When I first read the recent post from my friend Joe Paduda entitled “Missouri’s Resident Idiot”, I just automatically assumed that he was lashing out at that state’s legislature inducting native son Rush Limbaugh to the honored “Hall of Famous Missourians”. After all, Limbaugh and his beliefs don’t really reside within Paduda’s wheelhouse, as it were.
However, that was not the case. Turns out that the resident idiot Paduda was referring to was a Missouri legislator who filibustered, thereby preventing, a bill that would have created a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). Capping his 8 hour effort was the statement that earned Senator Rob Schaaf this unique designation. He apparently said, in reference to people who abuse prescription drugs, “If they overdose and kill themselves, it just removes them from the gene pool.”
It is refreshing to see a politician with a firm grasp and appreciation for Darwinian principles. Recognizing the human ability to thin the herd of those less suited for survival is a fading skill, and I suppose we should applaud it when we see it.
I have long maintained that we are dumbing the species down by our continual efforts to protect those slated for removal due to their physical or mental weaknesses. Legislated safety requirements and standards are interfering with the process of natural selection. Look no farther for an example of this than school zone speed limits. When I was a child, if you were too slow or too stupid to safely get across the street and make your way through speeding traffic, you did not get to grow up and pass on your defective seed. But today, with cars forced to travel through these zones as if they were being pushed by over medicated sloths, opportunity for effective herd thinning is blocked, and defective seed propagation proceeds unabated.
And we’ll probably have to pay for the resulting offsprings prescription medication, where, at least in Missouri, we have a second crack at getting this right, thanks to Senator Schaaf’s foresight and vision. A time to celebrate, to be sure.
But there is a catch. Paduda, ever the stickler for pesky details and useful if not annoying facts, points out that this simple Darwinian correction may in fact ensnare innocent victims. By pointing out that, with the absence of a PDMP, multiple physicians could unknowingly prescribe incompatible prescriptions that could kill an innocent patient, he pours cold water on the brilliance of Schaaf’s “screw ’em if they’re stupid” philosophy. Turns out, it may take more than just a Darwinian village idiot after all.
Seems Paduda was right. I hate it when that happens.