It's so easy to stay well informed if you have internet access! 
www.democracynow.org is a news service run by US journalist Amy Goodman, who
won the Right Livelihood Award (aka 'the alternative Nobel Peace Prize') in
2008. She is independent of any commercial ties so she can't afford the
make-up or clothes of the talking heads on the big networks, just has to
rely on her competence and the generosity of listeners/viewers.  A few days
ago she was in my old home town, Seattle and one of the interviews she did
was at the UW School of Public Health.  You can see the broadcast and read
the full transcript at 
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/30/as_recession_deepens_how_is_the 
This interview was apropos our current thread on the rights of babies; I
post it here to show that I don't just have my weird ideas from living in
Norway; I brought them with me from the Pacific NW. Some of them seem to
have leaked down to California (Hi Jaye!) too. 

"AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Bezruchka, how does our healthcare system affect this,
influence this? And what is the system you think would improve the health of
the most powerful country on earth?

DR. STEPHEN BEZRUCHKA: Well, if we talk about healthcare system, first of
all, we have to recognize, healthcare is a very tiny factor in the health of
whole populations. And that’s a real polemic.

What’s really important is how we structure early life. Since half of our
health as adults is somehow determined between conception and age three,
four or five, early life lasts a lifetime. And we are the only rich country
that doesn’t have mandated paid maternity, paternity leave, as all the other
rich countries do. So we neglect early life, and we pay the price with poor
health as adults.

I think in terms of a healthcare system, a medical care system, I think we
should remove the profit motive from it. As long as we have healthcare
insurance companies that in 2005 made $100 billion in profit, it’s very hard
to tamper with that kind of an industry. However, profiteer is not good for
our health. So I would begin by taking profit out of the system and not
seeing it as a market phenomenon."

Rachel Myr, loving it that today's DN broadcast has an interview with one of
my wedding guests, Jim McDermott, on the medical-industrial complex :-)
Kristiansand, Norway

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