They instituted a law in New York lately that restricts the selling of soft drinks, on the theory that they're bad for your health. It seems that 4 out of 5 black women are overweight. In a place like Africa, where the food supply may not be reliable, this would make sense. Overweight people are less likely to starve. It turns out that most black men like a woman with a little flesh on her hips. So there is a cultural side to this too, it's not just a health issue. Supporting laws like the one in New York could almost be seen as racist. Now, in America, the food supply is a lot more reliable than in Africa. That's presumably because of our technology - farming techniques and such. As long as technology keeps going onward and upward, we're safe. But there are no guarantees about that. For instance, we are (according to some) about halfway through the world's supply of oil already. All those overweight black ladies might turn out to have an adaptive advantage sometime in the unforeseeable future. So this question is not as simple as it looks.
On the blood transfusion issue, suppose the dying person is O. J. Simpson and the person with the right blood type is Nicole Brown Simpson's sister. I don't think anyone could fault her for denying him the transfusion. These moral questions often seem so complicated they don't really have a right answer.

This may raise a firestorm---but you do not need to allow it, if you choose not to do so. I think vaccinations are necessary, as are their known (and unknown) risks. Here is the deal, according to doctors; immunologists; and little me: We have eradicated smallpox, pretty much; poliomyelitis; diptheria; whooping cough (pertussis);varella (sp?-measles); chicken pox, and a host of other pestilences too numerous to list here. Some of the other nasties such as bubonic plague; cholera; dengue fever; and leprosy are stubbornly resistant. But, they too may ultimately succumb---or not. Ebola is really scary, as are all haemorragic (spelling, again?)fevers.
My point? Well, medicine has done much to make us safer. Anyone who ignores this is either mired in some sort of cultural superstition, or is not paying attention. I will not single out any group for criticism---I need not do so because most educated folks realize there are those who have issues with modern medicine. A pity, that.
I got my flu shot today. I will be 65 years old in January(tap,tap on hardened cellulose). Flu shots have not killed me yet. And, neither has the flu. Or smallpox;whooping cough;polio;herpes zoster; tetanus; pneumonia; diptheria;
---I could go on and on regarding the preventive poisons that have been placed in my body over these three-score and almost five. Come on now. People are intelligent. And smart enough to avail themselves of the advantages and protections of modern science. Aren't they? I would love to go to Africa before I leave this earthly realm. But, frankly, Ebola scares the hell out of me. Guess I'll stay home.
Best to All,
Neuman.

Dear TC. I'm not sure who I insulted or who you think I have shown disrespect for. Maybe I am educated or maybe not. No matter really. I'll leave it at that and let others decide who is the reactionary here. Have a nice day. Neuman, over and out.

Typhus is gone (remember Typhoid Mary?), smallpox is gone, polio, measles and many others, gone. Even tooth decay, largely a thing of the past since flouridation. Government had us install indoor plumbing. It forced electricity to be made available in rural areas. It forced doctors to show proof of competence. Employers used to argue that accepting employment implied consent to the hazards involved, even where death was common. Is it government intrusion to prevent employers from taking liberties with employees' bodily choices? Is this, after all, just another anarchy question? There's lots of debate yet about what methods work best to reduce addiction, but does this mean there is no public interest is limiting the crime and strain addiction is on the public and on public resources?
But a more basic question is, is this a question that lends itself to general discussion at all? Most public health consequences of individual decisions can be addressed on a public basis, effecting enough compliance to reduce the problem to a manageable level without imposing upon anyone in particular, just by convincing most people of the wisdom of a certain behavior or alternative.
But when we walk into a store and are instantly bombarded by every tactic the most devious and highly trained experts, armed with sophisticated experimental data, can inflict upon us, is this really a matter of individual choice? The marketers are certainly trying to see to it is is not. To get too individualistic in this is to go unilaterally disarmed against a phalanx of interest in undermining our individuality.  
So, is this a vexed question? 

This idea does NOT apply to kidneys, because we don't have an "extra" kidney, we have two because as we age there are conditions and illnesses that affect one kidney and perhaps not the other, and since the function of the kidney is so essential to life, we NEED the redundancy.  The people who donate a kidney voluntarily, often to a family member, are taking a risk for their own health into the future.  This _has_ to be voluntary!
 

Regulating abortion would mean that we're saying that women have to subordinate their bodies to the state in a way that men don't. How do we feel about that philosophically?

I think your post brings up two important, and importantly different, lenses through which to consider the problem of regulating bodies. The first you mention at the beginning of your post: the state. Here, the thought seems to be that the state has certain compelling interests, which, when demonstrated under sufficient scrutiny, allow it to justifiably interfere in areas otherwise off-limits to it. For example, I would argue that the state has a compelling interest in its citizens remaining free of illness. In fact, I would think that most people would agree with this claim. The disagreement comes when we consider whether some specific measure is appropriately suited at serving that interest. Does taxing unhealthy food serve that interest enough, for example, for us to justify it? What about mandating vaccinations?
The other lens is that of morality, which you mention toward the end of your post. Morality is not an institution, per se, so it is more difficult to speak of it infringing upon our rights. We can, however, ask if it generates the sort of force we think it does in reference to our bodies. But, the role of our bodies in this question seems misplaced. The question, I think, should not be whether morality can regulate our bodies; that seems to put the cart before the horse. Rather, the question should always concern what we ought to do and what doing so might say of our philosophical orientations. If, under this scheme, we find ourselves required to give blood, then we can take issue with it on the grounds of giving blood, not on the grounds of regulating bodies, which by itself is too broad a category to be meaningful. On this view, one might call forgoing vaccination immoral because in doing so we do not consider the agency of those whom we might be affecting (or, rather, infecting) further down the line.

 
Show opened today with Ken asking what Philosopher would even think to ask the question, "Who owns my body?" 
But only a male philosopher who has no real concept of what women have been dealing with with for thousands of years would find the question obscure, unique or strange. Women have been trying to assert control over their own bodies and reproductive capacities since the dawn of time. It's one of the central questions a woman starts to ask as soon as she's no longer a child.
 
 

The issue of vaccines is less one of public coercion, a preponderance of compliance should be enough without it, than of bad science, which frightens the unsophisticated into non-compliance. This is especially problematic when the hold-outs suppose themselves more knowledgeable than they are. This is a media issue, not one of personal choice. Public persuasion is effective if the media is not shill to private interest with no respect for facts or even decency. I would just hope there is no place for bad science in these discussions.
The images in the header here are troubling. But they underscore a whole range of intrusions that result, not from government heavy-handedness per se, but with the tendency of security services in particular to develop such an inflated sense of self-importance that privacy concerns have little impact on them. So much of what they do is secret that they can hardly avoid succumbing to the temptation to cover their mistakes in it, and so take on a culture of supremacy to law, and even to public interest, and certainly to public scrutiny. Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned of this twenty years ago in his book Secrecy.
 

I've been away for awhile--since insulting TC with my last comment on this regulating bodies topic. Happy to see some new ideas from some new contributors! I'll try not to be too insulting here, but, no---I do not see this question as at all vexatious. Why? Because, contrary to one comment, not all infectious diseases are gone. The growing measles outbreak seems to aptly illustrate that reality. We ought (seems to me) to be more responsible towards civilization. Immunization programs have, over the long view, proven safe and effective. Recent concerns about the autism connection have not been substantiated, to the best of my current knowledge. It is certainly laudable to respect people who wish to make their own choices about things. But for every choice we make, there is either a benefit to be gained or a price to be paid---or both. And it is another matter altogether when others are compelled to pay the price for choices THEY did not make. On a related note, there is an increasing epidemic of personal irresponsibility infecting our world. But, that is another issue that has been vexatious for perhaps a dozen years. Go your own ways, friends---by all means, make your own choices. But, remember also that those choices can affect innocent people in adverse ways. I really must read what Laura's post has to say about anarchy. I think it may connect with the I epidemic mentioned above. Warmly, Neuman.

Without taking issue with the gist of your post, a couple of things could be clarified. An infectious disease is said to be eradicated from a population when all new cases are externally derived, as in the case of the Mickey Mouse Measles. I thought somebody might miss that nuance. I wouldn't be too hard on people generally for the current problem. The real culprit is a media so scientifically illiterate that it is a wonder any sense can be made of it at all. It is all too easy to find clusters of anomalies that might convince the unsophisticated that something outside the stated principle is at work. A study was done asking two groups to do a series of coin tosses. One group actually tossed coins, while the other imagined their coin. The operators of the test could tell which group was which because the imaginary coins yielded results much too close to the theoretical distribution. It is very hard to convince the untrained that a 'cluster' is not statistically significant in too small a sample. Hence Oprah has convinced armies of soccer moms to keep their children unvaccinated. It's her, and not the mothers, who should be disciplined somehow. The issue is vexed because our bodies are regulated in ways that government is needed to prevent, insofar as this is possible. Aside from the manhandling we get from security forces, and the us vs. them mentality that creeps into law-enforcement, especially where white cops police black neighborhoods, government doesn't do nearly as much regulating our bodies as merchants do. That is, the issue is vexed because it doesn't address the most pertinent scale of intrusion, employers, the grocer, the bank, the insurance companies, fast food, etc. Political power is not proprietary, and tyranny is nothing more than the, perceived, prerogative of the strong. The role of government is not to own power, but to keep proprietary claims from being made upon it.

Do you feel a child should be able to bring a Wrongful Life suit against their parents when it is clear the parents knew there would be a 50% chance of passing on a defective dominant gene that would seriously limit the quality of life of the child?

No more than I feel a child should feel obligated throughout life for the 'gift' of being brought into the world. Non-being is not the opposite of being, it is its contrary. Leer is wrong.

What if experience is an illusion? What if we, humans, are an illusion? What if our physical bodies and mental processes are an illusion? Would then the question regarding ownership and/or regulation of ownership of human bodies still be relevant? Would affirming or thinking that ?I own my body - it?s my right ? and/or that ?I can do with my body what I please? be ascertainments that completely take another dimension in such a situation, perhaps a spiritual dimension?  And if that was the case, what would the meaning of ownership (at an individual or state level) be within a spiritual dimension? In my opinion, the human illusion of ownership is the result of a pretentious, misleading, and even misinformed human understanding of the human nature.  We own nothing, much less our physical wrapping. One day I have all my body parts (regulated or not by the system), the next day I am not even here! So how could I, or any system created by humans, all of us merely illusions, possibly have any rights over this ethereal illusionary human substance?

Can an illusion make a difference in you ability to apprehend your own words? Or to appreciate their meaning? The seeming hermetic seal between minds is not a simple matter. There is something secreted there (the refusal to appreciate my response) and yet there is also something there every bit as unhidden as it is unknown to me (your being influenced to do so). The former discerns you as a thing apart, but renders you anonymous to yourself. The latter frees me of your prejudices and so offers me the meaning of the name as that unhidden though yet unknown person. The flaw in the logic of it is its refusal to recognize the unfinished isolation in the qualifier. "Is not" is not the contradictory to "is", it is the contrary. And so the logical inference that divides the universe into distinct units and entities bleeds meaning as it goes. What extends is not more perfect isolation but less. We distinguish each other by offering the means to each other to be free of such secreted unresponsiveness and are introduced to each other as much unhidden as we are yet unknown. Our name is the initiation of that difference. This is why a name is a special linguistic event that logic cannot defeat.