tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post5973838509831821202..comments2023-10-17T15:56:22.827+01:00Comments on Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: Health über allesChristopher Snowdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15963753745009712865noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-82424032579787340172014-10-27T21:13:04.932+00:002014-10-27T21:13:04.932+00:00(humbly nods)(humbly nods)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-29506175974990588592014-10-27T21:09:32.245+00:002014-10-27T21:09:32.245+00:00"In a free society...""In a free society..."Christopher Snowdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15963753745009712865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-92015499238104383412014-10-27T21:07:07.032+00:002014-10-27T21:07:07.032+00:00You say: "... if it hasn’t been explicitly fo...You say: "... if it hasn’t been explicitly forbidden you have the right to do so."<br /><br />If only. <br /><br />"Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" is true under (pre-EU) English law. It meant that freedom comprised an infinitesimal number of permissible acts and was fettered by only a handful of prohibitions which the people allowed the Crown to enforce as part of its very restricted mandate. <br /><br />Over there, it was the other way around. Under Napoleonic law, the emperor was the overlord and owner of all of his subjects’ deeds – as well as their words and thoughts – and those subjects were not allowed to do anything without his express permission. <br /><br />In other words, in Eurolandia "everything which is not permitted is forbidden".<br /><br />And as Eurolaw has proven so effective in respectably neutering the ancient tenets of freedom in the Old World, it is the default preference for un-elected statists of the supra-national quangocracy. <br /><br />And by those standards, it is perfectly logical to assert that there is no right to smoke unless and until the imperial government deems to grant such a right to its charges. <br /><br />This haunting spectre of despotism is spookier than any demon spirited back to life on All Hallows’ Eve…Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-46361859468784255212014-10-27T12:20:51.545+00:002014-10-27T12:20:51.545+00:00Medicine does not have a monopoly on health – this...Medicine does not have a monopoly on health – this was supposed to be the lesson learned from early last century. It’s obvious from the global antismoking hysteria that’s been produced by this organization that its bureaucrats are clueless as to psychological and social health. The organization should be renamed the World Medical Organization and fully cognizant of the severe limitations of the medical model.<br /><br />Also problematic are Public Health courses, e.g., Master of Public Health. University Public Health Departments around the developed world are run under the auspices of Medical Faculties. This, too, is inviting disaster. What is taught in PH courses is dominated by physicalism and the “medical model”. It should come as no surprise that psychological and social dimensions have been jettisoned, with health again reduced to biology and disease fixation. Public Health Departments need to be removed from Medical Faculties and operate as multi-dimensional, stand-alone entities and where their major interest is keeping fanatics/zealots at bay.<br /><br />And, so, we’re right back to the perverse definition of health (biological reductionism) that was prevalent in the “healthy living” hysteria (eugenics) of a century ago with nothing of value learned, a situation that the WHO definition of health (1948) was supposed to guard against.<br /><br />The WHO definition of health somewhere on its website:<br />http://www.who.int/suggestions/faq/en/index.html<br />http://who.int/about/definition/en/print.html<br />JohnBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05165051324276559561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-491954730748093302014-10-27T12:19:27.946+00:002014-10-27T12:19:27.946+00:002.
Yet with all this history, as we have seen over...2.<br />Yet with all this history, as we have seen over the last half century, particularly pertaining to antismoking, the WHO and the medical establishment generally, and <b>contrary to the WHO’s very own definition of health</b>, have deteriorated back into a biological reductionist view of health and ventures into social engineering.<br /><br />Over the last half century, health has been reduced to biology with an emphasis on the behavioral dimension of eugenics – anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, prescribed diet, and physical exercise. The WHO adopted antismoking as a societal ideal many decades ago (Godber Blueprint) and now most nations are signed-up to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. With this ideological stance comes social engineering, i.e., coercion to conformity.<br /><br />Anyone that truly grasped the multi-dimensional definition of health above would not even contemplate, let alone enact, the idea of “denormalizing”/demonizing a group, this being an assault on psychological and social health (with physical health ramifications). But physicalists have no such grasp. And it’s physicalists that have set the current “healthist” craze in motion. The very conduct that the WHO definition of health was supposed to guard against has again been unleashed by the very promoters of the definition. The circumstance is utterly perverse.<br /><br />We have seen smoking bans on hospital grounds where patients have to venture considerable distances in night-attire and in all manner of weather to have a cigarette. This becomes a psychological and social health issue, in addition to the physical health issue. Indoor smoking bans with no prospect of accommodation have alienated particularly the elderly. This is a psychological and social health issue. Denormalization, a repugnant, vulgar concept very much identified with eugenics, has again come to the fore. Smokers have been incessantly slandered, ridiculed, and terrorized by official, government programs of denormalization, i.e., hate campaign. This is a psychological and social health issue. Robbing smokers through compounded extortionate taxes, further impoverishing them and imposed under false pretenses, is a multi-dimensional health issue. Many nonsmokers have been manipulated into irrational fear and bigotry to advance the ideological cause. This is an issue of psychological and social health. Smokers are being bullied out of normal social life on a purely ideological basis. This is an issue of psychological and social health. With this propaganda barrage, medical care professionals are demonstrating a cruel, bigoted streak – again - that can compromise the medical treatment of those who smoke. This is an issue of psychological, social, and physical health. Not only are psychological and social health issues important in their own right, but these can also have detrimental ramifications for physical health. <b>Health has again been reduced to incoherent quantification, dollar cost-benefit analyses, another eugenics trait.</b> All of these detrimental consequences inflicted by ideology under medical authority is iatrogenic.<br /><br />Everywhere we turn health has again been perversely reduced to only a biological phenomenon (e.g., behavioral) and with the [eugenics] intent of social engineering. Public Health has been hijacked by the “medical model”. Once again the medically-aligned have monopolized health. It is now commonplace to hear that draconian measures that invade personal autonomy have been instituted for a “healthier society” according to physicalism. “Get healthy”, “he’s looking after himself”, “I work out” all pertain to physicalism. In the obsession with the physical state, psychological, social, moral, and ideo-political aspects of health have been brutalized and discarded - <b>again</b>. And it is the WHO that leads this assault.<br />JohnBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05165051324276559561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-49514039216633736102014-10-27T12:18:34.280+00:002014-10-27T12:18:34.280+00:001.
The root of the problem
The problem lies in wh...1.<br /><b>The root of the problem</b><br /><br />The problem lies in what is understood by “health”.<br /><br />Consider the World Health Organization’s definition of health instituted in 1948:<br />The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health in its preamble as <i>"a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being."</i> [This definition used to appear on the WHO home page. At some time over the last few years it’s disappeared from this high visibility position]<br /><br />Notwithstanding a few questionable concepts such as “complete”, we can be sure that this definition was a direct result of the horrors of Nazi eugenics. Whatever was directed at Nazi eugenics was also directed at American eugenics. Eugenics is biologically reductionist (materialist/physicalist) or, as noted by the Nazis, “applied biology”. The WHO definition attempts to account for the fact that health is more that just absence of disease, more than just a biological phenomenon. It involves other dimensions such as psychological and social.<br /><br />Given that this WHO definition was put into circulation by Brock Chisholm, the first director of the WHO and a eugenicist, there is always a suspicion as to how the WHO, a medical organization, could potentially warp this definition in the long-term. It could have been an “appeasing” definition, given the anti-eugenics sentiment of the time. (From my understanding, the “mental” and “social” well-being aspects were a last-minute inclusion).<br /><br />However, what should be noted is the limited scope of the WHO. It does not have a monopoly on health. Being a medical organization, it is intimately bound to the biological level. It is not really a world health organization but a world <i>medical</i> organization – a global medical headquarters. It would have to accept that there are aspects of health that are not its domain or jurisdiction. Just this idea, properly applied, should discourage potentially destructive ventures into social engineering as was seen in eugenics early last century. The same can be said of government, that there are aspects of health that are none of its business. In relatively free societies persons are free to pursue happiness/health along variable combinations of the dimensions of health where the pursuit does not infringe on others. For example, a person who smokes derives some utility from the act, and they continue to smoke in a particular set of priorities (cost/benefit) along these multi dimensions that vary from person to person.<br />JohnBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05165051324276559561noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3585028625507474093.post-17559797595606264242014-10-27T12:17:34.906+00:002014-10-27T12:17:34.906+00:00The public health industry is not a single entity....<i> The public health industry is not a single entity. It is partly made up of those who have a connection with the medical establishment but who have taken the whole thing too far by ignoring trade-offs between longevity and other goals.</i><br /><br />They don’t just have a connection. “Public Health” is entirely monopolized by the medical model. The World Health Organization is a <i>medical</i> organization. And once again the medically-aligned have perversely reduced “health” to only a biological, absence-of-disease phenomenon. It’s this perverse definition that was at the heart of eugenics early last century.JohnBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05165051324276559561noreply@blogger.com