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Alex · 12-16-2008, 03:34 PM

I know it is cold and heartless, but on a cost benefit basis, is spending $1.2 billion* justified to save 1 life per year? It would be way more effective to allow that one kid to die and require pool owners to send $5,000 to Africa for water purification tablets (I know, that's not particularly fair, pretty much any home grown safety measure is not cost effective compared to purification tablets for African water).

*Article says 240,000 are not yet compliant and that change costs $1,000 to $15,000. So using a picked as a guess number of $5,000 per retrofit that is $1.2 billion still needing to be spent.

ETA: When the EPA does impact assessments for proposed regulations they value a human life at $6.9 million. If we assume that the new drains will last 20 years, work 100% perfectly and therefore save 33 lives, that is a value of $36.4 million.

12-16-2008, 03:34 PM	#1
Alex . Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 13,354	I know it is cold and heartless, but on a cost benefit basis, is spending $1.2 billion* justified to save 1 life per year? It would be way more effective to allow that one kid to die and require pool owners to send $5,000 to Africa for water purification tablets (I know, that's not particularly fair, pretty much any home grown safety measure is not cost effective compared to purification tablets for African water). Article says 240,000 are not yet compliant and that change costs $1,000 to $15,000. So using a picked as a guess number of $5,000 per retrofit that is $1.2 billion still needing to be spent. ETA:* When the EPA does impact assessments for proposed regulations they value a human life at $6.9 million. If we assume that the new drains will last 20 years, work 100% perfectly and therefore save 33 lives, that is a value of $36.4 million. Last edited by Alex : 12-16-2008 at 03:45 PM.
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