Friday, January 11, 2008

New Zealand in the news

Two stories from the Kiwi state:

One: Mountain climber Sir Edmund Hillary died.
He was the first person to ascend Mt Everest in 1953. But he also didn't stop there: Later he raised funds for schools and hospitals for the locals.

Two: NZ authorities refuse to allow a Samoan baby to enter the hospital for treatment.

The facial anomalies could be chromosome related, with a bad prognosis, or merely an anomaly that requires surgery but is not necessarily life threatening.

The doctors forbad feeding the child to hasten the death, but someone smuggled food into the Samoan hospital so the kid lived. I wish I could say I've never seen doctors do this, but I can say that all the babies were indeed fed by nurses who ignored the doctor's orders.

There is a racial aspect to all of this since those helping the child all have Samoan/indigenous names...

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