It's not Styrofoam or cellphones or tobacco that are killing us.
It's poverty.
A report released Friday by the American Cancer Society echoes a 1989 statement by Dr. Samuel A. Broder, then director of the National Cancer Institute, who said that poverty is a carcinogen.
As for why, the report said that people who are lower on the economic ladder are more likely to engage in risky behavior —- partly because marketing for products such as tobacco is aimed specifically at them, and partly because of barriers —- societal and otherwise —- to opportunities for exercise and healthy food.
And then impoverished people don't tend to engage in preventive medical care, which they can't afford, so that by the time they seek treatment, it's too often too late.
Damn. Stop smoking and drinking, cut back on red meat, exercise as often as practical, keep the overall caloric intake down to prohibit weighing more than a quarter ton...and now...
Will the government wrap them in warning labels with graphic pictures outlining the terrible risk of exposure?
2 comments:
This is always one of chicken/egg problems that I have with these types of studies.
Do the poor people more often engage in risky behavior or are they poor because they engage in such behaviors?
In our household, we've adopted Robert Kiwosaki's "It isn't how much you make, it is how much you keep" mentality.
If we drank more, smoked more, etc; we would have less.
That being said, we do smoke (me occasionally cigars, wife cigarettes), we do drink (1 to 5 per month for each of us), etc.
Maybe we should be concentrating on financial education instead of putting ugly pictures on cigarette wrappers.
Back during the depression, poor people..and that means pretty much the entire nation...were thin as rails, diabetes was something relatively unheard of, and even though most men smoked unfiltered cigarettes like my great grandfather and his son then his son, lived to a ripe old age without a lick of government interference.
No one had to tell them what to eat or drink, and come to think of it, no one dared. All anyone need do is look at the pictures and newsreels to tell that we were a fit and hale country.
Fast food did change this somewhat, but fast food is damned expansive if you look at how much you could be saving by cooking a simply hamburger and some fries yourself.
There DOES happen to be a class or two or three who easily gain weight, prefer junk food, haven't the time nor inclination to cook, and they throw curve out the window.
Food stamps also entered the picture and cakes and pies and pizza with everything on it filled the shopping carts because no one had to pinch pennies on foodstuffs.
The bottom line is that it isn't the governments business what folks do or eat, and this mumbo jumbo about how much it costs is pure poppycock.
You can take ANY endeavor not specifically geared towards the production of a product or service that aids society and wind up with a severe net loss to someone, somewhere.
Spelunkers and hikers and surfers and campers contribute relatively little to the economy versus what they drain from injuring themselves, and don't even go there about Hollywood.
If we took the literal billions of dollars a year spent on actors and movies and film studios we could cure cancer in a week and a half.
No one is suggesting that those endeavors are wasteful even though they most certainly are, as they return nothing to society save for relieving a few hours of boredom that would be better served in reading a book.
To the haughty few there will always be something that THEY want to ban because THEY do not engage in the practice.
Fuck them.
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