Andrew Speaker has become the new poster child for all that is wrong with our society. Infected with TB, he left
the country, traveled to Greece, got married, spent his honeymoon outside the country, and came back, clandestinely, then
turned himself in, all the while knowing the severity of his disease.
What I find troubling is not so much his selfish behavior, but the lack of proper safeguards, or protocols to protect
him, as well as the rest of us. The CDC essentially dropped the ball, because it is an agency gutted and forced
to work on shoe string budgets (much like all agencies in our government), where deregulation has now made it possible for
this to happen.
So we have become a people bent on tearing apart the person, but not the system. Oh, there will be oversight committees,
and other talking heads, spending more tax dollars trying to find a scapegoat, but in the end we still haven't solved
the problem.
The bottom line, since the first time medicine has saved a person's life, medical ethics has been in play, questioning
who gets to live, and who dies. It's great that God has given us a means to help our fellow breathren, but how
far do we go? We have given people a quantity of life, with no quality. Take my Grandma for example. She
died at Ninety Six, but spent the last Sixteen of those years in a state of senile dementia. Sixteen years.
Who really benefited from that? You guessed right.
But back to the issue. We forget that moral absolutes are necessary, and the ethical treatment of people in the
care of medical professionals needs to include what is really humane. The more we dabble into ways to save lives, the
greater the chasm we create between honoring God, and playing one.
The anger over what Andrew Speaker did is ludicrous compared to society's bent on abortion RIGHTS, or those living a
promiscuous lifestyle, spreading all sorts of diseases, especially AIDS, with no repercussions for their actions.
And we want to 'tar & feather' this guy!
I don't argee with what he did, but we all suffer consequences from other peoples actions.
I can no longer donate blood because of sexual abuse. I'm not a carrier of any disease, but the rules regarding
blood donation disallow me. I accept that, but I don't like it.
And the most important consequence someone suffered that didn't deserve it, is what Christ did for all of us on the Cross.
When we can finally quit screaming blood murder over someone elses selfishness, and look to what we each do to contribute
to the problem, (like not completing the antibiotic therapy required to eradicate the disease from our system), then we will
be on the right road to understanding the moral absolutes given to us are not burdens, but safety nets and loving protection.
Think about it!
