Does Life Matter Analysis

Does every life matter? Because in reality, it seems like certain lives matter more than others because of money. Looking back at my short life, there seems to be no greater or more complex question thrown.

I was in eighth grade when a medical volunteer group that my dad led to Northern Thailand faced a dilemma of choosing between treating a patient with MDR-TB or saving $5000 (the estimated treatment cost for this patient) for future patients. I remember overhearing intense conversations outside the headquarters tent. My dad and his friend were arguing that we should treat the lady regardless of the treatment cost, whereas the others were arguing that it simply cost too much to treat her. Looking back, it was a conflict between ideals--one

I even took online courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. But I failed to find a clear, logical argument for why every life mattered. I did, however, find sound arguments for the other side, supporting the idea that society should pursue the well-being of the greatest number, that interventions should mitigate the most death and disability per dollar spent. Essentially they said, “Kid, it’s all about numbers.” But I continued searching, even saving up pocket money to attend a summer course on global health at Brown University. It was there that I met Cate Oswald, a program director for Partners in Health (PIH), an organization that believed “the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.” It was like finding a ray of light in the

In other words, diagnostics and clinical procedures developed in industrialized countries were deemed “inappropriate” for use in the developing countries like West Africa due to its high cost. And thanks to such belief, it took the international community nearly an year to just identify the disease and declare it an international outbreak. In the meanwhile, the lost time was paid with thousand and thousands of innocent deaths. Then when the WHO identified Ebola as a serious threat, everyone turned to the West in hopes for a vaccine--a silver bullet that would put an end to the outbreak. However, the solution was found elsewhere, and surprisingly, it was quite simple: basic care. What saved the American doctor that flew into Emory was not a sophisticated treatment but an aggressive fluid and electrolyte replacement--simple replenishment of the lost fluids in the body. Through Ebola, as ironic as it may sound, I learned that beyond great complexity lay even greater