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LETS ALSO DENY DENTAL WORK FOR SODA DRINKERS!

Should smokers and the obese be denied coronary artery bypass surgery?

Before you answer, consider this:

Someone that you love may someday fall into the "smoker" or "obese" categories, and then what would happen if that person needed this surgery? Would you say "Sorry, Dad, but I guess you shouldn't have smoked all those years. It was nice knowing you. Sorry. Goodbye."

No one should be denied medical care.

Ever.

Once you start picking and choosing and drawing lines and boundaries for medical treatment, there is no clear-cut place to stop, and then you have pure chaos on your hands.

To deny smokers and the obese heart surgery, would be to deny a soda drinker dental work. Or a typist carpal tunnel treatment. Or a recreational athlete a cast for a broken bone.

The job of a doctor or a surgeon, in relation to a sick or injured patient, is to treat and help them along their road to a speedy recovery... not to scrutinize their lifestyle choices in order to determine if they are "worthy" of the treatment.

Is a smoker's life less valuable than that of a non-smoker? Is the life of an obese man less valuable than that of a thin man? What if the smoker in question was the President of the United States, and he needed the heart surgery to save his life? Would we apologize to him and send him on his way to die? If not, why not? Regardless of title or position in this world, he'd be denied the same treatment as all other smokers, right? If not, why not? He chose to abuse his body the same as all the other smokers, right?

And who should be able to determine something like the value of a person's life anyway? Doesn't that sound like the type of work that someone or something like a "God" should be doing?

You may not be a smoker and you may not be obese, but do those facts alone give you the right to say that a person deserves to be denied a surgery that may save their life, just because they smoke or have weight issues? If you believe the news, half of America has weight issues, so they're not alone! And besides, who blessed any of us with the right to say who does and does not deserve to die?

Smoker, obese, or not... these things should all be irrelevant when it comes time to decide whether a patient should die or be given a surgery that will allow them to survive.

Learn more about this author, James Mongold.
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