Hidden Arguments: Political Ideology and Disease Prevention Policy

Although this book is over 20 years old, its scope and relevance will continue as long as humans live in societies. Societies are built on political ideologies, which determine people's understanding of health and disease. When we come to understand this we will be better able to understand and prevent disease.The examples mentioned include tobacco and smoking. For example, Australians (such as me) regard smoking as the cause of much disease. Therefore as a nation we are doing better and better in controlling smoking. However we are vulnerable to pressures to introduce smoke free tobacco, and to the lobbying from tobacco growers because of the focus on smoking - rather than tobacco as the number one cause of death.Examples from Cuba demonstrate how even in a socialist society, individualism has dominated views on causes of disease. Individualism determines how most countires go about protecting people from disease. Individualism will fail to prevent disease when causes are overwhelmingly social.A better understanding of how political ideology guides understandings of disease causation will lead to more effective disease prevention policy. Read this book to improve your understanding!

What an expose on public health history! Excellent! An interesting historical perspective of public health and infectious disease that any public health professional or student should read! An excellent book; no question about that!

The text is pretty good, and its easy to read, but without having page numbers in the book - it makes it practically useless for academics. The locations become practically impossible to relate to page numbers and to cite.If you are using for a class you are much better off buying the paperback version

I jumped to the last chapter Individualism and Science to get a sampling of her political comments. Elevating the United Nations as some bastion of human rights was utterly vacuous as was the absurd comparison of Capitalism and Socialism. Claims that Individualism "fosters narcissistic permutations... produces some miserable consequences... drags those in the United States... limit rather than expand human potential.... and hobble the development and implementation of effective disease prevention policies" may appeal to some left-wing group think advocates, but it appears to be more evidence that our centers of higher education are promoting left-wing theories not based on observable reality.If you like to read pompously written leftist doublespeak, this is a book that belongs in your library.