DeLay's Own Tragic Crossroads
Tom DeLay, who tried to intervene in the Schiavo case, allowed his comatose father to die in 1988.
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The purpose of The Szasz Blog is to advance the debate about Thomas S. Szasz's basic ideas and their practical implications. The Szasz Blog is part of The Szasz Site, www.szasz.com Comments are published at the discretion of the administrator (Jeff Schaler). Please stay on topic. The length should not exceed 250 words. E-mail comments to jeffschaler@attglobal.net
Tom DeLay, who tried to intervene in the Schiavo case, allowed his comatose father to die in 1988.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
My article "Schiavo Case Affirms the Rule of Law" is online at The Future of Freedom Foundation. I also recommend Jacob Hornberger's more detailed "The Schiavo Case Is Not Judicial Murder."
Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of New Debate
Patients who refuse food and fluids to hasten death.
Pentagon Sees Aggressive Antidrug Effort in Afghanistan
Greetings:
This guy's view is incoherent. He believes in the medical model for bulimia and anorexia, but believes that obesity is a myth resistant to treatment. Lee
The New England Journal of Medicine
A Damaging Intervention
New York Times
The Times (London)
My views on the Terri Schiavo case per se are known. (See here.) Nevertheless, I am appalled by the assault on the rule of law launched by the U.S. Congress. The case went through the Florida courts and was reviewed many times. I don't like how the law is written, but it is a bald-faced lie to say, as one Republican representative said, that Terri Schiavo was deprived of due process of law. The precedent Congress has set—by decreeing that a particular person may file a state legal matter in the federal courts—will surely come back to haunt us. That this travesty is perpetrated by the party professing dedication to small government and federalism makes it all the more outrageous. This is a sad day in more ways than one.
Dr. Thomas Szasz is a prolific writer in the field of mental illness. His opinion on the matter is encapsulated in the title of his most famous book, “The Myth of Mental Illness.” Dr. Szasz is also well-known for his libertarian principles. This is exemplified by the terms “pharmacracy” and “the therapeutic state” coined by him.
To put it concisely, Dr. Szasz believes that:
1. mental illness does not exist;
2. the state should not interfere in health care or other personal matters.
As Dr. Szasz has written profusely on these two subjects, usually together, some people have jumped to the conclusion that rejecting the existence of mental illness and libertarianism are somehow connected. This is not necessarily so. A person can believe that mental illness does not exist, and yet not be a libertarian. On the other hand, in his recently published book “Faith in Freedom,” Dr. Szasz demonstrates that most famous people identified with libertarianism did/do, in fact, believe in the existence of mental illness.
The point that Dr. Szasz has dedicated his life to making, is that the concept of health and illness does not justify state interference. He endorses separation of Medicine and State, just as he endorses separation of Church and State.
So what does justify state interference? Does the concept of evil justify state interference? My opinion is that it does not. Good and evil are concepts borrowed from religion, even when they are used by atheists, just as health and illness are concepts borrowed from medicine, even when they are used by lay people. Neither concept is a valid base for coercion of individuals by the state, whether law-abiding or not.
Coercion by the state is justified only when someone has violated the freedom of another person, that is, violated the other person’s right to life, liberty, or property. This we call a crime. (A victimless act is not a crime, and should not be criminalized.) It is reasonable to assume that whoever commits such a violation may do it again, and must therefore be stopped, which requires coercion. Protecting the liberty of its non-criminal citizens is the state’s proper responsibility.
The state should not, and indeed cannot delve into the reason for the crime, except in the case of self-defense. Ascribing it to illness poses the risk that a violent criminal will be declared recovered, and released to strike again. Ascribing it to evil poses the risk that a violent criminal will be declared reformed, and released to strike again. Conversely, state recognition of illness or evil may criminalize acts that are not crimes. Furthermore, as illness and evil are concepts that are rightly separate from the state, a judge has no tools for determining them.
Criminals should be released only when they have completed their sentence. If the sentence was short, the crime must have been light, thus the released criminal does not pose a serious risk to others. When the crime was so grave that a life sentence is imposed, there should never be a release, whether recovered/reformed or not. It is wholly compatible with human rights to provide a convicted criminal with medical and/or spiritual assistance while he is serving his sentence, provided he asks for it. This then becomes a private matter between the convict and his doctor and/or spiritual advisor.
In summary, in my opinion both illness and evil are concepts borrowed from institutions which are, or should be, separate from the state, and therefore cannot be invoked either to absolve a person suspected of a crime or to convict him. Both concepts are irrelevant to the state.
Friday night, after it was announced that a career child molester had confessed to abducting and murdering a missing little girl from Florida, one of the cable-TV talking-head analysts (does it matter which one?) kept repeating, "We don't know how to treat these people." Will it ever occur to the analyst that child molesters don't need treatment because they aren't sick? Such evil doesn't call for treatment, but imprisonment.
The sad case of Terri Schiavo brings important medical-ethical issues to the fore. But this is not a hard case. As a general principle, when there is reasonable doubt about an incapacitated person's wishes regarding life-support and when someone is willing to pay for continued support, the presumption should be in favor of life and a spouse should not be able to terminate it. In this case, there is no written proof that Terri Schiavo expressed a wish not to be kept alive. All we have is her husband’s and one or two other persons' say so. Not good enough. In fact, according to Terri Schiavo’s parents, “When he [husband Michael Schiavo] promised the malpractice jury back in 1993 that he would take care of Terri for the rest of his life, Mr. Schiavo said nothing to the jury about Terri not wanting to be sustained on anything ‘artificial.’”
Saying someone has lost his mind is as true—and as false—as saying he has lost his head.
Opal Petty, 86, Patient Held 51 Years Involuntarily in Texas, Dies
Don't Blame the Drugs
From the Associated Press:
Bradenton, Florida—A Longboat Key psychologist has been sentenced to ten weekends in jail for lying on forms to involuntarily commit a griping neighbor who later died.
Holli Bodner had a yearlong feud with Jean Pierre Villar about street lights and dog poop before committing him to a mental health center in April 2003.
A prosecutor and Villar's family contend Bodner's action contributed to her 41-year-old neighbor's death from a blood clot last November. She pleaded no contest to a perjury charge and says she didn't mean any harm.
Erika Villar says her husband suffered from chronic pain after Manatee County sheriff's deputies aggravated a work-related back injury when they forced him into a squad car during the commitment process.
George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, a self-described "big fan" of Thomas Szasz, recently blog-posted his reaction to the movie The Aviator: "Howard Hughes and the Economics of Mental Illness." He writes, in part, "What's so odd about Hughes? His biggest foible, which drastically increases during the story, is germophobia. No doubt today he'd be diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. I say, however, that this is just name-calling." Well worth reading. It also contains a link to download his paper "The Economics of Thomas Szasz."
Worth checking out: "Doctoring the Market" by Arnold Kling at Tech Central Station. Here's a sample:
GlaxoSmithKline stopped distributing its Paxil CR antidepressant and Avandamet diabetes tablets after regulators seized the drugs Friday, saying manufacturing practices failed U.S. standards.
A US Army intelligence sergeant who accused fellow soldiers in Samarra of abusing detainees in 2003 was in turn accused by his commander of being delusional and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in Germany, despite a military psychiatrist's initial judgment that the man was stable, according to internal Army records released on Friday.
My article “Bush’s Brave New World” is now online at The Future of Freedom Foundation website. Originally appearing in the November issue of Freedom Daily, it examines the disturbing recommendations of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
In a small but startling preliminary new study, Texas researchers have found that after just three months, every one of a dozen children treated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with the drug methylphenidate [Ritalin] experienced a threefold increase in levels of chromosome abnormalities-occurrences associated with increased risks of cancer and other adverse health effects.
The heroic French liberal Frédéric Bastiat wrote that "The state is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else” (Selected Essays on Political Economy, chapter 5, "The State"). Were he writing today he would surely extend his aphorism to include government-mandated/regulated medical insurance.