Re: [asa] health care

Merv:

Your concerns here are exactly the reason that I introduced a thread on
Racial Hygiene, an international study that happened to coincide with
Nazi doctrine. Racial Hygiene was well supported by scientists and
doctors as "scientific." It was the national concern for
future generations that motivated the adoption of forced sterilizations in
many Western countries.

Science is not value neutral, but the application of science does not
logically follow from the science. That requires additional values.
Whether to save the baby with dwarfism or have it sterilized, knowing that
it may burden the community or influence the gene pool, requires a
valuation that goes beyond what we know of genetics.

Nazism resulted from believing that the welfare of the community took
priority over that of the individual. That's why they were National
Socialists. But Christ died for all, which is why Nietzche declared
Christianity to be the religion of weaklings.

bill

On Fri, 25 Sep 2009,
Merv Bitikofer wrote:

> I haven't read all the preceding posts in this thread, so I risk repeating
> previously made points.
>
> This ASA list is a venue for us to air our own thoughts (even thoughts we are
> merely dabbling in but not committed to) in an atmosphere that is somewhat
> more impartial than when we are among our own family or community. So here
> goes.
>
> What if science eventually informs us that all our medicines and zealous
> 'cradle-to-grave' health care options are leading our human population in bad
> evolutionary directions? I.e. that we are enabling an affluent-like
> reproductive behavior of many who, in other cultures & times, would not have
> opted to have children (or less of them). That said: I am just as horrified
> about evils like 'Eugenics' as the next guy and will pontificate on such.
> Yet the mere suggestion that we are an 'over-medicated', 'over-treated'
> culture can be seen as nothing more than cruelty when we begin to put
> personal names with policies. E.g. I may feel that pharmaceuticals are way
> out of hand as a matter of 'impersonal' opinion, but I can't begin to say
> such things, or even grant my thoughts much legitimacy around my own loved
> ones who themselves feel that their lives or mental health have literally
> been saved by regular pharmacology of one form or another. So the mere
> thoughts of such medical "excess" are taboo -- and I suspect this is probably
> true for most of us who ever entertain similar thoughts. It's put on the
> same level as suggesting that we should turn our elderly loose on the next
> outgoing ice flow. To add even more cognitive dissonance to my
> contemplations here: I claim to be a Christian. And as such I very much
> resonate with the thought that the quality of a society can be directly
> assessed by how it treats its weakest, lowliest, most powerless members.
> My convictions can only seem to find application in one setting, and that is
> for myself. I can leave a living will in the event of my medical demise; I
> can refuse to pop pills at every little sign of discomfort as pharmaceutical
> companies try to condition us to do; I can at least apply this all to myself
> and try to make sure I don't blow nest-egg proportion fortunes in my last
> hours and days of life. In doing so I merely hope to join the 80+% of
> humanity that already has no choice about these things anyway. But such
> ambitions (if I succeed in actually sticking to them) look particularly ugly
> when we attempt to turn them into public policy -- witness all the talk about
> 'death panels'. What is the range of Christian options on this as others see
> it?
> And to say that we have no universally agreed morality (forcing this all into
> the realm of mere politics) may be true enough. But there is a forced
> morality that will prevail over us one way or another. Social conservative
> policy may place more emphasis on merit or societal benefit a la Herbert
> Spencer. Social liberal policy may place more emphasis on unconditional
> entitlements that every human ought to have, worthy or not. Whenever either
> of these tensions prevail, all the constituents then live under the moral
> umbrella of that policy whether they endorse it or not. And as other here
> can point out, to endorse nothing is actually to endorse something. So there
> is no way to escape hard choices.
>
> --Merv
>
>
>
> Nucacids wrote:
>> Hi Jack,
>>
>> "Discussions on how health care is delievered is interesting, but more
>> political than moral or scientific. But there is no question that
>> resources
>> used in providing health care are limited. I would like to see a
>> discussion on who deserves to get what and at what time, and who decides
>> this?"
>>
>> If the discussion is about who deserves to get what and at what time, and
>> who decides
>> this, it is necessarily a political discussion. Science cannot answer
>> these questions.
>>
>> And since we live in cultures where moral assumptions and positions are not
>> universally
>>
>> shared, there is nothing left but politics.
>>
>> Mike
>
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Received on Fri Sep 25 23:51:50 2009