If you smoke or drink, that’s no longer your fault, it’s your genetics. You just inherited a predisposition
for addiction. If you are obese, that’s no longer your fault, it’s a glandular
problem, a metabolic disorder, or due to your genetically-caused diabetes. We
have been pathologizing all of these problems that our society faces. The
bottom line is that people need to take more responsibility for their health.
By pathologizing all these problems, people feel like these
issues are not their fault. This can lead to a sense of helplessness, and
people feel like they cannot do
anything about these problems, and so they do
not do anything about these problems. This functions as a positive feedback
loop and only makes the problem worse. Also, they think that their only solution
is medicine or surgery, which can have a lot of deleterious side effects and
complications.
At the same time, I don’t want to generalize; there are
situations where this doesn’t apply. Some people with diabetes are extremely
overweight or underweight, and there is not much they can do to remedy this. Charles
Fried, in Right and Wrong, goes so far as to say that “when the
disadvantage is medical or educational it is a disadvantage to the person
rather than to something which the person has done or chosen” (126).
Essentially Fried argues here that a person’s medical problems are not that
person’s fault. This seems to imply that most medical problems are genetic
rather than environmental (i.e. caused by diet, lifestyle, etc.). He says that
medical misfortune is misfortune to a person just like a fire can be misfortune
to a house. In some cases this argument might be valid, but most of the time
this is not the case. If this were how society viewed medical problems, then
this would be a moral hazard. If people were not held responsible for their
medical problems, then there would be less incentive for them to take care of
their bodies because they feel that their medical problems are not their fault
and that there is nothing they can do about them. From a scientific
perspective, there are certainly some diseases that are genetic and are not the
person’s fault; that’s just the card they were dealt. However, most diseases
have at least some environmental component, so a person should take
responsibility for their illness. Failure to do so will only worsen the obesity
epidemic in the United States, which leads to heart disease and other
cardiovascular problems, diabetes, and cancer. This, in turn, puts a strain on
the health care system and causes us to spend even more money on health care.
Therefore, by taking responsibility for our health, our citizens will not only
be happier and healthier, but we will also partially remedy our health care
spending crisis.
Wait, so you're saying I can't gain weight because I do about 6 hours a week of strenuous exercise and NOT because of my genetics? Absurd!
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