Scapegoating Illuminates The Bankruptcy Of Health Promotion

[undergroundpanther]

The concept of "preventing" chronic illnesses and social problems, arises from a premise that seems like simple common sense. That is - if individual's lifestyle and consumption choices can be statistically correlated to the probability of their developing chronic illness, then All We Have To Do to stop disease is...get everyone to make healthy choices! If individual's lifestyle and consumption choices can be "demonstrated" to contribute to the probability of their developing criminal behaviours, then All We Have To Do to stop crime is...get everyone to make socially responsible choices!

Unfortunately for this wonderfully optimistic attempt to escape from reality, the genetic-biological-social-economic dynamics involved in the development of chronic illnesses and criminal behaviours are about as complex as quantum mechanics. The concept of "All We Have To Do"..., is an unrealistic, utopian oversimplification.

Because Health Promotion and other 'prevention' industries cannot accomplish what they have caused the rest of society to believe in and expect will happen, they develop an endless series of scapegoats to blame for their failure.

When 'prevention' industry propagandists are pointing fingers of blame, there should be reflexive questioning in our minds, such as: "If Health Promotion and other 'preventions' are valid concepts, why is all this new regulation necessary? Why are these health or social issues still such a problem, supposedly requiring ever greater intrusion into our liberty & autonomy through laws and regulations, if 'prevention' really is capable of stopping them from occurring?"



http://surrealitytimes.blogspot.com/


It has a Darker side too

Fruit and vegetable consumption was encouraged, as was the use of wholemeal bread and the avoidance of fat.1 A key figure in Nazi medicine, Erwin Liek, predicted that cancer would come to be seen as a product of diet.2 The consumption of whipped cream seems to have been a particular target of disapproval. The official newspaper of the SS, Das Schwarzes Korps, reported on German tourists in Austrian coffee houses and said that anyone would “think Greater Germany was only created so that this raving Philistine rabble can wolf whipped cream.” A prominent promilitarist slogan read, “Fighting power or whipped cream?”

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=535959

[annabanana]

1. All illness will be judged to be "pre-existing conditions"

brought on by "poor lifestyle choices". .
(Why should I have to pay, blah blah blah)