"People who are unwilling to succumb to what the late Petr Skrabanek (a renegade Czech medic) described as 'Coercive Healthism' - those among us with 'bad habits' - are the new outcasts in this increasingly fearful and intolerant world. It is, in the words of the East London GP Michael Fitzpatrick, the Tyranny of Health which now surrounds us.
Michael Fitzpatrick's recent book called The Tyranny of Health: doctors and the regulation of lifestyle is one which I strongly urge everybody to read. He works in Hackney and is a man who is in daily contact with the sick, and sometimes with the dying. Increasingly, he is also in daily contact with the 'worried well', people who have been driven to fear the very world they live in by unfounded scares and inappropriate health promotion. And now he regularly encounters people who blame themselves for their own illnesses - those who have been persuaded that they are sick only because they have failed to lead the lifestyles which what he sees as an increasingly authoritarian government has prescribed for them.
His simple message is: "Doctors should stop trying to moralise their patients and concentrate on treating them", and he enlists the help of the microbiologist Renee Dubos to reinforce his point. Dubos commented in his book The Mirage of Health, written way back in 1960:
In the words of a wise physician, it is part of the doctor's function to make it possible for his patients to go on doing the pleasant things that are bad for them - smoking too much, eating and drinking too much - without killing themselves any sooner than is necessary.
And that, for Fitzpatrick, is the real job of the General Practitioner - not meeting 'lifestyle education' targets set by the state. Nor refusing to treat those who have allegedly brought ill health upon themselves. His job is that of the doctor, not the priest."
And
"A similar sentiment was also, and perhaps most famously, expressed by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. In his 'autobiography' he commented:
"There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokeable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get out of it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry."
It was Mark Twain, of course, who also urged us to be careful when reading health books. "You might", he warned "die of a misprint."
A hundred years on and we seem to have ignored all of these rather wise and liberal views, despite the clear evidence available to us of healthism's negative consequences at both individual and societal levels.
nice quote - here's another one:
"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."
1 Cor. 6:19,20.
Cigarettes are NOT good for you - the case is closed. A doctor should be concernd with the whole person. Smoking is the single biggest controlable factor affecting health - in other words - if people would just quit smoking their symptoms would recede. The relationship between smoking and emphysema should give any smoker pause - you DON'T get better. Telling people to quit destructive health habits is most definitely in the purview of the physician. You can do whatever you want, but don't expect me to tell you its smart or "ok". Furthermore, if the body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, perhaps we should not selfishly taint our bodies with "things" known to be harmful simply because "it feels good".