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Demography 365
by biological and social causes, has become something depending for the most
part on psychological factors. Mortality, on the other hand, has become an
occurrence concerning which society has more and more to say. The progress
of medical science enables us to cope better and better with diseases, the causes
of which lie within the individual himself. However, the therapeutic treatment
is so expensive that there is a danger of no longer being able one day to give
everyone the benefit of such treatment. Society comes up against an economic
obstacle in applying the principle referred to above, according to which every-
thing must be done to save a human life. Perhaps it wil be obliged to choose
between free medical care for all and, for example, the motor-car and colour
television. Naturally, everything wil still be done to restore the would-be
suicide to life. The condemned man wil still be given the medicines his body may
require, even on the eve of his execution. Mother and child in danger of death
as the result of an attempted abortion will still be saved, and the driver of a
motor-car who has been hurt in an accident for which he is responsible will
receive just as much medical attention as his victims. Attacker and attacked
will continue to find themselves next to each other in hospital. But all these are
exceptional cases, as can be seen resulting from some sudden crisis and the
relatively small number of which has no perceptible impact on a country's
economy.
The demands connected with the treatment of old people's diseases wil be of
an altogether different order. They wil present themselves more and more fre-
quently until in the end they become part of the daily routine, and an important
fraction of economic activity wil then have to be devoted to meeting them.
If the burden becomes too heavy, a series of choices wil have to be made; as
a rule these wil be anonymous, and will be effected by means of credit alloca-
tions. At the executive level, regulations wil inevitably be inhuman.
Our society has not been morally prepared for the advent of this age of social
mortality and the whole subject calls for research. This is certainly beyond the
scope of the demographer, but he could make a useful contribution thereto.
42. Purely economic considerations concerning the 'cost of human life' would
no doubt be of help in reaching a solution, despite the fact that many illusions
exist about this way of presenting things.
Economic development has no memory: the present and future alone count
in its scheme of things. If a factory which has been 90% built shows itself
economically useless, interest dictates that construction be stopped forthwith.
The same applies to a human being. Whatever may have been spent on his
training in the past, his economic usefulness has to be judged according to the
present and future situations.
43. We have pointed out how the priority accorded by humanity to the saving
of human life might be questioned if the notion of individual responsibility in
the series of events leading finally to death were more broadly interpreted. It
seems unrealistic in this series to isolate the final event and leave out of account
the events which have led up to and explain it, and in which individual responsi-