Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending?

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

There is something so biologically implausible that your attitude is going to cure a disease. Theres a tremendous arrogance to imagine that your mind is all that powerful.

A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome.

In economic terms, health care is a highly successful industry - profitable, growing, and virtually recession-proof - but it's a massive burden on the rest of the economy.

The pharmaceutical industry isn't the only place where there's waste and inefficiency and profiteering. That happens in much of the rest of the health care industry.

Brand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.