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.