--- Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But if you want big numbers of lives saved or kept > 'intact', look at sewage/water treatment and > vaccination programs -- these latter _were not_ > entirely voluntary as schools required certain > vaccinations for attendance. (Aside: I think the > 50-year anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine was > last > month.) That *is* state nannyism, as indeed most > public health programs are, and millions have been > saved thereby.
No, it really isn't, and most public health programs are not. Nanny-stateism is the state doing things that we are perfectly capable of doing ourselves, and indeed _should_ do ourselves, and denying us the choice to do otherwise because it thinks we know better than it does. I am not perfectly capable of building sewage plants, or of creating herd immunity in large populations. > The 'state nannyism' came up in a discussion of > taking > a pill vs. actually getting off one's tushie and > getting some exercise WRT coronary artery disease - > the latter position mine, the former Gautam's. I'm > not sure how 'an educational program' morphed into > 'state nannyism' as exemplified by the examples > above. No, my position is that people might actually do the former, while the evidence suggests that they don't do the latter. Lipitor and similar drugs save lots and lots of lives, and if more people took it it would save many more. > > Perhaps I am a bit piqued at what I see as an > underlying assumption Gautam makes when he > attributes > bad intentions or stupidity to those who disagree > with > him on certain issues -- You've assumed that people > I've never heard of, or at best marginally so > (Chomsky, frex, or that Karen person), represent > *my* > viewpoints and thoughts. I think I'll contemplate > things a bit before responding further in this > thread. > > Debbi Well, I don't know your thoughts, Debbi. I was criticizing a movement that has done immeasurable harm to the world's poor, and you kind of jumped in. Fine. But you (I notice) haven't actually agreed with me on what are - I believe - very baseline positions. Use DDT in countries where malaria is endemic. If not, why not? Why don't you feel _outraged_ over the fact that a few rich white people have condemned millions of poor brown people to death from malaria because of their entirely unfounded fears over using DDT - particularly after _they_ used DDT to eradicate malaria from their countries. That's pretty damn outrageous in my mind. So if you don't agree with that position, then say so. But if I'm criticizing a movement and you jump into the line of fire, it's not exactly my fault if I think you might agree with people I'm criticizing. If I mention Paul Erlich - the man who wrote _The Population Bomb_, the most influential environmentalist of the 1970s and still one of the most influential in the world and say, look, he's a leader of the movement and that's a problem as a way of rebutting your argument that it's only extremists who believe certain things, then I'm no attributing any beliefs to you. But I sure as hell disagree with your contention that it's only extremists, because if it is, then the extremists have won. They run the place. If they don't - when was the last time you saw someone use DDT? ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover
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