Really, FDA? REALLY?!

I've known for a long time that the Red Cross doesn't accept blood donations from men who have had sex with another man, even once. I had thought that this was because the Red Cross wanted to be especially cautious about the possibility of transmitting HIV to recipients of donated blood; statistically speaking, male-male sex carries a higher rate of transmission than heterosexual sex or female-female sex, so I figured the Red Cross was simply choosing to eliminate a group of people it deemed too risky.

It wasn't until today, through a pair of letters to the New York Times, that I learned two things: 1) the Red Cross and other collectors of donated blood didn't choose this ban, it was imposed on them by the FDA; and 2) that ban extends to bone marrow.

As one of the letters puts it, "It’s rare that patients are unable to get the blood type they need, but the stakes are much higher when a marrow transplant may be the only way to save a cancer patient’s life. Finding a well-matched marrow donor is much more difficult. If I had leukemia and my only chance for a cure was a gay man’s bone marrow, I’d take that chance — and I think anyone else would, too." No kidding!

But the FDA won't allow you that choice. It won't allow you to say, "Yes, I recognize that if I take this donated marrow, there is a slightly increased risk to my life because of the possibility of HIV, but I also recognize that there is an immediate and known threat to my life from cancer, and it's obviously to my benefit to take the marrow." The same is true of blood donation; although the threat to one's life of not receiving a gay man's donation may be less than with a bone marrow transplant, it should still be a patient's own decision, after a careful consideration of the risks and benefits.

FDA: Butt out. It's every individual's sovereign right to decide what will and will not go into his own body, by his own judgment and not some bureaucrat's.

On how Objectivists aren't self-absorbed egomaniacs

First, I'll disclaim by saying this post is off-topic...at best, it's super-tangentially related to health, since it's not about running marathons, but about volunteering for them. But I'd like to speak up against one of the most common misconceptions about Objectivists -- that being selfish means being a self-absorbed, insufferable twit who thinks only of oneself.

Not true. In fact, the self-absorbed jerk who tramples over other people is not the least rationally selfish. He's not considering that other people can be a huge value -- and that other people are not required to serve his interests, so if he wants to gain values from other people, he needs to offer value in return.

What, though, about volunteering? On the surface, volunteering looks like it has no clear selfish benefit. If, say, I hammer some nails for Habitat for Humanity, I'll likely never meet the family that moves into the house I helped build; I stand no chance of gaining a value from them. Altruists would say that that doesn't matter; I ought to volunteer, if not for Habitat, for some other charity, out of duty to other people. Most altruists I know would consider volunteering just about as foreign an activity to Objectivists as possible; why would we want to give?

As a matter of fact, I don't want to give when I receive no or little value in return -- and that's why I won't be volunteering for Habitat or a soup kitchen any time soon. I will, however, be volunteering in the 2010 New York City Marathon, handing water to thirsty runners.

Why am I doing this? Out of the forty thousand runners racing this year, I'll know just one, and I'm not likely to see her as the flood of people passes by the water station. What value am I getting out of helping this sea of strangers?

Well, you see, I'm a marathon runner, too. (My race this year is Chicago, so I'll be free to dish out the H20 in Gotham.) In three marathons, plus half-marathons and innumerable shorter races, I have depended on the kindness of volunteers who were strangers to me. Those people ushered me to start lines, kept me hydrated and fed, handed me medals at finish lines, were around to provide medical aid in case of an emergency.

I, selfishly, want to live in a world in which volunteers continue to support races. If all those who helped at races were paid, the price of entry would be prohibitively expensive. And if I want to live in the kind of world in which volunteers help runners, I need to help create that world -- by helping other runners myself. Besides, as a runner, I'm predisposed to be benevolent to other runners. It makes me happy to help them out. Thus, volunteering is not something I do out of duty to others, but out of selfish pleasure and a genuine desire to do for other runners what others have done for me.

Government food ratings get an F

New York City, whose Department of Health has meddled with food producers' business for years, has recently begun issuing letter grades to restaurants based on the results of unannounced inspections. And, apparently, although keeping smoked fish at a temperature deemed too warm by the bureaucrats is enough to get a restaurant a C rating, you can have mouse poo on the floor and still get an A.

Food writer Kat Odell, based in Los Angeles (a city that has issued letter grades for years), advises New Yorkers to look past the grades. As Odell writes, a pileup of minor infractions that won't actually hurt anybody (such as mislabeling of food containers or cracked tiles in the floor) can get a restaurant slapped with a C, whereas real threats to health, if isolated, can be glossed over with an A. Not to mention that, in many cases, what is safest by a bureaucrat's judgment isn't always what tastes best. The USDA has been urging us to overcook our steaks for years, and city health department officials are no different; they'd like us to have dumplings steamed in metal, rather than bamboo, containers, even if this cooking method affects their taste; they'd like us to eat our smoked fish ice-cold, even if eating it a little warmer brings out its flavor better.

This is what comes of substituting a bureaucrat's judgment for your own. In a free market, consumers could decide on their own whether, for example, having your dumplings steamed in the most perfectly sanitary way possible is more important, or whether it's better to enjoy a dumpling at its tastiest, with a small risk of bacteria from the bamboo. I know which one I would pick. But in our era of city health department dictators, restaurants are pressured to sacrifice taste in the name of risk avoidance.

I, for one, plan to follow Kat Odell's advice of ignoring the letter grades and finding out for myself whether the restaurants I patronize are clean and sanitary enough for my purposes -- not for some bureaucrat's.

I'm not dead...

...I'm just moving! I can't wait -- Dave's and my new digs in Brooklyn will be literally double the size of the eensy beansy Upper East Side one-bedroom we live in now. Between hunting for apartments, arranging movers, starting to change addresses on about a zillion different accounts, and going through our stuff to weed out things that don't need to come with us, I've had little time or inclination to write here. (Not to mention I'm running 30-40 miles a week as the marathon draws closer!)

I'm also wrapping up (at least, I hope I'm wrapping up) the editing process on an article for The Objective Standard on how a free market would improve health care. I'm really looking forward to seeing it in print!