equipment, cars. There are actually no policemen on the streets at all!

We could not close airports. Our airport workers don’t know how to do this. We could not deprive our citizens of the joy of going to ski in Italy and bringing the infection back with them, and we could not isolate them when they landed back in Heathrow/Gatwick. There are no isolation rooms there :( Such a shame!

So what can be done? Just nothing. It’s our fate. Let’s just choose whom to disconnect from the ventilator. And let's keep strolling outside - such a good weather! Perhaps some more elderly will get infected and die because we stroll outside, but come on! those elderly would have died anyway, right?

And let’s prepare to lose our relatives and friends. And don’t forget to say “sorry” on every occasion and in every direction, and clap to our brilliant government and the healthcare system.

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pinkblanchmange · 21/04/2020 14:14

There's an episode of Grey's anatomy that we use in school where a child needs a life saving transplant and a convicted murderer is brought in to be treated for a brain tumour but says he doesn't want treating and offers his organs to save the child. The doctors have to treat the murderer though and the child dies. It promotes lots of discussion on what is the right thing to do.

user1495884620 · 21/04/2020 14:13

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52361519

Here it is. Actually, it is far less than half the additional deaths, not due to corona, but a significant number nonetheless.

user1495884620 · 21/04/2020 14:11

There was an article on the BBC earlier that I annoyingly now can't find or I would link it. It showed that deaths over the last month are far higher than average but only half a corona related. In throwing resources at corona, we already seem to have increased other deaths presumably where treatments have been delayed or where people haven't sought emergency treatment fast enough. Another real world ethical problem.

KrakowDawn · 21/04/2020 14:07

Or- what they all said ^

KrakowDawn · 21/04/2020 14:05

Some people don't agree that life should be saved at all costs. In order for people to receive transplants, someone else must die. Death is not avoidable. It may be postponable.

Problems like this teach children to think, to look at things from all points of view, to consider different stances and differing approaches. To empathise- not just with the patients but with those treating then who are making such choices on a daily basis. There's a reason that so many surgeons have sociopathic tendencies- it's because you need to be able to discount emotion and squeamishness to slice into a fellow human, even when one is doing it for all the right reasons.

Lllot5 · 21/04/2020 14:04

Death isn’t unavoidable. It may be postponed but it’s not unavoidable.
I think it’s an interesting question.
How old is your dd

pinkblanchmange · 21/04/2020 14:04

You're saying that we should teach that 'life should be saved at all costs' ??? Euthanasia ? Abortion ? The death penalty ? War ? All ethical issues. Not everyone is pro-life.

PatriciaHolm · 21/04/2020 14:02

er- but death is unavoidable. Ultimately. how does it help to teach them that everyone be saved? They can't. From CV, from cancer, from anything. Money doesn't convey immortality.

pinkblanchmange · 21/04/2020 14:02

It's medical ethics, covered in Philosophy and RE, amongst others. I teach a similar lesson on organ transplant.

Xiaoxiong · 21/04/2020 14:02

Well OP if life needs to be saved at all cost, what is your answer to the trolley problem?

In the real world there is a cost to everything and we all have to make choices every day. Voters need to choose between what politicians tell them is a possible vision of the future. Kids need the skills to critically think through whether what they're being told is realistic, feasible and matches their values.

Eg. If we stay locked down forever, we might save more lives from covid19 but we might run out of money to fund the NHS. Is that "fund the hospitals at all costs"?

user1495884620 · 21/04/2020 14:01

This isn't a Nazi Germany question, this is a real world modern day problem, albeit simplified as a theoretical philosophical problem, and the whole reason why NICE exists. What treatments give value for money? Is it worth spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a drug treatment that will prolong someone's life for a few months, versus one hundred hip replacements that will massively improve quality of life for multiple people.

andlondon · 21/04/2020 14:00

She is the hero, who switches the people off. And where is the hero who builds the ventilators?

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andlondon · 21/04/2020 14:00

BBC News: "Coronavirus: 'I'm the nurse who switches off the ventilator'

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52345177

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PatriciaHolm · 21/04/2020 13:59

The lesson in LiS is a very different problem to the one you are referencing and posed very different. The one you talk about from the film is specifically posed as "saving money is a good thing; so killing those who cost us money is a good thing; so lets work out how much we can save!" The "killing people is a good thing" is assumed, not up for discussion.

The question from school is, as others have stated, different and a pretty well known ethics/philosophy discussion point. It leaves it up to the debators to discuss the relative merits of the various actions.

And I think you need read up on Japan. They haven't even remotely stopped it.

PlanDeRaccordement · 21/04/2020 13:59

OP you are figuratively lost.
No discussing a medical ethics scenario in school is not fascism akin to 1933 Germany.

And you are trotting out falsehoods regarding what the U.K. Government did and did not do regarding COVID

pinkblanchmange · 21/04/2020 13:58

Totally standard ethics question, we do similar - the Trolley problem, or who would you save from a burning building.

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:58

merryhouse, sorry, just yesterday there was a large news article on the BBC, all dedicated to a lady in a hospital whose work is deciding whom to disconnect from the ventilator. So yes, this problem is teaching that killing the fourth is the choice, because it saves more life.

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greathat · 21/04/2020 13:58

It's not telling them anything is right it wrong, it's asking them to THINK for themselves. Possibly something we are lacking in society is people who do think and consider things from different angles, rather than just blindly believe what the right or left wing media of their choice tell them

RoseAndRose · 21/04/2020 13:57

Did any of the pupils ask awkward questions about tissue matching?

Or as required drugs cannot be procured, whether even a successful transplant in technical terms would actually save anyone?

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:56

Dear sir/madam YoureAllABunchOfBastards!

Instead of teaching children with such ethical dilemmas and ESPECIALLY in the today's time, the following needs to be taught:

Life should be saved at all cost. Equipment should be provided to the hospitals at all cost. By teaching these moral dilemmas you excuse the government who decided to do nothing to prevent the deaths.

And you teach the children that death is unavoidable. You just need to decide who will die. Instead of teaching that death can be avoided with effort and diligence.

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YoureAllABunchOfBastards · 21/04/2020 13:51

You're presuming that they are going to suggest killing off the guy with the terminal illness. In my experience with that kind of question, they are not. It's a moral/ethical dilemma.

How did you discuss it with your DD? Or did you just go batshit?

merryhouse · 21/04/2020 13:51

Yeah, sounds like a discussion starter to me. How old is your daughter?

It was possibly a Bad Idea to throw this particular one out at this particular time...

If your daughter's teachers were All About The Fascism then they'd be telling her that the fourth person should be happy to die now to further the Glorious Greater Good. It's far more likely that one or two of the kids will hypothesise that and be shouted down by the others.

(I hate these questions. They're always ridiculously unrealistic.)

GoldenOmber · 21/04/2020 13:50

I promise you OP it’s a really standard philosophy/ethics thought experiment. The point is not to encourage children to kill people for their organs, it’s to look at and talk about the thinking behind their moral decisions.

andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:49

HandfulOfDust: This is exactly THE question of education! What kind of generation are we going to grow if we educate them with such problems in such situation?

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andlondon · 21/04/2020 13:48

Exactly guys! Same was in the movie “Life Is Beautiful” 1997 which unfortunately none of the responded here has seen :(

Many people were sitting at the table and a woman who was a head teacher of some school said that pupils of the age of 10 were given the following problem:

'The percent of the mentally ill in the country is 7%, keeping a person in hospital costs X money daily, the country population is Y, how much would the country save if got rid of all mentally ill'?

And the main character said: ' Wow! Horrible problem, how can they give this to children?!'

But someone else said, 'Wait, it's a simple math, you need to divide X by the percentage of the ill and multiply by the population of the country... We solved such problems when I was 9!'

I am now feeling here like I am in that movie...

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