WORKING DRAFT

 

Missouri Medicine Editorial #46

January/February 2008

 

John C. Hagan III MD

 

 

The Health Police-Big Government Crowd Are Out To Control Your Life

 

 

“I don’t believe in a government that protects us from ourselves”

Ronald Reagan

 

“Too much government is not enough”

Paraphrased from some present gubernatorial and presidential candidates

 

I urge each of you to carefully and thoughtfully read “Anti-Anti-Smokers Speak Up” by Jack Cashill. Jack is an intellectual of the first order and a virtuoso writer. In fact, he’s one of the most interesting men that I have never met.

First a little about Doctor Cashill: He has a PhD in American Studies from Purdue University. He is Executive Editor of the Kansas City business magazine Ingram’s and has written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and many national newspapers and magazines. He has produced over a dozen documentaries for PBS and cable networks, one of which won an Emmy Award. He has taught at several universities , and served as a Fulbright Scholar in France , and authored five non-fiction books, three of which were national best-sellers. I have read and enjoyed “Hookwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture” and look forward to reading his latest, “What’s the Matter with California” (Simon & Schuster: Threshhold Editions ).

Okay, that’s a lot of ink for one guy, even a smart one. What does Cashill have to say that’s so important anyway? Succinctly, how far can society’s do-gooders, holier/smarter-than-thou types, regulatory agencies and the various levels of government restrict and regulate individual behavior considered unhealthy, harmful, cruel or merely different from their norms.

Jack starts with smoking, something I--and most physicians--despise. Not a day goes by that I don’t chide my patients for smoking, give them information on how deleterious it is to their sight and try and direct them to the use of Chantrix or to call the Missouri Smoker’s Hotline (800-QUITNOW). I am appalled that tobacco subsidies are still paid to growers of this deadly and addicting weed. I view as favorable the creation of smoke free work places, restaurants and entertainment venues. I favored raising the Missouri tobacco tax and using the proceeds to fund anti-smoking efforts and monetarily supplementing the pathetic Medicaid reimbursement schedule.

Pile on the tobacco users; extract all the money we can from their addiction. Heaven and all the forces of good are on our side, we are healers and pure of heart. Is it only proper that we force our fellow humans into being better and healthier people? I thought so before Jack’s article crystallized some nascent doubt.

Recently I have become uncomfortable with the zealotry of the anti-right-to-light crowd. Nation-wide legislation has been considered that would make it unlawful to smoke in apartment buildings, for parents to smoke in automobiles with their children, even for parents to smoke in their own homes. There are those that believe that no foster or adopted child should be placed in the home of smokers. Interestingly, Congress—world’s greatest haven of hypocrisy —recently granted itself an exemption from the indoor smoking ban that applies to other government and public places.

The health police-big government crowd is Blitzkrieging many other areas. How about legislating all trans-fats out of foods. New York City, that bastion of self-righteousness and smugness, has already passed the first fat-fiat.

Before deputizing the fat posse, might we ask how solid is the evidence against trans-fats? As scientific skeptics, might we not question if the horse-collar has been hung on this particular lipid long enough to declare it now and forever flavor non-grata?

Was it not so long ago that coffee was considered a cause of myocardial infarcts? Isn’t it true that same beverage was recently shown to reduce the risk of diabetes? Was it not so long ago that vitamin E was felt to be so beneficial that we physicians recommended taking daily supplements? (I plead guilty as charged.) Was it not just this past year that same vitamin E was implicated for an increase of certain types of heart disease? Was “modern medicine” not wrong in treating acne with X-rays; with forced subjection of schizophrenics to frontal lobotomies; did we not cause deaths with prolong bed rest following childbirth and heart attacks? Should we really support mandatory HPV vaccination? (See Robert Onder MD’s article INSERT PAGE NUMBER).

Look at the problems associated with alcoholism and alcohol dependence such as drunken driving and diseases such as cirrhosis (see page INSERT PAGE NUMBER OF ARTICLE ON SCREENING FOR ALCOHOL PROBLEMS). Should the cocktail constabulary ban all alcohol use in the United Sates! Stamp out the buzz. Let’s pass a law. Let’s seize all the booze. Let’s smash the kegs and decanters and pour it down the drain. Oh, that’s right, been there-done that. Prohibition wasn’t much of a success was it?

Now we know (or for the moment, we think we know) that up to two alcoholic beverages-preferably red wine- may be good for our hearts. Will the health police and the zealots for more government, more laws, more rules, more taxes, more regulatory agencies all demand that I—a non-drinking teetotaler—start to drink two glasses of red wine daily?

And I confess to other high risk behavior such as mountain climbing, hang-gliding, parachuting, and writing about the unseemly machinations of the trial lawyers.

Yesterday I learned that that several states are considering making it illegal to spank your children. I’m talking about the light swat on the behind. Again I plead guilty and wish to report the similar crimes of my parents and their parents and …..you get the idea.

And so I wonder, “When will they come for me?” No doubt in the middle of the night. Likely government men in dark over-coats while black helicopters hover overhead.

We are, and must remain, a nation with liberty and justice for all. Even smokers, even the obese, even the believers in non-injury causing corporal punishment. Beware the political party and politicians that act as though too much government is not enough. Beware the elite secular progressives that believe they alone live in the zone of decency and must expand government for the welfare of the hoi polloi.

We can reason, we can persuade, we can educate, we can lead by example. But we are on a slippery slope when we prohibit, criminalize or ruinously tax behavior or ideas we simply disapprove, disagree with or that seem contrary to today’s (ever changing) concept of what’s healthy for us and good for society.

 

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TEASER: We are on a slippery slope when we prohibit, criminalize or ruinously tax behavior or ideas we simply disapprove, disagree with or that seem contrary to today’s (ever changing) concept of what’s healthy for us and good for society.