Myth#63: We Are Our Brother's Keeper?

Myth#63: We Are Our Brother's Keeper?

Many of us have heard the tape where the 911 Operator pleads with a nurse to give CPR to a woman who has fallen.   The nurse refuses to help the woman in the assisted living home because it is against policy.  The woman dies, persumably because no help was given. 

The initial debate in the media centers on the policy in the assisted living center, but to me the existance of a policy, good or bad, is not the real issue.  Does it make sense in a life and death situation that someone has to refer to a policy, to a written manual to know what to do?  We have our entire life to learn and study and develop our own moral code.  Is this a decision that can be delegated to someone else? Can the nurse, as a person, get off the hook because someone else has decided that letting the woman die was the right thing to do?

If the nurse knew she might get sued for trying to help and instead doing CPR wrong, would that change what is right and wrong?

Are we our brother's keeper?

Let's apply this principle to yesterday's question.  Should we be willing to work a shorter work week, make less money, if more unemployed people would now have a jobs? And what would happen to the economy if more people had jobs?

Is helping others the path to helping ourselves, the path to helping the economy?