---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 08:15:13 -0400
From: Jay Kaufman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [spiritof1848] Lancet:
A quote from this week's Lancet:
("A manipulated dichotomy in global health policy" (Editorial)
Lancet 2000; 355: 1923)
These disputes are not simply examples of rarefied academic skirmishes.
On May 15, immediately before this year's World Health Assembly,
two editorials appeared in prominent national newspapers. In the Wall
Street Journal, Roger Bate argued that "socialist" health elites have
perverted the health agenda "at the expense of big business", and that,
for example, smoking is merely "a free choice with health consequences".
He preferred to see these issues not in the context of public health,
but as
matters of "commercial free speech and individual choice", rights that
must be upheld against attacks by "leftist" bureaucrats. The Times of
London called Gro Harlem Brundtland's preoccupation with
"lifestyle diseases"--cancer, heart disease, and hypertension--an
instance
of pure and mistaken political correctness.
With these latest editorials to hand, the stand being taken by the
World Bank becomes a little clearer. In defence of international
business interests, the Bank is shoring up the World Trade
Organisation's
troubled position on free markets. By converting tobacco into an issue
of individual choice rather than one of collective responsibility for
public health, the Bank is appealing, successfully in the case of The
Times and Wall Street Journal, to our natural instincts of resisting
undue government interference in our lives. But trade and unrestricted
profit are the true objectives, not elevated philosophical notions of
free
will. Indeed, such open markets will only promote, not lessen, the
exchange of harmful commodities--firearms, landmines, psychoactive
substances, unsafe pharmaceuticals, contaminated food, and hazardous
waste. Free trade has health consequences, and these should be faced,
not shouted down.
(
http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/sub/issues/vol355no9219/body.editorial1923.html
)
--
Jay S. Kaufman, Ph.D
-----------------------------
email: [log in to unmask]
-----------------------------
Department of Epidemiology
UNC School of Public Health
2104C McGavran-Greenberg Hall
Pittsboro Road, CB#7400
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400
phone: 919-966-7435
fax: 919-966-2089
-----------------------------
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