HUXLEY HEALTHCARE As usual, I'm unsure how I feel about something...healthcare in this case. And, as usual, I would blame Aldous Huxley for the seeds he's planted. In particular, I'm referencing the following quote from Brave New World Revisited: "In this second half of the twentieth century we do nothing systematic about our breeding; but in our random and unregulated way we are not only over-populating our planet, we are also, it would seem, making sure that these greater numbers shall be of biologically poorer quality. In the bad old days children with considerable, or even with slight, hereditary defects rarely survived. Today, thanks to sanitation, modern pharmacology and the social conscience, most of the children born with hereditary defects reach maturity and multiply their kind. Under the conditions now prevailing, every advance in medicine will tend to be offset by a corresponding advance in the survival rate of individuals cursed by some genetic insufficiency. In spite of new wonder drugs and better treatment (indeed, in a certain sense, precisely because of these things), the physical health of the general population will show no improvement, and may even deteriorate. And along with a decline of average healthiness there may well go a decline in average intelligence. Indeed, some competent authorities are convinced that such a decline has already taken place and is continuing." While I'm at it, here's they lyrics to a song I wrote some years ago, titled "Gone". GONE All the ways to save us all these days Noone will die and there is noone to take the blame What is the price we pay when Earth has no voice to say To stop the machines and momentum we've built today What a mess Look where we live Look what we've done Look at what's left Look at what's gone What a mess All of the hatred, and all of the lies We all look away or just brush it aside Ignore the problem that has no solution Close our eyes while we add to pollution With billions of people who live in the now Who take it for granted what we use and how The seeds of destruction, instead of the facts One more step backward that ain't comin' back All our pet projects, All our kids in a tube We'll all live forever, And you know it's true We under-die, and over-birth We over-extend, our own net worth We'll never see famine, we'll never be bled Genetics have saved us and killed Darwin instead SAVE EVERYONE!! So, sure, cheap healthcare for everyone is such a wonderful thing, right? Save everyone? Maybe if we continue to close our eyes and pretend we have an infinite supply of resources and space. Obviously that's not true, but how do you curb or control population without turning into China (and them claiming their breeding policy has significantly prevented global warming)? There has to be some kind of solution to controlling population without going the way of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal". All of this feeds into what is the most significant change I would like to see, which is a responsible approach to mankind's breeding. Overpopulation is something I see as quickly wasting the Earth's limited available resources. We have "hereditarily defected" people living forever, we have zero newborns dying prematurely anymore, and the average life expectancy will soon be upwards of 80 years of age with so many more living beyond the century mark...all of which would seemingly be tremendous signs of modern technological advancement, but which also put tremendous stress on resources for a much longer period of time. Since Huxley got me into this debate, maybe Huxley can get me out of it with a quote about subjective right/wrong and sustainable living. This quote in particular helps explain why I find it so difficult to come to a definite conclusion or answer, because there are so many difficult decisions to be made that impact so many people across the board. I just wish we wouldn't be so ignorant to not only the human footprint we're leaving, but how comparatively short that human footprint may be on the timeline of the universe if we don't manage ourselves better. "Meanwhile, we find ourselves confronted by a most disturbing moral problem. We know that the pursuit of good ends does not justify the employment of bad means. But what about those situations, now of such frequent occurrence, in which good means have end results which turn out to be bad? For example, we go to a tropical island and with the aid of DDT we stamp out malaria and, in two or three years, save hundreds of thousands of lives. This is obviously good. But the hundreds of thousands of human beings thus saved, and the millions whom they beget and bring to birth, cannot be adequately clothed, housed, educated or even fed out of the island's available resources. Quick death by malaria has been abolished; but life made miserable by undernourishment and over-crowding is now the rule, and slow death by outright starvation threatens ever great numbers." Ultimately, if we can't do this right on Earth, how can we have any hope for colonizing other planets where we would most likely really have to live in a sustainable manner with population and resources?