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Ten Strangely Cruel Science Experiments
aalobode writes "The Times of London has a current story based on the review of a book by Alex Boase, Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments. There they list the top science experiments — including the one from which the book gets its name — that were conducted by otherwise sane humans who tragically or otherwise ignored the effect of their research on the subjects themselves. Nowadays, most institutions have a review board for research on human subjects which would flag most proposals that could lead to harm for the subjects, but not so in the past. 'Another 1960s experiment, in which ten soldiers on a training flight were told by the pilot that the aircraft was disabled, and about to ditch in the ocean. They were then required to fill in insurance forms before the crash -- ostensibly so the Army was not financially liable for any deaths or injuries. They were actually unwitting participants in an experiment: the plane was not crippled at all. It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms.'"
Nothing beats the lolocaust. Mengele FTW!
Submissions from kdawson and Zonk. Oh the irony on the last one.
Fortunately the Geneva Convention made Slashdot fire JonKatz using the Junis fiasco as a reason.
Correction: Author's name is Alex Boese, not Boase or Goatse.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
http://weblogs.marylandweather.com/2007/11/first_earthling_in_space_died.html
RIP Laika
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Vista as among the cruelest experiments wrought on unsuspecting test subjects?
Monstar L
I think conducting a study lacking informed consent where they denied syphilis treatment to over 300 people tops those in the list. And this went on until 1972. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male
That most of our scientific advances were made with experiments that would now be classified as cruel. Particularly psychological, Zimbardo et al, Harlowe et al etc etc. Not suggesting that these are morally fine, but we should be careful about criticizing experiments that have contributed to our understanding. On a different note however, the experiments mentioned don't seem to have contributed an awful lot :P
i know not what weapons the next world war will be fought with, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual
Yes, mistakenly shitting one's pants instead of standard-operating-procedure use of latrine.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
1) I would assume I had already signed such a waiver when I first enlisted.
2) What was the Army going to do if they didn't? Suddenly save the plane to avoid any lawsuits?
they made this massive social experiemt about how a poor population, which has a 1000 year long history of ethnic conflict, reacts when you take over their country by military force.
Until today researchers have found no clear answer as to why the population neglects the truth, that it actually has been fried,äh freed.
High-school chemestry, on a geek-pr0n scale:
20,000 lbs of metallic Sodium being dropped in a lake.
Oh yeah baby, you roll those barrels in there!
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
"It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms."
I would think that the soldiers made the mistakes willingly to avoid to let the "army not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.". Why the would like to save the Army (instead of their families) if they think tell are going to die?
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Sugar Experiments Of Mental Patients.
In 1947-1949 a group of mental patients in Sweden were used as subjects in a full-scale experiment designed to bring about tooth decay. They were fed copious amounts of candy, and many of them had their teeth completely ruined. But, scientifically speaking, the experiment was a huge success.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Report here. Select a random group of ignorant African men, circumcise some of them. Give them vague advice on safe sex, then tell them to go out and have sex. See how many of them come back with HIV.
It was concluded that you're about 50% more likely to catch HIV if you're uncircumcised. I'd say, especially in a society where circumcision is not standard (i.e. not Israel, USA, Philippines, etc.), if you've just had part of your cock lobbed off, you're very likely to change your sexual habits and people are less likely to have sex with you. If you're just given advice and then told to go away, you're more likely to carry on as usual.
Experimentation on the negro is not exactly new, of course.
When I read that they administered 3000 times the amount of a human dose to an elephant, it got me curious. http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-elephant.html It says males can reach up to 15000 lbs, and females 8000 lbs. I assumed that the average male is 180 lbs and the average female is 130 lbs (I know I'm not really being accurate, but I just wanted ball park figures). That means that the average male elephant is about 83.33 times the weight of a human male, and the average female elephant is about 61.54 times the size of a human female. So the administered about thirty-six times what they needed for a relative average male elephant dose. YIKES! Let me know if my math or assumptions were silly, and correct them if you can. I think it's no surprise that the elephant died with that much of an overdose.
Nothing to worry. Just testing the typical reaction of geeks, nerds and similar species.
In 1960, a guy conducted a psychological experiment where he took identical twin girls from an orphanage and purposefully separated them to different families with the express intent of them having no communication with each other - not even to know they had a sister.
They both found out after 30 years that they were part of an experiment.
I can understand that some twins are separated by accident, but how would you feel to know that you missing 30 years of growing up with your sibling because of some experiment?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/news/2007/10/twins_separated_as_babies_beco_1.html
Catch-22 anyone?
I'm surprised none of them pulled out a pistol and shot the guy making the request.Me too.
I certainly would have.
Then again, I am not really army material...
Ignore this signature. By order.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Top/experiments/P0 This site details some more crazy experiments culled from the same book.
Thomas edison and the war of the currents. Edison did some very cruel experiments on animals to show that AC was more dangerous than DC. He electrocuted dogs, elephants and even advocated for the use of the electric chair powered specifically by AC current.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
What about the Milgram Experiment of 1961, in which nearly 2/3rds of subjects were prepared to administer a lethal electrical shock to a partner hidden in another room, just because the scientist conducting the experiment said it was necessary? While no one was actually being shocked, many of the participants who inflicted the fake shocks were emotionally distressed by the ordeal. Derren Brown repeated the experiment in 2006, and obtained essentially the same results. Youtube videos of this are available.
What about the risks taken by the patients and surgeons who pioneered open heart surgery? A great recount of those gruesome days is provided by the book "King of Hearts", which details the career of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei?
"The Times of London has a current story based on the review of a book..." So this is a Slashdot story on a Times of London story on a book review on a book about science experiments...
/offtopic, I realize...
This is like saying that Rock sucks if you're listening to a high-school garage band tuning up.
Jazz is more than "soft" stuff that you probably associate it with. (like anything by Kenny G. which does, in fact, suck.)
Jazz has so many different genres inside of it. You should seriously look at some of the non-soft ones. Namely, Bebop and Free Jazz. Take a listen to Charlie Parker's "Ko Ko" from over 50 years ago. Insane chops on all the players. (Fast, hard... not soft.) Want something modern? Medeski, Martin and Wood albums are a start. (jam-based funky jazz)
Also, although you might consider it "soft" it should be considered "cool," - Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue." That's the album I buy for folks who "hate jazz" and all have enjoyed that album and opened up to Jazz after that. (Plus, all women I've introduced that to now love the thing.)
But perhaps I'm wrong, and you'll just continue to stagnate with Korn, or DethKlok, or whatever...
My favourite along these lines is Jack Barnes who discovered the extremely poisonous box Irukandji jellyfish (Carukia barnesi): "The jellyfish itself was identified in 1964 by Dr. Jack Barnes; in order to prove it was the cause of Irukandji syndrome, he captured the tiny jelly and stung himself and his son." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carukia_barnesi They were both hospitalized, as was a life gaurd he also stung to make triply sure.
Scientists are at least as amoral as the people/corporations/governments that fund them. None of this should be a surprise to anyone. If vivesection or giving subjects disease or electric shocks or whatever might be dreamed up is called for, the scientist will dutifully do it in the name of learning. Or money. Whichever.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Me too.
I certainly would have.
I would have been wondering: If we are about to crash so badly that we will die anyway, who will be able to recover the filled out forms later?Perhaps more scientifically relevant than the rest, with better anesthesia, but freakish nonetheless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdJGlYOL0r4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1263758.stm
http://www.freetimes.com/stories/14/46/whites-anatomy
In other news, Dr. White was my neurosurgeon once a long time ago. I suspect that's where my extra head came from, but you can never really know.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
That may well be a legitimate concern, but the guy would still get shot.
And that's even though we'd all die in a few minutes anyway.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't see the experiment concerning running a human through giant laboratory mazes with potentially deadly pitfalls. Armed only with pogo shoes and a trans-dimensional gun, the person is forced to dodge machine gun fire, suffer taunting quips from the AI running the experiments, and even commit fratricide. I will say that the carrot at the end of the stick, the Portal Song, does make the reward outweigh the risk.
How about Dr. Jack Barnes who exposed himself and his son to the venom of the Irukandji jellyfish
Synergies are basically awesome, and they're even better when you leverage them. -PA
Perhaps the book is written to indicate how much better science is now. How many wonderful controls we have. And of course it would be correct. Except for the Texas A&M biological research lab that was closed for making mistakes that a high school science student learns not to make. Or that we routinely subject out children to unscientific studies in education, nutrition, and marketing just to see what will happne. Or we continue to sacrifice huge number of animals with little scientific justification, because they are animals and have no right not to be sacrificed.
Perhaps this is the similarity between Tuskagee and most continuing research that the parent was looking for. The participants in the study were not considered human persons, but but merely humans without the rights of a person. Just like few would have a problem with sacrificing baby monkeys to study the effects of drugs during pregnancy, who would have a problem with this experiment? Are animals not there to serve the human person? This is a very convenient philosophy which allows to live with collateral losses, torturing enemy combatants, and spewing deadly substances into poor neighborhoods.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
thanks i was getting depressed after realizing I'm pushing 30, living at my mom's, my FOSS MMORPG isn't unique at all, and my entire social life consists of posting to slashdot. Now I have purpose again :)
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
It's the richest country in the world because its citizens can and do take care of their basic needs themselves.
Said like someone with a lot of money or someone who still lives at home with the parents. I haven't had health care in years. Can't afford it. But hey, I work for a multi-national corporation, so I'm sure I've raised your stock income up a bit.
My guess is because they were going for a fairly light-hearted story, with a few light gasps and chills, and not trying to get people actually furious. The last thing I'd put the Tuskegee study in is with a bunch of experiements described as wacky. Would you?
Looking at the article, I think the summary is mistitled. The article doesn't talk about having the "cruelest" experiments, but simply the wackiest ones. For example, number seven about arousing male turkeys with a model of a female turkey is hardly cruel, and as the parent pointed out many really cruel ones are omitted.
I was also reminded of another famous experiment, the Milgram experiment where a group of test subjects were instructed to shock other test subjects. The entire setup was false - those said to be receiving shocks were only acting, but those told to administer the shocks did not know this. They still continued to administer (fake) shocks because they had been instructed to do so. This may not have been cruel to those pretending to be shocked, but I certainly would not want to have been one of those told to administer the shocks, as I would doubtless have had trouble sleeping at night after if I had done so. The Wikipedia article as usual has much more detail on this experiment.
Libertarian ideals never seem to work out in the real world do they? Our current hybrid system of capitalism and socialism seems to work pretty good. I don't understand why so many people believe we are better off with no taxes and basically no government.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
"Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on."
Strangely appropriate for slashdot...
The large Hadron Collider is a moby piece of equipment. Built in the former LEP tunnel at CERN, it will be operational in May 2008. For the first time in history, we may be able to reach energy levels enough to produce particle-mass black holes (60% probability according to some, CERN just report it as "possible"). The safety analysis concludes that this is not supposed to be a problem because of fast evaporation by Hawking radiation. Alas, Hawkling radiation has never been observed in practice. It fits nicely with the standard model, but so does also models without it ...
This could be a cruel experiment indeed, if we happen to falsify Hawking and create a stable black hole with velocity below earth escape (which LHC, contrary to cosmic rays do nicely by head-on collisions, thereby eliminating momentum). Sadly, I predict a lack of people being able to sumbit this to the Darwin awards page, even less any web (or planet) at all ...
I wish this was just a joke, now this is more of black humour. While it's just a small probability of things going boom in the wrong way; given the hazard, the risk is quite large anyway. Also, sadly, the risk evalutation is highly unserious compared to, for example, nuclear power plant regulation. One good place for further reading is http://risk-evaluation-forum.org/
Oh please. I make $32,000/year, don't live with my parents, and I still can afford health insurance. I'm currently getting it cheaper from work, but even if that weren't the case, I'd still be able to afford health insurance! Whether it's worth it or not is debateable (I hate insurance on principle, paying for things I don't use pisses me off), but it's perfectly affordable, unless you're in horrible health.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Another 1960s experiment, in which ten soldiers on a training flight were told by the pilot that the aircraft was disabled, and about to ditch in the ocean. They were then required to fill in insurance forms before the crash -- ostensibly so the Army was not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.
They were actually unwitting participants in an experiment: the plane was not crippled at all. It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms.
It immediately reminded me of Stanley Milgram's Experiments. Where the test subjects are 'set up' and are tested on something different than appearances would indicate. They're tested in extreme conditions and caused such a shock at their time that I surely think they should be #1 on this list. I think Milgram started working on a really incredible part of human psychology: the unconscious rules that we live by so that our society can function. The weirdest part of what his research led to, imho, is that these un-knowing rules are so secretive; we hide them from ourselves. They have not been studied before, or since as far as I know. Until recently...
A group of Internet geeks got together on alt.seduction.fast and started working together to combine resources and model these secret behaviour rules in order to improve their success with women. They have had great success at what they call The Game. As these rules emerged they quickly realized that they are useful in all social situations rather then just the art of the 'pick-up'. Consequently several of these previous geeks are now somewhat superstars in their circles.
What's ironic to me though, is that knowledge of the built-in secret social rules be it Milgram's or the pick-up artists, does not translate to ease of their manipulation. There seems to be a built-in restraint component that does not go away merely because a subject knows it exists. As anthropologists would say, the system is protecting itself...
Now, when one starts to ponder what is often called 'High Level' game. Is it unusual for it to drift into analyses of people in the highest strata of society who use these rules to maintain their already dominant position? I don't want to go all 'Alex Jones' on this, but how much truth resides in conspiracy students who aren't content with staring at the surface veneer of the mass propaganda force-fed to us? Zeitgeist would translate more or less to 'spirit of the age'. Is Zeitgeist the true spirit of our age? Be your own judge, but be enlightened by the journey.
Thank you.
Liberty.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Also I don't see how the government is reducing my freedom by using some of my tax money to provide free health care.
If you're a real asshole you can look on it as an investment; healthy people work better, safe people may feel like they don't need a safety net and will spend more perhaps.
The argument that health care can't be provided because it would cost too much is also strange when you look at the amount of military spending, and how many countries do have successful health care systems.
It's the richest country in the world because its citizens can and do take care of their basic needs themselves. I'm in Australia where the government is involved in health care (you get refunds on necessary healthcare, and the amount you pay varies according to income), and we're not doing too bad. (ie we're not trillions of dollars in debt, though that may be about to change with Rudd poised to take over)
I don't get what you mean about citizens taking care of their basic needs themselves though. Citizens still pay for health care, but they do it via the government rather than an insurance agency.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
As I already wrote somewhere in this discussion, I am considered incapable of serving in the armed forces because I'm too near-sighted.
Which is perfectly fine by me.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I built a news site for software developers and other geeks, which every 12 seconds flashes a message saying "Blow-up dolls are fun!" The goal is to see if I can substantially increase the sales of blow-up dolls world wide through subliminal advertising.
So far it's been quite a success. The cruel part is that dependency on blow-up dolls seems to dramatically decrease the subject's aptitude when dealing with the (living) opposite sex, but hey, all science exacts a price.
Ignore that.
I'd argue that a government has the obligation to protect the liberty and the lives of its citizens. A national health service is one way to fulfill that obligation.
If the basic needs of its citizens were actually being taken care of, then I'd agree with you. But, in fact, they are not. The cost of health care is beyond the ability of too many citizens to take care of that themselves. The cost of some medical needs can exceed the lifetime take home pay of the median citizen.
The health care costs are up for a number of reasons:
This may well be the richest country in the world. But it achieves that for the rich few on the backs of the many.
I genuinely do believe we would be far far better off with universal health care (covering everything, including dentistry). I'm just seriously worried that our government is entirely incapable of managing such a task.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I hope you can see that "flamebait" is a complete and correct description of your post.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
If you're a real asshole you can look on it as an investment; healthy people work better, safe people may feel like they don't need a safety net and will spend more perhaps.
It is not reducing freedom by providing free health care. It is the laws it will pass limiting your freedom based on the fact that it is providing free health care.
Perhaps I phrased it poorly, however, roads and industrial regulation fall under what I meant by regulating commerce. I am not sure about parks. At this point I can't think of any harm that comes from government parks (I know of some related to government parks, but those are all from laws above and beyond those creating the parks), but I can't at the moment think of how they fit into my perception of the legitimate purpose of government.
My objection to government provided healthcare is not the cost. What countries have successful government provided health care? Canada's is coming apart, same for England. A couple of years ago France killed off a significant part of its elderly population during a heatwave. None of the programs that I have seen proposed in the US involves people taking care of their healthcare costs. They have all involved it being paid out of tax dollars. Since in the US, something on the order of 75% of tax revenues come from something less than 25% of the population, that is not taking care of health care through the government (unless they are one of the less than 25%, who will still probably have some kind of privately paid health care--see Canada).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
How has the Standford Prison Experiment not been mentioned yet?
Take a few volunteers pay them $15 a day and split them up into Prisoners and Guards. These are just normal people off the street. The experiment had to be canceled early because of the psychological trauma that the Prisoners were experiencing. And we're not talking 30 days of 60 days in, the experiment was canceled in 6 days.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
That works right up until you are diagnosed with a potentially expensive medical condition. Not when you have treatment for it mind you but when you are diagnosed. Try getting affordable private health insurance with rheumatoid arthritis. Or having ever had a bout with clinical depression. Or even something like severe excema. Your individual insurance premium for any of those conditions can run into multiple thousands a month, something you very likely won't be able to afford on 32K a year.
None of these are lifestyle diseases, there is nothing you can do to avoid them except be lucky. If you're unlucky, and don't have employeer provided health insurance, you're pretty much screwed.
If free health care is provided, the amount of hypochondriacs will increase, the quality of doctors will decrease, the requirements to become a doctor will decrease and will become a technicians job relying on manuals and a 2 year schooling instead of engineering requirements.
It is unavoidable in a country that provides welfare for those who don't work and those who will justify an excuse to not work in order to get benefits.
The TSA is what happens when you let government come up with a solution to a potential problem.
What is disheartening is that in the USA, the slacker and entitle mentality is celebrated while someone that works hard, saves, raises a family, and is dependent on themselves is seen as the problem.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Who says what the job of the government is? You? God? The constitution? I claim that the job of the government is to do what the people want it to do. In wellfare states that means that people willingly pay a bit more taxes to provide basic services for everyone. It means there's less poor, less homeless, less crime, less safelessness. In a wellfare state you don't NEED to own a gun to protect yourself, because the system isn't such that it makes people into criminals. (There will always be crime, but the system need not breed it.)
You say if government does anything beyond minimal regulation people suffer because of loss of "freedom". What kind of freedom is it to let your near ones go without food, shelter, health care? That's no freedom, that's cruelty.
I say, if the state does not some how guarantee a minimum of health care and social support a part of the populace suffer a real loss, a loss of dignity, a loss of life worth living. I am happy to pay taxes so that people around me can live a dignified life. I don't think it's okay for people to live on the streets, starve to death, be treated as criminals for simply existing at all. It's the task of the strong to take care of the weak, not to push them around.
What good is it being rich if people around you suffer?
Oh, you mean like in the UK where becoming a qualified medical practitioner is so simple and textbook-based we are now struggling to meet the required number of even nurses, let alone fully trained doctors.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I'd argue that a government has the obligation to protect the liberty and the lives of its citizens. A national health service is one way to fulfill that obligation. You could argue that, but you would be wrong. The police do not keep people safe from crime, the police rarely get involved until after the crime has occurred. The police are part of the system to arrest and punish those who violate the public order. The difference is significant and important. Likewise, the fire department doesn't keep people safe from fire. The fire department arrives and puts out the fire (btw, where I live the fire company is a private organization, not a government department. that survives on donations and volunteers). In both cases, the justification of the existence of a government department is the maintenance of public order.
Neither protecting liberty or lives is part of the job of government. I will repeat, the job of government is: provide for the common defense (military), maintain order, regulate commerce (this last might actually be part of the previous).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Personally, I would rather have that tax money so that I can give it to charities that do a much better job of helping those in need then the government. I believe that helping people in need is something that should be done voluntarily. I agree that it is the job of the strong to take care of the weak, but it is not the job of the strong to take from the less strong to give to the very weak (which seems to be what you propose.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The University of Iowa supported research, later dubbed "The Monster Study," that involved teaching young orphans how to stutter in an attempt to prove that stuttering is a learned behavior. While none of the children picked up stuttering, many began to exhibit the same mannerisms as stutterers (low self-esteem, hesitations, etc.)
The study's main researcher, Wendell Johnson, has a campus building named after him (the Wendell Johnson Speech & Hearing Center). Apparently the Univ. of Iowa still doesn't see anything wrong with conducting research on non-consenting children...
LSD has only been done in the gram level once, when college students broke into a lab and snorted a bunch of LSD in powder form (an extremely rare thing indeed), thinking it was cocaine. I believe 3/4 only made it through the night due to being put on a respirator. It was probably a VERY VERY bad trip, to the point of not knowing how to work your lung muscles. Considering a 1990s hit was "100micrograms" or so, a milligram is 10 hits, and a gram is 10,000 hits. Is my math wrong? I'm forgetting some of my college stuff and am too lazy to google ;)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
That's funny if true, because in German, the word "böse" (also spelled "boese" when umlauts are not available) means "evil".
If it's so secret, then how come I've never heard of it?
Just saw this, the other day, and I wonder how truthful it is.
It's a totally creepy video of a dog's head with some gizmo replacing it's body. Obviously, it crossed my mind that it probably is fake, but I've seen a lot of sources stating otherwise, so I really don't know what to think.
Either way, it's just plain sick.
Some smart French guy said "The downfall of every government begins when its citizens find out they can vote themselves money from the common fund"
As for socialized medicine, When a Canadian finds out they have something serious they come to the USA to get it fixed. If they stay in Canada and wait for the socialized medicine there, they die of their ailment before their turn comes up.
Our electrotechnics/electronics class actually got an assignment from one of our teachers to determine the effects of different voltage/ampèrage combinations, frequencies, etc. for 'the average 25-year old human male'. This 15 minutes after reading the numbers from a book and 10 minutes after a tirade from the teacher explaining that those figures were the result of actual experiments peformed by 'the nazis' and how we, by using those figures, were on some manner of slippery slope because if we use the results of such atrocities now, somebody in the future might think it wasn't such a bad idea, given that we've learned from these things. Another might even say so much as "well, let's not let their suffering/deaths be in vain".
Suffice to say that there's been no other method(s) established and that.. yes, it was awful... but we have the data now, and we'd be stupid not to use it - while at the same time knowing that we should do everything we can to prevent this ever happening again in the future. As far as humans go, that seems to have mostly succeeded (people going on wacky new drugs do so 'voluntarily' for money)... things still have a ways to go for lab animals to be used less and less, unfortunately.
It's fun to state your opinions as unqualified facts.
Your suggestions may be something approximating the bare minimum of services a government can provide, but merely because any government that didn't would have a tough time staying in power either because of invasions or revolt.
The role of the government is to do whatever its citizens have given it power to do and surrendered their individual rights and responsibilities for. Where those bounds are, varies widely.
I think someone needs to correct the units in the Wiki article. Is Wikipedia at fault, or is Slashdot at fault? Specifically, "1,200 g (1.2 mg)" suggests that Slashdot is deleting characters outside of ASCII, such as the micro sign.
Gobble Gobble "Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on."
Your argument rings false. I mean, you say that these services (police- and firedepartment) aren't doing any prevention (which is wrong, the police- and firedepartments are up to their knees in prevention) and therefore don't compare with the medical industry (which is again wrong, since a lot of medical work only comes up when the bad thing has already happened). So which is it ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
In the states, one does not have to have a diploma from an accredited high school to become a first responder.
If/when a health care practitioner becomes a government job, it will only get worse. Results will vary from municipality to municipality as local corruption plays a hand.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
There is a German movie called 'Das Experiment', it is about a similar experiment, and in the movie things too ran out of control.
I recommend it to those who are interested in studying the human psyche.
The saddest poem
like a gun to someones head might cause them to screw up filling out a form? Who knew? Thanks to science we now know.
There must be a Department of No Duh somewhere doing all these experiments. About a month ago I heard that a study confirmed that men are less choosy about their sexual partners than females. I think it was an Australian study, so maybe there is an International Institute of Obviousness. I wish to submit a grant request on a study proving that staple guns hurt when pointed at flesh. (I will "encourage" some ex-SCO lawyers to volunteer as subjects.)
Table-ized A.I.
MKULTRA was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program that began in 1950.
Some excerpts from the wikipedia article:
LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject's knowledge and informed consent.
(About experiments in Canada by Donald Ewen Cameron)
His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions.[18] His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents
[...]
The Canadian government was fully aware of this, and had later provided another $500,000 in funding to continue the experiments
Cutting off the entire cock reduces the chances of transmitting HIV by almost 100%. Clearly chopping off everyones penis at birth is the only ETHICAL thing to do.
From exactly where do you attain the information that the counseling on safe sex practices involved telling individuals to have sex or was less complete than the counseling available in Europe or the US?
There's nothing preventing such a study from achieving the same results by providing the most up to date methods of preventing the spread of HIV, so without further information, giving the study the benifit of the doubt seems a reasonable thing to do.
Furthermore, as soon as they had statistical evidence that circumcision actually did something, the study was stopped and circumcision was offered to all members of the study. That's a typical methodology for all case/control studies which discover a large effect on patient outcome in either direction and are stopped early because of it.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
I'm confused as to why you (and the person who replied above me) are so scathing about this research. They took people who would not have been circumcised and did it to some but not to others (so maybe making some better off than others but there was a Pareto improvement in utility). According to the article you quoted;
"All participants were extensively counseled in HIV prevention and risk reduction techniques."
I've not heard anything which has made me think that this is untrue, nor can I see why they would want to do anything other than this (as it also allows them to have a look at how effective education is at the same time). IIRC they actually reported the results early because they considered the findings to be so strong that it would be unethical not to report them early. I would think that the people who carried out the study probably met the very strict ethical requirements of research (hell, even I had to consider the ethical implications of political theory... medical research would be twice as strict).
I mean, it might be true that this research genuinely did abuse the people in it, but I have seen nothing which suggests that it was, and without you providing credible sources against this, then I see what you say as a needless attack on what seems like good quality research which could save thousands (or millions) of lives
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Several of the womenfolk in my family worked as nurses to bring in a second salary. They gave up their positions in the health service after Mrs. Thatcher decided to partially privatize the health service (to create the "internal market").
One of the first things that she privatized was the ward cleaning services. In particular, Mrs. Thatcher was outraged that cleaners were using three different sets of disinfectants as well as spending what seemed to be half their time cleaning door handles. But there were sound scientific reasons for doing all of this. NHS scientists had determined that three levels of disinfectant were required. A high concentration disinfectant was used for cleaning floors where bandages, blood and outdoor shoes would bring in contamination. A middle concentration disinfectant for cleaning frequently contacted surface (door handles, panels etc.. ) and a low concentration disinfectant for clean walls and ceilings. As cleaners were part of the ward team, they got to know which areas needed the most attention
To stop this "waste", the government decided to privatize the cleaning services so that they would be specified only by a contract and not through team-work. Consequently we have all the problems we have now with infection.
For this reaon alone, many experienced nurses who have retired will not consider going back into the profession.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
As you can clearly see, the counseling, testing, and even treatment available to the study members was superior to the generally available treatment at the time.
Please do everyone a favor and save such clearly incitatory comments for the experimentations on subjects which are actually conducted in an unethical fashion, instead of merely those whose study population fits in with your preconceived notions of racism.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Anyone can see HIV/Intactness link is unproven
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omg wtf bbq FAKE!11eleven!
I like your Macs, but I don't like your Mac users. (with apologies to Gandhi)
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Oddly enough this is starting to happen elsewhere in Europe. Not because nobody learned from that fiasco. Rather because they learned that there was lots of money to be made.
Which is why on some continental southern neighbours of the UK people are rather attached to the concept of public service because for all of its deficiencies there are a number of areas where it works much better than the private sector.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
When you ask the government to do these extra things, which it is very inefficient at, you need to stop complaining about loss of freedom.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I think what you say is true for adults, but the kids suffer under our system.
I remember reading a story about some kid dying because his parents didn't have money for dental care. IIRC a decaying tooth has caused infection to spread to her brain.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
No - that is a confidence trick and has worked because people actually feel they are doing good by paying more. Consider the recent vaccine against the virus that is a cause of cervical cancer. It's development was entirely funded by the Australian Taxpayer and yet people in the USA are paying more for it than anyone else on earth. In a lot of cases these products are just marked up to what the market can bear and people in the USA are used to paying more.
Personally I think the effect of corruption via the lobby system is the major impediment in US politics to getting anything done for the good of the country but others know a lot more.
Desolate Shore, live on Jazz Club.
Radiology equipment built any time recently will conform to the DICOM standard for storing, transmitting, receiving, and printing radiological imaging data (Wikipedia reference). On the radiologist's end, you can use software that is sold by the various large-scale healthcare systems providers, such as McKesson, GE, Philips, and so on, you can use a third-party viewer such as eFilm, or you can even grab a copy of the open-source OsiriX viewer for your Mac. All of these, including the free option, will interoperate with any of the others. If you doubt the industry's demand for interoperability, check out the IHE Connectathon, and note that all the big names, and the little ones, do their best to attend, find, and fix bugs like crazy. Successfully passing all the tests is quite a badge of honor among the programmers that attend.
Some implementations may have bugs, quirks, or might screw something up, or they might only implement part of the standard, but when hasn't that been the case? Still, to say that interoperability doesn't exist, or even to say that it's not a high-priority design goal (and huge selling feature) indicates a dramatic lack of understanding about the industry and the companies involved. When all you need to do diagnostic imaging from an MRI is a Macbook and an ethernet cable, you can't honestly say that proprietary software or lockin is an issue.
Because it's patronizing and manipulative. AIDS, specifically, is a very easy disease to avoid. We know how it spreads. It can be quarantined with words for goodness sake. All that needs to be done is to not do something.
But advocating mass circumcision is like saying, "We know that our little brown brothers can't be expected to refrain from fornicating with everyone they meet. They simply don't have the self control or the capacity to understand the risk. Let's just cut them up a bit, and that'll either reduce their mating opportunities or the infection channel through some unknown mechanism whose possibility I just made up right here."
Advocating circumcision to reduce AIDS risk is like advocating gastric bypass to reduce obesity risk. They're both invasive surgeries (although one could be done outpatient), and the both technically have some numbers to support their efficacy, but they gloss over some underlying assumptions whose implications are staggering.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Oh, I don't know, troll might fit as well.
People usually dies, you know, nobody is going to live forever. Be happy they live in a post-capitalistic society where the average life expectancy far exceeds the double of previous ages. But don't ask me to pay enormous amounts of money to extend the lifespan of YOUR loved ones by some 5 or 10 years.
Your ad could be here!
Way to insult deaf people?
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
I don't know about everybody else, but I was certainly aware that the system was totally broken in an evil kind of way while I was struggling through the middle of it. I just barely managed to crawl across the graduation finish line, having made enemies with several of the staff. I was young, and I could have done much better had I another go at it, but the whole thing seemed monumentally evil at the time. When I came across Ingli'e work, it made a lot more sense.
But the absolutely most mind-blowing points are covered in this video.
-FL
Wow, your comment had me convinced until I read the link provided by an AC:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/1/125028/8808
Very good argument that it was poorly done science in search of a pre-ordained conclusion by an interested party. I read through all the opposing comments as well, and they certainly don't seem satisfactory and are mainly just the Courtier's Reply. To be more explicit, The author of the article points out several ways in which the experiment did not have a sufficient control group and the counter-argument was that some of these are accounted for statistically. However it seems that list of things accounted for doesn't include all of the problems, and the counter-arguer just repeats himself more vehemently and seems to have absolute faith that sufficient rigor was taken despite lack of support from the research paper and multiple instances of other scientists and groups of scientists pointint out the exact same problems brought up in the article. Given the available options, we should in fact not trust the one scientist who has probable cause to fake the results and as the article points out, has already been suspiciously injudicious in his methodology. That's not just an ad hominem attack, the study itself has been attacked successfully, with a large variance on trustworthiness, and the circumstantial evidence only serves to point out that prudence urges caution in accepting the results. That some scientists agree with the research paper is not good support, as people (even scientists) who don't know tend to go with whoever's loudest, which creates false consensus.
(BTW, joe, this long reply is just to summarize the linked article and address possible concerns, not because of anything you said. I'm certainly interested in hearing any rebuttal if anyone has one)
Except they have been tested, and work really well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
What, was that little tidbit so concealed that they'd need to test for that?
Me, and my loved ones are doing fine thank you. They are paying more than their share for the health care. It's not them or myself that I'm worried about, but the man on the street. The unemployed and the very least payed people. Those are the people that have no (or very limited) insurance in the USA and pay the most for getting sick or unemployed.
It's not good enough to say that even they already have it better than people used to. If you're living in one of the richest countries in the world you're entitled to expect that your fellow citizens will take care of you when you most need it. Of course that also means that they also have a duty to help their fellow men and women. That kind of duty is best done through a state health insurance and unemployment compensation. That way everyone in the community pays a little to help those who need it - and know that if they in turn should ever need health insurance or get unemployed they'de be covered.
Otherwise your society is just a fancy form of every man for himself and let only the fittest survive. My belief is that men have evolved past that point, but then maybe I'm a dreamer.
Trainees are potentially heading into very dangerous, very consequential situations. Thousands of years of experience show that stressful training helps them survive these situations and achieve vital objectives. This involves an irreducible level of danger in training exercises.
It is proper to try to minimize the sum of training casualties, battle casualties, and mission-failure consequential casualties. It turns out that under this constraint the optimal number of training casualties is not zero. Sorry, it's a dangerous world.
--phunctor
Health care is certainly not a right. I want an XJ8 but I can't afford it so I have a Jetta. If you can't afford all the health care that you want then you will have to settle for less. It is just like everything else that you have to buy.
Here is another shocker. Most of the health care that you pay for provides no evidence based benefit whatsoever. When you go in for your sore throat and your doctor does a strep test which is negative, and then decide to treat you with an antibiotic anyway, there was $40 down the drain. I could have given you 10 days worth of placebo and it would have had the same benefit to you at almost no cost. Here's the kicker, it would have been much safer for you as well. You are going to in expecting something that can cause allergic reactions and contribute to antibiotic resistance with absolutely no change for any benefit to you.
The reason you need so much health care is because it has been sold to you. Just like all the other crap in your life that you have to have because it is sold to you. So when you are buying things you don't need don't complain about not being able to afford them.
Then once the artificial demand for unnecessary medical services is lessened, the price will go down because of oversupply. At that point people who really need the care will be better able to afford it.
Don't go to the doctor unless you need to. Expect to pay for the things you want. Understand you can't have everything you want or need.
Fancy semantics. If the founding fathers wanted to guarantee you health care it would have been written into the constitution. They had doctors then. They could have formed an anti-disease department. They didn't. Why? Because the governed people of the time would have never stood for it. They were independent and self sufficient.
They didn't yet have the entitlement mentality bred into them by the government. Why does the government want to provide more and more "services" to the people. To secure their votes, to secure their money, and to secure the power that comes with the wealth redistribution system of socialism.
How do they do it? They sell it to the public on one hand by creating a state of fear while on the other hand providing the easy remedy. Trade your freedom for "safety."
Do you feel safe yet?
Aren't there some rather severe psychological effects of being circumcised as an adult? (as in, "severe enough that most doctors won't do it unless there's a pressing medical need")
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The pilot has announced that the plane is going to crash land into the sea in fifteen minutes. The commanding officer on board orders me to fill out a form to release the military from liability.
Situation #1 - I sign the form. I die in the crash. I could've told the commander to fuck off, but I don't care now because I'm dead.
Situation #2 - I refuse to sign the form. I die in the crash. The last fifteen minutes of my life were spent with the commander yelling at me.
Situation #3 - I sign the form. I survive the crash. Everybody's happy.
Situation #4 - I refuse to sign the form. I survive the crash, and so does the commander. I get dishonorably discharged for failure to follow orders.
It would be hard to think logically, but a sliver of hope and a moment of thought would lead me to sign the form.
The best solution seems to be to privatize half the service - not always possible though. One city council privatized their school bus service. Soon, they were facing above inflation price increases. So they bought back the in-house bus service and gave it 50% of the business. Then they could play both parties off against each other. If the private service tried increasing prices, the in-house team would become more cost effective and vice versa.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The police do not keep people safe from crime, the police rarely get involved until after the crime has occurred.
Right, how many more people do you think would commit crimes if they weren't afraid of being tracked down by the police, convicted in court and then thrown in jail.
Likewise, the fire department doesn't keep people safe from fire. The fire department arrives and puts out the fire
Putting out fires prevents those fires from spreading and killing far more people/doing far more damage. Fire departments and other government or quasi-government bodies also get invovlved with fire protection.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Although many of the items on the list are indeed cruel and necessary, there are some that aren't really...
Take the guy who tried to infect himself with Yellow Fever in every way imaginable to prove that it wasn't contagious. He was so sure of his hypothesis, that he was willing to risk his own life to prove it.
As long as he's inflicting it upon himself, there's nothing terribly cruel about it
And of course, doing so did provide an important contribution to the development of modern medicine.
Why not put the Stanford Prison Experiment on the list instead.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Circumcision itself is still questionable surgery on a child. The cutting-off of a perfectly useful part of one's anatomy for purposes of religious or family tradition or "cleanliness" is sad.
Actually, that's exactly what The U.S. Constitution (or any, for that matter)is for--for specifically outlining what the job of of the government is. Federal constitutions describe federal governments; state constitutions define state governments--and so on. The last thing that the government should be doing is everything the people tell it to do. People can, do, and will give away their own freedoms for what, in the end, amounts to nothing. That nothing takes many forms, usually safety from terrorists, and, as in this case, safety from (death by) illness. Worse yet, people can, do, and will give away other people's freedoms for the same reasons! Don't believe me? Remember the Japanese internments of the 1940s, or Nazi Germany, or sex-offender laws that ruin people's lives for the stupid, mostly harmless things that they did when they were fifteen.
And when the money is created from thin air, because of rampant inflation, or demanded from the citizens at an ever-increasing rate, again due to inflation, to pay for it all, how is this any different than not providing those services? Instead of some people having quality health care while others don't, no one will have it. Will you be happy to pay so much in taxes that someone else, who may not have your work ethic, freeloads off the government while your quality of life takes a swim in the crapper? Let's see what you say when that possibility comes up, as it most certainly will if this country (the United States) continues its current course.
No, it's not okay for people to be forced to live on the streets, starving to death, being treated as criminals for daring to be alive. Yes, it is the human thing to do to help those in need, for the strong to assist the weak. Should it be forced by law? No. Freedom does include the right to be an ass to the rest of society, so long as you don't actively seek to destroy it. Just as is the rule with free speech, only permitting "popular" freedoms does not count as preserving freedom at all.
You say it is cruel to ignore those who have lesser means to get by, to throw them under the bus for your own gain. That is true. Do realize, though, that it is just as cruel to force someone to take care of another person without an implied or explicit agreement to do so (such as would be made in the case of parenthood). Legally, I have no responsibility for anyone other than myself, any children I help create, or anyone for whom I take legal guardianship of. Morally, I should help those in need, but the government has no place legislating based on all but the most basic moralities (such as the prohibition of murder). And yes, it is as morally wrong to force someone to degrade his own life to support the life of someone else, agreed-to commitments aside, as it is to leave a homeless man to die.
"osake no hou ga, biiru yori ii" to omotteiru.
I'd be wondering how the signed forms would survive the ditch in the ocean when I wouldn't. Of course the thinking wouldn't be clear either.
Yes, but there are downsides for infant circumcision as well, and in most countries doctors don't circumcise anyone without a pressing medical need.
In Sweden they have a circumcision rate of about 6 in 100,000 because they treat it like other amputations (leg amputation, mastectomy, castration, etc) - it's a last resort when nothing less invasive will work. So if you're heading for the argument "better now than when he grows up", keep in mind that you'd have to preform thousands of circs on infants to prevent one adult from needing one.
Finally, most of the impulse behind anti-circumcision groups and books like The Joy of Uncircumcising comes from the psychological effects of being circed as an infant. A person wouldn't try growing new skin on their penis, wave a protest signs saying "Penis Mutilator", or attempt to ban something if it hadn't had a large impact on them.
Well, that one's such a downer... the book wouldn't sell if it wasn't funny. Read the review:
Mr Boase said. "I confess I had no profound intellectual motive; I simply found them fascinating. They filled me with disbelief, astonishment, disgust and -- best of all - laughter."
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
It doesn't matter. The scientist gets paid, possibly fame, possibly the adoration of his peers... I think ethics takes a back seat here. And everywhere else!
"A person wouldn't ... attempt to ban something if it hadn't had a large impact on them."
What sentient species are you talking about? As far as I can tell, humans have been trying to ban things and activities that don't have a large impact on them since the very first nosy neighbors.
And this has what to do with my original point? My pint had nothing to do with what the job of doctors is, it had to do with what the job of government is.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
In 1951, at McGill University, in Canada, a group of grad students were put in a dark chamber.
http://www.samadhitank.com/sensorydep.html
"Years later, 1961, Hebb published an introductory note in the book, "Sensory Deprivation" which shed light on the true original purpose..."the work we have done at McGill University began, actually, with the problem of "brainwashing".We were not permitted to say so in the first publishing. What we did say however was true-"
Wbat the found is for the unwitting subjects, the amount of time spent in sensory deprivation, the more personality changed. Most of those subjects who spent more then 3 days, deprived of only the minumum of senses, had experenced a complete change of personality. Almost all long term subjects dropeed out of school.
The subjects earned about $5/day as a stipend.
Can't speak for the libertarians (shit, who can? ask 10 of them a question and you'll get 11 different answers). I'm opposed to taxation and most "government" on the simple basis of the fact that I have no choice in the matter. I don't give a shit whether taking money at gunpoint from most of the population "works" or not. Tell me what I'm getting for my money, and maybe I'll buy it.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
All science experiments are cruel to the grad students that stay up late at night working on them.
Ah yes; hello Godwin. Were that a civilized discussion were still possible.
First off, it's not exactly difficult to demonstrate the proper use of a condom in 15 to 20 minutes and explain that failure to wear one during intercourse will result in a higher likelyhood of contracting an STD and dying. Furthermore, that was the individualized, mandatory counseling session; participants were recommended to attend other sessions as well. Secondly, these individuals were not "dragged" off the street; they had to volunteer for the study, give informed consent, and were renumerated for their participation.
So you think that instead of attempting to find methods which may decrease the risk of STD transmission, scientists should do nothing?
Since there seems to be some confusion here, I don't particularly have a strong opinion on the actual treatment methodology used in this study or actually agree that the results are likely to be replicable. Those are valid things to attack this study for. What I completely disagree with is the characterization of this study as unethical on the grounds that it some how incited individuals in the control group to have unprotected sex (or failed to provide opportunities for the control group to minimize their risk of contracting HIV) without evidence indicating that that is the case. Is it bad science? Probably. Is the study design inherently unethical? Assuming informed consent was obtained before the treatment modality, not in my opinion.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Not to argue with your point, but as a simple clarification of fact, I doubt that YOU would have wanted the kind of medical treatment availible back then. Do you think they had MRIs and procedure success statistics? Ha, it was more like let's bleed the guy until the evil spirit spills out of him. They didn't even have the germ model of infectious disease at the time[1][2].
This is one of the times when it's perfectly acceptable to argue over this, because the founding fathers could not have predicted the changes technology would cause.
To actually address your point, you're just talking rhetoric. A reasonable person would notice that certain things like preventing epidemics are most definitely in the realm of government as the methodology for dealing with them might include isolating certain people or mandating the destruction of livestock which requires special legal powers that I wouldn't feel comfortable giving to a private organization.
Yes government does play the fear game, but I think it is more overplayed on the terrorist angle than it is on the healthcare angle.
I don't think the government has the job to protect you from yourself, but there should be a realistic threshold of protecting the populace from infectious disease. I think that a certain amount of basic care should be provided for so that we have a happier healthier environment overall which leads to a better economy and more science. I'm not sure how to deal with extreme (and expensive) cases like severe autoimmune disease, but it makes fiscal sense to provide the most basic things like 1000 dollars/person for medical care a year since that would allow general practitioners to catch stuff early and keep it from getting to the point where people can't work (and requiring much more expensive care).
The reason the full libertarian argument doesn't work in the case of medicine is because it is arguing to apply the usual algorithm to a discontinuity. Usually if you want something, you work your ass off for it and possibly eventually achieve it. When medicine is involved, the physical integrity of the system is in jeopardy and you're essentially asking a car with a bad motor to run a 1000 extra miles before you'll take it to a mechanic. What you really need is some padding to make sure that the car doesn't fall to pieces before you take it on the journey. If we say that we don't value human life any more than cars, the libertarian argument is fine. If we value it somewhat more than cars, we should take care of basic checkups at least.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke - the discoverer of cells in 1660 AD
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease - 1st major proposal in 1835 regarding the death of silk worms, well after the constitutional convention
LMFAO that should be score 5 funny not -1 troll lollz
the article says one of the reasons for Ireland's economic growth is "decades of investment in domestic higher education". There go your libertarian ideals.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Who cares? I care if my EMT knows first aid, not if he's read Dickens.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I don't personally know anyone who has trouble obtaining a place to live and yet I see homeless people on the streets all the time. How do you explain that?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
So you would like to use your money to donate to others, that's laudable but one example doesn't make an argument. What about the person who wants his tax money back to buy a bigger house or a new car? The benefit of government aid is that people get the help they need whether or not their fellow citizens care to help them.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
And don't ask everyone else to care if you have to spend enormous amounts of money to extend the lifespan of their loved ones. What makes your egocentric viewpoint any more important than anyones elses?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Maybe it's not a right where you live. Move elsewhere if you want that right or influence your government through the standard means to get it where you live now. For example the Finnish constitution states in chapter 2, section 19 ("The right to social security"): "The public authorities shall guarantee for everyone, as provided in more detail by an Act, adequate social, health and medical services and promote the health of the population."
The sad part in what I have seen of countries like U.S. with their money-first policies is not that they just stare at the money, it's that they fail to realize that there's more money to be made by keeping your citizens healthy. Ill and dying people can't work so they need wellfare money from the state (or, in the best/worst case, they just die), people who are healthy and motivated go to work, and pay the state their income taxes. I know that in the U.S. there's also that silly "the federal government won't do federal healthcare because we don't do federal healthcare" thing, but that's, in my opinion, bullshit. Taking care of your sick and poor makes sense from both humanitarian and monetary viewpoint.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
> It's the richest country in the world because its citizens can and do take care of their basic
> needs themselves.
Six of seven countries (I don't know about Qatar) listed as richer than USA have universal health care.
> What you don't seem to understand is that the taking care of its citizens is not one of the
> government's jobs.
Nonetheless, a job it does much more efficiently than the private sector. The total health care expense in Denmark per citizen is half of the amount in USA.
... promised cake but that turned out to be a lie.
A.) If you don't know them, how do you know they are homeless and not con artists? There are people who make a good living as beggars (as in fancy homes and fancy cars). B.) If they are truly homeless, since you don't know them, how can you possibly know what kind of help would make their situation better?
Back to the point if you don't know anyone who has problems obtaining health care, how can you possibly know if it is a problem that the government should be spending money on? Maybe they don't have health insurance because they decided that they would rather spend that money on getting all the movie channels and the sports packages on their cable? My point is that you don't know, but you want to take my money and use it to pay for the health care of a person who may be perfectly capable of paying for their own health insurance but chooses not to. If you were just talking about spending money that people voluntarily gave for that purpose, I would applaud you as someone who genuinely cares about your fellow man. But that is not what you want, you to forcibly take one person's money (tax) and give it to some stranger, who may or may not be deserving, you don't know because you don't know anything about them except that they don't have health insurance (either by choice or not).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA34A.htm Of course, the view you are given of Tuskegee is slanted & far from the truth of what actually happened. At the time the approved treatment was a series of arsenic injections, they were painful, and there was serious doubt as to whether or not it had any benefit vs. doing nothing. A large number of blacks did not complete the standard treatment, and there was no tracking for them at the time. What isn't commonly reported, they did offer treatment to all of the participants, many took it - the arsenic based treatment, the same treatment given to whites, many declined. Those that declined the treatment as well as those who accepted it were followed for a small cash stipend. 95% of syphilis goes into remission without treatment, a small portion of that crowd develops problems from latent syphilis.
The government didn't infect any of these people. Every single one of them was offered treatment. Every single one of them in the non-treatment group rejected treatment. Now it sounds a little different, doesn't it?
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
As for the person who uses his money to buy a bigger house or a new car, IT'S HIS/HER MONEY, what right do you have to tell them how to spend it? You want to be Robin Hood and steal from the rich and give to the poor. Except you don't want to take the risks of actually doing it yourself (getting wounded/killed, or arrested and thrown in jail), so you are going to have the government do it. You want to take one person's money against their consent, and give it to someone you consider more deserving. Except of course, you don't know either person. The person you are taking the money from might be someone who has worked extremely hard all his/her life, who donates 25% of all they earn to helping those less fortunate, while the person you are giving it to might be someone who has never been able to hold a steady job because some mornings he just doesn't feel like going to work, so he doesn't and he spends his money on drugs or entertainment instead of providing for his family's needs. You don't know and you don't care. I have personally known individuals who have fit both of those classifications; a wealthy person who gave at least 25% of their income to carefully investigated charities, and a government aid recipient who had trouble holding a job because of his own behaviors and spent much of his income on drugs, cable tv and other entertainment.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I should have mentioned that this video is a very slow-starter, but the opening info is important in order to grasp the whole enchilada. --It's well worth watching all six parts. One of the weird points which led the researcher to start investigating was a test her son told her about having written in school. She asked him what some of the questions on it were, and found them odd enough that she decided to ask the principal to see the test. She was denied, and in fact told that parents were not allowed to see the test, and that the children were not allowed to see their own test results. Okay. So she made a big stink and after weeks of work, finally got to see the test; one of the questions on it was the following. .
"If you and you friends are planning an act of vandalism, do you. .
A. Report this to an adult.
B. Report this to the Police.
C. Leave the group and go home.
D. Go along with the group.
The correct answer to the above question is, "D. Go along with the group."
Watch all six parts of this video. By the end, your hair will be standing on end.
-FL
...and regulating commerce. That last one is arguable... Without intervention, companies with majority market share will fight to destroy the free market. The government shouldn't meddle with the market otherwise, but markets don't stay free on their own! We need the government to keep the market free.I'm against stuff like tariffs, subsidies, and minimum wages, but I'd be horrified at the thought of completely unregulated "competition". (There wouldn't be much competition for long.)
I'm libertarian, and I'm actually in favor of a base level of health care, but it should be based on concrete benefits, not emotion. It should be to improve the economy, not to make yourself feel like you're a good person.
I think spending a little money on basic health needs could help the economy more than it hurts it, due to the increased health of the workforce. After all, a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. But I want the amount of money spent decided by studies of what level is best for the economy, not whatever level sounds the nicest and gives people the warmest fuzzy feeling.
Government should not make decisions based on emotions (although it already does).
Yes, I know several people that are unable to obtain sufficient health care. They are forced to do things like lose their homes or endure the stress of bankrupcy (it ruins your financial life for 10 to 15 years at the time you need it most to do things like buy medicine).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I am confused, how did NOT receiving sufficient health care force them to lose their homes or into bankruptcy?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't think Americans pay more for medicine because they feel good about it. A few pay more because they are filthy rich and it has no effect on their finances. Many more "pay" for it through employer health plans, some of which have group bargaining power to get lower prices. Some more PAY for it and can't afford to eat. The rest don't pay for it because they don't have the money and don't qualify for the confusing maze of programs that help fund medicines for the very poor.
"What the market can bear" really means that some will always be forced to do without because there are enough that can barely manage to pay. If everyone had exactly equal finances, then a "what the market can bear" principle would be fair to all. When you're talking about luxuries like having the latest dual quad-core computer, people can at least live without, and these days they live with the 400 MHz P-II "hand me downs". Some people live in mansions but others have to do without and live in a small trailer. But at least they have a roof over their heads. Medicines essential to someone with a particular illness are either available or not; there's no "non-luxury" version that has the same healt care properties.
Yes, the corruption of law making through the lobby system is a major cause of the high medicine and health care costs in the USA.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How is Watson's classic conditioning study on Little Albert not mentioned? Watson took an 11 month old, and conditioned him to be afraid of a white rat. Albert later generalized his reaction so much that he later showed fear to anything that was white.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment
I love deadlines. I like the "whoosh" sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams
Then it seems the hospitals need to be informed of this. At least one (where I was able to talk with people) said they had to buy special software to view the images. They bought both through the same sales person. So maybe this is all a case of FUD from the makers of this equipment?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Every single one of them was offered treatment.
But not penicillin.
HAL.Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
This region is already completely ignorant about HIV/AIDS and how to have safe sex (thanks in part to the Catholic church sucessfully spreading the baseless belief that condoms have tiny holes in them that let HIV pass through).
Now they are being told that circumcision will help protect them against AIDS. These newly-circumcised people will likely be less afraid to have sex with random individuals, and won't bother using condoms (after all, their safety is questionable!). And how long will it be until their education gets distorted to the point that they believe circumcision stops AIDS altogether?
These researchers seem to be completely ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
I specifically said homeless people, not beggars. If you think all those people I see sleeping in doorsteps on cold nights are con artists you are truly living in a fantasy world (the sort inhabited with faeries, and elves, and compassionate conservatives).
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Miller vs Washington (possibly DC) Police do not have any obligation to protect your rights/safety, only to uphold the law after the crime is committed.
Just the thought of living in a country with privatized healthcare is abhorrent to me, amongst others because it creates little incentive for anyone to actually look at the big picture and put in place proper preventative programs.
In the UK, for example, not doing enough to prevent health problems directly costs the NHS money in more care. As a result they put in a huge amount of effort in programs to help people stop smoking, for example, because it comes out of THEIR budget when people later get cancer or other health problems as a result of smoking.
You're right. It was late, and I needed a third example to fill out the range of behaviors affected.
And the use of foreskin is what, exactly? Other than being something you have to clean all the time so that it doesn't get infected, there is absolutely no use. The skin cut off is also used to help grow skin for burn victims, a worthy use of skin that has no practical purpose.
This is more than the dollars per capita, this is an active choice by the country in its allocation of resources.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" - Albert Einstein
Thats because penicillin didn't exist in 1932, and it didn't become the treatment for Syphilis until the late 50's. By the time it had, every single person in the experimental would be at the latent stage by more than 20 years where it was unlikely to do anything for them.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Even earlier than this, in the 40s, the Canadian government experimented on James Howlett amd Wade Wilson, in the first case bonding molten metal to his skeleton and in the second, causing severe disfigurement.
we would have no progress in medicine whatsoever. For any successful medical procedure, a great many were tried that were fatal. Even the successful ones need to be refined.
Without cutting some living thing open and watching its heart pump, we would never have learned about something as basic as circulation.
Without purposely exposing some poor sod to small pox, we would have never known that the vaccine worked.
The net result is that we have some basic understanding of the human body, and massive amounts of human suffering is alleviated.
Are these things unethical by most people's standards? Yes. Are they *worth it*? Obviously.
We need ethical standards in medicine, but you might consider that the sort of ethical standards that are imposed in a field that intensionally kills people are very different from what you might be used to.
The moral of the story is that nothing of value can be achieved without sacrifice.
The Tuskeegee study wasn't "bizarre", it was just plain wrong. I think the book is intended as dark humor, and there was nothing humorous about that one.
It was bound to come up at some point, but grats on the pre-emptive strike.
What is with all the Americans going "It's not the role of the Government" to provide free health care.
Think of it a different way. As a collective group, the people of the UK feel that it's unfair for people to go without medical care purely because they can't afford it. The people thus choose to fund a national health service that provides medical care to all members of the population equally (unless you're male, single and between 20 and 50, but that's an argument for another day).
The Government very kindly stepped in and took on the running and funding of that health service. They were ideally placed for it - they have the practical experience in collecting money from the population based on their ability to pay (or avoid paying), and a lot of experience in running expensive and inefficient bureaucracies. I mean, national level organisations.
If the people of the UK didn't want 'free' healthcare for all, the Government wouldn't provide it. If the Government didn't do it, someone else would have to, and as bad as the Government are, there aren't many sensible alternatives.
If the monetary side of things was really there and could be supported by hard evidence, you'd probably see a lot less opposition to the idea in the U.S.
However, that's not the way the debate is framed. It's all about mushy philosophical issues, and there's nothing that makes businesspeople scream "bullshit" and run the other way faster than hearing about what they ought to be doing out of charity or 'compassion.'
Start talking numbers and you might have a case. The people who are going to be swayed by moral arguments already have been; the rest of the country doesn't give a damn.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Having that money, and having a chance to buy a car or a house, are highly dependent on those people living in a community. So it's not far-fetched at all to expect members to benefit the community that will, as an entity, take care of itself. Even the worse parts, because it makes sense to keep the aid recipients away from crime and in a condition that might allow them to still get a job later on.
Prince John or the sheriff wouldn't be rich unless there were many many peasants around too. That's where the riches come from. It's not self-evident it really should be *their money*. That's the point of Robin Hood, I think.
Freedom also means opportunities. Free university education means more freedom, and free health care also means more freedom. That's essential - a poor young talented guy isn't really free unless he's both healthy and capable of receiving education that meets his talent.
We're so dependent on other people around us that to me, it makes sense to view the whole community as a one big family.
Further, countries poorer than USA have no trouble at all providing universal healthcare and free university education. People are quite willing to pay taxes, and other people are quite willing to heal and teach for the money.
This may not have been cruel to those pretending to be shocked, but I certainly would not want to have been one of those told to administer the shocks, as I would doubtless have had trouble sleeping at night after if I had done so.
I would love to be in that kind of study. If there was a (safe) way for me to be granted temporary amnesia so that my current knowledge of the experiments wouldn't mess with the results, I'd pay good money just to find out what I would do in that kind of situation.
I don't know how the system works in the US of A (at least that's where I'm guessing you're from), but at least over here in Finland (and the EU in general) crime prevention is pretty high on the priority list, and there's even an EU and UN-run Institution for Crime Prevention and Control (logically abbreviated as HEUNI.) The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (a.k.a. KRP) together with the Security Police (or SUPO) even have an extensive "intel" network (yes yes, sounds very "In Soviet Russia, you serve the Police" but trust me, it's not) that they use to prevent criminal activities. I'm willing to bet crime prevention is a large factor in American police work as well. Just because you never see it happen doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
TFA says the 10 "wackiest" experiments - they weren't selected for cruelty. One of the few that arguably would have been cruel as a proper experiment is mitigated by the fact that the experimenter was the only subject.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Having that money, and having a chance to buy a car or a house, are highly dependent on those people living in a community. So it's not far-fetched at all to expect members to benefit the community that will, as an entity, take care of itself. Even the worse parts, because it makes sense to keep the aid recipients away from crime and in a condition that might allow them to still get a job later on.
what is your evidence that poverty is the cause of crime? Or that government aid programs reduce crime? My experience indicates that the causes of crime are social, not economic.Prince John or the sheriff wouldn't be rich unless there were many many peasants around too. That's where the riches come from. It's not self-evident it really should be *their money*. That's the point of Robin Hood, I think.
You seem to be making two contradictory points. The first is that the money doesn't really belong the individual but to the "community" (which for all intents and purposes means the government). Then, second, that the government (Prince John and the sheriff) didn't have a legitimate right to the money. So which is it? Does wealth belong to the person who produces it or to the government (Prince John and the sheriff)?The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Crime prevention is part of maintaining order. Crime prevention is not the same as keeping people safe from crime.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I know personally that if my choices were either starve or steal, I'd pick steal. I think it's a rather common-sense choice. So a community is better off when nobody has to make that choice. Last famine here in the 1800s, some were even killing each other for food. If that's not happening now, it's because everybody has something to eat, either through work, aid or crime.
You seem to be making two contradictory points. The first is that the money doesn't really belong the individual but to the "community" (which for all intents and purposes means the government). Then, second, that the government (Prince John and the sheriff) didn't have a legitimate right to the money. So which is it? Does wealth belong to the person who produces it or to the government (Prince John and the sheriff)?I was more thinking that Prince John and the sheriff are rich individuals. Certainly the peasants didn't vote for them, and they use their wealth for personal gain, not for the community. A feudal system isn't something we'd want a government to be today..
It's fair to assume wealth belongs to whom- or whatever produced it. But any work done by any person today wouldn't be possible without a great amount of work done by a great amount of other people. I've seen myself why poor countries stay poor - nobody can produce wealth very well when road transport, electricity, telephones et cetera fail every day at random times. Think of all the machines and artifacts you're using in your work, and to get to work, and the number of people who manufactured those.
I argue it isn't therefore a question of principle but rather of fairness and practicality. It's fair and practical to do some amount of RobinHooding taking care of everybody and still reward good work with a higher standard of living.
What Sentry21 says is true.. last year when I was in the emergency room and got an xray of my foot I could view it on Linux with no trouble. It's possible to request a copy of any xrays on CD up here.
On a fun note the machines that handled the storage and transmission of the images were maintained by the company sentry21 used to do support for... that's how I knew to ask.
Well, you do need 'special software' - you need a radiological image viewer. You need to 'buy' one in the same sense that you need to 'buy' server licenses if you're going to run a fileserver - the vast majority of people do so.
In all honesty, the Mayo Clinic can afford to spend $20k on a dedicated (and custom) workstation for computerized tomography, and you know what? They should. The system is built for it, optimized for it, and is designed with it in mind.
Do you NEED one? No. If you're a radiologist starting your own practice, you can get by with an iMac or Mac Pro and a copy of OsiriX, and you can do diagnostic imaging perfectly well. What a specialized workstation for one of these systems gets you is a customized input designed for the task at hand (not just a keyboard and mouse), tools that can make use of non-standard metadata embedded in the images by the scanner (this is allowed by the DICOM standard, since all the necessary metadata is put into standard tags already), customized displays, custom hardware, and so on.
So do you *need* need a custom workstation or custom software? No, of course not. Why you *need* them is for the extras that make them $20,000 workstations instead of $1500 workstations - not to mention enterprise-level support.
That $4,000,000 MRI can still send to my $400 Mac Mini just fine though. Just... don't leave it in the room while you're acquiring.
It's hard to have hard evidence about long-term savings since we can't exactly run these systems side-by-side in equal conditions at will. And the numbers, well, they'll be fucked up by your politicians in all likelyhood anyway ("If we raise cigarette tax to pay for children's healthcare it might not work because people might stop buying cigarettes." Way to not see the long term or the big picture).
Anyhow, Physicians for a National Health Program Single Payer FAQ says "For the vast majority of people a 2% income tax is less than what they now pay for insurance premiums and in out-of-pocket payments" and "For large employers, a payroll tax in the 7% range would mean they would pay less than they currently do (about 8.5%)." Wow, less taxes and costs, how can you not sell that to your voters! And the current hard facts: check out the numbers on per capita expenditure on healthcare in the U.S. and Canada (and others), and tell me that something isn't royally fucked up in the U.S.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
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Apparently, some people consider having a part of their body that they have to "clean all the time" to be a waste of effort. Is it your opinion that the clitoris (maybe look it up) also has no practical purpose? Do earlobes actually "do" anything other than provide a fleshy part where one can hang shiny objects and make a social/political statement?
Hmmm, maybe removed foreskins could be used to grow new foreskins for those that never got to enjoy their own!
So just because a national health service didn't make sense back then, doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense now.