The electronic communication zone is running hot over some inane comments by some "researchers in public health". These illuminati were interviewed on national radio and had the temerity to utter the following inanity:
Obesity, she said, was "not a problem with individual choice and self-discipline, which we've proved successfully doesn't work". Instead it's the fault of "big institutions and the market".Most of the criticism rightly points out that for 99 percent of the obese population their condition is caused by three things--what they ingest, how much, and what is not done to burn the calories off. It is a completely self-inflicted condition. Quite right.
Naturally, the "researchers in public health" have alternative predictable solutions: more rules, regulations, restriction, and government controls over what you eat. In the end, the government will have to ration our food and ban lots of nasty things. We will end up clinging to Mother's skirts in a perpetual, malingering second childhood.
Naturally enough this sort of nannying (incidentally, both researchers are females) is offensive. At this point in history most New Zealanders resent a government telling them how to act, what to think, and above all, what to eat. Sadly almost no-one amongst the objectors is prepared to acknowledge that the fight was lost almost eighty years ago.
When our forebears, in their myopic wisdom, decided that government had a duty to provide state funded health-care, and voted for politicians who would give them their lusts, it was all over, rover. For, as a perceptive sage pointed out, if you cede to government the duty and responsibility to take care of your health, you have implicitly given over total control of your physical being. A government that is responsible for your healthcare, is responsible for your health, period; such a government will inevitably extend its reach to control what you eat and what is allowed to come out the rear end--and how often.
It will all be done under the cloak of cost containment, of course. We have got to control what people eat, because if we don't the rampant costs of treating the obesity epidemic will squash us all flat. It's a matter of survival of our species as we know it. Toss in a dose of guilt and another generous helping of pious pity and who can resist--with principled consistency, that is?
Most of those railing against the two nannies who "research" public health do so with a fair dose of inconsistent hypocrisy. We do not doubt that these objectors would at the same time argue for the reasonableness of a publicly funded health system per se. Getting rid of the entire nannying edifice would be as offensive to them as the stupid observations of our elite health researchers.
We repeat: if you are going to look to government to fund your doctors' visits, health procedures, subsidize your medicine, and provide you with hospitals you have already, in principle, ceded to the state control over your body. Such a Leviathan will eventually move to control the food you ingest, the air that you breathe, the hours you must sleep, the length and temperature of your showers, and the "quality" of your stools and urine.
Whilst we remain gratified that there are still people in this country who will stand up to intrusive government controls, another part of us want to say, "Stop your whining. You sold your souls to the Devil a long, long time ago. Now Old Nick has come to collect."
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