A little while back, Michael Kinsley had a few stupid lines in an otherwise OK article that neglected the concept of inviolability of the human being.    It's a slightly esoteric topic but nevertheless one that a political commentator like Kinsley should have been aware of -- it's certainly been a standard topic of discourse in political academia.  It gets to the heart of theories around positive & negative rights and the social contract.

The basic idea behind inviolability is that as you assemble all the biological components components to make a human (cells, tissues, organs, etc.), there's a magical point where suddenly the human is, well, "human".    And once we're at that point, he suddenly has the right to free speech, assembly, life, liberty, happiness, and so on.    None of these rights apply fractionally to the components of a human but apply generally en toto to the entire being.  You're severed hand doesn't have the right to vote.

Perhaps 2/3's of all Star Trek:TNG episodes that centered on the character of Command Data  focused on exploring this boundary.   Humans do X;  products do Y;  which should Data do?   Which should we do when interacting with Data?  The deep, cross-cultural fascination with fairy tales about hunchbacks, Frankensteins, near-human robots, and other gentle monsters demonstrate a remarkably deep mass social understanding of some of these core concepts.   We might not consciously talk about the magical tipping point when we treat something as human vs. animal but we certainly understand it at a subconscious level and it spices up our story telling.

The flip side of inviolability is a type of privacy or respect for the dignity of individual choice.   In Western philosophy, it's often phrased as the notion that a "human is an ends in and of himself."  It's absurd, for example, to legislate broadly that people should wear their hair a particular way or wear certain clothes.   In our era of rather well-realized individualism such throwbacks to the 1950's IBM'er positively induces shuddering -- even when it's commercially rather than legislatively driven.  

So here is yet another reason - a cultural / moral one rather than the standard economic ones - for my generalized opposition to nationalized health plans - they inevitably lead to a reduction in human dignity.   Why?  Because they transform care for the individual into a public good.   Thus, the individual's lifestyle choices determine how much he draws upon that public good.    And finally, therefore, some of these choices become public responsibility.   The care of my body is no longer my ends but rather society's.

This article in the Guardian describes steps that are being contemplated by Britain's health service to deal with the systemic public health problems caused by obesity and smoking:

Smokers and overweight people will be asked to sign contracts with their doctors to agree a programme to quit smoking and lose weight under radical plans being drawn up by the government.

In an attempt to remind people of their own responsibilities the health secretary, Alan Millburn, is examining plans for patients and doctors to agree a formal programme of treatment.

I'm not squeamish because this isn't the right thing to do in some sense - obesity & smoking are clearly massive problems.   I'm weirded out because the state is taking a pretty big leap towards stepping on the inviolability of the individual.

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UPDATE: I seem to be running into weird problems with my comment system. For some reason, it stopped working from IE6 / Mozilla on my end of the network.... I'm not ignoring you if you leave a comment (although I generally don't get around to responding to every comment that gets left either....)

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