Surprising Science — November 27, 2010

The Case Against Health

Institutions of public health and the commercial interests that surround it, including the media, do more harm than good to the nation’s health, says Cornell professor Richard Klein.

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The official version of health peddled by our current system is not only venal but potentially noxious. In some instances, public health has been transformed into a kind of iatric disease, a medically induced assault on the health of society. Our minders trumpet the obesity epidemic even as epidemiological evidence suggests that “yo-yo dieting” (repeatedly losing and regaining weight over a period of several years) actively damages the immune system. At any given time, it is estimated that 50 percent of all women are on diets, and 95 percent of all diets fail. The more we diet, the fatter we seem to become.

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