Is It True Public Health Advocacy… Or Is It Fear-mongering And Fads?

Coach is Right ^ | 9/17/14 | Michael D. Shaw

[Oldpuppymax]

A classical definition of “public health” describes it as the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental health, sanitation, personal hygiene, control of infection, and organization of health services. The practice of public health derives from dim antiquity, at least with respect to sanitation and personal hygiene, which was often done for religious purposes. The Greeks—including Hippocrates—in the 4th and 5th centuries BC, are considered the first to have applied logic and right reason to the causation of disease.

The Middle Ages would see various plagues, and an organized response to control further outbreaks. With scientific progress came such developments as Scottish surgeon James Lind figuring out that scurvy was caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C (his famous treatise published in 1753). By the turn of the next century, however, a somewhat less idealistic philosophy would creep into public health.

English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus’ theories of excessive population growth, a limited food supply, and the necessity for population control would emerge in 1798, preceded by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. As such, the pure notion of saving and improving lives is compromised, raising questions often rendered in Latin: cui bono (Who benefits?—literally “as a benefit to whom”) and qui decernit (Who decides?)

Of course, it is easy enough to maintain an uncompromising approach when dealing with fundamental problems, such as water purification, or gold standard epidemiological findings such as the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. But is it really public health advocacy when the long-debunked lipid/cholesterol theory of coronary heart disease is still promoted by officialdom, along with the ensuing bonanza of statin drugs, including their massive side effects?

What about the demonization of parabens, used safely for decades as cosmetic...