The normally sober George Will seems to have lost his marbles over corn. His latest column makes the discovery that America has figured out how to make almost endless amounts of food at a very low price. Mr Will thinks that this is bad because cheap food allows people to eat too much of it. If you eat too much you get fat, If you get fat your health may suffer. Wow! What a discovery. Stop the presses or whatever passes for them on the internet.
Will invokes Tom Vilsack Iowa’s former governor and current Secretary of Agriculture throughout his screed. While he doesn’t come out and say it he strongly implies that the government should do something about overeating and overproducing of food. I’d have thought that he’d value the latter but he thinks we have too much corn and beef and that we can’t be trusted with this abundance. This from a conservative.
You’d better put a lock on your refrigerator and cupboard, not to keep yourself from pigging out but to keep the government inspectors away. What inspectors? Well if George Will thinks the government should do something about overeating what will the current administration do about the fat problem? The FBI will become Fat Bureau of Investigation.
We already have weigh stations for trucks. Why not have them for people as well. If you’re walking down the street the FBI can haul you aside and weigh you. If your BMI is over 25 you’ll be fined $100 for every number over 25. Fines will double at 30 and triple at 35. OK, I know nobody walks, so we’ll put weigh stations on the roads and get the food transgressors on the way to the supermarket. We could even put scales at the checkout counter. Let no pound go uncounted.
Restaurant use obviously needs more government regulation. We could have a free market solution by instituting a cap and trade food coupon program. If you want to go to MacDonalds and have used up all your food coupons you could buy them from some anorexic teenager who still has all of hers. Let capitalism reign supreme.
So we’ve added food addiction to our addiction to energy. The finale of the second law of thermodynamics (the nasty one that requires the ultimate heat death of the universe) can’t come too soon for those obsessed by the latter. What’s next? The answer to that one is obvious. Water addiction.
Most of the world is short or soon will be short of water. Everyone knows, well not everyone – doctors, well not all doctors – nephrologists, that most people drink more water than they need. Typical fluid intake by American adults is about two liters. They could get by on 600 ml if they stayed cool and didn’t exercise too much. Ah, but now we have a problem. We don’t want people to stay too cool. Air conditioning, energy use, greenhouse gases. If they don’t exercise they’ll get fat and will need more government intervention. But if they do exercise they’ll get thirsty and drink more. We might need a blue ribbon commission. Then we can ration fluid intake appropriately.
The 800 pound gorilla that no one dares bring up but which will crush the life out of us if we don’t confront it is — air addiction. Every time you or any animal breathes you or it emits carbon dioxide. OK it’s out in the open. Too much breathing and the polar bears die. George Will the ball is in your court.
Dr. Kurtzman,
What George Will was saying in his “screed” is that government subsidies and the like, from well intentioned people in the US Government, actually have CAUSED the very health issues that they now want to help us to solve.
This somewhat sarcastic piece is very consistent with his conservative positions that government often brings about the exact opposite of stated intentions while meddling in affairs best left to individuals and markets.
I trust that, like you, he believes that individuals and their personal physicians can do a pretty good job of identifying how best to handle health matters than a team of bureaucrats in the drained swamp in DC.
Dr. Kurtzman,
I have read two of your articles wherein you berate the illness model of addiction.
How indepth have you studied the brain changes that take place in addictions? How about the defining features of loss of control and consequences that seem linked to hypofrontality and reward pathway hijacking by superstimuli?
Probably not as much time as you have studied the kidney.
It’s fun to have opinions. As a man of science I expect more from you.
MJM
Mr McGrath – You are correct. I haven’t studied addiction as much as I have the kidney. That would be true of anything you could mention. But I have studied addiction very thoroughly and found that the standard medical disease model does not fit here. That changes in the brain occur in conjunction with addiction prove nothing. Changes in brain function are associated with any behavioral event or the administration of any psychotropic drug. A disease has a cause and a common pathogenesis. There are probably as many reasons for people to become addicted as there are addicts and no one has come up with a common pathogenesis for addiction.Tobacco use is held to be an addiction, yet more people have stopped smoking, most of them on there own, than currently smoke. I am not the only physician who thinks addiction is not a disease Read this by Dr Lance Dodes. Consult the work of Stanton Peele who has spent his entire career arguing that the disease model is not appropriate for addiction. In any event it not up to me to prove that addiction is not a disease, rather it is incumbent on those who think it is to prove their argument. My view should not be taken to mean that addicts should not be helped, if possible. I think using the disease model in this situation makes helping them harder because you are using the wrong tools for the job. Nevertheless, I am sorry to have disappointed you.