The July/August issue Discover Magazine has a wonderful article about the physicist, rock star, bionic man–Stephen Hawking.
Hawking is an icon of science, and of survival. Here’s from Discover, print version (July/August 2009 p.44)–
In 1963, while a grad student at University of Cambridge, he was told he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a diagnosis which usually proves fatal within five years.
He was only 22 then, he’s 67 now and still a contender for the Nobel Prize. Famously brilliant, communicating through a voice simulator, motionless in a high-tech wheelchair with a team of people working 24/7 to keep him on this side of the veil, he’s a pioneer in living with a disability. But he’s not a natural-born American.
Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution catches ‘Investors Business Daily’ drafting Stephen Hawking into the teabaggers in an editorial where the facts are collateral damage in a war of opinion. Thanks to Americablog for the link…
But my favorite part of the editorial deals with the British health-care system, which if you believe IBD is basically condemning the old and disabled to die.
“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless,” the editorial claims.
Of course, that same Stephen Hawking who wouldn’t have a chance in the United Kingdom was in fact born in the United Kingdom, has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom and lives there still today, at the ripe old age of 67.
IBD has a cute sort-of retraction…
Editor’s Note: This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK.
The editorial is unsigned, which I guess means that IBD is collectively responsible.
This retraction is kind of like when I say that your mother dances on tabletops wearing men’s boxer shorts–sorry; I didn’t mean to say that she wears men’s boxer shorts. They make them for women now too. So now we’re fine. Arrgh!!!
Somewhere in the USA a 22 year old student has just received a dire diagnosis. His fears for his health and future are made worse by his fears of losing access to medical care. He will lose coverage on his parent’s insurance if he stops being a full-time student. But he’s sick. Suppose he has to drop out? Then he’ll be a young adult with a pre-existing condition. No insurance company will take him. His only recourse is government insurance–Medicaide.
With all the faults in government bureaucracy, you don’t see people being thrown off Medicare, Medicaide, Veterans or Federal Employees insurance for being sick.
There’s no way Stephen Hawking would be alive today if he had not received first rate care. He wasn’t a celebrity for most of those years either, just another patient in a national health plan. The expense of keeping him going day to day has to be enormous.
The young adults who depend on parent’s coverage, or who get their insurance through work or school are the most vulnerable to being shut out of the for-profit insurance system. They are one reason we need reform.
UPDATE- Stephen Hawking must be watching the net too, because he is aware of the controversy, and comments here.
Recurring Nightmare 
Thanks for an insightful post, a breath of fresh air.
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There is the absurd and there is the doubly absurd. The comments about where Mr. Hawking lives are clearly absurd and says more about the state of education, but doubly absurd is the notion that he receives “ordinary” treatment or concern that others in Britain mired in a collapsing public health system also receive is doubly absurd. Firstly, Mr. Hawking does receive special care and one can be assured that his university picks up a good part of that “extra” and likely private cost. Yes, there are miserable experiences for very many with the public health systems in Britain and Canada and elsewhere in the world, simply because government is systemically incapable of efficiency, and has always been so when it strays from the core needs for which it was created. One only has to read the fears of Jefferson or the failures of FDR or Johnson, etc., to realize that. The longest functioning “government” systems of health care in the U.S., for example, the Indian Health Service is replete with one issue after another, despite the undoubted good intention of its employees. The traumas of the VA are well documented. There is a real unease in America with the new tilt toward a series of proposals we see today, 1100 pages of “muck” in one version, that really represents a political agenda and not a health agenda, especially when 73% of the population said they are really content with what they have. The proof of course is the fact that members of Congress seem loath to give up “their” special medical options.
Mr. Hawking, I suggest, is still alive because of the innovations in medical technology that emerged from the private sector, and because of the “special” care he receives because he is considered special. To avoid that conclusion is to avoid the truth.
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When he was an unfamous 22 year old student, when all the high-tech stuff was yet to be invented, someone gave him good medical care. He deserves a lot of the credit for being determined to survive and keep working, for driving himself to the limit and not giving up, but he was helped by good care over 40 years.
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Indeed, Mr. Hawking has received excellent care along the way. It should be realized that he was not quite the “unrecognized student” at 22; his talent was early appreciated. The fact that he has survived so long is one of the modern miracles of medical care and technology that has evolved during his lifetime, mostly because of innovation of the private sector. An excellent comparison would be that with Lou Gehrig, that amazing and most gentle athelete. Lou Gehrig was diagnosed in mid-1939 and the age of 36, and by June, 1941 had died–his options were almost non-existent at the time. We must take great care not to see these marvelous men as worthy of “extreme” care because of who they are. That would be a defining of worth that no one should make because the danger within that defining is that less “accomplished” patients might not be judged worthy of heroic actions.
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Well, as a parallel example, I took care of a Medicaide patient who is totally disabled but has her mind and will intact. She wouldn’t make it past 3 days without intensive and expensive care, and she insists on her right to get that care at home. I’m inspired by her determination and will to live.
The ‘government health care’ that people are slandering is providing her with nurses aides to care for her 3 shifts daily, as well as high tech devices and medication.
She’s a more ‘productive’ member of society than many. The money spent on her care provides employment to workers who pay their bills and their taxes. She’s living proof that we can take care of our own.
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Disabilities should never determine care delivery; we can glimpse how sad a world that would be if that was the case. Hitler and his “eugenics” programs teach us the horror that awaits once we go down that road. What is very troubling for Americans, and not usually discussed, is the sheer mass of population we now have that adds to the complexity and costs of any care system no matter how democratic we want to make it. We are some 335,000,000 now (I think we were only 170,000,000 when Lyndon Johnson was President). The public healt care of places like Canada or Britain or France or Germany cannot be readily compared, whether good or bad, simply because their population base is so small. It is likely that we will be more than 500,000,000 in another 40 years, raising grave questions of sustainability of any program, medical or not.
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I don’t think we can sustain middlemen siphoning off profits.
It will be a problem as our population ages to provide a decent quality of life for the old without shortchanging the young.
Personal responsibility is one side, collective responsibility another. We need both.
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