Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, cathy wrote:
> > Also, if you want to 'sacrifice' a disease to challenge the status quo, CFS
> > won't do it. You'll just confirm everyone's suspicions. Why not pick a
> > disease like cancer? Gasp, but it would be so cruel to say that cancer is
> > cultural.
>
> Actuall, this is one of the things I came up against yesterday thinking
> about illness and culture. I sat at my desk listing illnesses, trying to
> find something that wasn't cultural at some level. Cancers? Nope. linked
> to environment and diet. Diabetes/ Nope. related to diet (well sort of,
> in a world where people dont eat sugar, I don't think you'd see it much).
> Heart disease? Stress and diet. Heart attacks, ditto. Car accidents? Drug
> overdoses, AIDS, car accidents, domestic violence? Ditto ditto ditto. So
> on one level, the culture thing is irrelevant, but CFS, along with
> environmental illness and anorexia, becoming interesting because they are
> are so *contemporary*.
But then we also know that some people smoke all their lives and never get cancer. Some people eat all the sugar they want and never develop diabetes, some people can stand exposure to chemicals and not get cancer, while that exposure strikes down others. As much as I hate to point to genetics as a significant factor in determining who gets ill from what, it is there staring us in the face. And it is dangerous to ignore the implications of our genetic legacies for as more is known about the individual's genetic make up, the more there is to discriminate against by health insurance corps and employers. Sorry to change the direction of the thread here, but it seemed important to mention this.
Marta