jont wrote:MGF wrote:Horse wrote:One of my pet hates is when, in news interviews, medicos proudly say how many "lives they have saved" by their new intervention. Uh-oh, no. They just die of something else, later.
Saving a life doesn't mean making someone immortal. I think you have missed the point. The fact that we are mortal doesn't negate the benefit of saving life as and when it is possible.
Only if it's 0 cost to save that particular life in that particular place. Otherwise, as we don't have limitless money, there is a downside for somebody, somewhere else.
There are of course, competing beneficiaries but in most cases the person saved benefits from a longer life.
We seem to rate the importance of saving life by how it comes to an end. We are more accepting of death by natural causes than we are of killing oneself which is more acceptable than being killed by someone else's carelessness, which is more acceptable than being killed maliciously, I think.
It may be that the sudden and violent nature of road traffic casualties and the fact that they are caused by people's carelessness makes for a greater desire to reduce them.
Horse wrote:...the event is delayed and that person is given the opportunity to have a different fate.
That is the meaning of the word 'saved' in this context. It is a correct use of the English language and it also makes sense. Apart from situations where time of death can be predicted with reasonable accuracy all discussion on the value of life presupposes mortality otherwise there could be no value to life at all and no basis for saving it.