All men are created equal

[andrewducker]

As some of you know, Erin has PCOS. The solution to this is to basically give her drugs that return her body to normal levels of insulin/glucose so that her testosterone levels drop and she's normal again.

Now, I have insulin problems too. And according to recent statistics a large proportion is ending up with type 2 diabetes because of dietary problems. So it'd be great if we could brute-force a solution to this.

In some ways.

How far from the norm do people have to be before they are considered eligible? Do you allow people to self-medicate away their problems? Do we allow people to use this tech to make themselves thinner (or fatter) than normal by medicating? Is it reasonable to allow people to basically make themselves dependent on this technology so that their hormone levels are constantly monitored and adjusted and tuned to keep them at optimum levels.

More to the point, lets extend that to a general level. We're gaining more and more control over our bodies and brains. Are we going to take control of our bodies on a deep invasive level (eventually redefining what it means to be human) or are we going to decide that only certain changes are to be allowed? This underlies many issues facing modern politics, from cloning to genetic manipulation to human/machine interfaces. At some point this basic issue is going to have to be faced, or the decisions will be taken piece by piece and not in the directions we necessarily want them to.

Comments

[aberbotimue.livejournal.com]

When you say high proportion, what are we talking about?

I know this isn't quite where you were going with the argument, but who am I not to start a new tangent?

Ilitracy started to become an issue for "a high proportion" so the government alterd the education system to counter, if you are saying that this issues is somwhat based on our eating habbits, maybe the government should make us change thoses, in an attempt to avoid the problem, rather than allow everyone to "manage the illness"

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

I have heard a doctor complain that he really does want to be able to tell people that they feel like crap because they eat crap, are overweight, and don't get any exercise, but of course, that'ss not what they want to hear. They want to hear 'You have XYZ syndrome. Here, take this pill. It will make you thin and happy'. I think a lot of this is down to laziness, and a lot of it is down to people wanting things not to be going right with them because there's something wrong with them, not because of some way that they behave, which they could change if they wanted to badly enough, or, in other words, that it's their fault.
Of course, for some people, there is actually something wrong, and if these people would benefit from being given medication, they should get medication, but as for the rest of us...
I think that it's a rather dangerous precedent, all of this self-medicating. It promotes the understanding that we are somehow not responsible, by the way we live our lives, the kinds of things we choose to put into our bodies, for the condition in which our bodies are, but that if we're fat and unheathly it's because there's something wrong with us and medical science can fix it. Even if it is explicitly understood that what we're doing when we self-medicate to alleviate symptoms that are directly caused by choices that we make, it encourages complacency. It probably isn't physically very healthy, as well. Further, it reduces the body's ability to adapt to new things if you're dependent upon all these drugs just to keep yourself in operating condition.
I don't think it's terribly wise to force the body to function in ways and on stuff it hasn't evolved to do. Millions of years went into turning us into the kinds of physical beings we are. In the long run, even if self-medication makes us feel like we're doing okay on high sugar, high refined carbohydrate, high fat diets, we're probably not, and certainly not as well as we would be if we were eating the kind of stuff our bodies really want.
And at worst we end up like Michael Jackson.
*shudder*

[heron61.livejournal.com]

As some of you know, Erin has PCOS. The solution to this is to basically give her drugs that return her body to normal levels of insulin/glucose so that her testosterone levels drop and she's normal again.

A friend of mine has this and has had bad luck with the drugs she was given. What is Erin taking? If it works, I'd like to tell me friend about it.

More to the point, lets extend that to a general level. We're gaining more and more control over our bodies and brains. Are we going to take control of our bodies on a deep invasive level (eventually redefining what it means to be human) or are we going to decide that only certain changes are to be allowed?

To me the only fair and reasonable answer to this question is to allow anyone to make whatever changes they wish with their own body. I can see the government (in civilized nations that actually have reasonable healthcare) only paying for treatments that improve the person's health, but any changes should be allowed.

I've seen some fascinating bodymods recently, one person in Portland has under-skin implants that are a pair of narrow rods that extend in a V from the inside edge of his eyebrows to the top outside edge of his forehead - he looks rather like a Star Trek alien. From my POV, increased physical and mental diversity is always a good thing as long as people are happy with the changes they make to their bodies.

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

These are both very good points, drawing attention to a distinction I failed to make. There are some body modifications which can accomplish certain ends, such as reactive lenses that keep you more comfortable or cosmetic changes that make you happy, and compensating with drugs for doing bad things to your body, such as maintaining an outright destructive diet, which was pretty much the aspect of the problem I meant to address. I would never advocate that people refrain from all sorts of body modifications: abolish penicillin? Preposterous. Our ability to adapt ourselves and our environment, willfully, with the use fo tools, is part of the reason we are where we are today, but I think it potentially damaging to attempt to ight every wrong by compensation rather than by addressing the cause. A lot of people do themselves a fair amount of harm by eating stupidly, and, okay, yeah, medical science can compensate for the fix into which they get themselves when they do, on a lot of fronts, but wouldn't it have been more sensible of them to adopt healthier eating practices-- which is a surprisingly non-painful thing to do-- in the first place?
I take drugs every day to control my rather nasty asthma. I'm a caffeine junkie, and I do like my glass of wine with dinner. I'll take pain killers when I'm sick, and spent many of my formative years under the influence of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride. I have a tattoo. I don't think these are bad things. But I do think that the solution to many of the health problems that are becoming epidemic in Western society is better and more easily reached by behavioural adaptation rather than body modification.