June 01, 2006

Pushing a moral code

Wise words from Philip Alcabes:

"... Risk reduction is the new religion. Americans today make risk sound like sin, the way earlier generations did with communism, atheism, or, well, sin. We talk about "risky sex" and mean not that you might fall in love and get your heart broken, but that you didn't use a condom. We no longer label habits "bad" because they smell nasty, like smoking; make you unattractive, like eating a diet of fried foods; or startle your neighbors, like having sex in public bathrooms. The old language of bad habits invited the uncomfortable discussion about who really suffers and therefore about who gets to dictate mores and morals. Disguising revulsion as a concern about health lets you push your moral code on everyone; nobody can be against health.

This is the newest incarnation of an old trend in public health in this country. Some Americans with a moral agenda have always wanted other Americans to reform their behavior and have often used public health as one way to advance their case. Segregating black people, vilifying those who drink alcohol, and keeping girls at home and celibate until they were married were all, at one time, justified as ways of controlling epidemic disease. Now health officials push sexual temperance, sexual conformity, and abstention from "addictive substances." Worst of all, public-health practitioners have been so indoctrinated in the risk-reduction religion that most disease-control programs today emphasize stamping out "risky behavior" -- and in so doing, promote a moral agenda -- instead of changing society."

Posted by richard at June 1, 2006 11:35 PM
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