> What really needs to happen is for health insurance to be categorisable.
> So, if you do find out you're likely to get Huntingtons in thirty years,
> you can still get insurance for everything BUT Huntingtons for
> a reasonable price.
Except that you can't. I have first hand experience of what you're suggesting and the reality of dying from something like HD is that lots of other factors arise, things like pneunomia, and your co-ordination is affected so you're more likely to fall down the stairs, and so on. It's a huge tangled mess, so they just refuse you insurance.
I'm in the UK and I tested positive for the HD gene 3 years ago. My mother has the condition and my grand-mother died of it.
In practical terms, what does this mean? Well in 20 years or so I'm going to get ill, if there's still no cure. And in the meantime, though I'm otherwise in perfect health I can't get life insurance, health insurance or loss-of-work-through-sickness type insurance.
I have a wife and 1 year old son to support, but if I step in front of a bus, they're screwed. Oh, and because I can't get life insurance I can't get a mortgage.
So this ruling doesn't really change anything, but perhaps insurance companies should be required to cover us and show how they calculate the risk level, rather than just washing their hands of us.
It makes no difference what you believe. The fact is we rely on many other species for our economic well-being and indeed our survival. In turn, each of those species relies on others for *its* well-being and survival. Ecosystems are a complex web interdependances that are notoriously hard to trace.
Randomly pushing species into extinction is like asking a surgeon to randomly remove 2oz from anywhere in your body. Probably you'll be lucky and no harm will be done, keep doing it and one day you will do yourself some serious damage.
When Adam Smith came up with the term "Free Market", he said it had 2 enemies - Government and Monopoly. That is as true today as it was then.
An efficient free market needs to be free of monopolies. Here in the UK we have much weaker anti-monoploy laws than the US, and the US is seen as being much more free market friendly because of it.
Oh, and BTW -
liberalism: The creed of those who believe in individual liberty. More specifically, since "no government allows absolute liberty" (Locke), it is the belief that it is desirable to maximize the amount of liberty in the state. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Despite the efforts of right-wing politicians, the word "liberal" is not an insult. I would be proud to be called it.
> No it's not! it's just humans meddling again! If species X is extinct, there is a reason for it.
The extinction rate has accelerated by several orders of magnitude during the 20th century. The human impact here is primarily habitat destruction, but we also have a habit of destroying delicately balanced eco-systems by introducing foreign species.
Saying extinctions are natural is like arguing for Hitler's Final Solution on the grounds that those 6 million Jews were going to die one day anyway.
---
Nick
> We can't play with the natural balance of life,
> the natural course that life takes. It's not
> right.
What a load of rubbish! We interfere with nature all the time. Medicine is entirely and completely devoted to interrupting the "natural course that life takes", that is it's sole purpose.
Remember "natural" != "good". Earthquakes, exploding volcanoes and viruses are all natural. Mother Nature can be a right bitch when the mood takes her.
The first option happens all the time. Two examples that have dragged on for years and years are beef and bananas.
US beef is not permitted into the EU because growth-hormone enchanced beef is not legal here. The US refuses to label the hormone stuff, so none of it is allowed in. (The US proposed a label to identify hormone-enchanced beef, the label read "Approved by US Dept of Agriculture" - true!)
US has been jumping up and down about this for years without much happening.
The US and the EU are both big boys when it comes to trade, each accounts for about 30% of the world's GDP. Neither one is likely to submit to pressure from the other.
> Looks like I may have to move to England soon. Go Arsenal!
Well, the good thing is we (in the UK) don't have the DMCA so you can buy multizone DVD-players in the high street, but the downside is the RIP bill which gives the govt huge powers to scan your emails and over your encrypted data.
"If you don't say something that is verifiable as true or false -- that that guy has his head up his butt -- it's not defamatory because nobody whether it's true or false," Chadwick said. "It's an opinion."
I assume we're speaking metaphorically, here;-D
That's one hell of a flexible spine he'd have. I wonder if they bend the other way?
If only, then all dating would be history.
(from 1996 interview)
RMS:...we could raise funds by selling copies of free software. It seems like an impossibility. That is, if you use a simplistic economic model of the world, then it seems impossible to raise money by selling free software. People told me that, if everyone was free to redistribute the software, I would sell one copy and then whoever bought it would turn around and undersell, and we would never sell another copy again. But they are exaggerating. Anyone who says that people will never pay for something if they don't have to is exaggerating fatally.
Slashdot Mirror
Mebbe we should get Bill Gates to take a look at the problem.
You may be surprised to discover that Eric Raymond agrees with you.
The Magic Cauldron: When To Be Open, When To Be Closed
> What really needs to happen is for health insurance to be categorisable.
> So, if you do find out you're likely to get Huntingtons in thirty years,
> you can still get insurance for everything BUT Huntingtons for
> a reasonable price.
Except that you can't. I have first hand experience of what you're suggesting and the reality of dying from something like HD is that lots of other factors arise, things like pneunomia, and your co-ordination is affected so you're more likely to fall down the stairs, and so on. It's a huge tangled mess, so they just refuse you insurance.
I'm in the UK and I tested positive for the HD gene 3 years ago. My mother has the condition and my grand-mother died of it.
In practical terms, what does this mean? Well in 20 years or so I'm going to get ill, if there's still no cure. And in the meantime, though I'm otherwise in perfect health I can't get life insurance, health insurance or loss-of-work-through-sickness type insurance.
I have a wife and 1 year old son to support, but if I step in front of a bus, they're screwed. Oh, and because I can't get life insurance I can't get a mortgage.
So this ruling doesn't really change anything, but perhaps insurance companies should be required to cover us and show how they calculate the risk level, rather than just washing their hands of us.
It makes no difference what you believe. The fact is we rely on many other species for our economic well-being and indeed our survival. In turn, each of those species relies on others for *its* well-being and survival. Ecosystems are a complex web interdependances that are notoriously hard to trace.
Randomly pushing species into extinction is like asking a surgeon to randomly remove 2oz from anywhere in your body. Probably you'll be lucky and no harm will be done, keep doing it and one day you will do yourself some serious damage.
When Adam Smith came up with the term "Free Market", he said it had 2 enemies - Government and Monopoly. That is as true today as it was then.
An efficient free market needs to be free of monopolies. Here in the UK we have much weaker anti-monoploy laws than the US, and the US is seen as being much more free market friendly because of it.
Oh, and BTW -
liberalism: The creed of those who believe in individual liberty. More specifically, since "no government allows absolute liberty" (Locke), it is the belief that it is desirable to maximize the amount of liberty in the state. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Despite the efforts of right-wing politicians, the word "liberal" is not an insult. I would be proud to be called it.
> No it's not! it's just humans meddling again! If species X is extinct, there is a reason for it.
The extinction rate has accelerated by several orders of magnitude during the 20th century. The human impact here is primarily habitat destruction, but we also have a habit of destroying delicately balanced eco-systems by introducing foreign species.
Saying extinctions are natural is like arguing for Hitler's Final Solution on the grounds that those 6 million Jews were going to die one day anyway.
---
Nick
> We can't play with the natural balance of life,
> the natural course that life takes. It's not
> right.
What a load of rubbish! We interfere with nature all the time. Medicine is entirely and completely devoted to interrupting the "natural course that life takes", that is it's sole purpose.
Remember "natural" != "good". Earthquakes, exploding volcanoes and viruses are all natural. Mother Nature can be a right bitch when the mood takes her.
The first option happens all the time. Two examples that have dragged on for years and years are beef and bananas.
US beef is not permitted into the EU because growth-hormone enchanced beef is not legal here. The US refuses to label the hormone stuff, so none of it is allowed in. (The US proposed a label to identify hormone-enchanced beef, the label read "Approved by US Dept of Agriculture" - true!)
US has been jumping up and down about this for years without much happening.
The US and the EU are both big boys when it comes to trade, each accounts for about 30% of the world's GDP. Neither one is likely to submit to pressure from the other.
> Looks like I may have to move to England soon. Go Arsenal!
Well, the good thing is we (in the UK) don't have the DMCA so you can buy multizone DVD-players in the high street, but the downside is the RIP bill which gives the govt huge powers to scan your emails and over your encrypted data.
"If you don't say something that is verifiable as true or false -- that that guy has his head up his butt -- it's not defamatory because nobody whether it's true or false," Chadwick said. "It's an opinion."
;-D
I assume we're speaking metaphorically, here
That's one hell of a flexible spine he'd have. I wonder if they bend the other way?
If only, then all dating would be history.
RMS has something to say about this.
...we could raise funds by selling copies of free software. It seems like an impossibility. That is, if you use a simplistic economic model of the world, then it seems impossible to raise money by selling free software. People told me that, if everyone was free to redistribute the software, I would sell one copy and then whoever bought it would turn around and undersell, and we would never sell another copy again. But they are exaggerating. Anyone who says that people will never pay for something if they don't have to is exaggerating fatally.
(from 1996 interview)
RMS: