The death of a 20-year-old woman is intuitively worse than that of a 2-month-old girl, even though the baby has had less life. The 20-year-old has a much more developed personality than the infant, and has drawn upon the investment of others to begin as-yet-unfulfilled projects.
Interpretation
The loss of a young adult is perceived as more tragic than that of an infant due to their developed identity and potential.
This quote by Ezekiel Emanuel explores the complex nature of life valuation, suggesting that our perceptions of loss are often shaped by the development of personality and the potential of unfulfilled endeavors. The quote highlights how we attribute greater significance to the life experiences and aspirations of individuals who have reached maturity, contrasting it with the potential life of an infant who, despite having lived less, has not yet formed a distinct identity or invested in future projects.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the value of life and how we perceive its worth.
There's nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, in trying to bend every child to match a one-size-fits-all notion of what it means to be a boy or girl of a specific age. Better to set a few parameters and then go with the flow. Call it 'jazz parenting.'
We had a big controversy in the United States when there was a limited number of dialysis machines. In Seattle, they appointed what they called a 'God committee' to choose who should get it, and that committee was eventually abandoned. Society ended up paying the whole bill for dialysis instead of having people make those decisions.
Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
As an academic, what do you have? You have the quality of your work and the integrity with which you do it.
Our dad hugged us and kissed us so much that some friends and relatives complained that he was going to turn us into sissies or homosexuals. But my dad didn't care. Let them raise their kids in a reserved and reticent way. He grew up in Israel, and his boys were going to be hugged and kissed by their father and know they were loved.
Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.
Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.
I've always thought that a lot of the problems in the world would be solved if a spaceship did arrive, then anyone with one head and two arms and two legs would be your brother! It wouldn't matter where they were from or what they believed or anything. It might be good for us.
If we are not even free anymore to decide something as basic as what we wish to eat or drink, how much freedom do we really have left?
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
The government was set to protect man from criminals-and the constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed at private citizens, but against the government-as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Man... cannot learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far or fast he runs, that chain runs with him.
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