Situation:

You are a middle class 45 year old woman, you and your husband have been slogging for as long as you remember to create some decent saving. You have a 15 year old son who aspires to study in US of A. Suddenly one fine morning your mother calls up and says cousin ABCD had called up saying that there is a cure for Parkinsons and she needs Rs500K to take your 75year old father who has very severe disease. You say you will answer in a day.

You call your sister, she says that she is totally broke (which you know is true) but adds that she would have gladly given everything she had.

You research and find out that the treatment is only 25% successful, so the choice is your son’s career / future OR a probable addition of a few years to your father’s life.

What do you do?

For the record – this lady refused and was called selfish by her mother.

On the technology front SANIsoft finally shifted from BNC co-ax < gasp > to a switched network. Now to read more about packet sniffing on a switched network. I read it is much more difficult but not impossible. Don’t ask me why and what 😉

  • dude.. I cant believe you were on BNC till now

    • everybody has some skeletons in the cupboard – this was mine 😉

    • I’m still on BNC unfortunately.

  • That’s a difficult situation, but based upon the relatively low chance of success, and the high probable success for providing the means for a child’s career, the career (and the fact that the child has his/her whole life in front of them) would have been my choice.

    As for the BNC network, that’s amazing 😉

  • the link

    Actually my dad has Parkinsons too.
    Can you give me a link to this treatment?
    Not that i can afford it Just want to know more about it.
    I am very suspicious of most such new treatments.

    I think the decision made was the right one.

    Just some random thoughts on how one can logically arrive at such a hard decision
    When a decision threatens your sanity then those
    Decisions must be based on (increase in quality of life)* (expected lifespan) *(probabilty of success).

    Or in such decisions use an evolutionary biology perspective
    ie How will it help our future generations?

    • Re: the link

      I dont have an actual link – will ask and let you know, the treatment involved a brain surgery, So I guess it is one of those things in which some fibres of the internal capsule are ablated. I guess parkinson + surgery should throw up more than necessary links at google OR yahoo.

      I find your POV very rational.