Public Health pioneer

[DMB]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article5920585.ece

The first report into the health of the nation began with a disgusting smell, a stench so overpowering that it forced the Government to improve sanitary conditions in London and helped to usher in the modern age of public health.

One hundred and fifty years ago, the year after the “Great Stink”, when London was overwhelmed by the worst pong in its malodorous history, Sir John Simon, Britain’s first Chief Medical Officer, presented a report to Parliament on the “State of Public Health in England”...

...One other aspect of public health has also remained constant over the past 150 years: politicians still tend to delay acting on public health issues until someone, or something, kicks up an almighty stink.

I this an anti-libertarian argument?

[Christina]

I can tell you that I've had dozens of arguments with libertarians over that issue, but just as many with hardcore conservatives, generally talking about illegal immigration. It's easy to say "cut off all individual and public health care", but do they really want people walking around with infectious diseases and their children going to school with kids without immunizations for things like TB? Do people really want hepatitis to run unchecked through the migrant population that picks and processes their food? It's all emotion, anger and no common sense. Yes, we have an immigration problem but I'd prefer not to have to get an infectious disease to solve it.

[lpetrich]

I think that the connection is from how right-libertarians like to scream: "You ought to take care of yourself, rather than begging the government to take care of you!!!"

But that has proved impractical for public health, just as it has proved impractical for self-protection, which is why military and police forces exist. There are not many libertarians who yell "If you want protection, then protect yourself! Don't get the government to pick my pocket to protect you if you are too lazy to protect yourself!!!"

[Joykins]

I can tell you that I've had dozens of arguments with libertarians over that issue, but just as many with hardcore conservatives, generally talking about illegal immigration. It's easy to say "cut off all individual and public health care", but do they really want people walking around with infectious diseases and their children going to school with kids without immunizations for things like TB? Do people really want hepatitis to run unchecked through the migrant population that picks and processes their food? It's all emotion, anger and no common sense. Yes, we have an immigration problem but I'd prefer not to have to get an infectious disease to solve it.


This is what I think also. Public health is a public good regardless of the issue of "freeloading" or however it is seen.

[Christina]

I think that the connection is from how right-libertarians like to scream: "You ought to take care of yourself, rather than begging the government to take care of you!!!"

But that has proved impractical for public health, just as it has proved impractical for self-protection, which is why military and police forces exist. There are not many libertarians who yell "If you want protection, then protect yourself! Don't get the government to pick my pocket to protect you if you are too lazy to protect yourself!!!"

From what I've seen working at a local level the vast majority of people don't think through the practical implications that their political opinions would have on community management and public policy, or for that matter even grasp that there's a connection. It's much easier to handwave all of the facts and details away so they don't get in the way of oversimplified theories than it is to think through how something is really going to work on the ground and what else is going to be affected by any changes. Don't even get me started with what I think about making health and human service workers the front line of the illegal immigration battle.

I only had one discussion with a libertarian friend about disabled people. It was awful because at the end it was obvious that he really did think that we should hit the streets and beg if we had no one to support us, although of course he would never include me in the 'them'. I'm never doing that again.

[dancer_rnb]

I think some of those people need a good dose of Shigella.