Soon to be Doctor Doctor Robert Paul Wolff [note to self: didn’t they name a song after him after he gets that second Doctor title?] proposes that we attempt to educate the populace by requiring that they be required to sign a statement when they enter the hospital, thereby denying themselves any treatment that conflicts with their belief system. And I think his sense of Justice makes eminent sense: Doesn’t everyone?

A Fundamentalist Christian is brought into the hospital suffering from life-threatening colon cancer. On the forms he fills out at Patient Intake, he says he is a Born-Again Evangelical Christian who believes that the world is ten thousand years old. The doctors then tell him that his best chance of conquering the cancer is radiation therapy. However, they explain, radiation therapy rests on the theory of radioactive decay, and that in turn depends on the fact that the half lives of the relevant elements are millions of years long, etc etc. So, before they violate his most deeply held convictions by beginning the radiation therapy, they just want him to sign a release acknowledging that he no longer believes that the earth is ten thousand years old.

I mean, these are the people who pass laws requiring doctors to show pictures of aborted fetuses to women who want abortions, right? What do you suppose would have happened if someone had put my proposed requirement into the omnibus health care reform bill?

We could save a ton of money nationally if all the Fundamentalist Creationists would forswear treatment that conflicts with their religious beliefs, and just die. Of course, we would have to require them to permit their children to be treated, but since we are talking about maybe one hundred million adults, you have to think that's a lot of expensive high tech treatment that wouldn’t have to be delivered.