Andrew Sullivan posted a link to a video about the UCLA medical center’s recent transplantation of a hand onto a 26 year old woman who had lost hers in an accident. The video runs 7 and a half minutes. It is hard not to be affected by the wonder of it all–technological triumph, and new lease on life that medical technology is giving this woman.
But how can it be that such videos are produced with a complete absence of any account of the costs involved? Teams of doctors, world class specialists, gobs of anti-rejection drugs, months of rehab… at a time when health care costs are part of a national debate. Not even to speak about the stunning unfairness of it all, when 10s of thousands around the world have been maimed by US actions.
There is in the end a kind of pornography to it.