Drug Needle Exchanges?

[Tinkerlina]

[quote name='picchick' post='1767048' date='Jan 30 2009, 10:08 PM']I should also add that many of the people using the needle exchange program cannot afford health care themselves. Furthermore, they have several comorbidities such as diabetes, malnutrition, heart issues. Why do we not work on treating these? Diabetes takes such a toll on the health care system.[/quote]

That's a very good point. Right now I have to enroll in Grad School by fall or go without insurance until I can enroll. And I'm the least of those affected by healthcare accessibility. I do think we need to address basic issues like those you mentioned first and foremost. Diabetes, until I worked in healthcare and saw it up close, I didn't realize the incessant repercussions it has-the stasis ulcers and such, it is so horrible. -Katie

[Veridicus]

[quote name='picchick' post='1767035' date='Jan 30 2009, 08:58 PM']Wait...I guess in a way it would...[/quote]

In a strictly materialist pragmatic sense it would cease the spread of AIDS in africa. Fortunately, I do not prescribe to materialistic pragmatism nor any of the ideas promulgated by the fascist eugenicists who typically promote such measures (Margaret Sanger comes to mind...)

[Veridicus]

[quote name='picchick' post='1767048' date='Jan 30 2009, 09:08 PM']I should also add that many of the people using the needle exchange program cannot afford health care themselves. Furthermore, they have several comorbidities such as diabetes, malnutrition, heart issues. Why do we not work on treating these? Diabetes takes such a toll on the health care system.[/quote]

I think Fulton Sheen expressed it best. We no longer have "sin" in America, but "sickness" by the modern intellect's reasoning. And our best attempts to treat this sickness is to pander to the behaviors which manifest the "sickness" because it doesn't respect individual liberty to hold other people accountable to your religious/ethical perogatives. And our medical system is backwords in that it only thinks in terms of responding to symptoms rather than insisting on prevention. The other side of the coin is that patients very often simply refuse to comply to recommended lifestyle changes. We have 'sick' people who the moral authorities and medical authorities let sink into self-destruction, all the while congratulating ourselves on the "progressiveness" of the freedoms we allow people to express (eat what you want, lay on your butt all day, do drugs...whatever you want we'll try to accomodate). Ugh....!

[picchick]

[quote name='Veridicus' post='1769823' date='Feb 2 2009, 01:35 PM']I think Fulton Sheen expressed it best. We no longer have "sin" in America, but "sickness" by the modern intellect's reasoning. And our best attempts to treat this sickness is to pander to the behaviors which manifest the "sickness" because it doesn't respect individual liberty to hold other people accountable to your religious/ethical perogatives. And our medical system is backwords in that it only thinks in terms of responding to symptoms rather than insisting on prevention. The other side of the coin is that patients very often simply refuse to comply to recommended lifestyle changes. We have 'sick' people who the moral authorities and medical authorities let sink into self-destruction, all the while congratulating ourselves on the "progressiveness" of the freedoms we allow people to express (eat what you want, lay on your butt all day, do drugs...whatever you want we'll try to accomodate). Ugh....![/quote]

Because there is no money in prevention.

[Veridicus]

[quote name='picchick' post='1770797' date='Feb 3 2009, 01:41 AM']Because there is no money in prevention.[/quote]

Bingo.