cancer patient REQUIRED to receive chemo therapy?!

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
21

Hi liquidangel,

“All who drink this remedy recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who all die. Therefore, it is obvious that it fails only in incurable cases.” Galen (Greek physician, A.D. 130-200)

Hi Kriswest,

If a simple and effective cure for cancer were available today, no amount of money on earth would keep desperate people from obtaining it.

If physicians and CEOs of large drug companies were suppressing known cures for cancer, is it odd that their wives and children still die from the disease? That is, wouldn’t you think CEO’s of Pfizer, Merk, etc., could put aside their greed long enough to save their own mothers from such an agonizing death?

It’s an unfortunate fact that modern medicine is, at present, only marginally effective in combating cancers. I understand why folks suffering from what orthodox medicine can’t cure are tempted to try snake-oil enemas, Tahitian noni juice and the like. Sadly, the snake-oil salesmen have noses exquisitely sensitive to the smell of desperation.

My favorite Uncle died this past winter from prostrate cancer. He was a rational man, and yet having sensed that the treatment for his cancer was failing, he told me one morning that he was going to cure his disease with herbal teas and prayer.

Vauvenargues wrote

“Hope deceives more men than does cunning.”

Only worse, it’s snake-oil salesmen and necromancers that cunningly transduce hope into profit.

Btw, my brother-in-law is an accomplished urologist. If he had a secret cure for prostrate cancer in his black bag - one that he kept hidden from his other patients in order to maximize his profits - loving me as he does, I’m quite sure that he would have secretly offered it to me, “Have him drink this when no one is watching!” Instead, my brother-in-law and I anguished together. Together we wrung our hands over my uncle’s worsening health.

Hi bishop

It doesn’t stop, it fades away. What gives traction to your “slippery slope” is the fact that real-world decisions are rarely based on unitary principles. Nor can we afford to postpone moral decisions until such time as we have an overarching, flawless, ethical theory at our disposal. The poor kid has cancer now.

Suppose that you happened upon a child drowning in a river. And standing on the riverbank were his parents louding insisting they were actively saving the boy through prayer; or saying, perhaps, that he wouldn’t actually drown as he’d had “eye of newt” for breakfast. Would you simply defer to the parents? or would you already be in the water and racing towards him?

I’d be in the water.

Regards,
Michael

22

you know what’s funny…

the state has to decide for this 16 year old boy about his medical treatments, but god forbid that anyone but the 15 year old girl decides to have a medical treatment…

if the boy wanted an abortion instead of avoiding chemo, all would be fine…

-Imp

23

yes, Polemarchus,
I believe a CEO of a multibillion dollar company would allow a family member to die. They are not CEOs because they are gentle and caring people. Do you honestly think that everyone in the medical profession knows everything? Also keep in mind they must give only what is approved or licenses will be revoked. The medical and pharmecuetical proffessions are hierarchal, the lower you are, the less you are told. Both are enterprises and answer to stockholders. yes, there are those that truly care,but, they are few and far between.

24

Hello F(r)iends,

Imp, do you have a 30-something sister that thinks like do? And, is she single?

Nice. And all black people are intellectually inferior… :unamused:
All republicans are warmongers.
All Jews are filthy…

I see where you are headed with this line of thinking…

-Thirst

25

Hey Imp

There’s no inconsistancy. If the State learns that a 15 year old girl is endangering a life (her’s included) it will step in. The State takes a special interest in the content of a girl’s womb once it judges that the content constitutes a human life.

Regards,
Michael

26

no liberal would ever let a court judge that a fetus is life.

that would fuck their abortion factories.

-Imp

27

Imp wrote

What are you whining about, Imp? You say that “might makes right,” remember? The Roe v. Wade decision ends with the words, “It is so ordered.”

See, it’s been ordered. The Supreme Court has the power to issue binding decisions and you’ve insisted that might makes right.

Might has been asserted, thus right has been made. Your case is closed.

Respectfully,
Michael

28

The one most beneficial for the child.

29

:smiley:

you never addressed my case, plus I never made an ethical argument so the might makes right instance doesn’t apply

-Imp

30

the 16 year-old’s situation was not one of passive ignorance as in the example you have given. there was an active attempt to resolve it in a manner that has been effective for others (acupuncture, diet, etc). just because something is not accepted by the majority of a society does not mean it should automatically be discounted.

the example of praying to save a drowing child is a bit out of context to parents deciding against a treatment of radiation (poison) in favor of acupuncture, herbs, foods, etc (not poison). both effective, one a bit more so than the other but not without consequences.

this example has not caused anyone to suggest that nothing be done. the differences are coming from whom gets to decide what shoud be done. be it the parents, the minor, a 3rd party, etc. everyone so far would “be in the water” as you say, some just want to try to airlift the kid out, others want to swim in after him, some thing a boat would be best while still others want to throw him a line.

each path has the same goal, all have different side-effects. so the discussion is not to decide if we want the boy with cancer to be healthy, its how to go about it.

31

OOh, OOh! Tell me I can’t wait to see if you are right!

32

well the state of texas just let that murdering mother go to a cushy hospital. Reason of Insanity, Bull. I fear for the lives of children that are already progeny to parents who are not safe and foster kids most especially are hanging in the balance. Texas just gave so many more kids the death sentence, by reason of insanity. It is stupidity like this that forces me to be pro abortion.

33

Imp wrote

You never made a case.

See, you said so yourself. You were crying. I asked you why. The Supreme Court has severed the Gordian Knot of abortion, in effect, saying, “Argue all you want but this is what you’re going to do.” You’ve said in the past that this is how the world should be - that might makes right. Well, you’ve gotten your wish here. I want to know what you’re complaining about?

Again, the government jumps in with both feet when it judges that the girl is carrying around another citizen. Before such time, forty-four states have parental notification laws on their books and these laws are in effect in thirty-five of those states. Some of the laws attempt to address the situation where a girl’s father might be the father of her baby - a complicating factor, to be sure. Otherwise, it’s the girl and her parents who decide whether or not she will have an abortion.

If Conservatives had their way, and abortion were again made illegal, the situtation would return to that of the 1950’s. Once again, the weathy would send their own daughters on a “French vacation,” while daughters of the lower middle-class and the poor are butchered in back-alley rooms. Once again, we’d have lonely, frightened, girls - some still clutching coat hangers or knitting needles - too afraid to go to a hospital when the hemorrhaging wouldn’t stop or the infection has set-in. They’d die again from perforations of the uterus and from putrification resulting from incomplete abortion. They’d die again just as they died before. Criminalize abortion, and the thirteen year old girl who has died, frightened and alone in a pool of her own blood, has died a criminal’s death. She’s received “just due” for her criminal act.

These horrors would again exist so that men of black and white morality may continue to live with a transparently clear conscience.

On this third planet from the sun
Among the signs of immorality
A clear conscience is Number One

Wislawa Szymborska, In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

Regards,
Michael

34

and you are accusing me of having black and white morality when there is no morality? it is about logical consistency and nothing else.

-Imp

35

Welp, as always, let’s see what the lit says:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum
So . . . . Homeopathy seems like it is a pretty terrible idea if you’ve got cancer. Certainly as an exclusive treatment.

As for other alternative cures, contrary to what has been suggested time and time again, they are being investigated:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer … med_DocSum

Some of the difficulties of researching CAM therapy are discussed within these (and other) papers, as well as the overall efficacy insofar as we can tell.

The funding bias within these papers should be minimal, since it looks like the PI’s either had NIH RO1 grants or were based out of Europe (where the private/academic worlds are still more seperate than they’ve become in America).

36

Imp wrote

Now you are saying both that might makes right and rightness ought to be consistant with other rightness. I’m here to tell you that those two views are incompatible. Might doesn’t give a rat’s ass about consistancy.

Again, Imp, your claim that “might makes right” doesn’t even constitute a moral position. Meta-ethically, your claim isn’t even right enough to be wrong. Morality is not where man says how the world is, but how it ought to be. If true, your claim dissolves the very possibility of man as a moral agent. A world without moral agents is a world without morality.

It would make little sense for me to argue whether or not “might makes right” to an android programmed to think that way. At best, the android would give me a puzzled look before it split my skull open. Humans are different, though. Humans are able to reprogram their program. Unfortunately, you don’t even play by the rules of your own making. You say that “might makes right” while complaining that moral decisions should be consistant. If the logic police were watching you’d already be in handcuffs.

The view from here is of a man loudly proclaiming that might makes right, as long as might is out busting someone else’s balls (conservative monolithic government, Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and so on). But once might gets in your face (i.e., Roe v. Wade), then you start whining about consistancy.

Regards,
Michael

37

-Imp

38

I wrote

To which Imp replied

And yet on the very same day Imp wrote

And then he went on to say of it

Run, Imp, the logic police are sending in their SWAT team!

Most everyone on this planet has a moral perception. Morality exists because we perceive it. Thousands of books on the subject line the shelves of university libraries the world over. There is an entry in every existent English dictionary for the word.

The very fact that Imp denies that morality exists tells me that he already perceives it. Otherwise, what is it that he thinks he’s talking about? Similarly, the fact that he talks to me about morality tells me that he assumes that I perceive what he’s talking about as well.

“When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is I give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don’t think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I’ve never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like “elephant,” evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The word is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame.”
George Lakeoff, Don’t Think of An Elephant!

On the very day that Imp tells us that morality does not exist he also tells us that he adheres to the view, “to be is to be perceived.”

I know, Imp, you’re already trying to think of a way to get out of the corner that you’ve just painted yourself into. Here are your options.

You can either try to convince us that men have no moral perception whatsover - yourself included, even though you have a long history talking about morality in this forum.

OR

You can furiously backpedal and deny that you believe “to be is to be perceived” is correct.

The black helicopters are circling, Imp. :wink:

Best,
Michael

39

nice try to change the subject.

-Imp

40

Imp wrote

A.C Grayling literally wrote the book on Berkeley. Check it out.

“Berkeley gives the name perception to any way of having ideas and notions before the mind, in sensing, conceiving, imagining, remembering, reasoning, and the rest. It is accordingly a generic term, and is not restricted to sensory perception alone.” Berkeley’s Argument for Immaterialism

Back pedaling! You denied that both morality and moral agents exist, period. But now you’re qualifying your denial by the inclusion of the word, “absolute.”

Game over. Thanks for the friendly argument, Imp.

Kind regards,
Michael