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Medicalization of issues
At Reason Online, Jacob Sullum has an excellent article, "An Epidemic of Meddling".
"What do these four “public health” problems—smoking, playing violent video games, overeating, and gambling—have in common? They’re all things that some people enjoy and other people condemn, attributing to them various bad effects. Sometimes these effects are medical, but they may also be psychological, behavioral, social, or financial. Calling the habits that supposedly lead to these consequences “public health” problems, “epidemics” that need to be controlled, equates choices with diseases, disguises moralizing as science, and casts meddling as medicine. It elevates a collectivist calculus of social welfare above the interests of individuals, who become subject to increasingly intrusive interventions aimed at making them as healthy as they can be, without regard to their own preferences."
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[increasingly intrusive interventions *aimed at making them as healthy as they can be*,]
With precious little evidence to support such a finding.
You need to read "The Devils Advocate" by Taylor Caldwell" Written in 1952 it tells the tale of totalitarian america and the efforts of one man to save freedom by turning up the heat on the frog pot.
tom gunn
Why should this be a surprise? 18 years ago when HMO's were becoming well-known, I read an opinion piece (IIRC in the WSJ) that an HMO pursued "Veterinary Medicine" for human beings. With socialized medicine, the humans covered by the program are merely cattle to be kept in the condition desired by the entity paying the health bills. Thinking about it, that's probably why the European manifestations of socialized medicine don't seem to work as hard to keep their subjects away from smoking, drinking and fatty foods, as they will then die earlier from the initial stages of the degenerative disease American medicine is trying to eradicate.
Too many people on the left and other crusaders against smoking, drinking, video games and, we should add, guns -- in addition to being moralists are very uncomfortable with the idea of freedom. To them "freedom" is only a word that they are in favor of, but real freedom, the freedom to do what one pleases be it smoking, owning guns, playing video games, riding an ATV or running a business are something else, something that needs to be controlled, regulated or stamped out by the government.