When defibrillators were fully deployed in emergency vehicles in a pilot program in Ontario, Canada, the survival rate of cardiac arrest patients increased by more than 20 percent. That extrapolates to 21 additional Ontarian lives saved annually, about one life per 120,000 residents. Unfortunately, the abundant benefits of defibrillators are much less vivid than the tragic results of fiery crashes. These sorts of calculations are distasteful to many and may be part of the reason for both the absurdly excessive punitive damages awarded in the GM case and for the lack of outrage over emergency vehicles without defibrillators. The perception of heartlessness seems to galvanize people more than does a simple desire to save lives.
Human lives are priceless in many ways.
But in order to reach practical compromises, we must at times place a finite economic value on them. It s better, I think, to be honest about this and work to increase this value than it is to indulge in histrionics. This is still huge as another recent figure in the news indicates. The negotiations for reparations from German companies to 300,000 surviving slave laborers hit a snag, just before the 60th anniversary of the beginning of World War II, Sept. 1, 1999. Professor of mathematics at Temple University, John Allen Paulos is the author of several books, including A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and, most recently, Once Upon a Number.