Travlin’ …
Sorry for the “lite” posting the last few days. I will have more soon. But fact is that lazing, shopping, and basking in the sun don’t make exciting blog material, alas. Neither does routine traveling (even when you’re wedged into a strange little jumpseat next to a lavatory that has no water and whose door keeps flopping open every time the bus hits a bump).
Ah well.
In the meantime, I see that James Dunlap has an article on LewRockwell.com about free-market medicine outside the U.S. His piece is different from, but reflects the same values as, my bit on non-prescription prescription meds in Furrin parts.
I also picked up an article in a local bilingual publication about stem-cell treatment. During the years that the U.S. fedgov interfered with stem-cell research*, the rest of the world zoomed ahead. Thus, it was not U.S. researchers who made the crucial discovery that skin cells could be substituted for the infamous fetal cells. Thus, Americans in need of stem-cell treatments now go to places like Costa Rica.
And so the empire crumbles.
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* I don’t, of course, think the gov should fund stem-cell or any other medical research. And I understand the moral creepiness of harvesting cells from custom-grown fetuses. I’m just talking about unintended consequences. Stem-cell medicine is just one area where other parts of the world have leaped ahead of the U.S. due to fedgov policies. And those bottled fetuses are becoming unnecessary because scientists who were free to research discovered other possibilities.
There are also a few scattered free market practices in the United States. I wrote about mine at http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/brook-j1.html. Even in the US of A it is possible to find affordable care, housecalls, and an overall high level of service. The way to do it is to find a direct payment doctor, for whom the patient, not the insurance company, is the customer.
Mentioned on the Rockwell article was a book, “Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine”, which I might buy. It looked very interesting and informative.
El Salvidor’s medicine sounds a lot like America’s of some years ago. While doctors’ offices were separate from hospitals and each other at that time, there was a healthier atmosphere generally——in every sense of the word.
-There was less competition between doctors and between hospitals.
-Costs were not exorbitant, and were often settled with cash, and when cash wasn’t available, time payments were accepted (the patient was trusted, and he felt responsible to pay up).
-Pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and fedgov, did not run the medical field.
-The focus was always on the patient, his illness, and getting well.
-“Preventive medicine” was not something to be treated in the office, but was the part that the patient could and should do for himself.
[Quote]”Stem-cell medicine is just one area where other parts of the world have leaped ahead of the U.S. due to fedgov policies. And those bottled fetuses are becoming unnec-essary because scientists who were free to research discovered other possibilities.” [Unquote]
But… some (many?) scientists don’t, won’t, or can’t think outside the box when they’re NOT “free to research.” They do not try to find other methods of arriving at a solution, or to apply their specialty knowledge to a BETTER solution——when they’re paid to find the “correct” solution. They cannot see past their microscope, and have no comprehension of either practical or ethical applications in their field, only the financial or institutional solution which keeps their job intact.
Also, too many scientists refuse to recognize ethics in research. I question the excuse of ‘scientific purity’ as a reason for ignoring the ethical. While the scientist should NEVER incorporate the ethical *into* his research, his final act should center around *what to do with* his data. As a human being, the scientist has an obligation to be aware of how his data can be used (both good and bad), and specifically how his boss——whoever that is, govt, university, or corporation——plans to use it. I don’t exonerate the scientist, any more than the government employee, for his choices.
OTOH (while I realize patents and copyrights are verboten to many libertarians), isn’t there some way to allow the scientist to retain some control over what he studies, discovers or invents, so he stands apart from the job title or outside funding which allows him to do the study? Is independent contracting possible witin the different fields of science? I don’t know the answer to this.
(This is getting off topic entirely, but I blame our educational system also, for this laboratory disconnect. Education doesn’t teach the individual how to think, how to recognise cause-and-effect, how to translate theory and testing into common-sense reality, or how to judge ethical choices by a non-partisan standard. [Neither do many parents, BTW.]
Without these learning attributes, no one in ANY field can move far beyond his basic job skills——in theory or in practice.)
:…the crucial discovery that skin cells could be substituted for the infamous fetal cells.”
Ah, but whose skin cells? I know little about this subject, not being much of a fan of high-tech medicine — much of which seems to me morally and otherwise creepy — but I have to wonder if the reference is to the very lucrative market in amputated foreskins, which are used not only for “medical” but also cosmetic purposes: http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/01/30/Foreskin. *Involuntarily* amputated, let me remind the libertarians in the audience, at great cost to the “donors” (newborn babies totally open and defenseless) in pain, fear and trauma.
As one of a growing number of men who are coming to realize the full horror of what was done to us in infancy, and the serious damage both physical and psychological (I for one have been in PTSD hell for over a decade, trying to work through its effects on my life) — and resent it mightily — I’m afraid I can’t see the substitution of “skin” cells — unless “harvested” from fully-cognizant adult volunteers (which is unlikely, since what is required is fast-growing pre- or perinatal flesh) — for fetal cells as “progress”.
I was pleased to see LRC recently link an article about this, which seems to me, among other things, as libertarian an issue as any: http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl2/stop-circumcision.html.
I think it’s worth keeping in mind, as we wax reflexively enthusiastic about “advances” in “modern medicine”, that heroin was originally developed as a cure for morphine addiction.
My favorite was the research lab that grew bone cells, heart cells, nerve cells, etc, out of stem cells found in the patients’ own “nasal mucosa”.
Heal with your own snot!