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a surgeries performed on them while laying on a wood table in a hut, by a surgeon with questionable credentials using outdated equipment, a scenario which happens far too often in developing countries.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