5 replies to this topic

[jroseland]

What say YOU? Should we punish those who chronically make stupid, selfish bad health decisions? I don't have my mind made up on this question...

 

In this podcast, we read and discuss the controversial philosophical new article by Biohacker and maniacal Transhumanist Serge Faguet:

People who make bad health choices f**k everyone else. Regulate them like polluting factories

 

 

Listen: Should society punish bad health decisions? [Philosophical Livecast]

 

[Mind]

Here is a related discussion in regards to COVID injections.

 

If rejuvenation therapies become cheap and reliable, then bad health choices do not matter as much. Example: If lung cancer can reliably be cured for "next to nothing" - essentially free - then why ban smoking. Makes no sense.

 

I lean heavily libertarian, so I would say that the problem is not bad health choices, but bad policy - ie, forcing people to pay for others bad health choices (socialized health care). If you force one person to pay for the health care of other people, then of course the person doing the paying will want to CONTROL the health choices of those other people. 

 

 

[Hip]

Most nasty chronic diseases are not the result of personal lifestyle choices, such as alcohol consumption or lack of exercise, although these lifestyle factors can exacerbate existing diseases.

 

There is increasing evidence that chronic diseases which dramatically reduce quality of life, and decrease lifespan and healthspan, are caused by common pathogens, which chronically infect the organs.

 

If the pathogen theory of chronic diseases is true, then bad health choices are those which expose you to too many pathogens in your life. We know that many viruses and bacteria are spread via kissing when you start dating a new girlfriend of boyfriend. So one bad health choice may be having too many amorous affairs. Another bad health choice is shunning vaccines which can protect you from disease causing pathogens.

 

An extremely bad choice for the whole of society is being an antivaxer: the more the general public cower from vaccines, the fewer new vaccines will be developed. 

 

As a society, we should be DEMANDING that our governments invest in new vaccines which protect us from the nasty pathogens which are linked to chronic diseases. Antivaxers are condemning society to chronic diseases. Antivaxers are in essence evil people, who make the worse ever health decisions, and their decisions don't just affect them, but influence the whole of society.

 

In the distant future, hundreds of years from now, I think we will have eradicated chronic disease, by eradicating the pathogens that cause them. This will be done through vaccination, and through advances in anti-microbial drugs.

 

There is a golden age of health and longevity awaiting humanity. All we need to do is dump the Luddite antivaxers, and their negative influence on our health.

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 01 January 2022 - 02:19 AM.

[pamojja]

Example: If lung cancer can reliably be cured for "next to nothing" - essentially free - then why ban smoking. Makes no sense.

 

I lean heavily libertarian, so I would say that the problem is not bad health choices, but bad policy - ie, forcing people to pay for others bad health choices (socialized health care).

 

1st problem: A bad or good health choice at young age might not even obvious at young age, or society didn't consent decades ago. Not to talk about discenting, or lack of suficient scientific evidence at that point at a time long gone. Which implies lack of any intent for the crime.

 

2nd main problem: Even observational evidence, as in the case of smokers, leaves statisticaly at about half its perpetrators healthy up to old age. So instead of a suicide, only a failed attempt to suicide could be prosecuted for, additional to lack to the lack of intent.

 

3rd: There are generous limitation periods for most minor crimes. Since bad health choices only might come to fruition many decades later, the laws would have to be re-written for prosecuting potential per-crimes without any allowance for limitation periods.

 

I'm not a liberal, but just as a spiritual person this whole proposal is completely inhumane, could only be really implemented in a totalitarian system, and be considered itself a crime to humanity.

 

Antivaxers are in essence evil people, who make the worse ever health decisions, and their decisions don't just affect them, but influence the whole of society.

 

As Hip seems to be happy to life in.

 

A spiritual person with their own-soul searching, an "in essence evil person" is only an unreflected projection of unresolved shadows within the assumed innocent ifself. Otherwise compassion of any spiritual tradition wouldn't be considered a godly quality, but instead promoting evil infinitely itself. And to be prosecuted too.

 

But without soul searching, of course all those persons - who got vaxxed their whole life but now only choose with this particular vaccines to decide against, because of unknown risks-benefits ratio - would of course for ever condemned to prosecution, by then not so innocent people anymore.

 

Decades ahead in a very unlikely futere, when there there would be enough societal consent on considering even such unreflected projected emotion of such hatred of purely materialistic persons having an bad impact on their own health - even such bad emotions would justify for such precrime prosecution?

 

 

..Absurdisthan

 

But actually we're are already there. Fines in the thousands of dollars for breaking unproven lockdown-rules (for alledged health-benefits, ignoring its disastrous harms to health) are already implemented in some countries.

 

Citizens with chronic diseases Western medicine has no treatment for (unrelated to choices) might choose unapproved self-paid natural medicines and experience remission. Like in my case, with a remission in walking-disabilty from PAD, costing additional €500,- additional to the useless €300,- paid montly for obligatory social and health-insurance (here in Austria).
 

Ok, I'm guilty of travelling the world at young age and therefore experiencing numerous malarias and bilharzia, causing organ-damages decades later. But now I should pay additional to the effective selfpaid 500,- a higher rate then the anyway in my case 300,- for obligatory and useless health-insurance?

[Bike_to_120]

In regards to holding people responsible for their poor health choices, there is some merit to that.

However, who is held responsible for media and governments which push behavior that is disastrous  for public health? The Food Pyramid is primarily responsible for the obesity in America today much more than laziness.

 

In regards to the "evil" antivaxxers"

 

Who is most evil?

- pharmaceutical companies that manipulate testing, hide data and bribe government officials? (Pfizer)

- Government regulators that ignore data, make decisions about public health based on their financial interests? (Fauci)

- little tyrants like Hip that want to impose their will on others?

 

I opt for the third as the worst of the bunch. At least I can understand the financial interest of the first two.

[Hip]

The Food Pyramid is primarily responsible for the obesity in America today much more than laziness.

 

Those sort of naive comments on obesity are very common among the general public, and tend to come from people who know little about medical science.

 

There is evidence to show that obesity is caused by infectious pathogens. 

 

If you infect mice with adenovirus 36, they become fat.

 

Obese people are found to have adenovirus 36 in their body.

 

The hypothesis that the obesity epidemic, which began in the 1980s, is cause by an infection is known as infectobesity. 

 

 

 

 

In regards to the "evil" antivaxxers"
 
Who is most evil?
- pharmaceutical companies that manipulate testing, hide data and bribe government officials? (Pfizer)
- Government regulators that ignore data, make decisions about public health based on their financial interests? (Fauci)
- little tyrants like Hip that want to impose their will on others?
 
I opt for the third as the worst of the bunch. At least I can understand the financial interest of the first two.

 

Do you know what evil is in the Socratic sense? That's the evil I am referring to. Socrates believed that people are only evil as a result of their ignorance. Because they are not wise, and because they are ignorant and do not know any better, their actions result in evil outcomes. It's not that they are deliberately causing harm; they are causing harm because of their ignorance. 

 

Antivaxers are evil in this sense. They do not really understand the bigger picture of disease and medical science, and because of this ignorance, they act as an evil force in the world.

 

 

In terms of corporate maleficence, a mature person knows that like individual people themselves, no corporates are without sin. Every person on this planet has done things which are shameful, but it's the overall balance of all the things that person has done which counts. If you have done mostly good, then you should be considered good. Same applies to corporates or institutions. 

 

Dumb liberal thinking these day would have us believe that if you have done one little thing wrong in the past, then your entire character gets assassinated. You made one racist remark 20 years ago? Right, that's it, thrown out of your job and vilified, no matter how much good you have done. This the liberal thinking that is turning the world stupid.

 

Your argument about drug companies comes from that liberal camp.

 

 

 

As for imposing will on others, if you think that detailing the facts, and calling out the vast amounts of bullshit pseudoscience that gets posted on this forum is tantamount to an imposition of will, well then that just makes you a snowflake. There is an epidemic snowflakery, where people have ears so delicate that they cannot bear to hear anything which contradicts their belief system, even if it is actually true. 

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 01 January 2022 - 06:24 PM.