STOP MEDICAL MARXISM August 12, 2009
Dear Friends and Readers,
I’ve said this before, in longer pieces. Doubtless I will again.
There is one — and only one — solution to the mess our medical
system presently finds itself in. That is to remove the real cause of
the mess, not to drive the system even further into a state of medical
Marxism.
America needs — meaning it cannot long survive without — a
Constitutional amendment mandating total separation of medicine and
state. “Mandating” means “making mandatory”, giving it full force of
law.
A Constitutional amendment mandating total separation of medicine
and state.
Anything less, the tiniest bit of government interference with
medicine at the national, state, or local level will simply end us up
right back where we are, since that’s what caused the mess to begin
with.
A Constitutional amendment mandating total separation of medicine
and state.
Along the way, we’ll reinstate the confidentiality between doctors
and patients that used to exist — a confidentiality as sacred and
unshakable as that between a lawyer and his client or a priest and his
parishoner.
A Constitutional amendment mandating total separation of medicine
and state.
Write to congress. Write to newspapers. Write to every web and
blogsite. Call radio talk shows. Go to townhalls. I ask for no credit,
no acknowledgement of any kind. Just tell everyone you know, everyone
within the reach of whatever kind of voice you command that America
needs:
A Constitutional amendment mandating total separation of medicine
and state.
Thanks for “listening”,
L. Neil Smith
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments»
Neil, sounds great, but the ammendment would probably mandate a tax to pay for implementing the requirements, and it would never pass, any way. All those who depend on the workers of this country to support them in the manner to which they have become accustomed would demand that we not take their “rights” to slave chains away from them. Then, the politicos would cave, and the amendment would die.
Okay, okay, I’ll stop nitpicking. I would cheerfully sacrifice one Democrat and one Republican on the altar of Hippocrates to get the gov’t out of healthcare, so if not nitpicking will help, I’m game. And, I’ll spread the word wherever I can. But, I’ve gotta tell you, this TYOE THE TWO WORDS thing is very annoying, sometimes, I can’t figure out what the hell the words are.
Oh well, I can’t even spell TYPE, so why worry about the security words.
The problem with medicine in almost the whole world is that our medical technology is at the cusp of being overpriced and ineffective and fairly priced and 100% effective. In too many things we’re at the braces and iron lung level instead of the Salk vaccine level. Unfortunately we’ve got some very light weight braces (arm and leg braces, not the ones used by orthodontists to impose penance for sins against natural/sexual selection) and iron lungs and too many people in the medical industry (not a system, an industry) invested in making lighter, more efficient prosthetics instead of vaccines.
This is made worse by too many companies not wanting to cough up their own money to do research and expecting Uncle Sugar to cover the bill for them (hey wasn’t this point made in our earliest correspondence?). Toss in insurance companies that won’t pay for authors’ Basset coils for a busted foot but will pay for similar treatment for star athletes and you have our current mess.
So rather than go to honest free enterprise everyone turns to the government to cover the tab and make the rules so that inflated stolen profits push out probably larger honest profits in the medical/ health care industry.
Meanwhile some media talking head gets to fill his rice bowl explaining why Something Must Be Done (and you can hear the caps in his voice) about our health care system (it’s a friggin’ industry not a system, dammit).
Disclaimer, my daughter is a doctor. Also 32, good looking divorced or in the process of getting divorced, and not romantically involved as far as I know as she lives across the state from me. Sorry shameless plug and matchmaking.
Mr. Perez, you’re not quite right.
Oh, hell, you’re wrong. Medical technology qua technology tends actually to decrease the costs of doing most stuff while making possible stuff that hitherto could not be done at all.
For example, when I was in training back in the ’70s, Bilroth II procedures (”ulcer surgery”) virtually filled the OR schedule. As an intern, I heard guys griping about having to scrub in for yet another one of those boring procedures.
Today - after the use of H2 blockers and especially the proton-pump inhibitors like omeprazole and pantoprazole - young surgical residents flock to the operating theater to watch a Bilroth II being done. They’re rare as hell.
Remember Bastiat? “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen.” If you’ve never read it - or Henry Hazlitt’s _Economics in One Lesson_ which is largely based on the principle discussed in Bastiat’s essay - you need to do so. You’re focusing on “That Which is Seen” and missing “That Which is Not Seen.”
The real costs afflicting the medical industry (and “the health care system”) are found in the horrible waste imposed by government regulation, particularly market restrictions designed explicitly to screw the consumer while offering the illusion of ensuring safety,
And, yes, I’m speaking of occupational/professional licensing as well as the billion-dollar gymkhana to which every new chemical entity (NCE) is subjected en route to becoming an FDA-approved medicinal product.
Ask your doctor daughter about abolishing governments’ medical licensing and you’ll probably get an initial reaction of pure horror. Then ask her about which certificate on her “I Love Me” wall means the most about her qualifications and abilities as a physician: her medical license from the state of whatever, or her professional board certification.
I predict that she will pause, think furiously, and then admit that getting her license out of a state bureaucracy - while it means the difference between being ALLOWED to practice her profession and make her living and being personally and professionally ruined - matters massively less than the honest of her training and skill in the actual care of her patients, as judged by a scrupulously skeptical board of her real peers and preceptors.
One more thing you ought to remember from Bastiat, particularly applicable to this “health care reform” bushwah.
“Government is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.”
R.D.- Do not be so hard on Al, both of you are correct in some ways. Al, in his assertion that being invested in the status quo, and refining said status, causes the stifling of innovation. You, with the assertion that refining current technology can lead to advances in that particular endeavor, AND in often unrelated areas.
What we need is a government panel to study this phenomenom.
HAH, Made you both gag. Just joking with that one, we NEVER want the gov’t involved in anything, other than dying out.
I still claim there are too many people committed because of income and political power To doing “the same old thing only better ” instead of developing and approving new and better techs (this includes improved meds and vaccines), methods of developing same and always methods of payment. The failure to perfect this last is what is behind the current “Health Care Reform.”
Also I stick to my guns on complaints of companies relying too much on gov’t subsidies. The entire stem cell research fuss was not over whether companies were legally limited to a few stem cell lines but over the government not coughing up the money on research using other lines.
In many way we are caught betwixt and between in the medical sciences and tech. Next year’s (well next decade’s) stuff will be much better, last years stuff was expensive but worked. “Health care reform” will commit us to improving last years stuff instead of inventing next years as the bureaucrats take over.
I just re-read my last and realized I left something out. Your contradictory statements are only contradictory on the face, because it mostly depends on the mindset of the entity doing the refining. Individuals look for the innovation. Organizations look for the quick bottom line. Either one of your results will come true, depending on the model used. And this gets me to Neil’s point, THE GOVERNMENT!!! Since refining requires far less red tape, and puts the product in the marketplace quicker, the bottom line being profits pushes the shorter sighted companies away from true innovation. This post is the result of my mind running away from me and wandering the streets without competent supervision. I started in the first one to make a point, and forgot to finish it.
Mr. Perez, damned if I don’t agree with you on a lot of that.
First, you’re right. There are a lot of hogs at the trough. The big pharma companies, for example, _like_ these billion-dollar regulatory hurdles for a number of reasons. Like tariffs, these high costs associated with FDA Office of New Drugs (OND) compliance very effectively freeze out not only domestic upstarts but also foreign competitors, quite commonly obliging small innovator companies outside these United States to license sales rights to U.S. corporations because they haven’t got the financial wherewithal to get their products approved. Or they form partnerships. The established players in this marketplace make out like bandits on other people’s hard work and genius.
But “what is behind the current ‘Health Care Reform’” is most definitely NOT failure to develop “new and better techs” but rather the distortions in market function inflicted by government regulation.
It’s perverse. A lot of people decry the “me-too” medications, for example. Esomeprazole to replace omeprazole in the “blockbuster” ulcer drugs category. But why do these guys in pharma do this?
Well, cop a clue. If it takes better than a billion (that’s “billion” with a “B”) bucks to get a new chemical entity from discovery to market approval - and that’s way to hellangone above and beyond whatever money the federal government may have “invested” in grants to scientists - the pharma manufacturer has got to get some kind of big damn return on that investment.
Moreover, a the overwhelming majority of promising NCE’s that looked cute in the government-funded science labs do not get through that development process, which gets more and more expensive as it passes from animal testing to Phase I to Phase II to Phase III and then to pre-registration.
Not only a billion bucks for esomeprazole, but millions, billions of bucks for other NCE’s that never got through the FDA approval process.
If your business doesn’ t make back those expenses on the pharmaceuticals that _do_ get to market, you are OUT of business.
The “me-too” drugs are more of a sure thing, and with the money bleeding away like that, they _need_ sure things.
What’s “is behind the current ‘Health Care Reform’” bilge is the Blue Wing of the great Boot On Your Neck Party playing bread-and-circuses games to tickle their grasshopper core constituencies, seeking to grab control of 20% of the nation’s GDP in one prehensile swoop.
What you perceive, Mr. Perez, is what these socialists want you to perceive.
Think “matador” and “cape” and “long pointy steel shaft getting shoved into your chest.”
As for stem cell research….
Do you conceive that any company was going to put stockholders’ money into that area without first making sure of political buy-in?
Watch. They get a good, trustworthy, effective biological product out of that stem cell research. They need marketing approval. They go through all the hoops, jump the flaming pit of death, swing successfully across the machete-wielding horde of rabid chimpanzees, and arrive on the platform where they expect to receive a big smack on both cheeks from the FDA and….
“Congressman Smortwangler and Senator Grabbyhands have told us that you’ve gotta do some more five-year effectiveness studies before we can give you approval. Sorry as all hell, but they’ve got us by the budgets.”
Oh, yeah.
I think one problem with medicine is that the traditional medical establishment tends to dismiss as ‘hocus pocus’ a lot of traditional beliefs. Without, btw, having even TESTED such beliefs, to see whether they are true or not.
A good example that comes to mind is acupuncture. Which was dismissed as ‘hocus pocus’ or a ‘placebo effect’. Until someone actually did test it and found out that it worked on animals.
There are a lot of other examples. For instance the belief that carrying an amethyst helps recovering alcoholics stay on the wagon. Which is dismissed as ‘hocus pocus’, even though no-one has ever done a study on it. I don’t know why, seems to me an experiment along those lines wouldn’t be too hard to devise. Get a bunch of new recruits to AA, give some of them large amethysts to carry around, give others some identical looking peices of purple glass, and still others some chunks of clear glass (in case maybe the color purple turns out to have an effect on alcoholism). A year later, see what percentage of each group is still on the wagon.
Methinks Mr. Bartucci and I are saying the same thing and maybe not catching what the other guy is saying quite correctly.
“Health Care Reform” is a consequence of the mentality that delays and blocks the development of new tech in medicine not an answer to it or a response to it. Once it is implemented it will make the situation worse. I think that’s what I was saying, anyhow that’s what I meant to say.
Going back to the polio example (got it from S.M, Stirling’s Dominion of the Draka series even though the thing eventually really never survived on my read more than twice list):
A. With Government subsidies prosthetic companies develop of better leg and arm braces for victims of polio. Lighter weight, more “lifelike” in their mobility, some even powered to increase strength. Secondary use for accident and war wound victims encourages advances.
B. Insurance companies agree on standard price that guarantees
manufacturers “fair profit.” Government will subsidize at this price through Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.
C. Crazy guy by name of Salk introduces polio vaccine. Government drags out trials, welfare agencies won’t subsidize its use, nor will insurance cover. SF types think is greatest thing since sliced bread. Media, encouraged by people with vested interest in status quo, play up risks and fail to honestly report success in preventing spread of polio. Math to process stats too complicated for their pointy heads.
Gov’t managed medicine will freeze our med tech at level where government took over through choking money to developing new med tech, denying payment for those who use it, and most probably incarcerating physicians and patients who choose to use it and pay out of their own pockets.
Increased Government control of medicine will screw up everything the Health Care Industry (not a system!) is doing right and exacerbate everything they are doing wrong.
Re: stem cells (specifically embryonic stem cells): was it reliance on government subsidizing research that led to Big G burdening with regulation, or overregulation that led to companies getting hooked on subsidies? Either way overregulation and dependence on subsidies is a lethal one two punch.
i think we’re both saying that Government managed health care will slow down advances in medical technology, interfere with effective implementation of existing medical art, and raise the price to boot.
So keep the government from grabbing (more) control of the Health care industry.
“For instance the belief that carrying an amethyst helps recovering alcoholics stay on the wagon. Which is dismissed as ?hocus pocus?, even though no-one has ever done a study on it.”
No one’s stopping you, Ms. Morgan.
Please understand that I don’t say that to be snarky; there’s a specific reason. In science (including the social sciences), we look for something called “nomological necessity” in theory-building. There ought to be some theory linking two empirical phenomena. This is why no one does a study of whether changes in hemlines really cause changes in the stock market. It’s a spurious correlation. For better or worse, the wider accessibility of more powerful tools for statistical analysis leads more people to believe that what turn out to be purely empirical constructs actually mean something, or mean something other than what they really mean (*cough* bristlecone pine data *cough*).
Lacking a theoretical basis for a reason to suspect (not necessarily a conclusive warrant to believe: “knowing with certainty” is an unnecessarily restrictive requirement) a relationship between amethyst-carrying and sobriety among alcoholics, you’re unlikely to get someone else to fund it. You could arrange with an AA chapter to run the experiment, though, if they’d be willing to agree to it (based on the content of their program, though, I doubt it).
Mr. Perez, I think we’re connecting. You cite S.M. Stirling, so let me give you John Ringo, who maintains (by way of his publisher) sample chapters of several of his books online.
Specific reference is drawn to http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416555536/1416555536___6.htm (chapter titled “Daddy Is Under The Roses” from his novel _The Last Centurion_.
On your Web browser, use the “Edit”/”Find” function to locate the first use of “CDC” and read through from there.
Wherever the word “plague” comes in (twice), substitute “CDC study” in your mind’s eye.
This pretty much summarizes the findings of that much-underplayed CDC study, and points pungently to the faults in any system of government-strangulated “health care delivery.”
–
“This was what the good doctors at the CDC learned when they set out to prove that American healthcare, with its dependence on the free-market, doctor/patient choice, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies was far inferior to the enlightened healthcare of ’socialized medicine’ countries.
They discovered the irrefutable truth that when you put the same sort of people that run the Post Office in charge of your healthcare you get Postal Workers for health care providers. And more people die in less necessary ways.”
–
Or, to quote Lew Rockwell just yesterday:
“Writing in _The State and Revolution_ in 1917, Vladimir Lenin summed up the economic aim of socialism as follows: ‘To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service….’
“Incredible, isn’t it? After centuries of treatises and miles of paper and tubs of ink, this is the great historical turning point: government employees carrying sacks of paper mail from house to house — and operating at an economic loss.
“It’s fascinating how it all comes down to the post office, again and again, in the history of public policy. And so it is in our time, with Obama’s admission/gaffe/slip concerning the post office and its analogy to what he wants to do with healthcare.”
Now now, R.D. that is not fair. You know the postal workers will never accept the pay cut necessary to become gov’t paid doctors.
I spent from about 2 AM to 2 PM of 15 July 2009 with my mom in the emergency room while she was waiting admission to a room. To be fair the Emergency Room staff was busy most of the time most of that time saving her life and stabilizing her condition so that she could be moved to a room. The personnel involved were quite solicitous of her well being, going over and above. The nurse who took care of her (and probably several other patients and who happened to be a former student of mine {who by the way claims she didn’t remember me}) worked hard to cut through red tape to help my mom get a room. This was at a private hospital.
Until it became a a teaching hospital associated with Texas Tech the local county hospital had a reputation for somewhat less efficient care, especially in its overcrowded emergency room. The emergency room is still overcrowded. They are trying harder and doing fantastically better, but to be honest they are swamped with people who don’t have insurance and private practitioners.
Proponents of public health care claim their efforts would solve this, but my observation and stories told me indicate the opposite is more likely. Consider the example of the Veteran’s Administration. I have seen them provide decent care, but I also know a lot of peolpe who have unkind things to say about how the VA met their needs inadequately.
I am concerned that the reforms being proposed will turn a big chunk (not all, but way more than worth the trade off) of American health care into a copy of the VA at its bureaucratic worse.
and more about why I don’t trust public health care.
A couple of years ago the Governor of the state of Texas gave an executive order requiring that girls entering sixth grade get vaccinated with Gardasil against HPV. This way the (expensive!) series of vaccinations would be covered by CHIPS (essentially a public health insurance program) if people could not afford the vaccination.
The legislature overturned him as he exceeded his authority. This is quite correct. Unfortunately a big part of the reason they overturned him was an outcry that that vaccinating kids against an STD would encourage sexual promiscuity. Keeping teenagers from acting like teenagers was valued higher than saving lives. Conversely, HPV negatively affects the health of a minority of those infected with it (Same same genital herpes by the way). So should girls who will not get infected and/or who are already resistant to the negative effects of the virus have to take the admittedly slight risks inherent in any vaccination to protect the minority?
Do you want your health care dependent on the judgment calls based on the moralism or lobbying skills of whoever has enough votes to sway the legislature or bureaucracies? Or would you rather control your own fate as much as possible? Remember, no matter what gets written into the current bill, eventually we will end up with legislators and bureaucrats deciding what care is available at any price.
I’d rather have that decision made by my physicians and me, not some bureaucrat off in Washington or even the local city hall.
Anyone familiar with the gun rights debate will remember that it always starts off with, “We’re only going to…” Only there is always a misuse of government power and a failure of the first law to accomplish its stated goals leading to more restrictive laws. Government health care can be trusted to take this slippery slope.
Ken: I don’t think you understand my point. I agree that it is *unlikely* that carrying an amethyst would help alcoholism. Although it is possible. There are a lot of things we don’t know about the universe. But my point is that the medical establishment really cannot say for CERTAIN that it does not help, if no study of the matter has ever actually been done. No feild of science should ever make any definitive statement (either for or against) about any subject which has never actually been studied.
Mr. Perez, the 12-hour stay in the Emergency Department you describe tends to be par for the course in almost every hospital, at least throughout my personal experience ranging back into my days as a house officer. I’d get a patient stable in the ER, the chart all “buffed” and ready to go upstairs, and then there’d be delays.
Environmental Services (”housekeeping”) wouldn’t have the room ready for the new patient. Change of shift (the big one) carved out an hour just before the end of each nursing shift, and no nurses ever wanted to bring a new patient aboard in the two hours preceding change of shift or the two hours immediately after they’d come on shift (many chores to take care of).
When I was practicing in the ’70s and ’80s, one of the hospitals on which I served as a staff member had a neat solution built into the Emergency Department. Just abaft the nurse’s station, we actually had two semiprivate rooms - each with two standard med/surg beds and all the amenities, including bathrooms - into which we could admit patients waiting transfer to the nursing floors.
Sometimes we’d hang onto those patients for a day or more, and it really wasn’t any big deal. We could initiate definitive treatment right there, with their attendings and consultants rounding on them as usual. All the diagnostic and therapeutic departments were always coming down to the Emergency Department anyway, and the patients got something more comfortable than a Gurney and a bedpan in the corridor.
Why the hell they don’t design Emergency Departments that way now I simply do not know.
A colleague of mine - a surgeon urologist - is going through pretty much what you’ve described with his mother, and he doesn’t get any breaks cut for her out of regard for his membership in the “fraternity,” I assure you.
As in warfare per von Clausewitz, there is “friction” in hospital medicine that chews away at efficiency and quality of care, and most of it is aggravated by bean-counting attitudes more typical of government-run (and “union shop”) institutions than in the charitable or for-profit sector.
But it’s still pretty much everywhere.
Given our head, doctors and nurses and the rest of the people directly involved in patient care can figure out (and have figured out) lots of ways to keep patients and their families safe and comfortable while squeezing the eagle for all it’s worth.
But we’re not in control any more.
“Write to congress. Write to newspapers. Write to every web and
blogsite. Call radio talk shows. Go to townhalls.”
How often has this worked? Even when the government fails to gain control over some aspect of our lives, it continues to creep in. All the letter writing in the world barely stops them from disarming us, I don’t see why this will be any different.
The last thing I want is for people to think of the current state of affairs as the “free-market” solution. I’ll stick with letting the government destroy itself so maybe, someday, people will realize that government violence never solves anything. It looks like that time is coming a little sooner every day.
Well, Red, I always did say that Libertarians win the world prize for thinking up good excuses for sitting on their asses and doing nothing in the face of enemy action. Here you are, proving me right again.
You’re probably younger than I am, and didn’t see my generation (which has admittedly done some really crappy stuff, too) put an end to a war. Even now, the Establishment is reeling under the very pressures I urge people to continue to exert with regard to medicalized Marxism.
Whether it is effective this time or not, nobody can predict. I do agree that we can’t go on fighting them a single issue at a time, but must choose instead to attack them on a broader, more fundamentla basis — like Bill of Rights Enforcement.
But I do know that the easiest way to avoid the hard, grimy work that might lead to success is just to lie down and accept defeat before the fight starts. I’ve watched libertarians and conservatives alike doing it for over forty years.
And next time, Red, have the _cojones_ and the courtesy to use your real name.
Putting end to war was only part of it. People between 18 and 21 seized political power that was rightfully theirs.
And proceeded to piss it away so that by 1980 our choices for president were limited to a proven incompetent and a geriatric former actor.
The battle cry from 1967 through 1974 was “we will change the world!” By 1986 young people were saying “What we say doesn’t matter.”
As little as I care for Obama’s policies at least he got people saying “yes we can.” Don’t you youngsters (Under thirty five) dare start saying “Why bother to try?” so soon.
If we shut up and let the bastards do it to us they will. Resistance is not futile. But don’t complain that you were robbed when the burglar paraded past you with your stuff and you had a weapon in one hand and a cell phone to call 911 in the other (for someone to come pick up the corpse, of course) and didn’t use them.
I apologize for not using my name, I didn’t realize you expected that here. Some of what I said was poorly worded. I don’t want to let the government destroy itself, I want to be there pushing, too, peacefully of course. I just don’t see fighting every issue (like you said) as the answer.
I haven’t been a Libertarian since I was dumb enough to join the military, but I do enjoy sitting on my ass as much as the next guy. Since then, I’ve spent months teaching people to shoot and hopefully the freedom and joy associated with being able to defend and feed yourself. I also do what I can to advocate a stateless society. I want to change the world, but I don’t think being involved in politics is any solution. It hasn’t worked for the Libertarians, and it didn’t work for the Paulites. Hell, the best the anti-federalists could do was get a few promises. Which aren’t honored. You’re fighting crooks and murderers at their own game.
Your generation may have put an end to a war, but wouldn’t that mean you are also responsible for the two we have now?
Al, are you saying that when a group seizes political power, they soon frack things up? I can agree with that.
And I don’t own a cell phone, I’ve got a dog to feed. Too bad politicians don’t rob us personally!
I hope this made more sense.
Okay, a cordless house phone, since I specified a burglar. I guess feeding the corpse too your dog obviates the need to call in the meat wagon.
I;m still getting many a laugh from the time my neighbors across the street from where I was living at the time shot a burglar and had to borrow our phone to call the cops. The response they got boils down to “You tagged him, you bag him.”
While this showed great respect for liberty it weakened my trust in the state as a protector of life, liberty, and property.
Can’t see much sense in trusting them with my health care either.
Hmmn. I do see your point that way too many folks are more’n willing to whine and complain, but few are willing to act. But that is not necessarily a sign that they don’t care - just that the opportunity cost of taking more direct action is not yet higher than the cost of “suffer[ing], while evils are sufferable”, a phrase I remember from some obscure 18th century political treatise or other.
This health care “debate”, though, seems to have become the vehicle for the whole individualist/statist argument to boil over. Some rather remarkable things have happened in the past couple of weeks. William Kostric made a HELL of a statement when he strapped that pistol on and held his sign (oddly enough quoting the same obscure writer I cited above). The story has legs, and it has already inspired others.
The most remarkable thing about the whole situation, though, is the fedgoon’s reaction. There was more went on in New Hampshire than came out, Kostric was not the ONLY armed activist who the “Men Who Would be Kings” became aware of. So far as I know, there were NO arrests. Now we’ve had another tizzy over armed protesters in Phoenix - and again, no official action.
I tend to sympathize with “Red” above about political action, even though I do a lot of it. Something exceptional seems to be happening of late, though. Activists are going eyeball-to-eyeball with the tyrant wannabes - and “The Men Who Would be Kings” blink. The idiots in the mainstream media ranting and raving about how horrible it is are accomplishing nothing but to help spread the word about how WRONG the statists and their worldview is. Interesting times.
Hunter, did you not read Neil’s response to RED? Please, we are all friends here, and we like to know who we are talking too.
“And next time, Red, have the _cojones_ and the courtesy to use your real name.”
If you stand up for your beliefs, be proud of it no matter who you offend, piss off, or cause to erupt in raucous disbelief. Hell, they might even agree with you. Here, we will welcome anyone with the COJONES to state their mind, even if we disagree. Welcomr to the true home of free speech.
(shrug) If I signed as anything but “The Hunter” nobody would know who it is. I am hardly unknown to more than a couple of names I see posting here. Ain’t hardly my first rodeo.
http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/hunter.html
Real name is Jeff Jordan, I am in the phone book in Lyndeboroguh, NH. I suspect no more than a half dozen people remember that. I’ll keep signing as The Hunter until Neil tells me otherwise, if I decide to listen even then (laugh).
My take on this differs a bit. The real home of free speech will let anyone use whatever identity they choose, without asking any questions. Especially in these times. There can be a lot of perfectly valid reasons to post under a nom de guerre.
Apparently, While trying to save my friend, El neilbo’s, shoulder, I have put my pedal appendage in my mouth. I can only tender my apology, and claim youth and in-experience combined with long and faithful aquaintance to explain it. Sorry, Hunter. I knew Neil’s shoulder has been making it hard to type, and since I am relatively new to this computer crap, I am un-familiar with you. I have known Neil for years, but we had fallen out of touch for a while. I was only trying to save him the effort of writing that again. No insult intended, hopefully none delivered. Please let me know, because that appendage tastes like horse shit (I own 12, So I should know)
(laugh) No worries, lad. I’ve spent several years walking alone in the dark places of the earth. Kind of a ranger’s lot I fear. Thought I should drop in and see what El Neil is up to before I have to head out again. Hadn’t been in the mood for writing most of that while, and for assorted reasons most of the places I wrote are off the net now. My “real” identity was never any particular secret, and since I got dragged into court and made to justify my online existence even less so. (shrug)
I know what you mean about speaking up and being counted, but I’ve come to feel over the years that “the Hunter” is as real a name as the one I proudly bear from my parents. Which may just be a sign of vanity, or the onset of age or something.
To return to the topic at hand, though, I am really fairly impressed with what has been happening lately. The statists are really getting their heads handed to them. I even begin to faintly hope we might get outta this without things getting ugly. But, then, their capacity for stupidity and greed never ceases to amaze me, so me an’ my thousands of little brass friends will just keep watching and waiting.
Thanks Hunter, and I share your hope, but I am afraid we’re both wrong in it.
Hmmn - one way or another, it appears to me that something is gonna break soon. Somewhat depends on just how stupid the “Men Who Would be Kings” are. If they retain enough low animal cunning to back off and bide their time, things may calm down for another few years.
There seems to be an air of desperation in some of them, though, so they may well keep pushing and touch off something. My guess would be some continuing unrest of a fairly civil sort, then a fairly massive “throw the bums out” in the 2010 midterms. Whether the general public has yet seen enough of the man behind the curtain to realize that putting the OTHER bums in is not gonna fundamentally change anything or not I can’t even hazard a guess.
Her’s my favorite pipedream.
1st, in 2010 we loose nearly all incumbents from both parties to third party candidates (preferrably Libertarians, but almost anything would be better). These new people ram through-
2 the elimination of the Electoral College, restoring enough TRUE HOPE that-
3 Millions more people vote than ever before bothered, now that every vote WILL TRULY COUNT and we finally get aTRUE CHANGE.
Yeah, I know, NOT FREAKING LIKELY, but I can dream, can’t I. But until then, I’ll collect little brass friends myself, and keep food animals in the barn, and a large crop in the fields. PS, not all of my horses are gelded, so who knows, in 5-10 uears I may be the new supplyer of the only transportation the government can’t raise the emission standards on.
(laugh) Could well be. I hope not, I’ve done a fair bit of trail riding in the Rockies, including one day where we did 17 miles back up into the Weminuche wilderness area. Dad kept asking me how I was holding up, it wasn’t until we hit the divide that he finally admitted that HE wanted a rest. (laugh)
Anyways, fun as an occasional ride is, I wouldn’t want to have to go back to that full time. Wrong direction entirely, I want ioncopters and airships and flying cars and spaceships.
My observation on election possibilities is that there is only one political force outside the statist parties that has a real possibility of running their own slate. That’s the gunnies, if they ever decide to go that way. The one pro-freedom group that keeps consistently winning political fights, and can mobilize their troops on amazingly short notice. A lot of them have finally gotten it through their heads that they are never gonna get a fair shake from either wing of the statist party. Question now is, what are they gonna do about it…
(blink) Egad, we’ve wandered off a topic cliff haven’t we?
AAAAHHHHH, I’M FALLING!!!!! This is one place where no one seems to care, so why worry? I love hoerses, but I prefer my F250 better. An ionopter would be cool, but I’m afraid of heights. So you try one out, test it for 2-3 years, then maybe I’ll GULP, try one on for size. I f you ever plan a trip to the Corning, NY area, e-mail me first and I’ll make you some fresh eggs. I may be slightly overeweight, 6′3, and male, but I can cook for any friend of Neil’s who cares to stop by.
I’ll keep it in mind; I’ve been through Corning, though I’ll admit that I tend to take the shortest path possible through New York any time I am travelling. They are not exactly friendly to folks like me who believe in being appropriately equipped to defend myself “in the gravest extreme”.
Come on up to New Hampshire for one of the Free State events some year. They hold a campout every summer, and started a conference in early spring a couple of years ago. I’ve missed a lot of them myself in the past year or two due to work commitments, but they are always a blast, and a fair number of folks from New York come up.
One of my brothers worked on control systems for a “flying car” prototype based on the Williams turbojet a few years back. The technology is definitely there, like a lot of other things the politics is what is holding us back. The aerospace companies can definitely build something that would be as easy to handle as your car, but the FAA would never let them put it out to the public. Lotta that going around.
Sounds good, I’ll try next summer. I’m too broke this year, but next years looking good.
Just FYI, As a physician of 25 years, early in my career I was castigated for intense use of technology rapidly on admission because of the “excessive cost.” On review and comparison with all other physicians in the hospital my average length of stay was 2 days LESS than theirs and the overall cost of stay was LESS than theirs BECAUSE of intense use of technology. Rapid diagnosis and treatment SAVES money. “Wait and see” COSTS money. Capitalism takes risks and uses innovation. That’s what works. Govt/socialism care will grossly limit innovation, restrain rapid care, cost HUGE amounts, and give poorer quality. IT’s been proven repeatedly.
I go to a dentist who aggressively seeks out and uses new technology. Some of what he’s found (and in some cases helped develop) is really amazing. I really did a double-take when I heard him ask for the “particle beam” the last time I was in there. Turned out to not be accelerated ions, but more or less a micro-sandblaster for teeth.
Funny thing is, his prices are very reasonable. So he works fairly cheap, is much faster than any other dentist I’ve ever been to, and his results are just amazing. This is what technology can do for you.
Doc, I just wish the government and the insurance companies would get the hell out of your way. The medical profession is FAR better at your job than the politicians are at theirs. I agree with El Neil’s often-stated belief that we’d be living longer and healthier if the doctors suffered less interference from well meaning but woefully uneducated officials.
Ain’t it the truth, Hunter. The only innovation the government wants to see is one that gets more dollars out of our pockets, quicker than before. If it is helpful, healthy, or fun, IT MUST BE STAMPED OUT !! Also, H, do not mention your dentist by name (not that you are the kind to make that mistake), because the AMA, the Surgeon General, and probably the ATF and HSS (Homeland Security Service, my name for them) will raid him and put him in jail as a dangerous subversive.
Recently it was reported that Americans are living longer and dying in fewer numbers.
This of course constitutes a health care crisis that requires government intervention. All comments about swine flue,
West Nile VIrus, the STD de jour, and whatever journalists are freaking out about aside, the big problem coming up is diseases related to old age.
the big question (and it’s out of my kid’s specialty, so she is not a good source of info. blast it!) is whether “youth extension” can and will be developed or whether we will go on lurching on to next crisis until luck runs out treatment.
the other question is which one government managed health care and the current insurance industry is organized to pay for/
(laugh) I am sure he’s on their watch list already, he has a lot of dangerous free citizens as patients.
What the govgoons have never figured out is that liberty-minded folks are WAY better at using new technology than they are. There’s more of us, and we tend to be both more innovative and more apt at creatively using new tools we’re handed, if not indeed more intelligent. The vast majority of their followers have been kept intentionally ignorant of far too many subjects, and not-so-subtly discouraged from thinking for themselves.
That is part of the reason that in the long run statism is utterly doomed. Not to say they can’t kill a lot of people in the meantime, and utterly ruin the lives of entire generations. But I tend to agree more with Princess Leia than George Orwell - “The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers” rather than “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” Brits might put up with that guy with the boot that long, but Americans will shoot the bastard pretty damn quick.
Speaking of boots, did you ever read Jack London’s The Iron Heel?
OK so he was a socialist but he saw the essential flaw of statism. His big error was thinking that capitalism leads to a corrupt state when in fact the state is a tool for corrupting capitalism.
I only vaguely remember that one, sorry. I loved “White Fang”, and “Call of the Wild”, and several of his other books.
Point taken, though. I think its more basic yet than that, though. The state IS corruption in one of its purest forms.
Oh, Al, sorry, missed your other post. I’ve seen some fairly credible studies which seems to suggest that there is no theoretical reason why current or near-term medical technologies won’t eventually extend life far beyond what is possible today. Again, we come back to the politics.
There’s another (sort of) related phenomenon that I want to bring to the discussion. Have you noticed how often the theme of dying gracefully or accepting that your time has come has been popping up in movies lately? And, to my mind rather ominously, in a lot of kids movies, of all things. Not entirely sure WHAT Hollyweird thinks they are saying, but they sure seem concerned about driving home the point.
people going underground to get life/youth extension treatment which their rationed public healthcare won’t cover for them but which seems available for political, financial, and media leaders and of course the glitterati. Persecution by cops and neighbors who lack money and/or gumption to do same.
Seems like short story subject, Even if already used, good to (re) explore in one of the themed editions analog has been printing lately
Dr. Nielson, the noise I’m getting from the National Socialist (formerly “Democrat”) partisans on physician Web sites has been about physician compensation predicated upon outcomes calculations along Byzantine formulae incorporating everything on the QA Committee nit-picking list up to and including QALY (quality adjusted life year) estimates.
I’m personally concerned that if outcomes-based compensation is implemented, a great many specialists will look at each referral to a great extent on the basis of whether or not the patient involved is likely to come a-cropper, and therefore screw up his “quality of outcomes” rating. It seems that such a system of incentives (and disincentives) is virtually designed to shunt the most desperately in-need patients directly into those “death panels” of which the Republicans are maundering.
Seems like yet another HCFA (nearly was MAMA, now CMS) ploy not only to screw the “health care provider” out of reimbursements and compensation, but also to “control costs” by triaging more and more patients directly into the “leave ‘em to die” classification.
Like something out of _Soylent Green_, seems to me.
You’re obviously a skilled and experienced hospitalist; I’m just a primary care grunt. What’s your take on this?
I’m hungry, hurry up and die. Soon, it will be necessary to hurry Grandma out to the woodshed to smoke. This will become your civic duty. Your birth certificate will come with an expiration date. (Yes, I stole it from a story I read, maybe Spider Robinson) Or maybe a LIFECLOCK as in Logan’s Run. Personally, I’d rather shoot every asshole who pushes the whole medical reform BS. The biggest problem today seems to me to be regulations. Every regulation seems to suck a little more incentive to improve things out of medical practitioners. As a plumber, I may not know much about medicine, BUT I do know shit, and the gov’t is definitely full of it.
What?! Amorie is engaged in some sort of prostitution-qua-eugenics program?! But… but… that’s not fair! If it improves the genes of the next generation, then it’s not fair to other spacing families who wouldn’t or couldn’t do the same thing, and if there is some hidden genetic problem with the fathers, then it’s not fair to the unborn babies!
And by specifically choosing men with healthy genetic profiles, she is denying other men the RIGHT to have sex with her!
Besides which, it’s impossible to engage in selective breeding, like the Nazis did, without ALSO engaging in genocide, like the Nazis did. Obviously there is a secret airlock somewhere around where Amorie and her relatives are killing thousands of people, and you just haven’t told us about it, Neil! Shame on you!!
(Just a little bit of sarcasm from the crap responses I was given on another supposed pro-freedom forum regarding my position that people have a right to engage in eugenics on a voluntary individual basis via either deliberate selection of the healthiest possible mate and/or genetic engineering)
Remember, you are also denying the rights of mental and physical defectives to be born, suffer, and die in misery if you prevent the use of genetically damaged materials in conception. Despite my personal stance against abortion (Gasp, horrors, yell at me later) I firmly believe in the right of people to carefully rweed out problems in future offspring.
Neale Osborne wrote: <>
Oh, that’s different! That’s NATURAL!! (Sarcasm)
Thing you have to understand, Neale, is that the notion of ‘freedom’ which the people on this forum had in their heads, was apparently that since we were ‘free’ (relatively speaking compared to now) in the 1800’s, freedom therefore consists ONLY of crouching in an unheated log cabin and starving to death half the time.
Why they were in favor of guns invented AFTER this time period, I still don’t know.
Thing is, there are 3 things, call them the 3 C’s, which people do to domestic livestock, and which tyrannical governments seek to do to people. The things done are:
1. Crippled: Which means you mutilate the foot of, put a leash on, or otherwise control the movements and action of your livestock. This can consist of MENTAL crippling as well, btw.
2. Clawless: Which means you remove any dangerous body parts or other weapons. Including horns, teeth, claws, and guns. This can also consist of MENTAL declawing, or somehow removing the desire of the animal to do violence, even in it’s own defense.
3. Castrated: This means more than simply removing the ability of an animal to reproduce. It also means that the reproduction of that animal is CONTROLLED, to select for certain traits or against other traits. This selection is not necessarily the same selection an animal would choose for itself, or even for traits that are good for the survival of the species. They may be traits that are obviously BAD for the survival of the species, like hairless cats, but which are desired for whatever reason, by those controlling the reproduction.
An awful lot of people who claim to be libertarians, in favor of freedom, and would not see the human race crippled or clawless, ei, they would not prevent people from owning certain vehicles, or immigrating to where they would like, or owning any weapons of choice, miserably fail in the third category. They would see the human race castrated, and one way or another, control the sexual and reproductive behavior of others.
In which case, I would label them as back-door authoritarians. If you control human reproduction (of others), then long term, through selective breeding, you will also eventually control their capacity and desire for mobility, action, and self defense. And this includes control by ANY means at all, including killing ‘undesirables’ as the Nazi’s did, or subsidizing ‘undesirables’ which all welfares states do, or preventing people from voluntarily engaging in reproductive practices or using reproductive technologies that happen to offend your personal religious or aesthetic opinions.
The owner of this other forum btw, (this person knows full well who they are) will be considered by me to be a fraud and a hypocrite, and not in favor of freedom in any sense at all, until they change their opinion on this matter. I have thrown away all of my books which I had by this person (despite their having a lot of otherwise useful information), and will not buy any more until they publicly alter their position on this matter.
Sorry, should have read above:
Neale Osborne wrote: “Remember, you are also denying the rights of mental and physical defectives to be born, suffer, and die in misery if you prevent the use of genetically damaged materials in conception.”
Oh, that’s different! That’s NATURAL!! (Sarcasm)
(then the rest of the stuff I wrote)
Thanks, Ann. SOmetimes my sarcastic little shit gets too obscure, and for a minute, I thought he’d done it again. No offense was taken. If in doubt, ask Neil. He’ll confirm that while I’m weird, I am definately NOT AUTHORITARIAN. I am (at least one of the) one who paraphrased the following “That government which governs best governs least. The government which governs least leaves us the fuck alone”.
Just to clear the air regarding abortion, ’cause I know that sooner or later someone will get pissy regarding it, please read the following before yelling. My objections ARE philosophical, although totally non-religious. In fact, just the opposite. There is, at this time, no conclusive proof (or disproof {is that a word?}) that there is any survival of a personality after death, nor that an unborn baby is sentient, I am opposed to abortion on the grounds that we may be destroying that person’s only shot at the whole enchilada. In cases of rape or incest, it is necessary to prevent implantation or even do a D&C, sad but true. To save the life of the mother, hypocritical but necessary and also, sad but true. But, in ALL concensual sex acts, you accept the risk. if the egg implants, give it birth the adopt it out. A morning after pill is fine by me, as thirty percent of all “pregnancies” never implant, therefore are never even known to occur. I am not preaching, just either stoppingfuture arguments, or kicking off a whole new bag of worms. Sorry to ramble on, and a little off the general topic, but now it is out there. Catch ya later.
Speeding help in Scotland…
As the first road traffic specialist lawyers in Scotland please see this video to realise our service is not just for the rich and famous…
Neale, sorry for the WTF, but “WTF?”
Neale writes: “I am opposed to abortion on the grounds that we may be destroying that person’s only shot at the whole enchilada. In cases of rape or incest, it is necessary to prevent implantation or even do a D&C, sad but true. To save the life of the mother, hypocritical but necessary and also, sad but true.”
Okay, let’s take it in no reverse order:
1) Therapeutic abortion in a life-threatening situation, where mitigation cannot effect decent prospects of salvaging either conceptus or pregnant woman. No-brainer. If the pregnancy is going to kill the host, _both_ are going to die. You triage, and if the conceptus has zero chance of survival (too early in gestation for the neonatologists to work their wizardry), it’s time to get out the snickersnee and make fetus salad.
2) “In cases of rape or incest….” Ah, goodie. The conservative hypocrisy. It’s okay to administer the RU486, or do a saline stick-and-flush, or dilate that cervix and shove in the suction tube/curette as long as what’s in there is the product of forcible rape or incestuous copulation, and that’s because….
Er, because what?
Well, the product of incest is EVIL and bad and automatically malformed, and life not worthy of living, right?
Not necessarily. Not even most of the time. If the conceptus is viable, chances are that it’s going to come out without much more in the way of adverse characteristics than if the parents hadn’t more than the degree of consanguinity we find in the average marriage in a small town in Minnesota.
You wanna pull the plug on a monster before it gets born? Well, there are genetic assays that can pick out most of the nastiest abnormalities. Shouldn’t there be a bit of wait-and-look before the gynecologist gets out the dilators and starts stretching the cervix open?
As for the product of rape…. Well, the father was a criminal. A violent criminal.
But what did the kid do?
Neale, you’re down as opposing voluntary abortion ” on the grounds that we may be destroying that person’s only shot at the whole enchilada.”
So the “person” produced as a byproduct of violent rape is not entitled to his/her opportunity for that Mexican dinner because…?
Re: Abortion debate: Whatever is the right answer you can trust statists to get it wrong, This is because the right answer will not extend their power.
Arguments about abortion get down to,” when does the unborn fetus’ right to live equal or exceed mamsan’s right to control her bod?”. The answer goes back to when does unborn get ensouled, for lack of better word. This get’s into whether or not their is a God(desses), when they ensoul the unborn, and when the divinities feel abortion is murder.
If there is a Supreme Being That One is a greater power than the state, and statists cannot admit to themselves such exists. If there is no Supreme Being, statists insisting that That Ork hubcapne commands obedience to statists as a pillar of their authority goes out the window
Either way, the power of the statists are diminished, which means they have too many conflicts of interest to get the answer right.
You will notice I am staying mum on my opinion on the issue. The main reason is that I am meditating articles in future dealing directly and indirectly with abortion/ right to life issues. hope you find enlightening if when they are published.
Umh, how did “That One” get changed to That Orc Hubcap ne”?
Did you read it carefully, R.D.? I said it was specifically because no-one can prove or disprove when true sentience begins. I am not a conservative, I disbelieve in all the forms of religion I have studied so far, because of two simple problems I find. 1st, there is no way to prove their “God, Goddess, Grand Poobah, Or Whatever” exists. I am not big on the whole “take it on faith. Prove it or shut up. 2nd, ANY DEITY who needs to be “feared” or “obeyed” needs to be immediately destroyed. I fear only violating my own code of ethics. This is why I have a hard time with Rape and incest abortions. I AM A HYPOCRITE on these two, and I know it. The psychological scars to the poor woman are the reason I believe them to be necessary, BUT, for my personal peace of mind, I feel it to be murder. I never claimed to be perfect, just ask Neil, (Well, okay, I do claim it, but only in jest), but I try to do the best I can to avoid violating my ethics. As for statists, I AIN”T ONE!!! I have never known one to get it right. I would prefer there to be no laws regarding abortion. I am merely stating MY OPINIONS and I am a very opinioated man. I would hope for the quick developement of an artificial womb, and then the very few rape conceived babies could be raised to birth, and adopted by those who were not foully harmed by this atrocious act. Didn’t I say this would spark arguments or debates? I must go get ice cream for my kids, will finish the thoughts later. Hope no one hates me, but if so, oh well.
did not mean to state or imply anyone writing here a statist. Simply observing that regardless of facts of issue, whoever right on issue, the law passed by the statists (who need to pass a law to satisfy their psychological issues) can be relied on to be the wrong thing to do abaout problems abortion supposed to address.
Sorry, I was in a rush, kids screaming for Daddy shakes. I left a few things out in my previous. The reason I said “The very few rape conceived babies” is pre-supposing armed women preventing most of the attempted rapes that may occur if we change the world the correct way. My stance on abortion is the ONLY PLACE where I am in opposition to the Libertarian Party, and I do consider myself a die-hard Libertarian. I was one of the earliest signers of the Atlanta Declaration (according to Neil in 1992-3, the most hardcore declaration the L.P. had to date). I will cheerfully water the tree with tyrants blood, and my own if necessary to give my kids the freedoms they deserve. In my newsvine article “Property Rights Party, My New Third Party” I even expand on it as my gun rights stance. But, when I find myself at odds with ANY position, I must use my best judgement to resolve the dilemna. I do not claim to be the only person whose opinion counts, just the final arbiter for MY stands. I remember Cathy (Neil’s wife) and I having a heated discussion about this 16 years ago. Since both of us are hardheaded, we cordially agreed to disagree on this one. So, I guess this is my way of saying I may disagree on one point, but I am still a Libertarian. Unless, of course, we have become another Republican or Democrat party, tolerating no variations in thought amongst our membership, in which case I am a Just-Plain-American, and willing to kill or die to protect my way of life for my posterity. Live Free or Die.
Sorry, Neil, if I broke any of the official Anarchist Rules Of Discourse (HA HA HA)
Some years ago I attended a Freedom Summit… El Neil was there, come to think of it. Anyway, one of the speakers that year was walter Block, who told us he was working on a libertarian property theory based approach to the subject of abortion. I got a bit distracted by other events for several years, and only now find that he finished it. I submit for your consideration:
http://www.walterblock.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/block-whitehead_abortion-2005.pdf
I can’t intelligently discuss it, cuz I haven’t read it yet - this discussion just jogged my memory and reminded me to look for it.
Thanks, Hunter. I’ll read it later tonight.
You’re WAY more ambitious than me. (laugh)
No, I just hate to look more ignorant than is necessary. Besides, maybe he will miraculously remove all my doubts and eliminate the need for this discussion. (belly laugh, milk snort)
Regarding voluntary termination of pregnancy (an “abortion” can be spontaneous), I’ve pretty much got Walter Block’s proprietarian approach to the issue. A woman’s body is her property - and nobody else’s. If she doesn’t want to carry a conceptus, she has the right to secure its “eviction” by whatever means suits her.
I’m all for the “transortion” option a la Victor Koman’s _Solomon’s Knife_, but until that becomes possible, intervention that results in mulching the munchkin is what we’ve got.
As for “when true sentience begins,” Neale, that’s not the term you want to use. Sentience is not much more than elementary and rather undifferentiated consciousness, the capacity for sensory perception and response thereunto. A paramecium qualifies a “sentient,” and so does a fetus by the time it becomes a fetus. Ever watch ‘em on ultrasound? The little boogers flinch and grimace and when you palpate ‘em through the abdominal wall, sometimes they kick back at you. They’re alive in there, no doubt about it.
What you’re working toward is sapience or intelligence, the ability to reason. Think of H. Beam Piper’s _Little Fuzzy_ and the Pendarvis Decision.
It’s undeniable that genetically, the human is potentially sapient from the moment of conception. When does it achieve the ability to reason, to conceptualize in abstract terms? Well, until recently, philosophers didn’t think babies could think until they were able to verbalize, and many cultures had (still have) infanticide classified outside the realm of homicide altogether.
I’m inclined to take the child from the moment of neonatal viability as a “person,” not just an organism. If the kid is even remotely salvagable in a NICU, then his rights to survive are the same as an adult with a traumatic brain injury and a cruddy Glasgow Coma Scale evaluation. Probably won’t make it, but giving up is not an option.
There are plenty of people willing to adopt and care for even a kid with major medical problems. If mom is willing - and only if she is willing, unpressured - she can launch the kid as a kind of gift-of-service and let him go. Women have done it throughout history, and I don’t think that the trauma of separation is anything compared to the trauma of having a viable fetus hacked out of her belly in chunks.
The chewy nougat center, however, is pretty much as Neil and Aaron Zelman had described in their “abortion chapter” in _Hope_*
It’s a stinking business, and I don’t want to euphemize or circumlocute about it.
But, Neale, I strongly advise you to think hard with regard to “In cases of rape or incest….” If there’s a moral difference between a child sired in such a way and a child born of parents who’d mated and cleft to each other in Holy Monotony like something out of a Roman Catholic Parochial school’s textbook on sex education, I can’t see it, and I can’t understand the mindset of someone who could.
* http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle485-20080921-02.html
Did I say I liked my stance regarding rape or incest? no. In fact, I admitted to my hypocrisy. I understand the dilemna of anyone taking a hard look at it. No paramecium is sentient. It has no sense of self. (at least, that is MY definition) My 24 week daughter, now 4 1/2, is proof that many definitions of viable are dead wrong. I loved “Little Fuzzy”, and I get the idea, I just do not compare the two. And yes, a womans body is her property, no doubt about it. A human being, however is not the property of another, until voluntarily given (as in whatever form of commitment you choose to use), and, by my definition, a “conceptus” (what a weird term, but I get it so I’ll use it) is a person, I.E.a human, when it implants. Prevent implantation, as happens roughly 30% of the time if I recall correctly, and no murder. Am I right? I don’t know. Neither do you, if you are honest. In rape, I feel the horror the woman must live with, of the growth of someone that is half of her attacker, outweighs the poor innocent child’s rights, but I hate that decision at the same time. John Ringo deals with it in “There Will Be Dragons” and I truly wish that all rape victims could deal with it that way too, but I am not the man to force her to. I am not a Catholic, so that doesn’t really fly for me. I am trying not only to live up to my ideals, but admit when I can’t. How much more do you want??? At least I admit it when I have a problem. Many do not, or worse, try to legislate away their problem. I,m doing the best I can. I have spent over 20 years forming my stance, and this is hte best I can do. If I go to either end of the spectrum, I violate my core belief. It is the only topic where I am truly, dare I say it, (whisper) Moderate. So sue me.
Neale, in the medical dictionary “conceptus” describes the products of conception within the uterus. This includes the embryo itself, the placenta, the chorionic sac, and the fetal membranes. The whole megillah. What is either delivered by the completion of the third stage of labor or what you’ve got to get out with a curette after an incomplete abortion or placenta accreta (one of the nastier complications of delivery, and one of the reasons why the OB guys earn the Big Bucks and pay the Big Malpractice Insurance Premiums).
Dunno as you can’t call a paramecium “sentient.” It sure as hell responds to a noxious stimulus by trying to get away from it, and that evinces enough “sense of self” to preserve its corporeal integrity. A white blood cell - especially a polymorphonucleocyte - is just about as complex as a paramecium, yet it has no similar sense of self-preservation whatsoever. I’m not claiming to be an authority on this subject (scientifically, philosophically, or theologically), but when you think about it, a paramecium’s single cell is all it’s got (or ever will have), and it “knows” this.
The WBC is part of a multicellular organism, and its purpose is to expend itself in the implementation of the immune response. Survival and reproduction are imperatives for the paramecium. For the white blood cell? Well, if peripheral leukocytes start reproducing, it’s called “leukemia” and it kills the person unlucky enough to be hosting that festival of horror.
I’m not critical of you for being “(whisper) Moderate.” Voluntary termination of pregnancy is a stinking, rotten business, and if I could have nothing whatsoever to do with it, I’d be absolutely delighted.
But I’m stuck with that much-quoted remark by von Mises:
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders, no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle.”
Neale, all of us on this board are participating in society, “non-socialists” though we decidedly are. I can’t duck the responsibility to look at this subject with such intellectual resource as I can bring to bear, and I’ve come to some conclusions, the best damned conclusions I could get at.
I don’t like ‘em much, but then I don’t like a lot of the things I run into every day.
Either a woman owns her own body or she’s a slave - the property of a husband or a father or some walking sperm factory or the bloody government - and that’s not to be accepted. If she finds herself the unwilling host of a conceptus, she’s got the right to dump it or get it dumped, whether it’s implanted or not, even if that kills the little critter.
If she wants to bake it until it’s all light and fluffy and out there peeing on people, I’m fine with that. She can keep it or hand it off to somebody else willing to take the responsibility for it, and that’s the kind of gift-of-service to a fellow human being I’m very happy to accord all kinds of respect.
But I can no more justify forcing her to bear those costs (especially those risks) under compulsion than I am to respond to a drowning victim by throwing a bystander off the dock to function as a flotation device.
Where the hell else can we go with this?
I support our esteemed administrator’s. stance on thie issue of abortion. I do not think the state should deny a woman the right to an abortion.However, I don’t think the state should subsidize her exercise of this right with tax money.
Government mandated and provided health care means you end up doing one or the other.
Not to mention the waiting lines that GPHC will create. Kidll be graduating kinderarten by the time the paperwork for an abortion comes through!
R.D. -First, a favor, if you will. Are you male or female? Initials give no referrance, and, altough irrelevant, I like to know enough to form a mental image. It is solely my peccadillo, but I hate typing responses, so to be honest, I “listen” to you talk when I read it, and I cannot put a voice to the name. If you prefer not to answer, I won’t be offended (not that that should matter to anyone), it is just my curiosity. Now, to the meat of the matter. I am a plumber. A very (so I have been told) intelligent plumber, but still a plumber. All this means in this context is that much medical terminology is not part of my vocabulary, hence the comment “wierd term”. It just felt strange on the tongue, and I don’t recall hearing it before. WOW, that last was an unconscious illustration of the reason for my request. (laugh at myself) I do respect your opinions, SPECIFICALLY because of how you present them in the first person. Personally, I have no experience with abortion other than a female friend crying the day she went for one, 25 years ago. NOT MINE. I find myself becoming less tolerant of opposition to my opinion re abortion as I grow older, and especially since the birth of my 4th child at 24-25 weeks and 1lb13oz. A legal abortion in some areas. Because I understand both the ethical and legal arguments on both sides are often based more on the definition of “life” some have, I have to force myself to not get on my high horse when someone dis-agrees with me. To be truthful, this is the deepest discussion on abortion I have had since Cathy Smith and I discussed the topic years ago, and I am appreciating the opposing arguments points better than ever before. What I am trying to say is this: I respect the philosophical basis for your argument, in fact it is the heart of MY philosophicl viewpoint. My only difference between us is the definition of when the child/conceptus becomes a person, rather than a tissue sample. Leaving any religious overtones out of the following, I guess you could sum my view up thusly (is that really a word?) Pro choice prior to conception, Pro life after. And again, I realize the hypocrisy inherent in my stated opinion, and I know no way to remove it that will make me fully content either way. I just keep on looking, talking, and listening in the hopes that someone, somewhere will say the one thing that will enable me to resolve the whole thing. Well, I have rambled on much more than I intended,sorry.
The question of when a fetus gets a ’soul’ is probably not soluble with the current state of technology. It may SOMEDAY be answered.
The question of when it might possibly qualify as ’sentient’ or ‘intelligent’ or whatever, is a different question that MIGHT be soluble today, depending on how specificly you phrase your question.
For instance: What is the earliest point in fetal developement in which the human brain is physically capable of processing information and sensation in an organized fashion?
This point does NOT occur before the 6th month of pregnancy (although it may occur afterwards). The reason why is, that myelinization of the nervous system occurs in the 6th month of pregnancy. Myelin has the same function in the human brain that insulation does on wires. Before myelinization of the nerves in the brain occurs, the brain is the equivalent of a massive short-circuit. Organized thought and sensation are simply not physically possible.
As for the questions of rape and incest, if we had a decent society, I would expect both to become remarkably unpopular. If the government were not around to give handouts to people’s genetic mistakes, increasing the risk of such mistakes by incest would become rather unpopular.
As for rape, IMHO, I bet that would become unpopular real fast when a rapist could be sued for all expenses regarding the raising of a child resulting from that act until it graduated from college. Including paying for private schooling, and the college in question.
I agree regarding rape, but it is hard to sue a corpse, the true desired ending for any rape case. Night, all.
Neale, I’m male. A bit more than 30 years out of medical school. Not a surgeon, never done a voluntary terminations of pregnancy. Delivered a few babies, but not a perinatologist or neonatologist. Just a primary care grunt, such as those upon whom Barry Soetoro wants to load the burden of Obamacare, ’cause he can get away with paying us less (think “HMO gatekeeper”). I’ve had patients who’ve had elective terminations of pregnancy.
We’ve even got a code to keep track of a woman’s reproductive history in brief. “F-P-A-L.” Full term pregnancies delivered, Premature pregnancies delivered, Abortions and miscarriages, Living children. (Not all deliveries result in live babies, and it’s appropriate to determine how many of a woman’s children have predeceased her, and for what specific reasons.) Thus a woman with an “FPAL” of “3-0-2m-3″ would be instantly recognizable as having had a total of five pregnancies, two of them miscarried, no premature deliveries, and she has three living children.
So “medical terminology” is inescapably part of my vocabulary. Not that you couldn’t pick it up pretty easily. Hell, if a medical student can learn it, how hard could it be?
If you want to “listen” to my voice imagine standard American pronunciation, mid-Atlantic, but NOT the non-rhotic noises of either Taxachusetts or Noo Yawk.
Given what I know and what’s been my experience, the point at which I consider a fetus salvagable if premature delivery has to happen has changed as the neonatologists have gotten better and better at their jobs. Once a pregnancy passes that point, I recommend against voluntary termination, and though I haven’t yet been put up against it, I would refuse to refer such a patient to anyone willing to perform the procedure.
Hell, I don’t know any people who perform abortions who would undertake such a procedure anywhere near that point in fetal development. The attitude toward the woman in question is generally “Look, if you’ve waited this long, you might as well wait a little longer and take it all the way to term. I can take good care of you through delivery and afterwards, and there are great adoption services out there.”
Two of my own kids were adopted, one as a fresh-caught infant, the other out of foster care when he was three. Both of ‘em grown and with kids of their own. So much for taking MY advice, damnit….
Your youngest kid is an example of what the NICU types can do, but it’s damned difficult, very expensive, and prognoses aren’t uniformly good. Better to keep ‘em in the oven as per the instructions on the back of the box.
(In training, I spent a month on a NICU handling nothing but premies, and then went on to a month on the regular pediatric service. I was in the presence of full-term infants every day, and discovered that I was regarding them nervously as I examined them, and even when I was in the same room with them. Think “grenade with the pin pulled.” Then I realized that what’s normal in a full-term kid - limbs flexed, moving all the time, grimacing, making noises, etc. - is “danger! danger!” in a premie. Signs that the kid is closing in on a convulsion or something similar. Premies are FLACCID, relatively unresponsive, very delicate little critters. Once you get to the point where you regard a premie as “cute/normal,” your detection software is re-set to the point at which a full-term kid impacts upon you like an alien species. That’s when I decided I did not want to go into munchkin medicine, thank you.)
Ms. Morgan’s got some good points, and has expressed them dispassionately, but I think “salvage” in neonatology, same as I think “salvage” in every other therapeutic area. If there’s a chance that the patient can survive and improve, I’ve got to do what I can to maximize that chance. There are a lot of ex-premies out there walking around and making complete pains in the ass of themselves, just like full-term products of the gestational proces.
But even after conception, even after the “salvage point” has been reached in gestation, the body inhabited by the conceptus is the property of an unique individual, a human being who has human rights, including a property in her own body.
I can cajole and nag and pester and persuade, but I won’t *force* her to do a damned thing, nor will I countenance anybody so acting against her.
Remember, “do it for the children!” has gotten us into a helluva lot of trouble in every other area where government goons have intervened to screw with individual rights. Why should their armed aggression result in anything better happening here?
I have said, repeatedly, that I want no laws to force her. I do not want laws, period. BUT to me, it is a murder, heinous, sad, and usually avoidable. Just as a person may elect to sacrifice their life to save another, lifesaving abortions are a sad, but OBVIOUS, necessity. My biggest problem, i guess, is abortions with no medical or moral (rape and incest) reason. And my thanks to you for your erudite responses, AND your response to my un-warranted intrusion into your personal life, but at least I hear you better. (Erudite was an attempt to show that I can be trained to use big words, ha ha) Since suffering from a stroke (at 43) I have far too much experience with specialists and GPs, and I must say that while the specs saved my life, the GPs have made it worth living again, so you have my utmost respect. Sorry, but the farrier is here, gotta go
Bartucci: Regarding the statements you made, I think it is an error to morally classify a fetus or embryo based on whether technology has advanced to the point where it can be kept alive outside the uterus. The moral status of any being depends on it’s own qualities, not whether or not technology has advanced to the point where it can be kept alive or not.
By your standards, a 12 year old boy in the year 1500 who had appendicitis would have no moral worth, but WOULD have moral worth today, because we can take that rotten appendix out now.
I think the 12 year old with appendicitis had moral worth both in the year 1500, and today as well. The fact that we can treat his problem now and couldn’t then, has no relevence on his moral worth, which is determined entirely by the fact that he is an intelligent being.
If a fetus has moral worth, at whatever point in developement, that moral worth must be based on some innate quality of the fetus, and remains constant, regardless of whether technological advances enable an ever-younger fetus to be kept alive outside the uterus.
Regarding your statements of ’salvage’, this word is a good one to use. I happen to dumpster dive a lot, so I can understand the concept of trying to ’salvage’ something that others threw away. However, the mere fact that an object in a dumpster CAN be salvaged, does not in and of itself place me under an obligation to salvage it, if I have other things to do. This is particularly so if the object in question does not have any moral worth as a sentient being. I probably would have a moral obligation to ’salvage’ a full term baby that some nut job threw in a dumpster, at least to the point of spending 10 minutes to take it to a hospital, before going back to my dumpster diving. I do not have an obligation to ’salvage’ a broken table I see in a dumpster, and it’s questionable as to whether I or anyone else has an obligation to ’salvage’ an embryo or fetus, and if so, at what point in it’s developement this obligation would come into existence.
I also think you may have a lack of understanding of the concept of ‘right to life’. All real rights are NEGATIVE in nature. They refer not to some claim you have for others to give you something, but rather, a right not to be interfered with by others in certain matters. Thus, a ‘right to life’ refers to the right not to have others murder you. It does not give you a claim on others. You do not have a ‘right’ to have food given to you to keep you from starving to death, or to have someone’s kidney ripped out against their will so you can have a transplant, or (if you are a fetus) to either live inside the body of a woman who doesn’t want you there, or to be hooked up to expensive machinery at the cost of those who are made to pay for it at the point of a gun.
And so we come back to the main point, no one has the right to force some other uninterested party to pick up their tab, whether it is to lunch or medical service. No one has the right to force me to pay for their abortion or to pay for antiabortion propaganda ad technological alternatives if and when they come on line. I may volunteer my funds to pay for either, but noone has the right to force me to pick up their tab.
Yet that is what public health care will eventually do.
DAMN STRAIGHT, AL. I guess I should re-phrase my objections. I hope all pregnant women would elect to deliver, then adopt out the unwanted (by them) babies. Since I detest the concept of laws, I must accept the decision to abort, but I reverve the right to castigate, spout my opinions and the reasons therefore, and try to change her mind, except, of course in order to save her life, and try my best not to be a hypocrite. I confess, though, that while all your arguments have been reasonable, well thought out, and politely (although forcefully) expressed, you have not altered my opinions. You have, however, given me much to think about, and a better way to put them out there. Thanks all, but I admit to tiring of the abortion debate for a while. The thought of all those possible Libertarians not being born depresses me, and it is even worse that I may, in the future, be forced to pay for their murder even moreso than now. Night All.
Ok so let’s have some fun. as nature hates a vacuum (at least according to planet bound philosophizer types) so does policy debate hate a vacuum. If we can’t propose a plan to pay for health care (which in the end is what health care debate is all about) better that fixes broken parts of current system socialists will win by default and we will have government provided health care shoved down our throats. Please note that current mess is supported by and the result of Big G meddling.
So what do we have to offer to beat the devil’s choice our opponents are offering?
As an aside, personally I do not like abortion any more than you do Neale and was raised to think it was a sin. That said, other than offering realistic alternatives, I can think of nothing one can do to prevent a woman from getting an abortion or a doctor from performing one that is not an even bigger sin.
That’s a special case of why I support libertarianism. too damned frequently, the use of government power to resolve a problem leads to solutions more evil (more sinful if you take your religion straight) than the original problem. And usually more harmful to individuals and “society.”
Neale, thanks for the “erudite,” but I ain’t. As for the “utmost respect,” put it away. Primary care grunts become primary care grunts (I strongly suspect) because we’re inveterate and compulsive “picture straighteners.” I can’t remember a single situation in my entire life where I’ve been able to walk past someone in trouble without sticking my nose in. I literally cannot help it. On my honeymoon, I wound up moving like a rescue dog to the aid of a small boy who’d fallen and broken his wrist, assessed the injury, immobilized the limb, reassured his parents, and stayed with them until I was able to turn him over to an ambulance crew for conveyance to the nearest hospital Emergency Department. My wife was vexed. She still is. But I can’t _not_ do what I do.
One of the Bach family (I forget which one) asked how he composed such beautiful stuff. His response? “I make music as a sow piddles.”
It’s a byproduct of life, not a helluva lot more. Doctors don’t want to be worshiped. We’re flattered all to hellangone by the simple fact that people bring us their problems in confidence that we’ll work hard to fix them.
Plus, of course, the fact that I can tell complete strangers to take their clothes off, they do it, and then they pay me afterwards. Jeez, what more could you want?
As for incest and rape, I don’t know how conception can have any sort of “moral” component to it. No matter how kinky the male perpetrator of incest or rape might be, there’s not much intention - the moral component - to sire a child. There’s the violation of a victim, the perpetration of the forbidden, the purely sexual gratification, but I’ve got to think that an exultant “I’m gonna make her pregnant!” sentiment comes way down the list of desired outcomes.
That being the case, I can’t consider the method by which the pregnancy had been kindled as sufficient justification for a voluntary termination thereof. If the woman doesn’t want that conceptus inside her uterus, however it got there, she has the right to get it evicted. Gotta be that way. Property rights.
Ms. Morgan, if you got the impression that I was trying “to morally classify a fetus or embryo based on whether technology has advanced to the point where it can be kept alive outside the uterus,” pardon me for leading you astray.
When it gets down to determining a patient’s viability - his potential for rescue with the employment of existing and available art - I think practicability first. Morality comes later, as it has to. If you think about it, you’ll understand that it has to be that way.
If you and I were stranded on a desert island together and you came to me with a breast lump, and physical examination revealed obvious signs of metastatic spread to your axillary and supraclavicular lymph nodes, I would _not_ be justified in improvising a mastectomy and extirpation of those palpable superficial lymph nodes even if I figured I could pull it off without killing you, because there’s a dead certainty that the tumor had already spread to intrathoracic lymph node groups and I wasn’t going to be able to crack your chest to get at them. Moreover, for any real chance of survival, I’d have to have access to radiation therapy and various adjuvent and pre-adjuvent chemotherapeutic modalities to make of such surgery any sort of real prospect for success and survival.
In other words, on that desert island, you’re toast. Here in America - absent Obamacare - you’ve got a chance. Not much of one, but a chance. And balancing risks and benefits of intervention in each setting is part of what us sawbones are trained to do. Here, I send you to the best damned cancer surgeons I can find in my Rolodex, probably the guys associated with a couple of clinical trials on the cutting edge of chemotherapy. On that desert island, I try to make you comfortable and redouble my efforts to get us back to civilization. You understand how that works?
Okay, so “If a fetus has moral worth, at whatever point in development, that moral worth must be based on some innate quality of the fetus, and remains constant…,” but there’s no way that existing and available medical art can offer _any_ real prospect of salvage, then whether it is aborted spontaneously (commonly called a “miscarriage”) or the host decides to have it salted, sucked, or scooped out, it’s *DEAD* and there’s an end to it.
People die. All the damned time. Some accidentally, some suicidally, some gallantly, some by way of plain stupidity. What’s the moral aspect of these deaths?
Think about the guy hanging over a seven-story drop, one of his hands in the hand of another guy, who himself is only barely hanging onto the rooftop. The weight of the dangling individual is going to pull them both off the roof. Does the fellow on the rooftop have a moral obligation to die with the guy who can’t pull himself up to safety?
In the military, decorations for valor are awarded for “conduct above and beyond the call of duty.” The unspoken contention is that the recipients of such decorations didn’t _have_ to do the things they did, but they did ‘em anyway, and risked (or lost) their lives in the doing thereof.
I don’t think that a woman carrying a pregnancy has a _duty_ to bring that pregnancy to term. The “gift of life” is precisely that - a gift, and it’s either freely given or the mother’s rights are being violated.
Every baby born is the beneficiary of an act of great valor on the part of that kid’s mother. As far as I’m concerned, every woman who’s ever borne a child is at least as worthy of my respect as is the recipient of a Bronze Star with a “V” for valor.
Can that valor be made meaningless? You betcha. Treat women as reproductive animals - breeders - and both human rights and women’s dignity goes right out the window.
DAMN YOU, RD. I’ll have to think about it, but you may have just driven a stake through the heart of my argument. One that WON’T make me feel like a hypocrite. Now I just have to mull it over, reason it out, and decide if I can fully support it. I WILL let you know. In case I wasn’t clear, The cursing was humorous not serious. I was finally resigned to never being able to fully resolve my misgivings, and you have destroyed that, and I thank you for trying, even if in the long run it fails. As to respect, if you have ever lain in the ER, dying, and people working their asses off save you, then over the ensuing months work even harder to return much of the life you thought was over, respect is a far too inadequate term, but the best I can come up wiht, SO LIVE WITH IT, DUDE!!! (laughter at the thought of teaching newest teacher something about himself) Unless you are a doctor who ONLY looked for a way to become wealthy, some part of you desired to learn to help ME when I stroked out, and that, Sir, is worthy of respect whether you realize it or not.
Yeah, I’ve “lain in the ER, dying.” Happened in January 2008. The ER doc blew out my kidneys like a schmuck, and I was too far out of it to realize what he was doing, else I would’ve wrapped the IV line around his throat and applied traction.
Had I been in his shoes with a patient presenting in the same condition, I would’ve approached treatment a helluva lot differently (you can whack down hyperkalemia even more rapidly with a bolus of D50W and a shot of insulin than you can with a megadose of furosemide, and the adverse impact on wonky nephrons is effectively nil). He turned my stage II CKD into stage IV, thank you very much.
I know how easy it is to screw up, Neale. And how often it is that we “work miracles” only by blind dumb luck and some reasonable precautions we learn pretty much by rote. There’s an awful lot of trivia to remember in this racket, but most of what we do is “taped” so thoroughly that it takes real talent to actually kill a patient.
When you’re privy to the mysteries, all the priestly aspects of the profession of medicine boil down to the point at which your praise is limited to “Good pick-up. So what have you done lately?”
As for your stroke, was it embolic or hemorrhagic? And how long ago did you suffer the event?
The employment of tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) and similar “clot busting” IV medications for embolic cerebravascular accidents (CVAs) has been around for some time, building upon experience with similar treatment of coronary arterial occlusions back in the very early ’90s. (That’s when we began systemic administration in community hospital Emergency Departments rather than selective injection of coronary arteries cannulated by way of cath lab intervention, which had been the state of the art starting in the late ’70s.)
The only thing I wonder about - retrospectively - is why the hell it took us so goddam long to go from “wait until we can get ‘em in the cath lab” to “jeez, we need to put this stuff in the paramedic’s kit.”
One of my professors in med school told us solemnly that old saw about how a whole generation of physicians must die before any real advance could be made in any field of medicine.
Ever since then, I’ve mostly whiled away my time in compulsory hospital medical staff meetings trying to determine which of my colleagues I should bump off to speed things up.
I know the one to bump first, but I must remain mum for now. I presented to the ER with total right side paralysis, slurred speech, droopy eyelid, the whole shebang. By the time my wife, an RN, dropped me at the hospital (45miles from home) I had ben experiencing symptoms for over 2 hrs. BP was 267/195. No prior history of hypertension other than a few slightly elevated readingsyears before during prolonged trauma, and one other event that must, for now, remain private. They offered me a clotbustind drug, and began listing possible side effects, thus scaring the pants they had stolen (HAHA) off of me. Since my poor wife had to drop me and go home with 3 of the 4 mini-me’s, I had no one to help me decide, so I said no. Later, the doctor who presented the option, the side effects, and the reasons to and not to take it said he felt I had made the right decision, as it was a totally hypertensive stroke. 5 days in the ICU, 3 days in-patient PT (another long story) and months of hard work at home, and I walk (limping and not as long, but hey) my writing still sucks, and I one handed type. I can’t hit anything anymore, but I am re-learning to shoot. Now, 2yrs 1.5 months later, still unabale to work, I am still fighting, never quitting, and when I get depressed, I think of the other possibilities. Since I hate gardenning, looking at roots from the bottom holds no appeal for me, so I’ll settle for what I have, and keep fighting for the future. IF you are curious for details, have Neil give you my home e-mail address and send me yours, or a Phone number (preferrable) and I’ll probably make you regeret it, as my mother still says I get mental constipation and oral diarrhea.Your choice (or risk). (Laughter) As to your event, YES, even doctors make mistakes, and unfortunately for them they can hold disasterous consequences, but I still prefer to give them respect UNTIL an individual one earns contempt. You have given me no reason for other than respect, therefore you have it. Shut up and take it like a man. (Third laugh)
RD, I am now 45. was 43 at time of stroke. Not obese, but overweight.
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Well, incest and rape are two different issues. The main issues regarding incest are genetic and financial. A child born from incest has a drastically increased chance of genetic problems. It is not appropriate for ‘kinky’ parents who engage in incest to try to pass these financial problems onto others, be it the taxpayers in today’s society, or in a free-market society, an insurance company that offers ‘deformity insurance’ to pregnant women. Such an insurance company would be justified in denying or reducing coverage to people who had not bought their special ‘incest’ rider.
Regarding rape, it’s entirely irrelevent whether the father in that case ‘intended’ to get the mother pregnant. If you commit a crime, you are responsible for all of the results of that crime, whether you ‘intended’ for that result to happen or not. For instance, if I mug someone, and push them down during the mugging, I might not ‘intend’ for them to break their skull when they hit their head on the ground. Nevertheless, if they do break their skull, I’m responsible for paying for getting their skull fixed. Or possibly being responsible for their murder, if they die from the broken skull, which is a definite possibility.
Since getting a woman pregnant is a definite possible outcome in rape, the rapist is then completely financially responsible for that child, regardless of whether he ‘intended’ to get the woman pregnant or not.
Neale, the history you give sounds like a hemorrhagic (hypertensive) stroke, all right. That punched-up blood pressure in a patient without a prior history of essential hypertension is not uncommonly evidence of increased intracranial pressure, which is one way such a bleed manifests.
(Figure it out. Number one priority for the cardiovascular system is Feed the Brain. Bleeding occurs inside the skull, taking up more of the sharply limited space inside the bucket. The heart pumps harder, trying to push adequate flow into the cerebral vasculature. Systemic BP goes up. Not rocket science.)
Clotbusting drugs contraindicated, for obvious reasons.
Symptom scope looks like you took a big hit in the distribution of the left middle cerebral artery. Most common place for a stroke to hit. If it gives you any comfort to know, there was a 15-30% chance (depending on whose mortality figures you credit) that you wouldn’t live past the first 30 days, so you’re now perfectly entitled to do schtick out of _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ (”I don’t want to go on the cart”/ “Oh, don’t be such a baby”).
Hell, I’ll write to Neil and ask him to send you my e-mail address. Then you can elect to contact me at your own discretion.
Ms. Morgan, I wasn’t discussing the moral responsibility of the perpetrator of either rape or incest, but rather that of the conceptus resulting from such an act.
Insofar as incest is concerned, the adverse genetic consequences of which you speak are not inevitable. Existing and available art permits reasonably accurate diagnosis of likely genetic adverse outcomes early in gestation, and so a blanket policy of therapeutic termination of pregnancy in all such cases is not justified by the desire to foreclose a “drastically increased chance of genetic problems” that is not uniformly present in all cases.
Regarding the conceptus resulting from rape, the responsibility of the rapist cannot descend upon his offspring. Yes, i agree with you that the rapist should be made to shoulder the financial burdens imposed upon his victim by his action, including monetary support for the offspring. But the offspring him/herself doesn’t inherit daddy’s debt. Very much the classic “innocent bystander.”
This notwithstanding, the victim of incest _or_ rape has every woman’s propertarian right to the ownership of her body, and therefore the right to evict that conceptus if she chooses to do so.
“Hard cases make bad law,” but they give rise to good discussions, don’t they?
“In fact, I’m feeling much betteh”. (I love that movie)(proof positive that there was extensive brain damage) Dead on the diagnosis, with caveats I won’t discuss in open forum. I will, with your permission, send the details when Neil passes on the address. I just got back from a Cub Scout camp-out, so I haven’t slept in 24 hours, so I,m off for a few winks.
It looks as if the discussion on voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion) has wound down. I don’t think that anybody has “won” anything in this exchange, the idiot “last poster standing” rule be damned.
Ms. Morgan has offered lucid argument the validity of which cannot be gainsaid, and Neale Osborn has voiced his concerns from a perspective that requires valuation and respect. This is an utterly damnable subject, as the impulse to cherish and protect children is tied to a reproductive impulse that cannot be anything other than strong among the human populace.
Hell, we’ve all inherited it, haven’t we? Were that not the case, our progenitors wouldn’t have become progenitors, and we wouldn’t be alive to be wasting our time on the Internet.
This understood, let me offer an observation. It is possible that much of the current “abortion debate” would go away completely if people in these United States of prime reproductive age - in their third and fourth decades of life - didn’t have the vampire fangs of government in their throats 24/7, consuming their productive effort by way of taxation (both arrogantly naked and invidiously hidden in the prices of everything for which they pay), currency inflation, and “winner picking” regulation.
Kill government DRT (dead right there) and it might be possible that more women would elect to carry their pregnancies to term - indeed, more women would elect to _get_ pregnant and bear children - and voluntary terminations of pregnancy would decrease.
In any population of living things, times of adversity tend to be met (one way or another) with reduction in rates of reproduction. That civil government in this nation is now a complex, omnipresent, malicious influence on the lives of Americans cannot be denied, and to the extent that it saps our productivity, preys upon our wealth, and grinds us under its predatory exactions, it is killing our children, born and unborn.
Want to reduce the abortion rate? Smash the state.
Everything else is peripheral.
I like that prescription.
So you’re sayig that by creating environmental stress in the form of taxation and inflation government paid health care is in fact compromising people’s physical and menal health?
Well, here’s ANOTHER free market way to reduce the abortion rate, which a lot of people are not going to like.
Legalize the sale of infants below 1 year of age.
I suspect a lot of mothers who currently abort, especially teenagers, will carry that baby to term, if by doing so, they can get enough money for a new car or a couple years of tech school.
Yes, I know all the protests, the infants might be used to harvest organs from them, or for slave labor. Regarding the first, if the infants are killed for their organs, they are no more dead than if they were killed by an abortion. Besides which, theres a perfectly sensible free-market solution to the organ shortage which is going on right now, but isn’t getting nearly enough publicity. Look up http://www.lifesharers.com
Regarding objecting to it because the infants might be used for slave labor, this is then what is known as ‘raising the bar: First you say that the infants should be allowed to have what might be their only possible chance (given the absence of scientific proof of an afterlife) at the Big Mexican Lunch. Now you would say that the Big Mexican Lunch must be of some minimum (determined by you) quality. I am not so sure that given the choice between slavery and death, all people would choose death. There’s actually a good book on this issue, ‘Unwind” by Neal Schusterman (I think that’s the author). In that book, abortion of fetuses is illegal, but it is legal for a parent to sign an ‘Unwind’ order for a child between the ages of 13 and 18, after which their entire body is surgically taken apart (a process called being ‘Unwound’), and every organ they have used for transplant into others.
Naturally, some of these kids run away rather than submit to the ‘Unwinding’. The GOOD guys in this book are slave traders, they use the kids for slave labor until they are 18, and then legally safe from being ‘Unwound’. The children in the book were GLAD for the chance to trade being killed for being enslaved for several years.
WARNING!!! THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT TAXATION IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH! It is recommended that all persons of taxpaying years IMMEDIATELY cease voting for people who increase taxes, and work harder at forming a SUB-ROSA economy that may alleviate some of the immediate effects of taxation. Be advised, even a sub-rosa economy cannot remove all vestiges of this hideous affliction until ALL forms of government are effictively removed from society.
METHODS OF CURE may include the following:
Hanging tax collectors and politicians
Driving liberals who vote Democrat out of the country
Driving conservatives who vote Republican out of the country
Learning to think for yourself and voting with your brain instead of your heart
THIS HAS BEEN A SERVICE OF THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
Ann, I’m sorry, but you just lost me. THERE IS NO WAY< ONCE BORN, THAT ANY ONE I WOULD CLASSIFY AS A HUMAN BEING WOULD KILL A BABY. I think you just forgot our basic right to own our own body. So, what now? Are you going to mandate the age at which a person “OWNS” their body? So at what age do I have to buy a girl to be able to use her as I wish? If that sounds ridiculous, it is not as ridiculous as your last posting. YES, if a woman is paid to let someone adopt her child as a family member, that is selling a baby, and technically slavery, but NO ONE is adopting babies to harvest their organs To be brutally honest, a woman should recieve a tremendous fee for agreeing to have a baby for others on purpose (surrogate mothers) and unwanted pregnancies definitely would benefit from allowing the biological parent to be recompensed for time and expenses involved in carrying and birthing it. And YES, it would rapidly become a business, meaning there will be abuses, and since we all postulate NO GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE, some yammerheads will blow the abuses out of proportion, but killing and harvesting them for organs??? NO FUCKING WAY!!! Here’s hoping I haven’t totally pissed off everybody, but if so OH WELL.
Neale: I did not say that I approved of the theoretically possible abuses that might occur if it were legal to sell infants (ei, killing them for their organs, using them for slave labor). I, in fact, don’t approve of them. What I said was, that if you want to go the route of reducing the number of abortions, on the grounds of giving as many people as possible their chance at the ‘Big Enchilada’, their chances at the Mexican Lunch are a lot better if it is legal to sell infants, than it is under our current system, where a mother has no incentive whatsoever to carry a baby to term. The number of infants who might be killed for their organs, probably being far less than the number currently aborted. That in no way means that killing infants for their organs is desirable, or should be legal. I also mentioned that there is a free-market solution that would get rid of the organ shortage entirely, and therefore remove the incentive to buy infants in order to remove their organs. However, you apparently did not bother to look this up on the link I gave.
Please read my post more carefully next time, before you respond.
Ms. Morgan, the concept of “legalization” in any regard is damned dangerous.
In order to “legalize” something, there is the assumption that it is proper for the officers of civil government to have any role in deciding whether said something is PERMITTED.
Hang on a minute. “Permitted?” If there is a legitimate role for civil government in the affairs of humankind, that role is exclusively the retaliatory use of lethal force to protect individual rights. The only thing that lawful government can “legalize” - can PERMIT - is the violation of someone’s rights.
As recently as in my grandparents’ time, “adopting” a child was about as complicated as adopting a stray kitten. Back in the early ’30s, my father’s younger sister (one of two girls in a seven-child family, and she was #7 thereof) simply moved down the road about a mile and became part of my mother’s family (seven children, five of them girls) as the new youngest daughter.
Neither of the families was related in any way other than the fact that they’d both wound up settling in the same small township after coming over from widely separated towns in Italy.
(( I don’t think that either of the men who would later become my paternal and maternal grandfathers even took much notice. I grew up with two aunts each named “Maria,” but one of them (the elder, on the maternal side) had re-named herself “Mary” while the other (the younger, paternal aunt) had taken the French version “Marie.” You want to figure out how that worked? I’ve never been able to do so. ))
Spinsters and widowed ladies have been picking up “nieces” and “nephews” and raising them thus since time out of memory, and the “orphan trains” of the late 19th Century saw cast-off boys and girls of the Eastern seaboard cities formally transplanted - admittedly as the equivalent of slave labor, but “adopted” nevertheless, settling and taking root - in the farm country of the northern Plains states.
I’m vehemently and utterly opposed to any sort of “legalize” scheme. At most, I would support legislation compelling “the Malevolent Jobholder” of civil government to RECOGNIZE the right of parent(s) to transfer responsibility for raising a particular child to another adult. That sort of thing becomes necessary when dealing with the various bureaucracies, and must be done to enable the adoptive parent(s) to raise such a child in an already over-regulated America.
Take as your example SF writer David Gerrold’s experience as an adoptive father.
But putting a pistol to the head of a government tax-consumer and telling him “Provide this service, you useless waste of oxygen!” is radically different (and more appropriate) than unlawfully empowering a politician to PERMIT something that people have been doing peacefully, agreeably, and with no breach of human rights since before the beginning of recorded history.
If the adoptive process involves some sort of compensatory mechanism - the adoptive parent paying or receiving a sum of money or other valuable consideration in the process of taking on the responsibility for the ankle-biter in question - that’s a matter of contract, and no damned business of the government at all.
Laissez-goddam-faire.
Mr. perez, the “environmental stress” is emphatically not confined to “government paid health care” but rather to all government action outside the limited realm in which the agents of civil government act to any purpose other than the management of retaliatory violent force to protect the negative rights (life, liberty, property) of the individual human being.
Government action of all kinds has a deleterious effect upon human well-being, just as anti-cancer and antibiotic chemotherapy does. Think of it that way and you’ll understand why government action has to be as constrained, specifically directed, limited, and explicitly purposeful as the administration of methotrexate or tetracycline.
Government - like chemotherapy - involves the administration of killing. Too much of either, and the body (physical or politic) sickens and dies.
My apologies, Ann, if I offended, I am nearly computer illiterate, and literally suck at following links. And to be honest, the posting’s body so disgusted me in concept that I was probably not able to absorb it all. I read the 3 posts prior to yours, jumped forward to write my off the cuff warning label, went back to read yours, and quite frankly, lost it. I stand by my response as to the adoption and surrogate issues, but if the links may have removed some of the disgust at the organ harvesting, then I tender apologies. IF, however, they merely re-affirm it as a method of justifying infanticide, I will not recant my positions. It is my profound belief, as stated before, that each life is entitled, to the best of it’s ability, to pursue Mexican food (I love that version of the “whole enchilada” BTW) and I stick with it. Please feel free to donate OR SELL any bodily organs you see fit, without hindrance or let, but it better come from your own body, not from someone else’s. That is a general “you”, not a specific one. PLEASE NOTE: I have not , and never will, proffer any guarantees of a full meal, nor the right to be provided one by any means other than self- service, with the exception of parental feedings until maturity is reached, or the parent boots their asses out the door. I hope this clarifies my position. I regret my in-ability to follow links, I have them written down on paper, and as my limited skills improve, I WILL attempt to read them. If you desire to contact me directly, either to bitch me out, straighten out the misunderstandings, or merely to say “HI, STUPID!”, feel free to ask Neil for phone or e-mail address. I won’t (for obvious reasons) put them here.
Ann- I DID IT. I figured out how, and I followed the link. (Momma to Neale “He’s such a big boy. Someday he’ll finish growing up.”) Okay, I guess I will try to chalk this one up to overreacting. I hope. Lifeshares seems like A good idea. I have never liked the whole donate them thing, because there is little incentive to. But being part of a network that offers YOU first shot before they go “on the market” removes that objection ( although I do have an organ donor card). I am going to make another assumption, so get ready. Was this a Swiftian post, and I missed it? I can never remember the name of it, but this could be like his proposal to feed Irish babies to English overlords. Perhaps I have again swallowed my foot? If so, please pull it out. If not, Well all I can say is we will have to disagree. But your statement regarding Your lack of support for your proposal leads me to suspect the initial posting may have been intended as sarcasm and it went right over my head. please let me know either way, as Libertarians have too many foes to infight where it isn’t necessary. Thanks.
Neale: I will try to explain my post once more, perhaps I did not make it clear: My points were actually 2 seperate ones, perhaps I did not make them clear:
1. If your stance is that the abortion rate should be reduced as drastically as possible, in order to give all embryoes the chance at the ‘Big Enchilada’ as another poster did it, legalizing the sale of infants (Or removing all laws currently BANNING such sales if you insist), will go a long way to accomplishing this. However, it is possible for the selling of infants to be accompanied by various abuses including their being used for slave labor, or harvested for organs. Regarding these 2 objections:
A. Regarding slave labor, if you want infants to have a chance at ‘The Big Enchilada’ then their being alive, but used as slaves accomplishes this. It was never specified that the ‘Big Enchilada’ be of a particular quality, and it probably is not desirable to do so, because where would you draw the line? Would it be acceptable for infants to be trained to sew clothes for no payment but food in a Chinese factory? What about doing chores on a farm for no allowance? For a SMALL allowance? Or would it be acceptable only for infants to be adopted by millionaire families that have a maid and several servants? About the only thing that could be done would be to recognize and enforce the right of all people, even children, to ‘vote with their feet’ and leave a situation they dislike.
B. Regarding their being harvested for organs, there are free-market solutions to the organ shortage that would eliminate this problem. Lifesharers is one. Legalizing the payment of heirs for organs is another. However, if your sole criteria regarding abortion is that as many early term embryoes be given a chance at the ‘Big Enchilada’ as possible, then by that standard, it would be desirable for 1% of all embryoes currently aborted to be harvested for their organs after birth, if it meant that the other 99% of embryoes currently aborted would NOT die.
I personally don’t think this is a very good solution. Neal Schusterman’s book ‘Unwind’ does a pretty good job of showing why this is NOT a good solution. It is, in fact, an abysmally BAD solution, which is probably only even contemplated in our society specifically because the government has interfered for the past 50 years with a free market that would pay the heirs of organ donors, thereby creating a huge organ shortage that has raised the price of organs to ridiculously huge amounts, far more than their actual worth, in much the same way that it has done to drugs, so that 5 cents worth of plant juice sells for $500 dollars on the street. With the result that certain highly unscrupulous people are now willing to risk the death penalty by murdering others to steal their organs. But of course we can’t remedy the situation by getting rid of the laws the prohibit the payment of heirs for organs. That would be (gasp) trading in human flesh. It would be immoral for them to get money for cutting up gramma after she dies. Mind you, everyone ELSE gets paid, including the surgeons, the lawyers, and the insurance companies. But not the heirs of the organ donor. As Mark Twain would put it: That would be going quite too far.
Cool, I was being a jerk, and YOU are not the asshole I thought. This IS NOT FACETIOUS. I am thrilled that I do not have to avoid your posts. Please, accept my apologies, as I mean them. Even after reading the first of them several times, I missed the DIs-approval in your posts. I have to think out the slavery side, because, of course, none of us approve of it, but a live slave can create a dead master and a free man. And of course, pedal franchise is always an option. Also, we both agree (I think) that “selling” a person a new child to become a new son or daughter is perfectly acceptable. I have always felt that a person selling a kidney or eye is perfectly acceptable while alive, and selling the dead body of Grandma, or indeed Junior, when they meet an untimely demise or a drastically overdue one should be as well. AS LONG AS THEY HAVE A LIVING WILL, I even approve (not that anyone needs MY approval, but you know, I hope, what I mean) of pulling the brain dead persons plug ONLY when a person is found who actually needs the organ that will kill the body, but keeping it alive through other harvesting until that point arrives. I have made it clear in writing to my wife, and the people who might take over for her if she croaks first, my wishes on this.
This can not only defray or eliminate the absurd “death costs” incurred in the disposal of the corpse, but also help the family cope financially. As we all know, there will be people who will bump off Uncle Fred for the organ fees, but mostly it wil be a good thing. The primary objections are political, NOT moral, in my opinion. So I guess we ain’t so far apart as I thought. As I said at the beginning of this post, COOL!
This is from an E-mail I recently sent an old friend:
“I’m not sure if you’ve read the “Harry Potter” books. If only for this, you should.
I was reading “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” to get ready for the Movie and on page 510 is the key to the “fear” that the “elites” have of the “Regular people.”
“Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!”
-Professor Dumbledore to Harry
They NEED to have power over other people to feel safe.
In acquiring power they create VICTIMS.
Among the Victims are some who will FIGHT BACK.
Which means that they need even MORE POWER.
There is no way back once they start down this path. They are inexorably bound to the path that will lead to their own destruction. It’s just a question of how many victims they will be allowed/able to take with them. Sad to say, the history of the Twentieth-Century only makes quite clear that with the tools now available, this can mean deaths by the millions.
The only answer I can see is to identify and kill such creatures as soon as possible.”
As the Obamaists are increasingly frustrated in their attempt to “Socialize” Medicine we are seeing that the “Officer Friendly” mask is slipping, and that their hands are starting to ache for the reassuring comfort of their Guns.
Slap Leather!
Mr. Foley, it’s a good observation. Of the two great factions of the Boot On Your Neck Party (Republican and National Socialist), I observe that the former tend most blatantly to whip out their guns in attacks upon people outside the national government’s jurisdiction while the latter like to arrange “law enforcement” butcheries against selected domestic enemies.
Do you think it’s reasonable to expect that as Barry Soetoro’s Messiah Quotient continues to slip, we’ll be seeing something Waco-ish happening in the next month or two?
It appears at this time that Obama’s health care reform is about to bite the dust, and that the Chicago community activist is losing control of big parts of the situation,
Unless there is a lot going on behind the scenes it appears that Obama has forgotten (if he ever had) the skills at deal making and political infighting a Chicago ward heeler ought to have.
so the current plan to socialize medicine will either die or be emasculated (read, they’ll save some of the worst ideas and save damn few of any good ones.)
Meanwhile the health care payment industry will continue to be overpriced and pay out to few benefits with just enough regulation to block out the competition and push up prices.
“Say hello to the new boss”
Mr. Perez, would you please be kind enough to name “any of the good [ideas]” in Obamacare?
Honestly, I can’t think of any.
The best ideas I’ve come across in the past year or so have been found on the libertarian side, particularly in the evaluations of the Mises Institute. Nothing offered by either the National Socialists or the Republicans has been worth the proverbial bucket of warm spit.
Poor phrasing. What I meant to say was that if by some twist of fate any good ideas get into any bill proposed in congress they will almost certainly be shitcanned while the worse an idea the more likely it is to end up in what get’s passed by Congress.
My bad for expressing myself poorly.
Mr. Perez, I honestly thought that you might’ve found _something_ in that welter of arrant statist stupidity that was worth the adverse environmental impact imposed by a horde of bloated congresscritters passing digestive gases into the murk of Mordor’s atmosphere.
Thomas Sowell’s most recent column (8 September)* is quote-worthy on the subject of “health care reform.” I offer:
=== === ===
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation’s medical care before the August recess - for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years - more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?
If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?
If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don’t we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to “hurry up and wait” on something that is literally a matter of life and death?
If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.
Moreover, he wanted to get re-elected in 2012 before the public experienced what its actual consequences would be.
=== === ===
If you get the sense that the nation is being stampeded off a cliff here - as throughout to reign of our Fraudulence-in-Chief thus far - you’re not alone.
This damned steamer trunk full of steaming shit is, I strongly suspect, even worse than either you or I had supposed.
* http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/09/08/listening_to_a_liar
Whenever a bill is so thick it cannot be read there is something wrong with it. If any parts are worth having they can be written as separate and much shorter bills. Let us pick one desirable reform, restricting punitive damage awards on most (not all) malpractice suits. Surely a bill doing so while allowing for larger settlements in extreme cases can be written that is less than fifty pages long.
Pass it separately. Do not tolerate hiding pork in limitless amendments. Don’t stick in expansion of gun rights in it. Don’t put in language rewriting the schedule of Veterans medical benefits. Limit yourself to limiting malpractice claims.
Then go through the whole “health care reform” bill. Present each part as a stand alone bill. Don’t add pork. avoid putting tit for tat deals in each bill. That does not mean no “I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine.” deals. It means don’t combine two bills into one so that people have to hold their nose and vote against their conscience to get what they feel is in the nation’s best interests.
Of course none of this will ever happen. This is not how Congress does business and I’ll admit seeing ideas I support get stuck into unrelated bills people whose ideas I oppose tickles me pink. Ain’t gonna happen though.
And political charlatans and tyrants love to hide behind this.
This comment is added after BHO’s speech of 09/09/09.
there are some good goals and ideas in what was stated on Wednesday night.
Each one could be pushed as a stand alone bill, to succeed or fail on it’s merits, both ideological and whether they would actually work. so why do the Democrats, who want this “reform,” not break it down into smaller bills, letting each part be passed or rejected based on its perceived merits?
If Mr, Obama & company have faith in their goals they should go for the smaller bills, That they don’t should set off alarms.
Just dropping a note that InkTip.com recently sent out a call for screenplays based on graphic novels.
First, apologies if I’m repeating what someone else has written; I reviewed some of the comments, but not all.
I’d support an amendment to separate medical care from the state, but I think a broader amendment would be better. I’d suggest prohibiting the government from providing economic goods and services to citizens. This would cover education, medical care, trash pick up and whatever else. The government would be left with protecting citizens’ political rights and protecting citizens from force, fraud, and theft. I know that the private enterprise could also provide services such as binding mediation of disputes, but let’s start by separating what’s economic from what’s political.
Is anyone aware of anyone else who has tried or begun the actual framework and process of legally creating this constitutional amendment? Collecting signatures, petitioning state legisatures, etc. I believe what we are specifically articulating is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of medicine, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Thomas, I sympathize with your position. It’s like an amendment that would say, “Congress shall make no law — period”. But we stand a far greater chance of passing one focused on healthcare right now.
Sam, thank you for formulating the proposed amendment. I believe it will have to be stronger, more direct, and less ambiguous than the First Amendment, though. After all, there have been centuries of debate over what that one means.
Here’s another hack at it: “Congress shall make no law, nor shall government, at any level, engage itself in any way, with regard to medicine or the practice or provision thereof; nor shall government prohibit any aspect of its free exercise among private individuals. Any attempt to violate or evade this act will be regarded as a felony, and punished appropriately.”
How’s that?
Admin and all- I like both proposals. Either would be an improvement. It is said that in the long run, men only hit what they aim at. Just having it in writing, would be a delaying or inhibiting effect on the corrosive action of government. Imagine every judge in the country having to read this as the latest constitutional amendment, before having to decide a case involving government and its (non)relationship to medicine. Every year, every decade, every century…. You already know how far we have come with separation of religion and state. For the better part of a millennium, indirectly, the factions of christianity kept europe at war with itself. When is the last time the USA split itself in two and tried to kill itself? I don’t remember any. God willing it never will. The point is, words, over the long run can make a great difference.