I'm going to have to agree with him. He says that we've more than quadrupled the amount of people who die prematurely, despite the world being a safer place with the advent of such safety items as seat belts. People taking personal responsibility has been something I've been harping on for quite some time. No one wants to take responsibility for spilling hot coffee on themselves. How can you eat healthy when it's so expensive, but you can afford to eat out nightly. You can't exercise because you have no time, but you can spend hours sitting in front of a computer or tv each day. Or why eat healthy or exercise when if you just gain a few more pounds your insurance company will pay for expensive, risky weight loss surgery.
Apparently some people have issue with the author including suicide in his numbers. The issue is genetic predisposition to depression, etc. But what so many people fail to see in their quest of personally irresponsibility is that it's a genetic PREdisposition, but a genetic disposition. We can avoid genetically predisposed obesity by leading a healthy lifestyle, and we can avoid diseases like depression the same way by changing the way we think and also by leading a healthy lifestyle, who doesn't know that exercise releases endorphins and endorphins make you happy and happy people don't kill (Elle Woods from Legally Blonde said that!). Besides, depression is commonly a side effect of many prescription drugs, like statins, that overweight people commonly take.
What's really interesting to me is that it was pointed on that the 20th century was the century of medicine. Doesn't that imply that we should be healthier? And yet where are we? We have the highest levels of chronic disease and obesity than ever!! What has medicine done? Nothing, except indoctrinate us into believing that a pill is our quick answer. Judging by the state of our health, medicine is not the way to go.
