Monday, March 26, 2012

Could Smoking Buy You Time?

I saw yet another news item over the weekend where another town council was considering banning smoking. This time it was in all the city's apartment complexes. And for all the real or imagined healthscare reasons you've grown accustomed to reading.

And I also noticed that the majority of the critics had comments that fall under the subheading of "Nanny State intrusiveness."

Now most of us know how badly the Left is infested with radical Greens and thus influenced by Malthusians.  Given such live and let die sorts at the top of the food chain, "Nanny State" sounds far too benign a label for such actions, let alone giving them a label that fits places so civilized as to have nannies.

So let's think about smoking and its effects a little bit more.

First hand smoke, on average, takes decades to actually kill a smoker (if he dies from it). All in all, it only really takes about 10 years off the average life span of all smokers.

But nowadays there's a big push for people to live healthier. Healthier hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, etc. One might even call it a propagandizing push. Propaganda to improve the health of the population overall can't be a bad thing, right? Bwahahahahaha.

Let's simply concentrate on the smoking issue again. Think of the people who have lung ailments. If they smoked they probably now wish they hadn't. On average it's safe to say that a very large majority of people who are now suffering, and are eligible for a lung transplant, would want the lung of a recently deceased non-smoker. What sense would it make to take a lung from a preserved cadaver that smoked? Thus, the lung from a non-smoker is much more highly prized.

Now many of you have heard the rumors of how China harvests the organs from its prisoners and makes them available on the world transplant market. For some reason it is not publicized. I can't imagine why not. It's not like the rulers of China are like our Western rulers, right?

For instance, we know how open and honest our Western "progressives" are. They'd surely be open and aboveboard with the purpose behind all their machinations, right? Like climate change scientists.

Anyway, if you think about how much more a certified smoke free human lung could fetch at auction, all this effort begins to make sense. Well, in China anyway.

Surely, over there, you can forget about calling it the Nanny State — that’s far too civilized for what their “progressives” have in mind. Call it the Cannibal State.

On a side note. A little outside the box thinking might actually gain you some time. If you were a plant and wanted to make yourself look less attractive to harvesters, and had the will of a human, what might you consider -- cough -- doing?

3 comments:

  1. Let me recommend Larry Niven's story The Jigsaw Man to readers who are not familiar with it.

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  2. Thanks for the cool scifi ref.

    "In the future, criminals convicted of capital offenses are forced to donate all of their organs to medicine, so that their body parts can be used to save lives and thus repay society for their crimes. However, high demand for organs has inspired lawmakers to lower the bar for execution further and further over time.

    The protagonist of the story, certain that he will be convicted of a capital crime, but feeling that the punishment is unfair, escapes from prison and decides to do something really worth dying for. His crime: excessive traffic violations."

    It's here now, at least in China. So go out and smoke and pollute the body that government thinks is their property.

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  3. Interesting take on the "no-smoking" issue. And as a smoker, I probably have foiled the state in their attempts to want yet one more clean source of harvesting material. I also drink...so does that mean all my parts will be properly marinated for future use? (Taking the cannibalization theme one step further? Though I don't know how good I would taste with either flava beans or a good chianti. )

    At the end of the day, I see it not as just a "Nanny State" issue. Or even one of the state using us as human cattle. It is pure and simply an issue of power and or control. "They" either already have it...or are progressing toward amassing more of the same. The "nice ones" will be "benign" in their approach and treatment, the despots, thugs, and nere-do-wells, not so much.

    The useful idiots and fellow travelers of the progressives are perhaps the more vocal and noticeable critters out there, but they are still sheep after all is said and done. They just bleet louder. The wolfs will find them to be every bit as tasty as their more docile brethren..

    Now it's the sheepdogs out here which give the wolfs some degree of concern. The question is; are there (still) enough of us out there to get the job done. And when will we have to become more agressive in doing same.

    THink I will go out to the garage, have a smoke, and ponder on this for a bit...

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