Medical Device Makers In Ethical Dilemma Over Continuing To Prolong Dick Cheney's Life

9/17/03 - Save a life, or indirectly save thousands of lives by sacrificing one? This was the hotly contested debate at Tuesday's session of the annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Conference in Washington D.C., a normally insipid medical device symposium that brings together the top doctors and manufacturers in the industry. At center of the debate was one of the industry's top benefactors of angioplasty and stent technology, the former and current bankrolled-by-Halliburton Dick Cheney.

Cardiologists have come to commonly refer to Dick as the "medical de-Vice President," a reference to the numerous mechanical and structural devices that keep him alive. A full report on Cheney's "Whereabouts of Medical Devices" was unavailable indefinitely.

While past conferences have strictly focused on the positive aspects of prolonging life through new advances in medical technology, regardless of profit, a keynote address given by Dr. Bot Doo, Head of Cardiovascular Surgery at Baadu Baaboo Hospital in Boobaa Duboo, Oobadooba, sent the agenda into absolute chaos as heated debate gripped the conference.

"If our products, and the procedures to install them, are only available to the elite class that can afford them, while said elite class engages in an aggressive foreign policy that targets lesser fortunate classes numbering thousands, maybe millions more, are we actually saving lives, as a whole, when installing little metallic components into one human?" concluded Dr. Doo.

In a related conference down the street, neurologists were debating using stent technology to prop open the memory centers of the Vice President, as he gives the appearance that he is dangerously uninformed.