Day: May 2, 2001

Cheap AIDS Drugs, Now What?

Daryl Lindsey wrote a pretty even handed article on the recent decision by pharmaceutical companies to drop their patent challenge to cheap AIDS drugs in Africa. But as Lindsey notes, the entire fiasco was largely a public relations gimmick to affect drug pricing in the United States.

It’s buried in Lindsey’s article, but although the pharmaceutical companies’ actions were widely announced in the media, the next step wasn’t — South Africa, the main focal point of this issue, announced it had no intention of actually using anti-AIDS drugs. This should have come as no surprise as previously the South African government had refused companies who offered to donate millions of dollars worth of anti-AIDS drugs.

And, to be honest, it doesn’t really make any sense for African nations to attempt to duplicate healthcare treatment patterns of Western nations when it comes to AIDS. Even with the very cheap anti-virals, their health care systems lack the capacity to effectively distribute and administer an anti-AIDS drug regimen.

So what was the point? The real debate, as the Salon.Com article makes clear, is about price controls on drugs in the United States. The United States is the only developed country to my knowledge that doesn’t have widespread price controls on drug prices. Some Left wing groups want to change that as part of a plan that would essentially nationalize health care in the United States (akin to what Canada or Great Britain have).

Source:

Amy and Goliath. Daryl Lindsey, Salon.Com, May 1, 2001.

Do Euthanasia Laws Lead to Murder?

I’m rather ambivalent about right-to-die laws. On the one hand, I think people who are terminally ill should be able to decide for themselves if they want to end their lives, especially people who are in severe pain. On the other hand, personally I want absolutely every medical intervention possible and have told my wife that I’ll come back to haunt anyone who pulls me off life support. But beyond that, a bigger question looms — do right-to-die laws work? More specifically, can societies give doctors the right to help patients who want to die, without giving those same doctors license to kill.

Typically, supporters of right-to-die laws simply dismiss the idea that such laws will turn doctors into killers. Most euthanasia laws have a series of built-in safeguards that require consent of the patient to be very clear. But those legal safeguards really won’t mean much if a subculture of death takes hold in the medical profession.

Opinion Journal (the online version of the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page) has an interesting summary of various studies and surveys about euthanasia in the Netherlands, The Dutch Way of Death.

One of the more disturbing things about euthanasia in the Netherlands is that there seems to have developed a view among a significant minority of doctors that consent is not necessary to end a life provided that the quality of that life is below some subjective threshold. Almost 5 percent of people who died in the Netherlands in 1990, for example, were killed by doctors who never received explicit consent for their actions. Even more disturbing is that a 1997 study found that as many as 8 percent of infants who died in the Netherlands were killed by their doctors.

A major part of the problem, in my opinion, is that supporters of euthanasia seriously underestimate the likelihood of influential groups emerging that favor involuntary euthanasia. Already in the United States prominent philosophers such as Peter Singer explicitly argue that people’s whose lives aren’t worth living should be euthanized — involuntarily if necessary — and a large segment of medical ethicists who wouldn’t come out and say they support involuntary euthanasia nonetheless have at the core of their views a disdain for individual rights where such rights impose real or perceived costs on the larger society.

Women Who Don’t Agree With Feminists Are “Anti-Woman”

A good example of how effortlessly feminists denigrate anyone who disagrees was recently provided by Feminist.Org’s Daily News Wire in a brief story, Article Reveals Bush Connections to Independent Women?s Forum. Feminist.Org is apparently bent out of shape that several people affiliated with the IWF are under consideration for positions within the Bush administration.

Here many of us thought that one of the most important goals of feminism was to expand opportunities for women to serve in a variety of roles, including public service within the government, but now Feminist.Org informs reminds us that only women with a sinister agenda would want to serve in a Republican administration.

In fact, Feminist.Org is on to the truth about the IWF — these women are just a front for men. According to the brief story, “Its [IWF’s] purpose was to be the counterpoint to feminist groups, providing a female face for the far-right, anti-women’s rights agenda.” The notion that women of a conservative bent could come together to voice their concerns is, of course, absurd. There must be some nefarious anti-woman conspiracy.

Ah, sisterhood is powerful indeed, especially when it turns into an Inquisition aimed at anyone who dares dissent from the party line.

Source:

Article Reveals Bush Connections to Independent Women?s Forum. Feminist Daily News Wire, Feminist.Org, May 1, 2001.

Fight The Patriarchy … With Sex Toys?

I don’t think I could have written a more bizarre story than that written by Elliott Balch for the Harvard Crimson. The story outlined a plan by the Radcliff Union of Students to host a sex toy party for Harvard women, as Balch put it, “to emphasize women’s sexual independence.”

The kicker to the story is the role that one of the organizers apparently thought such an event would have in fighting “the patriarchy.” Balch reports that RUS president Elizabeth Vogt sent an e-mail to all RUS members saying that among other things, the sex toy part would give women a way to “challenge patriarchal society.”

“If you know that you can satisfy your own sexual desires without relying on someone else, you can gain a lot of power in romantic relationships,” Vogt wrote in her e-mail message.

Interesting how some feminists have no problem conflating sex with power — a view that traditionalists were long criticized by feminists for maintaining.

Source:

RUS Plans Women’s Sex Toy Event. Elliot W. Bach, The Harvard Crimson, April 20, 2001.