After Gary Hobish collapsed while swing-dancing with friends in Golden Gate Park Sunday, a fellow dancer raced to the nearby de Young Museum in search of a defibrillator. Most people in the group knew Hobish, 70, had a heart condition. Seconds counted.

Inside the museum, Tim O’Brien found himself pleading with a staff member to let him use the life-saving device, or to accompany him back to where Hobish, a legend of the Bay Area music scene, lay unconscious. O’Brien offered the museum staffer his wallet and his watch as collateral.

The museum staffer checked with his boss, but the answer was firm: The de Young defibrillator could not leave the building.

O’Brien sprinted empty handed back to the group, where a doctor who had luckily been on the scene was administering CPR. Paramedics arrived a few minutes later, but by then nearly 10 minutes had gone by, O’Brien said.

But I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends

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[–] bumblebeehellbringer@hexbear.net 59 points 1 year ago

This is what happens when society is centered around profit. The need of the institution to avoid liability, potential liability, is put higher than a person's life. The staff member probably feared they'd lose their job or be retaliated against if they made a real decision. The boss made a choice to defend the institution at any cost.

What a fucked up system.

Life saving necessities are right there and they're systematically denied to the ones who need them. We have enough housing to house the homeless. We have enough food to feed the hungry. We have enough medicine to heal the world. Yet doing all these things is a threat to profit, and so instead we feed bodies into the profit grinder, and the capitalists become rich and powerful on their blood.