An Epidemic of Meddling

My stage name is Eddie Danger and the intro I like best is, “Here’s Eddie Danger, Born Feet First.”

Steve Martin’s book was called, Born Standing Up, which I failed to do because the muscle tone in my legs was not developed enough. I was, however, probably born kicking. Nowadays I would have been born via C-section, however. Feet first births are too risky.

Indeed, it seems everything in society today is based on being risk averse. Seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws… and even helmets for riding bicycles. A helmet would not have saved me from injury when I fell off my tricycle with a dowel in my mouth. To quote Dylan, “Just ask me and I’ll show you the scars.”

Lawyers have taken advantage of our risk aversion and profited handsomely. Sears lost a lawsuit because its lawn mowers were too hard to start. That was a million dollar payout to the guy who had a heart attack, and his lawyer. Sears fixed the problem, to avoid further lawsuits because they knew hard starting lawn mowers could kill. Sure enough, a couple kids were injured after that because their lawn mowers were too easy to start. They two victims teamed up in a class action suit that cost Sears another cool two million in payouts, after expenses.

This tendency to make sure people are healthy and safe is moving to a new level of government regulation and policy making. This is the premise of Jacob Sullum’s cover story, "An Epidemic of Meddling," in a recent Reason magazine.

Writes Sullum, “What do these four ‘public health’ problems—smoking, playing violent video games, overeating and gambling—have in common? They’re all things some people enjoy and other people condemn, attributing to them various bad effects.”

It’s hard to say whether government incursion is driven by good intentions or simply a desire to consolidate power. We have no way of knowing motivations when people do things, so we must evaluate behavior.

"An Epidemic of Meddling" is about the totalitarian implications of public health. Sullum continues: “Public health used to mean keeping statistics, imposing quarantines, requiring vaccination of children, providing purified water, building sewer systems, inspecting restaurants, regulating emissions from factories, and reviewing medicines for safety. Nowadays it means, among other things, banning cigarette ads, raising alcohol taxes, restricting gun ownership, forcing people to buckle their seat belts, redesigning cities to discourage driving, and making illegal drug users choose between prison and “treatment.” In the past, public health officials could argue that they were protecting people from external threats: carriers of contagious diseases, fumes from the local glue factory, contaminated water, food poisoning, dangerous quack remedies. By contrast, the new enemies of public health come from within; the aim is to protect people from themselves—from their own carelessness, shortsightedness, weak will, or bad values—rather than from each other.”

One subhead in the article reads, "The Corruption of Medicine by Morality." He makes the point that the public health department really did have a reason for existence when it was first developed. The mission was to protect people from deadly epidemics like small pox, tuberculosis, cholera. But like most government agencies, success does not result in a dismantling of the agency. There needed to be new targets.

But now, lifestyle choices are the target. "The public health mission to minimize morbidity and mortality leaves no room for the possibility that someone might accept a shorter life span in exchange for more pleasure or less discomfort." People who do not universally share the healthy lifestyle creed are deemed "noncompliant."

Well, you get the picture. For a thought provoking read, check it out here.

Jacob Sullum is Senior Editor of Reason magazine and author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health.