Smoking, Hitler & Nukes

I enjoyed this week's book. I like that it covered a wide range of topics, with each one written by a different author.

Preface

The introduction made me reflect on my own disdain for people who smoke excessively. I realized that I find it an offensive and disgusting habit, but that I rarely had any true concern about the potential health complications the person may experience as a result of smoking.

I believe obesity and smoking are easy to criticize because they are easily identifiable, can be prevented, and are often unpleasant for the outside observer. Most non-smokers find secondhand smoke abhorrent, and many people do not find an obese body pleasing aesthetically. If other unhealthy habits such as not washing one's hands or not using sunscreen were as easy to detect as smoking and obesity, and caused displeasure to the senses of other individuals, I believe these acts would be scorned alongside smoking and obesity.

Health is not a 'new' morality. In indigenous tribes throughout the world, illness is seen as a punishment from the gods for offending them. The Holy Bible is filled with dietary regulations (kosher laws for example), while pork is forbidden in both Muslim and Jewish traditions, and beef in the Hindu tradition. These regulations on diet most likely originated from a combination of moral, practical, and health benefits. Religions also prescribe various cleansing rituals. Our modern day ideas about the relationship between health and morality may have a secular foundation, however the concept is not new.

What Is Health and How Do You Get It?

I did not enjoy the article by Klein. He wrote, "Forty seven million people in the United States receive health care equivalent to that of third- and fourth-world countries." I checked out the article he cited, and it said that 47 million people do not have healthcare in the country. The author's hyperbole makes no sense. What he means is that too many people do not have insurance which would allow them to be able to afford medical care. This is not the same as saying that uninsured people would have to have a surgeries performed on them while laying on a wood table in a hut, by a surgeon with questionable credentials using outdated equipment, a scenario which happens far too often in developing countries.

Klein also said that totalitarian states often dictate personal health and hygiene, and he resorted to Godwin's law to say that Hitler outlawed smoking. Is the author saying that a smoking ban to preserve public health and welfare is the first step on a slippery slope to genocide? I would like to know if he considers the United States to be a totalitarian regime because we outlaw marijuana and other recreational drugs.

Atomic Health

I watched the House in the Middle film on Youtube. Its interesting to watch if you have the time, it provides some shocking visuals of what a nuke going off might look like. Nuclear bombs are a largely unpredictable risk looming over our heads, as are plagues and natural disasters. It is the governments job to try to prevent a nuclear attack; at the same time it is the responsibility of the citizens not to panic, and to be prepared to help themselves and others in the event of an attack, if they are at all capable. Almost no threat will ever be completely preventable, so normalization of a threat is an inevitable consequence of the threats' existence. There is but one line in the article that compares nuclear attacks with plagues and natural disasters:

"The moralizing tone of the narration [of the film] is ultimately an effort to recuperate the classic definition of hygiene as a social responsibility and in so doing to create an image of a state that treats nuclear crisis as it would an infectious disease of a natural disaster."

I want to understand what the author thinks the governmental response to plagues and natural disasters should be, versus what its response to nuclear attacks should be.

Links:

Article cited by Klein
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2007/08/28/19319/number-of-americans-without-health.html

House in the Middle Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t_5wthG0WC

How to "be" sick

Hi, everyone.

There are so many topics from "Against Health" that I'm excited to talk about, but there was one in particular that struck me. The chapter toward the end (like, 13 I think?) about cancer dealt with some issues that I've pondered for a long time. I've always been puzzled about the marketing that surrounds breast cancer - eat yogurt out a pink container, and you're supporting women with breast cancer! play golf with pink golf clubs to support women with breast cancer! buy a North Face with a breast cancer ribbon on it to support women with breast cancer! It all seems odd to me - instead of simply donating money to an organization, the Susan G. Komen foundation has become something that literally invades every facet of life. When I was teaching middle school, my 12 year old 7th graders wore bracelets (sold in a breast cancer awareness fundraiser) that said "i <3 boobies" on them. When a teacher suggested that they not wear them because the language was inappropriate for school, she was treated like she had just suggested that all breast cancer patients get over with it and die.

This raises a couple of questions - Is it necessary to prove our opposition to a disease? What disesases are socially acceptable to oppose? What causes certain diseases to rise in popularity, or to decline in popularity?

Also, why don't we have merchandising to raise 'awareness' for lung cancer, or liver cancer? My thought is because they have an element of responsibility - the largest cause associated with lung cancer is smoking. Do we not raise money for lung cancer patients because they "brought it on themselves?"

Finally, the author of this chapter writes about the "Lance Face" and the idea that cancer patientes have to take on certain roles or attitudes - acting like a "fighter" or "warrior" or "survivor." How do we, as "healthy" observers, expect the sick to act? How do you properly perform illness, and does this change according to other factors, like gender, race, class, culture?

Okay, I know I was rambling. See you tomorrow!

"I don't have any guilt"

I enjoyed many of the articles from Against Health, particularly Klein's article as the opener for the other articles. His emphasis on an epicurean approach to life is something that I think is relevant to a great number of people. I felt his emphasis on the art of being healthy rather than the science of health is an important distinction that I think many Americans forget. They emphasize too much on being stressed about not being perfect, and following the latest diet fad than simply doing activities that they enjoy.

Julia Child's philosophy on food and guilt came to my attention while I was an undergrad. Her ideas about having good food but not overindulging i feel are great advice, and are partly responsible for me having some ice cream more than just once a year. I was happy to see her included in this book

This is probably too long but…

I found all the articles in Against Health interesting and provocative. Realizing the futility of attempting to draw distance parallels between them in a manner that both generalizes and addresses each one on its own terms, I will comment on a few that I found to be particularly interesting to me.

Richard Klein's "What is Health and How do You Get it?" serves as the perfect opening chapter. Straight away the reader is challenged to re-assess his or her most basic assumptions about what health is. I found his Epicurean approach to understanding health as not only intimately connected to pleasure but contingent on each person's own individual needs refreshing. His assertion that "each of us has to find his or her own road to health" not only speaks to the overall theme of the volume, but places ideas of health and well being back in the hands of individuals rather than heavily sponsored health magazines, pharmaceutical ads and doctor shows.

Speaking of pharmaceutical adds, I found it increasingly hard not to move from skepticism to outright cynicism while reading Carl Elliot's piece. While I believe it is a well established face that many physicians and federal regulators are all but beholden to drug companies, the actual depths to which this connection runs is shocking. It all began to make sense when Elliot explained advertisers brilliant idea to have or "encourage" magazines to run articles rather than simple ads for their products. The ways in which these companies go about creating their own markets for their drugs that treat conditions largely created by these companies is astonishing. Elliot had me at "Ghost written medical journals" WHAT!

I also appreciated the authors' collective effort to complicate a number of issues that are popularly accepted as black and white. For instance, Joan Wolf's article on breast feeding not only exposes the moral agenda for many of those involved in the debate, but simply puts things into perspective. For example, she points out correctly that "It is possible that mothers who breast feed tend to behave differently in a variety of health-promoting ways and that it is this behavior, not breastfeeding per se, that is responsible for better health." Again, echoing Klein, people need to find their own road toward health and avoid polarizing campaigns that contribute little in the ways of substance to the larger discourse.

Fixing People vs. Research

While reading, I found myself interested in the idea of the "rubrics of science" and how they take on "empirical tyranny". The idea of having a control group is not a new one. It is something we hear about all the time and if you ever take a psychology class here at UB you can be part of an experiment where you can be part of a control group. But the idea that it was necessary to stop saving women who were in delivery distress because it messes up numbers does not make sense to me. The numbers are the numbers and in my mind to mess with those numbers negates the need for a control group in the first place. As the chapter goes on and speaks of problems of accountability it made me think of earlier in the book where it spoke of medicine and how politics were involved with medicine. The aid that this chapter brings about is politically motivated in some way. People campaign for it , though perhaps I am using political out of context here. This shows that the money to find the medicine to "fix" people actually trumps fixing people. Without having people you need to fix, you cannot get the money to fund research. But to manipulate numbers and in cases real peoples lives, that just shows that research has become more important than patient care. People are "campaigning" for money but they are campaigning with peoples lives.

Who determines if you're healthy enough to work?

I wanted to post this, because it relates to my high school - and a teacher I actually had a class with 2 years. She has been deemed as mentally unfit to teach; I'll leave my personal feelings aside, and just link to the article.

http://www.meaexposed.org/wordpress/?p=288

chapter 5(ish)

Although I haven't finished the Against Health reading yet, chapter 5 is interesting - but much of what it has to say I feel is a point worth debating in a philosophy text or classroom. Much of what this chapter deals with reminded me a lot of Nicholas Agar's Liberal Eugenics: In Defence of Human Enhancement. Take for example: Agar gives a story about two deaf parents who want selective IVF (or what this chapter calls preimplantation genetic diagnosis, PGD) for their future child so that it will be deaf as well; another story is about a couple who chooses to have a child free from genetic disabilities. Agar does not really say which one is right, but his overall mood is that if science is able to eventually rid society of terrible ailments and genetic disabilities (e.g. DMD-Duchenne muscular dystrophy) that procedures like PGD will benefit society at-large.

It would seem to me however, that PGD is simply prolonging "society's" prejudice toward those who have a disablity, be it a physical or mental impairment. Furthermore, the cost factor of these screenings (let alone the cost of IVF) would further separate class lines and make the idea of "bettering society" in reality one of "placing those who are less well-off a little further behind." (the 2nd to last sentence actually says this same thing more or less).

But the question I have is (although much is hypothetical): if two parents who have a disability want their child to have that same disability - is that wrong?

To me, the question cannot be answered - its equivalent to asking someone how they feel about the death penalty or abortions. By that, I mean everyone has a different opinion. Biotechnological procedures like PGD are what many are deeming as "(new)genics" or "new eugenics" - a way of weeding out those who are unfit - or in the case of PGD in this chapter, weeding out disabilities that are unfit and racializing prescription drugs...all in the good name of health.

Defining health

From the World Health Organization:

"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

What say ye?

Welcome

Welcome to the class blog for History 545!