Monday, October 27, 2014
Hard question
We need to stop and ask one hard question. Medicins Sans Frontiers is unquestionably saving SOME lives in West Africa. But the countries that have stopped Ebola have done it by STRICTLY ENFORCING STANDARD PUBLIC HEALTH RULES, not by heroic medical efforts. Heroic medicine is a desperate post-hoc effort that can't remotely compensate for a failed government.
Public health is NOT about saving a few lives. Real public health officials often have to sacrifice a few lives to save millions.
Are the few saved lives in Africa balanced out by the harm MSF has done in Europe and America? When you bring a virus back to your home country and heedlessly spread it by taking ocean cruises and shopping, you are doing BIG HARM.
This is Neocon Medicine. "We are EXCEPTIONAL. We have a Unique Moral Purpose, so ordinary rules and laws do not apply to us."
Nature doesn't think you're EXCEPTIONAL. The virus sees you as infectable tissue just like any other infectable tissue. In medicine as in economics or war, infantile ego and infinite stupidity are killers.
¶ 6:27 AM 
