Big Brother and Singaporean "Medicine".

Singapore is generally known as a "police state", to the rest of the world. In one way, this is an odd description, because one rarely sees actual policemen and women in Singapore. However, what people are referring to, when they label Singapore as a "police state" is, partially, the degree of surveillance of the citizens and the very controlled nature of the populace.

Now, nothing that I have written in the first paragraph is in the least controversial. This way of looking at Singapore is basically the common stereotype of the nation itself, in the eyes of the rest of the developed world. However, today I met with a very surprising aspect of this tendency towards surveillance and control.

I was in a Polyclinic with one of my sons, when I noted a weighing machine. Now, not having weighed myself in a good six months (thus, not being particularly interested in it), I thought that I might as well see how I was faring. So, I stepped onto the rather oddly shaped weighing machine. I saw it was odd because it had a column stretching up into the air above me, in addition to the weighing panel below me.

I rather expected to see a digital readout of my weight at that point. Indeed, I thought it would give me my body mass index too (since that was advertised on the machine). However, it gave me something else, something really disturbing, in my view. It asked me to scan my NRIC (national identity) card. That really spooked me. You see this machine, sitting quietly on its own in a Polyclinic, was actually spying for the state of Singapore. This is because anyone who actually weighed themselves with it, would have to identify themselves first. The machine would then weigh them. The tall column above the person, had a sensor at the top which, presumably, measured their height. These two pieces of information would then be used to calculate the BMI - or body mass index. This index is a measure of whether or not someone is "obese" and therefore open to various disease risks.

The machine itself is a good idea - however, the manner in which it had been implemented in Singapore struck me as a very bad one. By requiring all who used to it, to prove their identity, the machine could be used to gather data on individuals in Singapore, which should be private, really. Why would the machine ask for ID? The only possible reason is that the information is being stored against the person's name. If the information were not being stored, it would be a waste of time to ask for ID. It would make no sense. Yet, it seems to me a basic breach of individual privacy, that someone could not measure their BMI, in a Singaporean Polyclinic, without simultaneously having that information recorded for the attention of persons unknown. It should be at the discretion of the individual whether or not that information is made known to the state. They should have the power to decide the limits of knowledge of the state about themselves. After all, the state does not OWN the individual...or does it? The answer to that, for all other countries that I am familiar with is "no" - but with Singapore, one is left to wonder. Why have a machine to determine BMI that takes away from people the right to determine who knows that information about them? Is that reasonable?

Today, is a special day, in a way. It marks the first time, in my life, that I have seen a piece of medical equipment that demands ID from a person before it can be used. It is the first time in my life, that I have seen a piece of medical equipment that seems to automatically gather data about the population at the individual level.

George Orwell, the writer of "1984", would have recognized the weighing machine as the kind of device that would be common in his envisioned world. His was a world of total surveillance, in which even the tv in people's homes was a spying device that looked out into the rooms of every home in the land. A weighing machine that gathers data about the people who use it, is the very same kind of device. The spirit of the machines is akin.

In my title I have enclosed medicine in inverted commas. There is a good reason for this. You see, to my mind, medicine is about serving the patient's needs: the patient is centre of the whole edifice and the doctor, the hospital and all its staff and resources are there to meet his or her medical needs. Yet, that odd weighing machine doesn't fit into such a schema. A weighing machine that gathers data automatically about the people who use it, seems to be serving a different master, than a medical one. It takes control of the medical experience away from the patient. It creates a situation of involuntary submission of personal information. It seems, in fact, to serve the needs of a state to monitor its people - in this case, most invasively. A machine that automatically monitors the BMI of the population that uses it, is a machine that did not get permission from the patient, for a record to be made. It is a machine that takes personal freedom away from the patient. It subverts the innocent quest for a measurement of one's own weight and turns it into an invasion of privacy. It makes of it, yet another instance of the interests of the state, being placed above those of the individual.

Anyway, I didn't weigh myself. I didn't identify myself to this robotic "policeman". I stepped off the machine WITHOUT my BMI. You see, I wasn't about to submit a record of what I regard as private information, into some state electronic archive, by proceeding to weigh myself. As far as I am concerned, my BMI is a private matter for my attention alone.

Thus, it can be seen that the advent of medical machines that automatically record information leads immediately to a sharp reduction in care. Some people will choose NOT to use the machines and not learn more about their health, if that information is going to be archived. They will lose out on personal medical knowledge, because they will be seeking to ensure that no strangers have access to that information.

People should have the choice whether their medical data is recorded in databases. If they don't, some people will just avoid medical "care".

This unorthodox weighing machine is a step in a dangerous direction. The philosophy behind it is one that disregards the wishes of the patient. It doesn't ask the patient how they feel or what they want. It takes freedom and choice away from the individual. Each step in this direction, should be resisted - for the ultimate destination of such steps, is the total loss of personal freedom, choice and liberty. The road on which this machine stands goes to a place in which the state owns the individual - and treats the individual as property to be used as it wishes. Is that a road that Singapore should be travelling upon?

I suggest this. Reprogram the weighing machines. Take out the requirement for personal ID - and let them be what they should be: machines providing a private service, to allow a person to make a private assessment of their own health parameters - without forcing them to divulge it to anyone who cares to know. That is what medical "care" should be about: the patient, not the state.

P.S: For those who doubt my account of the Weighing Machine that Spies...please try this link:

http://www.avamech.com/B1000EC.htm

The machine I saw was by Avamech...and was very like this one. Note that it automatically transmits data to a computer - and that it captures identity for "database integration".

Unsurprisingly, Avalanche Mechtronics (hence Avamech...) is a Singaporean company. Perhaps only a company imbued with a worldview like Singapore's would manufacture a machine that takes a basic right to privacy away from its users.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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Baroness Warnock, the unethical "ethics expert".

Baroness Warnock wants you to die. More specifically, if you become ill with dementia she wants people to be "licensed" to put you down - just like an old dog. Baroness Warnock is, I contend, a far from ethical medical ethics expert.

Let us a take a closer look at what she believes. She thinks that an old person should be killed for the sake of their loved ones or society in general. She believes that such ill people are a burden on society and their loved ones and should be put down, like animals, to save others the burden of caring for them. This is, she considers, the "ethical" thing to do. I am left to wonder if she is quite sane. I think not.

Baroness Warnock thinks that if one burdens others, one should die. She is putting the convenience of society as a whole as a higher value than individual human life. I have seen this kind of thinking before: the Nazis were particularly enamoured of it, putting down whole swathes of people for violating the convenience of society as a whole, as they defined convenience. The convenience of society is NOT and can never be a higher value than human life itself. There is no higher value than human life - and one who does not place human life as the highest of values is not and can never be considered an ethical authority.

Baroness Warnock has revealed herself as a monster. I use the word deliberately, for she shares the outlook on human life (that its value is contingent on what others want) with the Nazis and other monstrous people before them. Human life is of the highest value - and is never and can never be considered contingent on what others want, in any civilized, ethical society. Baroness Warnock's reasoning is monstrous - or perhaps she is, herself, showing signs of dementia (she is 84). By her own reasoning, Baroness Warnock should be put down, therefore, for the demented nature of her own utterances. I don't see her being too quick to volunteer, however - perhaps she places a high value on her own life, but a low value on the life of others (another definite sign of a monstrous personality).

Baroness Warnock says that old people in mental decline are "wasting people's lives", due to the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if not in pain. She insisted that there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of loved ones or society. She has previously been recorded as saying that old people, who did not want to become a burden, should be helped to die. Now, she wants people to be licensed to do just that: go around killing old people. To my mind, she seems quite mad, in holding such views.

Baroness Warnock holds the kinds of views typical of despots and tyrants and monsters through the ages. Yet, she is supposedly a "medical ethics expert" who has been an adviser to the British government. I am puzzled as to how someone with so little grasp of what constitutes an ethical position could ever have been considered an ethics expert - or allowed to be an adviser on it. Her remarks show her to be most unethical - profoundly so - for she places no value on individual human life, but values the convenience of others above it.

It seems to me that more careful vetting is needed of candidates for the position of ethical adviser. Clearly, the British made a serious error in ever allowing Baroness Warnock any influence on ethical matters at all. Her influence can only be highly dangerous. Just think of what kind of world would come into being if Baroness Warnock were heeded on this matter: a world in which any human who fell sick and therefore inconvenienced others, would be put down. It is a world in which Stephen Hawking would have been killed off in his twenties when his motor disease overcame him. It is a world in which no-one would be allowed to live who troubled others. It is a world in which the handicapped would be executed at birth. It is world in which the stupid would be eliminated. For is not a mentally impaired person a burden on others? It is a world in which all would be relatively young, because the old would be consistently eliminated. It is a world that has been tried before. It is the world of the Third Reich.

Baroness Warnock is clearly impaired mentally, herself. She is clearly not thinking of the broader implications of advocating the death of one inconvenient class of people. Before long ALL inconvenient classes of people would be executed. Then again, what does "inconvenient" mean? Would it be extended, in some countries, to mean all those who don't support a particular political viewpoint? Would it extend to homosexuals? Or holders of another religion other than the official one? You may say that I am extending her argument too much - but I am most assuredly not. Once the idea that society has the right to execute one class of inconvenient people has become entrenched, it will soon be generalized. The taboo against taking human life would have been broken and this would open the way for all kinds of people to be ruled against as "inconvenient". Before long the few classes of people who survive will be living in a much duller, sanitized world - the world of Baroness Warnock "ethical expert".

Baroness Warnock is not a very intelligent woman. That much is clear. Her contribution to the world is not a positive one. What she advocates would destroy the civility of the modern world as we know it. Far from being a burden that must be killed, sick old people should be the focus of a duty of care: it is our responsibility, as fellow humans, to ensure that their lives are as comfortable as possible. In fact, I will go further than this: it is our duty as fellow humans to TREAT their illness and make them better if we can. Our ethical duty is not to kill them, to spare ourselves the trouble of bothering with them, as "ethical", oops, monstrous Baroness Warnock contends, but to cure them of their illnesses. A civilized culture would invest greater funds in research on dementing illnesses so as to cure them. They would not invest in the apparatus of death which Baroness Warnock would like to see brought into being.

The ethical thing to do, in this situation, would be to ensure that Baroness Warnock's plan is never implemented. Furthermore, to safeguard the future of society, the ethical thing to do would be to ensure that Baroness Warnock has no further influence over ethical matters. The ethical thing to do would be to review ALL of Baroness Warnock's past "ethical" decisions and check them for ethical content, against a more humanistic view of the world.

Baroness Warnock, by advocating the early deaths of millions of people, has become an inconvenience to society - for there could be no greater inconvenience to members of that society than wholesale deaths. Therefore, by her own reasoning, it is time for Baroness Warnock to say goodbye to the world. Perhaps she would like to try to establish the wisdom of her own reasoning by providing an example to the world of how a "sick old person" can benefit society by their own euthanasia.

I very much doubt whether she will take her own advice - which just goes to show how valueless it is.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)