Better win that lottery quick!!

Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers - Yahoo! News:

"Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:
_People older than 85. [ginger says: remember we are living longer these days]
_Those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings.
_Severely burned patients older than 60.
_Those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer's disease.
_Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes."

My guess is that even if Bill Gates or Ted Turner or whatshisface with the really bad toupee were over 85, or had a chronic disease, or Alzheimer's .... they'd find a way to save them.
What if the person who knew how to come up with the cure was in a crash and could tell the cure with just a bit of an operation ... do you let them die and take the cure with them? Or do you spend the 3 hrs on the operating table but let a bunch of sorority chicks who's goal in life is to star in a 'Girls gone stupid' video??
I'm sorry - but there are a few things in this list that simply do not qualify as being reasons to let someone die. Diabetes for instance ... unless they figure that there won't be any new supplies of insulin, but then they should state that as a reason instead of making these people feel as if they are a burden on society - especially the kids that suffer this disease, or actually as my mother would have corrected me "its not a disease, its an inconvenience!" (mom suffered from was inconvenienced by it).

You know what? This reminds me of "Restraunt At The End of The Universe" (book #2 of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Universe" quintuplet. If you haven't read the book or heard the BBC broadcast dramatization -- spoiler ahead.
In the book, all the telephone sanitizers (along with other 'non-essential' personal) are conned into boarding a space ship and are launched into space; they end up surviving on some planet and the people who ditched them in the first place die of a pandemic - caused by an unsanitized phone