Malthus was a profound enemy of birth control!

www.theasianoutlook.com ^ | February 2003 | John Brand, D.Min., J.D.

[wideawake]

From a purely worldly point of view, the most horrible thing imaginable is physical suffering.

From a more realistic point of view, suffering is a means of grace, of uniting oneself to Christ crucified.

Suffering is temporary, grace is eternal.

Only someone purely caught up in material things would prefer nothingness to suffering.

[wideawake]

AJ points out the conceptual flaw in your pedantry, AJ.

Salk was not funded by some socialized healthcare bureaucracy.

His accomplishments were made possible by private citizens in the private sector making voluntary contributions.

Taxes confiscated from people involuntarily and put into the hands of government functionaries were not the primary means of the polio breakthrough: just the opposite.

Where do charitable contributions come from, FK? Almost exclusively from businesses and from people who run or work for businesses.

In 1954 the UK had a fully socialized health system and, on paper, some of the best doctors and research biologists in the world. But they never got around to figuring out a way to prevent polio.

It was the private US healthcare system that produced the minds and the initiative to solve this problem.

[A.J.Armitage]

No, but it is inherently profitable.

I would have thought that if there were a business where the income is inherently higher than expenses more people would be in it. But the great Feldkurat has spoken: every baker from time immemorial until now has always turned a profit.

Just like I said, some parts of medical research (as you just said, the specific applications) are profitable ... but not all of them are and those which are not need to be financed somehow.

Research is an expense. All of it. Let the drug companies pay their own expenses.

[A.J.Armitage]

It gets worse. Consider the 18th century. Every single person alive then, without one exception, died. Obviously God doesn't care about life in general. Therefore murder should be legal.

[plusone]

So if someone is in pain, that is God's grace bestowed upon them? Should we not treat people in pain to help in their suffering? Are we denying them grace by giving them medicine and treatments? That logic smacks of the medieval argument that burning a witch, whilst destroying their body, is in fact saving their soul. No thanks. Pass the aspirin.

[plusone]

As sarcasm, that is pretty effective. But I'm willing to bet you live in a much more comfy place than the millions who starve to death each year in numerous third world countries. They don't have the luxury to obliquely debate this, for them it is life and death...mostly death. To bring more children into a country that cannot support properly those already here is to visit evil upon the place. For those of us comfortable in the developed world to foist misery onto the poor in some far away place, just to appease our version of God is demented. I don't care for the idea of abortion, but I can seperate it from the notion of Birth Control. I can be in favor of one (BC) and be generally opposed to the other. It is not a contradiction is views, I treat them as different articles.

[wideawake]

So if someone is in pain, that is God's grace bestowed upon them?

No.

As I said before, suffering can be a means of grace.

One's own suffering can be a means of grace through patient endurance.

The suffering of another can be a means of grace by giving us an opportunity to help and heal them.

Suffering is not an end in itself.

[A.J.Armitage]

They don't have the luxury to obliquely debate this, for them it is life and death...mostly death. To bring more children into a country that cannot support properly those already here is to visit evil upon the place.

So killing babies prior to birth is justified because they already have too many to feed. But after the abortion, they've still got too many too feed, and if killing kids because you couldn't feed them all was justified before, it still is.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

Research is an expense. All of it. Let the drug companies pay their own expenses

OK, let's test your theory in practice - which drug companies funded genetics research from 1860 to 1970, when it was not profitable?

[Feldkurat_Katz]

Look, no matter how you spin it, it is clear by now that when you wrote posting #31 you pretended to know who supported Salk's research but you did not.

[wideawake]

You are correct. I only recalled that Salk's research support came from the private sector instead of a government research program. I didn't remember any specifics.

When you erroneously said Mellon, I took you at your word, which was my foolishly trusting mistake.

Mellon was plausible - since he is one of 20th century America's leading philanthropists.

My essential point is still unshakably proven: the polio vaccine came out of a private, rather than a socialized, healthcare system.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

Thank you. As far as broader context (Salk's vaccine being developed without government funding) is concerned, you are correct.

At the same time, some of the most important advances in epidemiology were funded by governments, for example, Louis Pasteur's finding that diseases are being caused by bacteria (funded by the French government via Ecole Superieure) or the discovery of tuberculosis bacteria by Robert Koch (who was a medical officer for the German government.)

Last but not least, the polio vaccine we use since 1958 - the oral polio vaccine - was developed by Dr. Albert Sabin and his research was partly funded by the US Army Medical Corps.

[A.J.Armitage]

OK, let's test your theory in practice

What theory? I have a moral precept that businesses should pay their own expenses.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

OK, let's test your theory in practice

What theory? I have a moral precept that businesses should pay their own expenses

Did drug companies pay for genetics research?