CBC Maritimes

Should we ration health care in the last - and most medically expensive - years of life ?

Is the life of a disabled person worth less than what writer Ian Brown would calls the lives of "the normals" ?  He's the author of The Boy in the Moon, A Father's Search for his Disabled Son.  
The uncomfortable question was raised on our October 20th phone-in (see podcast) when we asked "What can we learn from a person with severe disabilities? "  
Mr. Brown's son, Walker, has an exceptionally rare genetic disorder. At 13, he can't communicate in any conventional way. He gets food through a tube, is in diapers & he repeatedly hits himself in fits of self-harm.
Ian Brown makes the point that 20 years ago, a boy like Walker wouldn't have survived. But now cases as complex as his are appearing more often. In his book, Ian Brown searches for the meaning in his son's life.
During the phone-in, Mr Brown cited a recent opinion piece written by Mark Parent, a former Nova Scotia MLA and cabinet minister, who is also an ordained Baptist minister (to read the article, click here ). He was incensed by Mr Parent's suggestion that costly end-of-life health care for the elderly should be rationed, because of where this thinking might lead.
Mr Parent responded to Mr Brown's heated criticism.

Remember that stock market collapse of a year ago ?
Well, the business media seem to be burying those bad memories with news that China's economy is rebounding more quickly than expected, followed by  stories of rising commodity prices in Canada & stock exchanges on in Toronto & New York gaining lost ground.
But wait a minute - wasn't that financial meltdown accompanied by oaths that this kind of unrealistic bubble would never be pumped up again ? That the drive to hype quarterly forecasts and returns would have to be curbed ?
Toby Heaps is in a good position to monitor this. He's the President & editor of Corporate Knights Magazine. Founded in 2002, it focuses on corporate responsibility and strives to identify solutions that would make the market work better for the environment, society and economy.
We asked Toby Heaps what - if anything - has changed ?


Would it matter to you if you heard that the last member of a distant tribe in Africa had died ?
Wade Davis thinks it would, if we truly appreciated how much humanity loses every time this kind of extinction occurs.
Because human cultures and the languages that tie them together are going extinct more quickly than animal and plant species. Of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, anthropologists predict that half will disappear within our lifetimes.
Wade Davis is the author of this year's CBC Massey Lectures, entitled : "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World". In the lectures, he illustrates how much knowledge we've already lost - or actively exterminated. Some of it has been pieced together by researchers or by the last remaining holders of the knowledge who brought their people back from the brink.
Think of how sophisticated earlier civilizations had to be to build the Incan palaces or the Egyptian pyramids without current technology. How had the Polynesians figured out how to navigate the Pacific centuries ago ? And aside from these accomplishments, what did earlier people know about how to live in harmony with nature ?
Wade Davis was our guest as we asked : What ancient knowledge most impresses you ?