Kevin's Watch

Oh really? *Does the throaty ambiguous evil laugh*

Is it going to be , , or for you guys soon?

They turned me into a newt!


I got better!

Are you kidding? Me and danlo--as I said to Covenant once--are foemen. Since we're making Covenant allusions, I'll go further and say danlo's the groveler, and I'm, of course, Master P--er . . . LF! Oooo!! *Chalks up 1 for the home team*

Something like a smile sharpened the specter's acute face.
"I keep telling you you're wrong. I wouldn't dream of fighting you."

eat graveling Foul!

NO. NO!

Melenkurion abatha! This has gone to far!

One can never go too far! he-he-he

caamora wrote:One can never go too far! he-he-he

"Too much of a good thing is wonderful!" (Mae West)

Dag said:\

Taking birth controll pills are just the same as not having sex..you make it impossible for a contraception to take place. You don`t kill anything..after all, millions of sperm cells (or what you call them) die all the time, and no one screams atrocity about that.

Sorry Dag, you couldnt be more wrong. Recent studiews have shown that taking birth control is far more than not having sex. It limits the sperms chance of fertilizing an egg, but the sperm could still get through, yet worse than that, should the egg be fertilized it can easilt be caught and attach to the filopian tube. This is always fatal to the fetus, and can be deadly to the mother as well.

Add to that the possible threat of future infertility for the mother, after she stops taking the pill, as well as heart ailments, and the pill is very different from abstinence...


-B

Why was this moved? To remind me why danlo and I should never talk about Monty Python in the same room?

Somehow, while posting in this topic, I managed to move it accidentally.

Sorry, my bad. Could a Gen Diss mod please move it back for me?

As I'm sure you can guess, I'm in favour of SCR, abortion, euthanasia and anything else that constitutes "freedom of choice".

Yes, it is playing god, but since "We" are god, there's nothing inherently wrong about this in my opinion. I'm of the opinion of Skyweir here, although the embryo has the potential for humanity, it is not a human yet. If people are willing to make the cells available, let us use them for the betterment of humanity.

I'm not sure I would have a problem with them being deliberately grown either. Of course, I'm not talking about stealing someones cells, but I'm sure that eventually, we will have inert "clones" of ourselves in order to replace organs etc. as neccessary. This would solve the whole transplant gridlock, eliminate the possibility of rejection, etc.

Naturally, this will open a whole other problem of ethical use, but the fundamental principle is not something I'm automatically opposed to.

--Avatar

BUMPED to be moved back to the Close

And moved it is. (Thanks Vain!)

Thoughts people?

caamora wrote:How can science go too far if it discovers procedures that benefit human life? Let's look at Frankenstein. Understand that it was written as a horror story before anything similar was possible. It was written in a time where they still believed that bleeding people helped flush out any bad humors and leeches were the aspirin of the day. We can prolong life! What a wonderful thing to be able to do. The stem cell research is a wonderful thing, I think. We are able to recycle body parts. And why not? Even our own heart recycles our blood over and over again. The human heart is the most efficient recycling station known to man. If my own children were to die, I would donate what organs of theirs that I could in order to save the life of someone else's child.

Medicine is a wonderful thing. The unfortunate part of it is that some practitioners are not moral and ethical and are looking for the dollar!

Actually, the Victorians are responsible for an enormous amount of advancements in medicine. The first detailed anatomical books, and germ theory all come from this era. So did the first modern case studies, centered around the wells in English slums (Whitechapel?).

Sorry, just had to nitpick. Personally it isn't possible for me to have an opinion. By my very definition of human life, It isn't possible for me to know. When is a Human Being a Person? When does the soul enter the body? When does the mind have an ego? Impossible to know. Seeing as how I have absolutely no stake in the choice any woman makes in the matter, I can safely remain opinion less for the rest of my life. However, if I had to guess, I would say conception... just to be on the safe side.

Sorry, just had to nitpick. Personally it isn't possible for me to have an opinion. By my very definition of human life, It isn't possible for me to know. When is a Human Being a Person? When does the soul enter the body? When does the mind have an ego? Impossible to know. Seeing as how I have absolutely no stake in the choice any woman makes in the matter, I can safely remain opinion less for the rest of my life. However, if I had to guess, I would say conception... just to be on the safe side.

One more thing, there is a huge misconception that it is the doctors who are responsible for all the problems in modern medicine. Others blame the drug companies. This is a very false misconception. It is the HMOs that are ruining the field of medicine. They have absolute dictatorial power over their doctors. After all, they are the ones who are responsible for paying the majority of medical bills. Think about it for a second also. The Doctor profits from your health. The more and better he heals you, the more money he will make. Not to mention that most doctors take the Hippocratic Oath extremely seriously. It is their moral and legal responsibility to care about people. Not only that, it is their job.

What responsibilities do the HMOs have? Only one. Keep it in the black. Their responsibility is to the shareholders and no one more. The cheaper they can keep medical procedures the better. They are the ones who are in charge of the field of medicine these days. They decide what tests are done, they decide what drugs people take, and they decide whether or not to pay the Doctors. There is a doctor in my fathers office who decided to go rogue and heal people without telling the HMOs, and he had a multimillion dollar federal lawsuit brought down on him. (it was Humana by the way)

Anyway, I know it was a passing comment, but someone needs to clear all of these misconceptions people have about doctors. That is the field I am going into because I feel it is the only field I can go into that I will never have to question the ethics of my actions. (ideally anyway) I am not saying there aren't corrupt doctors, I am saying that they are rare and not the cause of the modern decay of medicine.

On a final note, I would like to point out that the reason drugs and medical care cost so much are not so much the greed of the drug companies, rather it is the zeal and strictness of our own FDA.

The Dreaming wrote:...When is a Human Being a Person? When does the soul enter the body? When does the mind have an ego? Impossible to know. Seeing as how I have absolutely no stake in the choice any woman makes in the matter, I can safely remain opinion less for the rest of my life. However, if I had to guess, I would say conception... just to be on the safe side.

Although you have a point in saying that you have no personal stake in the question, I don't think that lets you off from having to have an opinion about it.

Personally, as I said, I think there is a big difference between life and humanity. Conception creates the potential for humanity. Nothing more. I'm not even sure that birth makes someone human, and I think that the "soul" is something we develop with experience.

The best test of "humanity" may well be the development of self-interest. Awareness on a human level begins with the knowledge that you are "you". Now I don't necessarily mean that only rationality makes one human, but I certainly think that "selfishness" does.

The Dreaming wrote:...There is a doctor in my fathers office who decided to go rogue and heal people without telling the HMOs, and he had a multimillion dollar federal lawsuit brought down on him.

That's terrible. We had similar problems in this country when the government refused to allow doctors to prescribe ARV treatments for HIV positive patients. Many doctors ignored the ruling, and effectively "stole" ARV's from dispensaries to give to patients. Eventually, government changed their minds, but those doctors were still considered to have acted illegally by the government.

You know things are in a bad spot when policy seems to hold more weight than the well-being of the people.

--Avatar

The medical proffesion is rapidly approaching a state of crises in this country. No one knows or cares about the power HMO's have. A simple clerical error can cause an HMO to deny a clinic billing, and when one leaves, they all do. If you run a test they don't like, they can threaten to withdraw billing. There is a word for this in American law, it's called racketeering. The extortion of human beings for monetary gain by an organized group. It's what they got all the maffia bosses in jail on, and there is actually a lawsuit right now in texas directed at one of the big companies.

It would be so easy to cut them off though. Some American hospitals are beginning to offer a service that allows someone to pay a flat rate to the hospital for lifetime medical care. (Most hospitals in this country are Non-Profit by the way) Of course, as soon as a hospital does this, the HMOs go apeshit, bit it's a start.

Very informative stuff, dreaming. I've been involved with health insurance companies for my mental healthcare for about 10 years now, and its been hell. I've had a psychiatrist tell me that he has an absolutely perfect psychologist for me to meet, he's sure that we'll click, and we have similar goals in therapy. Then I find out that there is only one doctor in the office that I can go see, and he's into christian science on the side. Nothing against christian science, just not my bag.

Anyway, as far as playing God goes, it seems to me that this topic is marked as playing God in the modern era only because it's the current issue. What about tapping into the power of lightning? Or flying in the air? Or distributing death, restoring life into a recently dead body? We are all natural creations. If there is a God that created us, and we have the capacity to act in our world, I can't imagine he did not intend for that possibility.
Unless this is a Garden of Eden situation. In which case I want that guy brought up on charges.

Oh yeah, also I just remembered that in order to get on the sleeping pill that works for me, Ambien, I had to go through two tranquilizers and an anti seizure medication. Because they were all cheaper. Meanwhile I failed out of college.
Bitter. Bitter. Bitter.