European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 10, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                New York times Suter value of one we Fawn to million Brigitte Gerney being extricated from beneath a 40ton Crane last a photo by William Greer new York times when a construction Crane fell on Brigitte Gerney last May As she walked along manhattans third pinning her for six the City leaped into hundreds of police officers rerouted traffic throughout the upper East two cranes were brought from other boroughs to lift the one that had doctors from Bellevue Hospital set up a Mobile Hospital at the construction Emer gency service Rescue workers risked their own lives to save once she was the police halted traffic for 30 blocks along Franklin Roosevelt drive to Speed her trip to the emergency no City official questioned How much the Rescue Effort Cost the or whether saving gurneys life was Worth the to do so would have been Unthank theres no Point where you say that too sex said Thomas speaking for the new York City police putting a Price tag on human life is a common activity among life insurance air industries and the Federal government routinely calculates the value of a having been required to do so by Law executive order issued by president Reagan in february Ordinary citizens make much the same deter i albeit when they choose Small cars Over larger ones take jobs hundreds of feet below ground for higher or buy inexpensive houses in a flood Plain instead of More expensive ones in safer the fact that americans put a Price on human the processes for making such valuations and the ways in which the results Are used raise questions about our society is this necessary what Are the ethical and moral considerations Given the an where does human life stand in this society scheme of things people have been calculating the Worth of their lives and the lives of others for As Long As Archaeol anthropologists and historians can document human it May be thought to be an aberration of our own institutional but its not at All unique in the course of said Kenneth an anthropologist at Dartmouth in tribal and band for we find indemnification for the loss of a life that involves property How else can those groups set straight the fabric of the society when it is distressed by the disorder of a murder the aztecs in the 15th Century created an elaborate system of compensation for injuries and deaths so did the code of Hammurabi of ancient in both ancient and medieval a or sum of was paid by a guilty party to satisfy the family of the person he injured or in old English the word meaning mans referred to the amount paid to the who had lost a subject to the lord of the who had lost a and to the family of the there is a fundamental Many social scientists Between calculating the value of a life to compensate for its a common prac Tice throughout the and determining whether it is Worth a practice growing More common we cannot argue that in our society human life has gained in value or that we cherish life More than primitive people said Robert an archaeologist at Brandeis i think looking Back at our society thousands of years from people will regard some of the things we do with absolute the fact that we knowingly allow people to die from environmental for some philosophers say the value of human life is infinite or individual human beings Are utterly Irre said Daniel director of the Hastings a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to ethical is sues in Medicine and biology in new insurance Legal scientists and Agency administrators Are assigning life values ranging from a few dollars to Many millions of depending on the formulas one Way of figuring value is to break Down the body into chemical elements 5 pounds pounds 9 ounces Botassi 6 ounces 6 ounces a Little More than 1 ounce magnesium and less than an ounce each of Copper and Harry an Anatomy professor at the University of Illinois medical school in said that on that basis a human life today is Worth up in six years because of another approach is to look at the going Price of contract Andreas Santiago recently told the los Angeles police department that he was paid to kill Lorraine the 67yearold widow of a san Fernando Valley Fahey says that in Page 14 the stars and stripes a Gist 1985 new York a murder contract can Cost if it is for or and the life insurance Industry determines what people would have earned had they what is the economic value of an individual said Robert director of the new York office of the american Council of life its their earning Power Over the course of their working its unsentimental but its fairly Lee a lawyer since has been representing the victims of air plane crashes and their says his formula is specified by but the Law varies from state to in for people Are Worth what they would have while in new York they Are Worth what they would have contributed to their a 35yearold killed in a is unmarried but was making a great amount of Kreindler that a Small Case in new but a huge Case in Kreindler said that today crash victims families could expect to recover Between to with a few cases in the insurance experts say that in the Case of the air India jetliner that crashed in Many passenger claims against the airline would be limited to a Maxi mum of under the Montreal an International but that there is no limitation in claims against the aircraft then there Are the Federal governments executive 12291 requires unless Congress forbids regulatory action shall not be undertaken unless the potential benefits to society from the Regula Tion outweigh the potential costs to performing this cos Benefit analysis Means that government agencies must put a value in dollars and sometimes cents on human the Federal aviation when analysing the costs and benefits of proposed regulations or Revi Sions in old figures that a human life is Worth according to John a spokes the he is for the environmental Protection Agency chooses a number Between and million the Agency officials is arbitrary with the average being around million or according to John the Deputy assistant administrator for the occupational safety and health administration uses a scale of million to million the decision is Agency administrators Federal officials argue that these computations make economic sense it helps them decide which regulations will protect the most people for the least amount of we Haven got infinite said Edwin Dale a spokesman for the office of management and if it would Cost an Industry million of remedial action to save one then it would Only take lives before they would use one fifth of the Kip an economist at Duke University who directed the Council on wage and Price stability in the Carter supports the govern ments use of the willingness to pay approach an economist looks at How much Money employees must be paid to accept a certain level of risk in their jobs the economist can then calculate the value employees place on their own for a certain Job carries a fatality risk of one in every workers in a year and work ers Are willing to face that risk for in additional then that group values one of its members lives at times or Viscusi figures that the average Blu Collar worker puts a million to million Price tag on a workers in High risk industries like mining and Oil Rig where the death risk is 1 in value life at about he and White Collar who Are much less willing to accept the risk of fatalities in their relatively Safe Price it at million to we always have to get Back to the fundamental Trade off Between Money and because we dont have enough Money to eliminate All the Viscusi a new heart being lowered by surgeons into patients Chest up file photo heart transplant Lach of donors a big problem by Robert Furlow associated press a continuing shortage of hearts for transplanting Means no end soon to the wrenching decisions of who will or wont get life prolonging under such recipients will still be chosen on a wide variety of criteria including ability to pay huge Hospital Bills according to surgeons and others speaking last month a meeting of the National task Force on Organ transplantation in the Reagan administration is currently weighing the idea of expanding Federal medicare coverage to include heart but speakers at the meeting said that  solve All even though such a Federal move would almost certainly be followed by surging growth in transplant Federal officials at the hearing asked the task Force established by a Law passed last fall for help in developing qualifying criteria for accepting or rejecting patients if and when such a program is approved by the department of health and human those officials spoke As if it were almost inevitable there would be some sort of Federal medicare approval has been Long awaited by transplant supporting groups even though Likely disqualification of elderly patients could mean eligibility would be severely the 407 heart transplants performed in the United states last year represented a 400 percent increase Over the number just two years showing the explosive growth in such but a fact Sheet supplied by the task Force quoted a recent study As saying there Are As Many As people who could Benefit from heart and speakers at the hearing suggested the rate of approved by healthy americans who later die in some Noheart related Accident or other is showing no signs of any big Lack of donors is a big added Jack chief of the cardio thoracic surgery Section at the University of Arizona medical Center in Copeland suggested that allowing private businesses to enter the system of human Organ procurement would provide a financial incentive that would do wonders for providing but no one on the task Force leaped to embrace that there seemed to be wide agreement on the panel concerning some transplant eligibility criteria such As relatively Good health other than heart but several speakers also opposed the idea of detailed government we Are very Loath to get so said John a Federal official meeting with the i would agree rather strongly with replied panel member Paul chief of the transplantation unit at Massachusetts general Hospital in one of the things that troubles me he is the possibility that rejection of patients with certain perceived drawbacks would mean never knowing whether those drawbacks were really my concern is that we will limit Progress rather strictly by he that a bit unfortunate for the Federal government to be standing against As for the Money with no current Federal coverage and far from Universal coverage by private insurance or theres certainly financial no doubt about said Michael director of cardiac transplantation at the medical College of he added that some hospitals routinely demand a Down payment if a patient cant prove insurance coverage for a transplant operation that can run into Many thousands of if medicare were to a tremendous amount of the discrimination would he the stars and stripes 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