Whenever I say to someone that I do not believe that there is a universal human right to healthcare, that person always asks whether, then, I want to see people dying in the street from treatable disease. I in turn ask that person whether he can think of any reason for not allowing people to die in the street other than that they have a right to treatment. The fact that, as often as not, the person has great difficulty with this question suggests not only that our state, but our minds and moral imaginations have become highly bureaucratised.



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Robert Burns
February 23rd, 2009 12:49pmI've read Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," which attempts (in a well-thought out manner, IMHO) to deal with the matter oa altruism as a survival trait. I'd assumed that this book was a spinoff. Evidently not. So I guess I won't read it after all.
BTW, my novel, "The Unselfish Gene" (unselfishgene DOT com) does try to deal some with the Dawkins' concept, albeit in a kind of dramatized thought-experiment form. I dread the thought of what this reviewer might do with it,however.
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Andrew Dib
January 26th, 2009 7:22amYou speak of evidence. Where's your evidence for this drivel?
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harold stevens
January 20th, 2009 5:25amThe Adam Smith quote at the end of the review is a pretty good definition of "empathy" - and is evidently the answer to the question posed by the reviewer in his opening sentence. I wonder if he realised that....
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Vithal C Nadkarni
January 16th, 2009 5:00pmThanks for a characterstically brilliant review and thank you for saving me the enormous bother buying the book (I live in India and it would take 8 weeks to float to our shores at considerable expense)!
Vithal C Nadkarni
Senior Editor
The Times of India
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