X-Message-Number: 4242
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 95 09:55:11 EDT
From:  (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Suicide Ships

>From: Jim Davidson <>
>
>Have you heard of "flags of convenience."  Many nations have very
>different attitudes about medicine than the US, and the standard
>flags of convenience, Panama and Liberia, are not very uptight about
>what happens on the ships they register.

They aren't uptight about how much you pay the crew, how many people
are in the crew, and what hours they work, how you keep your ship up,
and the like. Thats why people use them -- it makes for much looser
regulation on how you conduct your shipping business. See the
excellent biannual by the Economist Research Unit called "Tax Havens
and their uses" for a summary of this sort of issue.

This is not to say that they tolerate ANYTHING on ships in their
registry, however. In particular, it is far from clear that they will
tolerate what they might consider to be murder.

As for their "different attitudes about medicine than the US", well,
were that really fundamentally the case one could simply do
suspensions or odd proceedures on land in these countries (Panama is
fairly close by) without having to deal with the enormous expenses and
risks of running a hospital ship.

Perry


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