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Pastimes : The Boxing Ring Revived -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (6416)	6/13/2003 6:52:53 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7720

Larry Niven, a science fiction writer, postulates in one of his novels a society where failure to take drugs necessary to control mental illness is a death penalty offense. That seems rather extreme. But the basic idea is right. The problem with that is its not always a clear cut case of take drug A to safely and effectively stop behavior X. Sometimes its Take drug A to hope to control X, while causing side effect Y, take drug B to try and deal with Y but cause mental or physical problem Z for which there is no good treatment available. In the hypothetical future that Niven writes about such drugs may be safer and more effective and the disorders may be more precisely diagnosed but its not always such simple now, in the current real world. BTW - Dishonest adds or committing to many minor traffic violations was a death penalty act at some points of Niven's future history, when transplants where safe and easy but there wasn't enough organs to meet the demand for transplants. Even with so many capital offences there still was not enough organs so some criminals became "organleggers" who would kill people to sell their organs on the black market. If they left fingerprints they would just change out their hands... Tim