Comments | buster: What's the easiest way to save a life?

buster

What's the easiest way to save a life?

Jan 16, 2009 14:24

I heard a This American Life about someone who gave their kidney to a stranger, after a long string of bad luck on the donatee's part. Also, my friend's husband just went through a crazy 3-year ordeal trying to get him a new kidney. It seems like a no-brainer. We should all save a life by donating a kidney. The risks aren't actually that high ( Read more... )

Comments 17

tarvie January 17 2009, 04:57:04 UTC

I just listened to that "This American Life"!

Two pelicans ate a meal, and then one of them asked, "Where's the bill?" HA!!!

I think that everyone's saving lives every day because of the butterfly effect. You are saving a life just by sitting at your computer reading this instead of walking into the street in front of a truck, which would cause it to swerve and hit a young mother with a baby carriage. You're a hero!

thewicked3000 January 17 2009, 14:33:37 UTC

What about in a social rather than medical way, like volunteering at a shelter or food bank, tutoring children, staffing a runaway hotline, etc

billetdoux January 17 2009, 23:53:46 UTC

Recently I was at someone's house and they were watching this travel show about Alaska. It was about the southeast panhandle and the blue whales and whatnot. The person I was with asked me if I had been there, and if that's what Alaska was like. I struggled with it a bit, because yes, I had been there, but... only parts of alaska were like that. Eventually I found my tongue and explained that while that's Alaska, it is some 900 miles from where I grew up - roughly the distance from Seattle to Los Angeles. It's easy to think of countries and other regions as these uniformed-sized blocks that are equidistant from the other blocks and all of the same sized. Viewed through this prism, your potato statistic sounds ridiculous. Thinking of it differently, though, it could be perfectly logical. The Idahoans send potatos to canada and the georgians get them from the Yucatan, which are both closer. Borders don't have to mean anything, do they? I believe that a single statistic almost never represents a problem, and it almost never represents a ( ... )