Arguing with Health Fascists

I have been following Karen de Coster’s work on health fascists and how it does not make any sense to fight health fascism by deliberately being unhealthy or advocating unhealthy choices: http://www.karendecoster.com/blog/archives/002013.html. She is dead on.

If you don’t like health fascists’ bullying on obesity, it is not really helpful to come out with the “morbid obesity is delightful” argument. You don’t get far arguing against public schools by arguing that education itself is harmful or arguing against drug laws by overdosing on some narcotic. Instead, we might be better off to admit that obesity is problematic while offering non-coercive solutions.

Karen goes off on statin drugs and what a scam they are. In doing so, she does not claim that high cholesterol should be a goal, that you should not be concerned about your cholesterol level. Rather, she advocates that folks become more educated about cholesterol and statin drugs and take other steps to get their cholesterol under control. She advocates personal responsibility, not more deep fat fried foods! Libertarians don’t win if they die young just to spite the health fascists.

(I’ve been on statin drugs since my 30s and Vytorin, the latest I have tried, has me in the normal readings for the first time in my life. My family has hypercholesterolemia and cannot control it with diet and exercise. Even Uncle “Zero Percent Body Fat” Wayne, the marathon runner, has to take statins. My father refused them for years and has had all the bypasses he can have (there is nothing left to graft to) and now has a built in pacemaker/defibrillator. I don’t want to end up with a bum ticker like Dad, and I am pretty paranoid about it.)

How is it that health fascists reckon they have a legitimate interest in the health of perfect strangers? They argue from the perspective that poor health lowers productivity and costs “society” and they argue that, since they might have to pay the costs for treating the results of unhealthy choices, they ought to have a say in those choices. Coming out in favor of unhealthy choices for their own sake does nothing to confront these arguments. In a sense, the contrarian arguments that “fat is good”, that “smoking is cool”, and what have you are concessions to the fascists’ perspectives. You are already surrendering ground by tacitly admitting that the fascists’ interest in your health is legitimate.