Darwin himself never says that evolution leads to “better” organisms, simply ones that are better suited to an environment that could change in another direction on any given day.

Evolution is as much of a fact as gravity is.

Seriously, you’re the one who, in the non-sequitor of the century, brought up and attacked Darwin. He has nothing to do with modern health care besides the fact that his theory is essential in understanding and curing diseases. His personal beliefs on health care have no baring whatsoever.

So you linked to a made up website URL to prove you were just making shit up.

The opinion piece you link to speaks of vaccinations and surgery and states that Darwin didn’t believe in them for one reason or another even though vaccinations were not even existant in Darwin’s time and surgery was recognized as tinkering.

I’m sorry I don’t have time to search for the exact quote about dying with family but it’s there in the correspondence near the end of his life.

Nevertheless none of this really matters. Darwin can stupidly hate the Irish and still be the scientist with the idea that successfully argues against creation. He recognized that chance doesn’t build complex beings but the power of natural selection does and that’s why we talk about him. We can still criticize certain ideas he had, that’s how science works. But maybe that’s confusing to people who believe in unquestioned authority.

I believe that what Darwin said was that optimally, there should be no hospitals, because it gives the unfit an undeserved advantage.

My source for that information?

http://www.somewhereontheinternet.com

Then again, this might be of interest:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8751&page=2

Of course, if you want to believe Darwin was a humanitarian, wait til you see how Margaret Sanger interprets him, or you may want to read about the case of Buck v Bell

Teresa, when Mike Over Here makes things up, you would do well to do some research before you back his play.

DiSalle,

Some people read people’s work before commenting on it. You should try reading Darwin. Then you would not have to rely on more educated people for your information.

It is not difficult to read him he is quite a clear and straightforward writer. I recommend beginning with “The Voyage of the Beagle” It is available for free online, Here:

http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/

Yep, and you keep sliding right down it.

Yes. That’s why I said that it might be worth innoculating against H1N1 when you wouldn’t otherwise innoculate yourself against the seasonal flu. Still, though, many deaths due to H1N1 many times occur because there is some other underlying condition that makes the patient vulnerable.

Maybe part of this is that I’m simply skeptical of our ability to innoculate 300 million people and just think it would be better for everyone if we just concentrated on people who might die without it and people like health care workers who deal with patients all day, every day.

In addition, I’ve noticed a definite shift in public sentiment when it comes to flu vaccines in general– it used to be that it was something that the elderly got because the flu might kill them. Now we go in an give seasonal flu vaccines to healthy high school students. Of course, I got my seasonal shot and I may well get H1N1 when it becomes available, but this was the first time ever.

You do realize that H1N1 has a much higher infection and mortality rate among the young than the seasonal flu, right? Almost half the hospitalizations have been of teenagers and children, and unprecedented rate.

Have they actually done any testing to conclude that this vaccine will cause no additional side effects as standard flu vaccines created from human-borne viruses?

H1N1 is a human-borne virus.

Regarding whether it is the Spanish flu or not is that we don’t know whether it’s the Spanish flu or not until it’s too late. So the plan is to nip it in the bud.

Odds are I probably got H1N1 during the original outbreak last spring. However, I do not really know for sure.

I always assumed that the reason you should get a flu shot is because you stand a risk from dying from the flu. Otherwise, you should just stay at home when you get the flu, tough it out, and make sure not to infect everyone else around you.

Just saying “We don’t see any reason why it would.” isn’t really good enough. We test things for a reason, and we are dealing with a biological vaccine, not some sort of chemical treatment. We should be more wary and make sure we only vaccinate those people who are actually necessary to vaccinate. This aint the spanish flu, and there’s no reason to rush into this.