At the Center, February 2002

David Kelley spoke to two very different organizations last month, on two very different topics:

On January 3, when Kelley spoke to the Junto, a discussion group run by TOC advisor and benefactor Victor Neiderhoffer, his subject was the terrorist attacks of September 11. Drawing on arguments he made in his article "The Assault on Civilization" (available at www.objectivistcenter.org), Kelley explained why the terrorist assault was, most probably, motivated by a nihilistic hostility toward civilization as such. The Junto audience comprised about one hundred TOC members and other free-market advocates, and a lively discussion of Kelley's remarks followed his talk.

Next, on January 11, Kelley spoke at a conference hosted by the Institute of Human Values in Health Care, at the Medical University of South Carolina. The institute is dedicated to scholarly inquiry into the ethical aspects of health-care policy, and this year's conference focused on ethical issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Kelley was asked to lecture on the obligations that the public owes to AIDS patients. He argued that the public has no unchosen obligations to such patients and that government aid programs are unjustified. The thesis was, as might be expected, controversial and the subject of much discussion. Nonetheless, Kelley notes: "The theme of my lecture was one that people kept coming back to throughout the conference. And despite the fact that the audience generally disagreed with my presentation, many people reacted positively to the political principle of individualism. Indeed, no other coherent political principle emerged at the conference." This spring the peer-reviewed journal Health Care Analysis: An International Journal of Health Care Philosophy and Policy will publish Kelley's article under the title "What Are the Public Obligations to AIDS Patients?"

TOC member Robert Sade, a professor of surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina, is the director of the Institute of Human Values in Health Care and has himself written extensively on medical ethics. One of his most notable articles, "Medical Care as a Right: A Refutation," was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1971. That paper is still taught in colleges around the country and can be found online at www2.misnet.com/~rick/pages/moral.html.