Editorial/Live Fat-Free or Die
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIAL Live Fat-Free or Die by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. A ccording to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, written by government researchers, my bartender is a killer....
...Alcohol will be next, then junk food, then sex...
...Yes, sex...
...She is going to save the innocent by making it more difficult—or at least more costly—to drink alcohol, eat junk food, and avoid exercise...
...McGinnis declares: "To the individual the message is 'You can do a great deal to control your own health destiny.' " Right now, if you would rather eat junk food and lie on the couch you can...
...When you come up with half the total number of deaths in this country are preventable, that people can do something about, the implications are enormous from an economic point of view," declares Dorothy Rice, a 12 The American Spectator January 1994 medical economist, in the Los Angeles Times...
...Department of Health and Human Services and one of the writers of this tenebrous report...
...When asked in September during her appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee if she would consider taxing such unhealthy substances as caffeine, cholesterol, salt, sugar and alcohol, Mrs...
...But how did these researchers arrive at their grim figures...
...Once national health care is brought down on our heads and every taxpayer is bearing the cost of your dubious habits, you can be sure that statists such as Mrs...
...Mrs...
...In 1990—the most recent year in which statistics are available—these hitherto unidentified killers dispatched 1,148,000 innocent Americans...
...A national health-care system will create public pressure behind the health bureaucrats' lust to patrol our lives and tax such traditional pleasures as unwholesome foods and restful repose, rather than the governmentally prescribed 30-minute daily workout...
...Mrs...
...Clinton plans to bring about behavioral change among smokers by raising the cost of tobacco 300 percent...
...And Dr...
...The local tobacconist has blood on his hands, and so do all the rogues who appear on television, beguiling us into becoming couch potatoes...
...That is one of the many reasons I oppose national health care...
...The hamburger flipper at the local McDonald's and all his cronies in the junk-food Mafia are equally homicidal...
...Poor diet and lack of exercise accounted for 300,000 preventable deaths...
...Clinton has already admitted that she would like to impose taxes on substances deemed dangerous to our health...
...Alcohol helped polish off 100,000...
...People may not realize the extent [to] which deaths among Americans are preventable," says Dr...
...The burden of the JAMA article on "preventable" deaths is that they are costly...
...They examined death certificates from 1990 and speculated...
...From all I can tell, no serious analysis of the lifestyles of the deceased exists, nor of their family histories, nor any other personal details...
...Alcohol, tobacco, junk food, and a "sedentary lifestyle," according to these "government researchers," account for nearly half America's annual deaths...
...J. Michael McGinnis, head of the Office of Disease Prevention at the U.S...
...We have quite enough bureaucrats patrolling our private lives right now...
...Then the health-care experts move in with their mandate for changing behavior...
...According to the government study now published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 30,000 deaths from preventable disease in 1990 were attributable to sex...
...No distinction is drawn between the longevity of a harddrinker, say Winston Churchill, and the early death of an F. Scott Fitzgerald...
...C:1 14 The American Spectator January 1994...
...Clinton will be promising to keep taxes down by enforcing "behavioral change" among drinkers, junk-foodeaters, couch potatoes, and practitioners of unwholesome sex...
...He and like-minded public-health experts prescribe "behavioral change...
...the longevity of a smoker like the jazz musician Eubie Blake, and the early death of a smoker less favored by fate or by genes...
...Already Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...Who doubts that even now this champion of the nanny state is abundant with ideas to tax and otherwise regulate the aforementioned poisons...
...You can be sure that Hillary Clinton's national health-care program will bring them all to justice...
...With national health care the government will put an end to these costly indulgences...
...Raw data is fed into a computer and, hesto presto, hundreds of thousands of "preventable" deaths mount up...
...Apparently we must live the salubrious lives of the Clintons, lest we cost our society a bundle with our "preventable deaths...
...The assumption is that adult Americans cannot be trusted to manage their own lives...
...Clinton pertly replied to her questioner, Congressman Jim Bunning, "If there is a way that you can ever come up with to tax substances like the ones you just named we'll be glad to look at it...
Vol. 27 • January 1994 • No. 1
