Stephen Hawking
Wednesday, August 12 2009
You may have heard about the kerfuffle over Investor’s Business Daily’s claim* that
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
The obvious objection to this is that, of course, Stephen Hawking is British, has been all his life, and has received lots of health care from the NHS. That seems pretty conclusive, but we still haven’t heard from the one expert with impeccable credentials on the subject… until now:
We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he told us. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”
So, that should settle it. A leading contender for World’s Smartest Person speaks out in favor of the NHS. Those who are not Stephen Hawking would do well to shut up about the NHS, or at least think very carefully before weighing in – lest they make fools of themselves.
*Note that the IBD editorial has now been corrected scrubbed of any mention of Stephen Hawking, save for a “correction” note:
Editor’s Note: This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK.
But that’s not what the editorial implied at all; it implied that Stephen Hawking would have been allowed to die in the UK because of the NHS’s judgment of his life as worthless. So even the correction to the editorial is itself… incorrect.
(via Matt Yglesias)
Where are people coming up with this crap? I need to find a town hall meeting to attend, seriously. I have not seen many health care workers at them, only raving lunatics. Are people (Americans) really this stupid? Rhetorical question.
Love this. I will be sending lots of people to this blog post, every single time they give me crap about how horrible it would be if we had a system like the NHS or Canada’s system, both of which I think would be a HUGE improvement on the mess we currently have. (And I say that as someone who has fairly good insurance thanks to a healthy spouse’s employer.)