A Good Stopping Point

This is the sort of news that always brightens my day.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new $214 million infectious disease laboratory in Atlanta, scientists are conducting experiments on bioterror bacteria in a room with a containment door sealed with duct tape.

The tape was applied around the edges of the door a year ago after the building's ventilation system malfunctioned and pulled potentially contaminated air out of the lab and into a "clean" hallway.

The facility in question is a BSL-3 Q fever lab. Q fever's potential as an incapacitating agent was heavily researched during Operation Whitecoat, not least because it's extremely infectious, and hardy enough to withstand a broad range of environmental conditions. It's very unpleasant, but it's not normally fatal and it does respond to antibiotics. (Which is undoubtedly why we'd stockpiled 5,098 gallons of it by 1970. What's not to like?)

Although the CDC's position seems to be that duct tape is adequate to prevent contaminated air from circulating, they are planning to install a self-sealing door, just as soon as it's convenient:

The construction to install the new door will begin sometime between November and next April, possibly sooner, depending on when there is a good stopping point in the experiments being conducted by the Q fever scientists.

Or, I suppose, a bad stopping point...like the ones reached by UoT-San Antonio and Boston University during their work with tularemia.

Revere has lots more.

A Meaningful Difference

The EPA has come to a predictable conclusion on the legality of "pumping polluted water from farms and suburbs into the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee":

"Clean water permits should focus on water pollution, not water movement," said Benjamin Grumbles, an EPA assistant administrator....

The logic behind this distinction is that water occasionally needs to be transferred from one place to another for legitimate reasons. Flood control is the obvious example; you can see how contaminated water might be released into a sensitive area during a flood, or in order to avoid one, although you might also feel that other, better flood-control options should be pursued.

Allowing polluted water to be transferred without treatment, for what the EPA calls "later public use," is a bit more troubling, especially given the EPA's highminded insistence that its primary concern is "to stop polluters from dumping waste into the nation's waterways."

Essentially, the EPA's stance is that the South Florida Water Management District doesn't dump any waste into the water in question; it simply moves already-polluted water from one place (e.g., the farms and suburbs whose runoff it has the legal right and the moral obligation to monitor) to another (e.g., a source of public drinking water).

What seems to be at issue is whether there's "a 'meaningful difference' between where the pump draws its water and where it deposits it."

If only there were some way of settling this question.

In other news:

Water utilities would get earlier warning of viruses, bacteria or chemicals that could be introduced into drinking water systems by terrorists under a test monitoring program set for expansion beyond Cincinnati.

The pilot program ordered by the Department of Homeland Security in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks uses continuous monitoring of public water for contaminants that could sicken or kill millions of people.

Scientificacious Integritude

Elizabeth Whelan has yet another bone to pick with the Scientific Establishment:

Medical journals now routinely attempt to ferret out what they perceive as "conflict of interest" by requiring that authors disclose any funding they have received from drug companies.

While I'd like to think that these journals have some degree of highmindedness about science, there's no doubt that the appearance of objectivity and transparency helps them to compete in their field. Whelan wants them to forgo this advantage, even though their readership demands it; what she offers in return, besides her personal Certificate of Purity, is unclear.

Oh, and remember that stuff she said a moment ago, about how people are making too much of a fuss about conflicts of interest and guilt by association? Well, don't get too carried away by it.

The Nader-inspired Center for Science in the Public Interest touts its "Integrity Project," which separates what they perceive as integrity-rich scientists (who do not accept industry funding) from the integrity-challenged scientists (with some type of link to corporate dollars).

If it's important for us to know that CSPI was "inspired" by Ralph Nader, you'd think it'd also be important for us to know that a study on coal-plant emissions was paid for by the coal industry. But for some reason, Whelan's brand of kneejerk green-baiting and circumstantial ad hominem doesn't qualify as "scientific McCarthyism." To be guilty of that crimson sin, a journal must attempt to shore up its credibility by strengthening editorial standards that it only relaxed thanks to years of corporate influence.

Whelan managed to overcome her own objections to accepting corporate money quite some time ago, but don't take that as evidence of bias. Her concern is fundamentally humanitarian: she worries that if these journals don't accept her diktat on Scientificacious Integritude, it'll deal a deathblow to Progress.

The current obsession with corporate ties as a "conflict of interest" is not harmless. It has led to regulations and restrictions in government and academia that have restricted scientists, preventing collaboration with external scientific experts and slowing development of new technologies. Such arbitrary guidelines stifle the progress of public health.

Fever-dream laissez-faire horseshit does that too, last time I checked, in part by insisting that public health goals should be set by a handful of catastrophically corrupt private firms that buy scientists as casually as I'd buy a bag of peanuts.

Again, many of these journals are published privately; surely Whelan's splendid libertarian principles would allow them to set strict editorial guidelines, even if scientific ethics didn't oblige them to do so.

As for the scientists who are griping because they can't get published in a respected journal, just because they saw fit to spend a decade or two suckling with robotic fixity at Monsanto's teat, I'd say they deserve the sort of readymade answer libertarians have for the grievances of the poor: Recognition is a privilege, not a right, and you made bad personal decisions.

But then, I'm biased.

A Dangerous Precedent

Punishing Christie Todd Whitman for her misleading statements about air quality after the collapse of the WTC could make other functionaries think twice before misleading the public.

You may be thinking that this would be an excellent reason to throw the book at her, even if her lies hadn't blighted so many people's lives.

If so, you fail to understand the intricacies of statecraft:

Holding Christine Todd Whitman liable will set a dangerous precedent, leaving public officials to worry that their words to reassure the public after disasters will open them up to personal liability, Justice Department attorney Alisa Klein told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

There's enough material here for a dozen posts, but I'll restrict myself to a couple of points. First, I'm not likely to be reassured by people I don't trust. But if I were, it'd probably be because I felt that there was some chance, however small, that they'd be held accountable if they lied to me. That was a rather forlorn hope even before 2000, God knows, but the solution is surely not to treat the anodyne gibberish of party hacks as a balm for which we should be grateful.

Second, if I'd lived in lower Manhattan on 9/11 (instead of the Bronx), I would've found it much more reassuring if Whitman had said, "It's not safe for you to go home." It would've agreed with the evidence directly before my eyes, for one thing, and it also would've given me the feeling that marginally competent people were in charge.

Last, I've never seen much evidence that this government worries at all about frightening people. They've tried to frighten us with anthrax-laden balsa-wood drones drifting across the Atlantic, and a radical homosexual attack on traditional marriage, and ticking time-bombs from which only torture can save us. Worse, they expect us to be more frightened of these threats than the horrific behavior they were invented to justify (e.g., pre-emptive war, institutionalized bigotry, and outright barbarism).

And of course, they've consistently tried to frighten us with the consequences of holding them responsible for their own actions:

"If you speak, you will be potentially held liable," [Klein] said. "Then the clear message for government officials is to say nothing."

I didn't think that any false dichotomy could be venal or insane enough to shock me at this point, but this one does the trick: Officials must be able to say whatever they think will "help" during a national disaster, without any fear of being held responsible, or they'll be forced to preside mutely over the carnage like a funerary statue.

All things considered, I think I'm willing to take the risk.

(Photo: Ruins of Dresden, 1945.)

A Malicious Ideology

A word to the wise from Phyllis Schlafly: Them radical feminist dames is crooked as a barrel of snakes:

Radical feminists have devised a scheme to cash in on the flow of taxpayer money in a big way. Their good buddy, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., has just introduced Senate Bill 2279, called the International Violence Against Women Act.

Some of this money will go to "a certain type of women's organizations" (e.g., the Family Violence Prevention Fund). This exemplifies the shamefully narrow focus of the International Violence Against Women Act, which targets violence against women rather than fetuses or men or conservative Supreme Court nominees or Lasiorhinus krefftii, the Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat.

Radical feminists who would be the recipients of the act's awesome bureaucratic and money power are very selective about the kinds of violence they will target in 10 to 20 foreign countries. They have no interest in speaking up for the hundreds of thousands of unborn girls in China and India who are victims of sex-selection abortions.

Schlafly probably hasn't read the UNFPA's statement on gender-based violence, which specifically identifies prenatal sex selection as a form of "gender violence." Feministing recently had some not entirely complimentary things to say about the practice, too. The disagreement, of course, is over methodology. Schlafly wants to solve this problem, and most others, by banning all abortions now and forever. Most "radical feminists" would probably prefer to address the causes of prenatal sex selection, such as social structures that perpetuate the idea that women are inherently less valuable than men.

So far, we've learned that a bill intended to prevent violence against women will try to prevent violence against women by giving money to groups that try to prevent violence against women. And that feminists who support abortion rights aren't calling for a worldwide ban on abortion. We can be forgiven, I think, for feeling that Schlafly's hunt for logical inconsistencies has been a bit of a bust.

She's nothing if not persistent, though:

Feminist ideology about the goal of gender-neutrality and the absence of innate differences between males and females goes out the window when it comes to the subject of domestic violence. Feminist dogma is that the law should assume men are batterers and women are victims.

Just in case you doubt this, here's an example of gender neutrality going out the window, thanks to the "malicious ideology" of feminism:

Political correctness requires that the Illinois Bar Journal use gender-neutral words, but anyone familiar with this subject knows that "petitioner" overwhelmingly means wife and "respondent" means husband.

Yes, we do know that, don't we? (And isn't it odd how the people who dispute this fact tend to be perfectly comfortable with racial profiling?)

Having demonstrated that political correctness is the handperson of feminist ideology, because it demands the gender neutrality that feminist ideology rejects except when it doesn't, Schlafly points out that accusations of domestic violence can give one party - and it's usually going to be a woman, since the little minxes are clever enough to know that they're statistically more likely to suffer abuse - an "unfair advantage in divorce and child custody."

The possibility of this grave injustice - which is far more dangerous, you'll agree, than legally codifying the presumption that women are lying bitches who probably deserved whatever they got - is apparently what justifies Schlafly's headline: Feminists Abuse Domestic Violence Laws.

My brain hurts.

(Illustration via What Were They Thinking?)

The Enviably Comfortable

I've been busy lately, so the Right's orchestrated attack on a couple of children has barely percolated into my noggin.

For better or worse, I'm old enough to remember a time when things like this didn't happen. You probably are, too; it wasn't that long ago. If you're 30 or older, you can probably remember a time in America - before Michelle Malkin and her ilk burst upon us like a pinata full of cockroaches - when political marginalization was the least you could expect for subjecting injured children to nationwide slander.

Everyone agrees that healthcare is a serious issue. Everyone knows that accidents and illnesses can have huge medical, financial, and legal consequences for children and their parents. None of the vacuous goons currently abusing the Frost family would claim that a scenario like the one Graeme Frost described is impossible; they'd be laughed off the face of the earth if they tried. Instead, they treat all individual victims of for-profit healthcare, and all individual beneficiaries of government aid, as frauds and underachievers who have a grubby private interest in their own health and that of their loved ones (unlike the advocates of for-profit care, who are concerned solely with the well-being of the Collective). The system will always be fallible in theory, but blameless in practice.

We all know this. What we don't know - what we're afraid to imagine - is how much lower these fanatics are able to sink. Previously, their topsy-turvy victimology has portrayed middle-aged sexual predators as victims of teenagers, and the military as victims of "enemy combatants" who'd hanged themselves, and torturers as victims of the tortured, and the Vice President as the victim of the man he shot in the face, and the President as the victim of a bereaved mother. Everything that used to make the arrogance of power so intolerable - the callousness, the capriciousness, the disdain for individual lives - is now supposed to merit sympathy to the precise extent that it gets the outraged response it deserves from humane people. The Conservatarian commentariat has gone from sneering at the special pleading of Black Lesbian Nuns in Wheelchairs to portraying themselves as the ultimate oppressed minority; reasonable remonstrance with their cruel, ugly worldview is an act of intolerance along the lines of torching a synagogue.

Now, the poor downtrodden creatures find themselves cringing under the rhetorical lash of an injured 12-year-old, who had the gall to point out that vetoing SCHIP could mean that other injured kids won't be cared for as well as he was.

The thing is, this would be a valid concern even if the Frosts were every bit as wealthy as their detractors falsely claim; the family's financial status is completely beside the point. If he were a responsible or kind or honorable man, Bush would've signed SCHIP for exactly the reason Graeme Frost recommends: to ensure that vulnerable children will have access to appropriate healthcare. What infuriates the Right is the logic and decency of Frost's position; that's what has them lashing out and hissing like vampires who've been splashed with Holy Water. The debate here isn't about how much money you can earn building cabinets in Baltimore; it's about whether poor children should receive medical treatment as a matter of course, without first having to convince some grotesque cartel of antisocial cranks that they and their families are "worthy" of being treated like human beings.

Speaking of which, here's an edifying exchange between Thers and one of his trolls:

What are all of you doing to help poor children (when you aren't huffing and puffing on behalf of the enviably comfortable)?

Advocating for a rational healthcare system so that the poor don't have to accept charity from condescending, clueless maniacs like yourself.

UPDATE: The Democrats hoped that Graeme Frost would put a human face on SCHIP, but Republicans understand that attacking the human face of an issue is a reliable way to undermine its political support. Their goal, obviously, was to cause as many people as possible to base their opinions about SCHIP not on the reasonably clearcut ethical and logical issues, but on negative emotions - or failing that, lazy suspicions - about the Frost family.

This is what bugs me about liberal attempts to trot out examples of "the deserving poor"; doing so buys into the essentially conservative notion that we can, and should, distinguish officially between different types of poverty (usually by applying standards that perpetuate it, such as the idea that "cheaters" are irredeemable).

Back in the eighties, Ronald Reagan's carefully crafted fantasy of the Welfare Queen, driving around haughtily in her Welfare Cadillac, did quite a bit to drive real images of black poverty out of the public consciousness. And the attempts to counter that image with images of the deserving poor simply reinforced the notion that we have the ability and duty to make this distinction (before we pull people out of the gutter, no less) rather than the ability and duty to relieve poverty per se, as Nathaniel Hawthorne argues:

There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin comes face to face with the Enemy.

(Illustration: "The American Workingman of the Future, When the Labor Agitators Have 'Improved His Condition" Until He is Perfectly Satisfied With It," from Puck, ca 1890.)

Morbid Districts and Deadly Cantons

Eric Umansky (via Bruce Schneier) makes the grim connection between Iraq's "surge" in cholera cases and the crackdown on chlorine bombs:

I'm sure nobody intended for the restrictions to be so burdensome that they'd effectively cut off Iraq's clean water supply. But that's what looks to have happened. What makes it all the more tragic is that chlorine--for all the hype and worry--is actually a very ineffective booster for bombs. Of the roughly dozen chlorine-laced bombings in Iraq, it appears the chlorine has killed exactly nobody.

In other words, the biggest damage from chlorine bombs--as with so many terrorist attacks--has come from overreaction to it. Fear operates as a "force multipier" for terrorists and in this case has helped them cut off Iraq's clean water. Pretty impressive feat for some bombs that turned out to be close to duds.

Perhaps because I'm so angry, the only thing I can think of is Henry Mayhew's 1849 vision of a pathological map of London:

[S]o well known are the localities of fever and disease, that London would almost admit of being mapped out pathologically, and divided into its morbid districts and deadly cantons. We might lay our fingers on the Ordnance map, and say here is the typhoid parish, and there the ward of cholera; for as truly as the West-end rejoices in the title of Belgravia, might the southern shores of the Thames be christened Pestilentia.

Perhaps a similar map could help Iraq along its road to partition.

(Illustration: "Mr. Grainger's Cholera Map of the Metropolis, 1849.")

The Death of Millions

Kevin Roeten wishes a few words with you on the subject of DDT:

Many times politics can be good. But when it’s bad — it’s bad. Especially when it means the death of millions. Unfortunately, sometimes the road has to be traveled for years before facts become known. One of the most hideous ones was the banning of a chemical named dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.

Since DDT was not banned for use against malaria, the death toll resulting from this "ban" is, to put it very politely, apocryphal. Plus, restrictions on agricultural use may've delayed the development of resistance in some areas.

All of which is very old news indeed. Fortunately, Roeten has bigger fish to fry. Building on the pioneering research of Walter E. Williams, Roeten announces that DDT is an anti-tumor agent:

Actually, DDT was found to reduce tumors in animals.

Like most DDT propagandists, Roeten can't be bothered to provide cites. I assume he's referring to a rather...nuanced 1972 paper entitled Dimethylbenzanthracene-induced mammary tumors in rats: inhibition by DDT. I think it'd be fair, if insufficiently abusive, to call this cherrypicking.

Next, Roeten dredges up a few quotes from the vast Sargasso of wingnuttian disinformation to "prove" that the goal of the (imaginary) DDT ban was to depopulate the Third World; the WHO, Roeten claims, wished "to assure that 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria."

I remain fascinated by the conservatarian tendency to enjoy anti-genocide fantasies and pro-genocide fantasies simultaneously; it reminds me of H.G. Wells' claim that "moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." But that's a discussion for another, more lighthearted day.

Just to round things off, erstwhile Grist commenter Jeff Hoffman gets a promotion. Walter Williams misleadingly but correctly stated that Hoffman "wrote on Grist.org"; Roeten simply links Hoffman's name to the site:

Jeff Hoffman, environmental attorney (grist.org) wrote, “Malaria was actually a natural population control, and DDT has actually caused a massive population explosion in some places where it has eradicated malaria.”

Although he's demonstrated to any sane person's satisfaction that DDT restrictions stemmed, like chemtrails and sex-ed classes, from the Trilateralists' murderous campaign against "useless eaters," Roeten ends his piece with an accomodationist whimper:

One can wonder how science has treated chemicals such as daminozide (alar) and chlorofluorocarbons (blamed for the ozone hole). Damnation by the uniformed public is a better description.

Putting aside his ghastly prose, it's interesting how easily he jumps from the incendiary claim that the WHO made an explicit decision to kill children by the millions, to a tepid, roundabout plea for "sound science"; it's a perfect example of wingnut overdetermination.

The main problem I have with his line of reasoning - I mean, apart from the fact that it's utterly dishonest and insane - is that it contributes to the perception that Western doctors and aid workers are agents of genocide in the developing world. This perception routinely causes problems for vaccination teams, and causes at-risk populations to avoid seeking prophylaxis or treatment for serious diseases.

Which is why, beneath its faux-humanist veneer, Roeten's rhetoric is a good deal more poisonous than DDT.

Deadly Agents

Those of us who'd taken an interest in the fate of the Tripoli Six were pleased by their release last week. But as Harriet A. Washington reminds us, their liberation may intensify the problems that led to their imprisonment.

[T]o many Africans, the accusations, which have been validated by a guilty verdict and a promise to reimburse the families of the infected children with a $426 million payout, seem perfectly plausible. The medical workers’ release appears to be the latest episode in a health care nightmare in which white and Western-trained doctors and nurses have harmed Africans — and have gone unpunished.

As I said in an earlier post:

It's easy to feel impatient with these people, whose fanaticism blinds them to the fact that while we might bomb Muslims indiscriminately, or imprison and torture them indefinitely, or dump toxic waste along their shorelines, we are not going to shoot their children up with pathogen-laced vaccines.

People who speak about "completing the project of the Enlightenment" usually aren't talking about performing medical experiments on the poor and powerless. Regardless, this sort of research comes a bit closer to certain cultures' understanding of "Science" than the relentlessly cheerful abstractions of, say, Richard Dawkins.

Africa has harbored a number of high-profile Western medical miscreants who have intentionally administered deadly agents under the guise of providing health care or conducting research....

These medical killers are well known throughout Africa, but the most notorious is Wouter Basson, a former head of Project Coast, South Africa’s chemical and biological weapons unit under apartheid. Dr. Basson was charged with killing hundreds of blacks in South Africa and Namibia, from 1979 to 1987, many via injected poisons. He was never convicted in South African courts, even though his lieutenants testified in detail and with consistency about the medical crimes they conducted against blacks.

These are exceptions, of course, and Ms Washington is careful to acknowledge that fact. But as Adorno pointed, it's perfectly normal to "neutralize the key phenomena of social injustice as mere exceptions."

Meanwhile, via Adventus:

[L]ast fall, a psychologist named Jean Maria Arrigo came to see me with a disturbing claim about the American Psychological Association, her profession's 148,000-member trade group. Arrigo had sat on a specially convened A.P.A. task force that, in July 2005, had ruled that psychologists could assist in military interrogations, despite angry objections from many in the profession. The task force also determined that, in cases where international human-rights law conflicts with U.S. law, psychologists could defer to the much looser U.S. standards—what Arrigo called the "Rumsfeld definition" of humane treatment.

Tales From the Crypt

You probably think that the healthcare crisis has very little to do with illegal immigrants who have leprosy, and very much to do with the fact that insurance companies are for-profit businesses with exorbitant lobbying and marketing budgets, and outrageous CEO salaries.

In reality, the exact opposite is true. And WorldNetDaily has the numbers to prove it, so long as you don't insist on strict accuracy, fairness, or logic:

While "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore is blaming greed and a broken health care system for the inability of Americans to get health-care insurance, it turns out a heavy percentage of those without coverage are illegal aliens.

According to the latest Census Bureau figures, 43.6 percent of non-citizens in the U.S. are without health insurance. In addition, 33.6 percent of those born elsewhere are without coverage.

The main problem here, obviously, is that neither non-citizens, nor people who were born somewhere else, are necessarily "illegal" -- just ask John Derbyshire. (The role of greed in the hiring of dirt-cheap, uninsured laborers is a discussion for another day.)

The article goes on to say that hospitals are closing because they can't afford to provide emergency services to "uninsured and under-insured patients."

You may be thinking that this is a central point of healthcare reformers: the system's failure has increased the unnecessary use of ERs, which is astronomically expensive compared to preventative care and early intervention.

With all due respect, that type of thinking is destroying this country, and with it, the world's only hope for a brighter conservatarian tomorrow.

Now, you can find experts to argue for any position you like. But humanity has always granted a special authority to the opinions of revenants, haints, and spectres, whose membership in the Choir Invisible gives them a unique perspective on the issues of the day. This is precisely what makes the testimony of Madeleine Pelner Cosman so compelling:

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, author of a report in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, is particularly concerned with increases in multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis, chagas disease, dengue fever, polio, hepatitis A, B, and C, she told Lou Dobbs on CNN in June.

Ms. Cosman died on March 2, 2006. It's not clear why WND would wish to imply otherwise, but I'm sure it has something to do with Freedom, or perhaps Values.

Listen and tremble, foolish mortals, as the vivacious Ms. Cosman rails from beyond the grave against the acts and monuments of compassion:

A terrible, absolutely vicious, law called EMTALA: the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act...is really the culprit that requires every emergency room, and every physician of an emergency room, to treat [human beings] illegal aliens for free....

"Even physicians in those emergency rooms don't fully get the point that by being compassionate, and generous, and gracious, they are, in essence, destroying their own livelihoods as well as their own hospitals," she said.

The thing is, they could accomplish this destruction a lot more efficiently by allowing people to bleed to death on the sidewalk. That the EMTALA is the focus of wingnut outrage explains perfectly why their cause is doomed; this country simply will not tolerate the formal, systemic refusal of medical care to men and women and children who will die or be crippled or suffer noisily without it.

And even if it did, you couldn't find many doctors or nurses who'd be willing to work under those conditions. And even if you could, they'd be emotionally defective oddballs at best, and would be likely to give you and yours inadequate care.

Give people like Cosman what they want for a single month, and this country will have socialized medicine within the year.

(Illustration: From Trick Photography, 1902. Via Jack and Beverley's Spirit Photographs.)

Fools Rush In

Contrary to what inebriate louts like Thers might think, setting up a single-payer healthcare system is very, very complicated. Like every other policy decision - from spreading sewage sludge on food crops, to inaugurating “three strikes” laws, to executing pedophiles, to invading Iraq – it needs to be considered carefully in terms of its potential downside.

Granted, polls show that Americans want a single-payer system. But with all due respect, is a public that’s not sophisticated enough to avoid sickness and injury sophisticated enough to understand the risks of single-payer healthcare?

It’s one thing to trust the public to elect a president; how much damage can one person do, given our exquisite system of checks and balances? But attempting to protect America’s health is quite another matter. If we can’t set up a perfect system from the outset, we probably shouldn’t attempt it at all. For one thing, there’s the issue of cost. It costs money to provide healthcare; this fact alone should give us pause.

I also worry about the effect of single-payer care on the American soul. If you can get free healthcare after being run over, why would you bother looking both ways before crossing the street? Why would you avoid overdosing on heroin, for that matter, or catching AIDS from prostitutes?

Everyone agrees that it can be inconvenient when someone dies due to a lack of timely and affordable medical care. But I fail to see how we can solve this problem by giving taxpayer-funded ER care to any Prius-driving metrosexual fop who breaks a nail en route to the Power Exchange.

If America is famous for anything, it’s famous for carefully weighing the long-term results of its decisions. It’d be a shame if the purely emotional lure of anodyne clichés like “moral obligation” caused us to ignore our natural conservatism and pursue an unrealistic, risky solution to our problems…especially at a time when we need to devote our wisdom and resources to the vital project of remaking the Middle East in our own image.

Hell's Golden Rule

A few days ago, CKR had the temerity to ask what the solution might be to the problems I described in this post.

It was a fair question, so I tried to give it some thought. In the meantime, I posted three quotes in honor of the Fourth of July. And today, I realized that somewhere in the interplay of these quotes lies pretty much the only answer I have. Taken together, they describe what's wrong, explain why change is difficult to the point of being unthinkable, and point out that we are the only miracle we're going to get.

Which brings me, only a bit gratuitously, to Amanda's review of Sicko. While reading it, I started thinking about the Administration's claim that democratizing the Middle East is doubleplusgood because democratic nations are less likely to go to war with one another. This bit of Kantian fluff normally travels under the name of Democratic Peace Theory, but BushCo has fashioned it into a casus belli through its usual logical contortionism.

Sometimes, the best way to approach this sort of argument is not to reject it, or point out its hypocrisy, but to carry it a bit further. I notice that countries with effective, equitable healthcare systems often seem to be a bit less belligerent than...others. And not just towards other democracies, but also towards the developing world. Perhaps there's something about honoring people as such - by protecting the weak, relieving distress, and so forth - that makes a country slightly less likely to embark on stupid military adventures. Or vice versa. At any rate, there's a lot to be said for formally rejecting the idea that human beings can become "life unworthy of life" simply by failing to thrive in the petri-dish conditions of late capitalism; it's a short step from shrugging at one's own ghettoes to bombing someone else's.

We know that the American healthcare system, along with the economic system into which it fits like a gun into a holster, produces excessive misery and anxiety, and that excessive misery and anxiety cry out for scapegoats; the system "engenders those to whom punishment is due," in Walter Benjamin's phrase. Which is why my efforts here - from titling this blog, to cluttering it with my scatterbrained, morose, and generally inadequate ramblings - have focused on the argument that if we're unhappy, frightened, or at risk, we have no one to blame but ourselves and no one to turn to but each other.

Apparently, these beliefs makes me a "collectivist." I won't deny any part of the charge, but it's interesting to consider what's popularly defined as collectivism versus what's popularly defined as individualism. Collectivism (which is actually moderately liberal common sense dressed up as Stalinism) recognizes citizens as individuals whose living conditions and state of health affect other individuals, and formalizes the responsibility of the relatively strong to look out for the relatively weak.

America currently does this, of course; we just stop far short of what's properly humane. To quote Hawthorne again:

There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.

By contrast, individualism (which is actually cowardice dressed up as "character") reduces the poor, the sick, the exploited, victims of bigotry, and the mentally ill to an undifferentiated mass of underachieving sad sacks; its adherents glorify their paltry attainments by overemphasizing the delicate line that divides success from failure, health from sickness, and sanity from madness. It all boils down in the end to a vision of economic determinism that makes the worst excesses of vulgar Marxism seem like a page out of Dale Carnegie.

And it's as pitiless to us, ultimately, as it is to the people we deploy it against. But then, that's Hell's Golden Rule: Mistreat others as you mistreat yourself.

(Illustration: "The Circle of the Corrupt Officials. The Devils Mauling Each Other" by William Blake, 1826.)