I am severely peeved about a Katrina story I just saw on CNN.
I am severely peeved about a Katrina story I just saw on CNN. Well, not just saw; I needed some time to calm down because it turns out I can get rather angry about some things. This still may not be particularly articulate; maybe I am irrational (not).
What's the story? The story is how volunteer professional help from Illinois was sent to save 1200 frozen embryos from a New Orleans hospital (and how they found the first children born from those embryos after Katrina and how isn't this all wonderful and heart-warming and and and). Yep, somebody in the story says something about how isn't it wonderful those 1200 lives were saved.
o.O
I ... kind of don't know what to say. The numbers being used to talk about Katrina are that 1800 people died. Overwhelmingly in New Orleans. There is some dispute about those numbers, because it's always difficult to calculate these things and this was such a mess that it wouldn't be possible to have an absolute number. Even if you went with the lowest numbers I could find, though, which are over 900, this isn't about the numbers per se. This is about the decision to use precious resources in the middle of the compounded disaster of the response to the disaster of Katrina to save embryos, rather than already alive human beings.
The only date I could find for this was that it occurred two weeks after Katrina hit, which means some sort of proper disaster response was starting to occur by then. Nevertheless, there were still people without homes, dependent on whether or not an aid agency could provide them any kind of shelter, drinkable water, MREs. There were still people living under tarps, not even in buildings. It was still a mess. Maybe there is some sort of dreadful algebra of necessity that said we don't need to worry about the living, now, we've met their needs and I just don't understand.
It says Louisiana law considers embryos people, so maybe they had to do this. Did they rescue all the potential frozen embryos in New Orleans? Maybe these were the only ones so there weren't others to rescue. Maybe of the families they found who later had children from those embryos, only the white families agreed to be on camera.
I don't know. All I know is that something about this whole story instantly rubbed me very much the wrong way, and even if I can't articulate it, something just feels deeply wrong.
What's the story? The story is how volunteer professional help from Illinois was sent to save 1200 frozen embryos from a New Orleans hospital (and how they found the first children born from those embryos after Katrina and how isn't this all wonderful and heart-warming and and and). Yep, somebody in the story says something about how isn't it wonderful those 1200 lives were saved.
o.O
I ... kind of don't know what to say. The numbers being used to talk about Katrina are that 1800 people died. Overwhelmingly in New Orleans. There is some dispute about those numbers, because it's always difficult to calculate these things and this was such a mess that it wouldn't be possible to have an absolute number. Even if you went with the lowest numbers I could find, though, which are over 900, this isn't about the numbers per se. This is about the decision to use precious resources in the middle of the compounded disaster of the response to the disaster of Katrina to save embryos, rather than already alive human beings.
The only date I could find for this was that it occurred two weeks after Katrina hit, which means some sort of proper disaster response was starting to occur by then. Nevertheless, there were still people without homes, dependent on whether or not an aid agency could provide them any kind of shelter, drinkable water, MREs. There were still people living under tarps, not even in buildings. It was still a mess. Maybe there is some sort of dreadful algebra of necessity that said we don't need to worry about the living, now, we've met their needs and I just don't understand.
It says Louisiana law considers embryos people, so maybe they had to do this. Did they rescue all the potential frozen embryos in New Orleans? Maybe these were the only ones so there weren't others to rescue. Maybe of the families they found who later had children from those embryos, only the white families agreed to be on camera.
I don't know. All I know is that something about this whole story instantly rubbed me very much the wrong way, and even if I can't articulate it, something just feels deeply wrong.
In my persona as devil's advocate:
ReplyDeletePeople tend to do what they know how to do and have facilities to do, when they set out to help, and if these people were trained in dealing with frozen embryos, it's what they would be best at doing, and if they didn't do that they probably wouldn't have done anything. It's also easier to save a thousand embryos than a thousand people - they take up less room and just need power to keep the freezers running, not an ongoing influx of food and water and access to sewer-equivalent.
As for the white people thing, I'd be a little surprised if a modestly-sized statistical selection of frozen embryos from much of anywhere had many not-white phenotypes represented - IVF is kind of horrifically expensive last I checked, and sure, white folks don't have ALL the money, and yet.
I'm not saying it wouldn't have rubbed me the wrong way too, though; it certainly would be trivially easy to present it in a godawfully tacky fashion whether it actually was or not.
Valid points. Just for information, the people sent were a group of 7 Illinois Conservation Police and 3 Louisiana State Police. It seems the Illinois police brought boats with them. If I understood correctly, they brought one or two of the doctors with them, probably because they knew where the embryos were, but basically all they did was pick up the containers and keep them upright in the boats until they got them somewhere they could be appropriately stored. Presumably they needed the police because they had the boats and maybe could assess the safety of the building and probably as some sort of assumed safety escort. However, I still don't get why they needed 10 officers for a small scale operation.
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