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Is the BMJ Promoting Eugenics?
- Dennis Grainger (7 November 2001)
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men's poor health is more than a psycho-social problem
- Sebastian Kraemer (10 November 2001)
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citations please
- Duane Fowler (14 November 2001)
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Dennis Grainger, Self-employed Editor & Copywriter Wordcraft Services For Writers
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The absurdity of the opening sentence of your Editorial “The Future of Men and Their Health” should have been enough to warn me that I was not reading a scholarly work. So what if “up to just 25 years ago there was very limited research specifically targeted at women's health”? There was very little research targeted at anyone’s health. There were plenty of books describing ill-health and its treatment, and there was research into biological processes and morbid pathology, but it was the nature of the times that “health” was not an “issue” to be researched in the way that things are today. To conclude from this, that “The world seemed to assume that, except for issues related to reproduction, women's health problems, needs, and solutions were essentially the same as men's” is like concluding that because I haven’t published any research on snails, I evidently think their needs are the same as giraffes’ (on which I also haven’t published any research)!. The authors point out that "Major studies are now generating increasing evidence on important differences between men and women, from the cellular to the societal level". Quite apart from the fact that the readers of the British Medical Journal must be the only people ever born who need “major studies” to tell them that, one such difference, of course, is that men respond to threats to the security and integrity of their country and the safety of its citizens in a very different way from women. That is why, despite the UK, the USA and many other countries now frantically trying to encourage women to join their armies in combat roles, the numbers of women responding have been negligible. Indeed, no nation on earth has so far been able to field even one women-only battle unit, and that’s not for want of trying. So the burden of national defence still falls on men. This fact is the one which Messrs Meryn and Jarad have perverted into the propagandist sneer that wars are "mostly created, maintained, and aggravated by men". It's disgraceful that they can get away with saying this (and it is notable that this is almost the only claim which they haven’t even attempted to reference). Perhaps they've never heard of Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meier, Benazzir Bhutto. In fact, in proportion to their numerical presence as heads of state, women have been responsible for initiating more wars than men. It is very difficult indeed to find a nation, anywhere in history, headed by a woman who has NOT declared war on her neighbours. And even where this would be denied, as perhaps in the case of Ireland recently, the woman head of Sate has run something very close to war, and left office with it still on-going!). But the most important question here, if the authors are as devoted to the feminist Credo as they imply, is why would they not get away with referring to the "servicemen" who defend our country, its citizens, and its vital interests! Why, whenever praise is being handed out, have we all been ordered to refer to the effort and self-sacrifice of our "brave servicemen and servicewomen". Yet when the authors wish to imply that all military action is naked aggression, they forget the much-vaunted servicewomen? Whether women soldiers are a reality or just an advertiser’s gimmick, it is blatant and outrageous sexism to emasculate our soldiers when praising them, and then restore them temporarily to manhood when seeking to condemn soldiers en masse. I am surprised to find the BMJ, and these authors in particular, guilty of sexist stereotyping and the peddling of the propaganda of social vilification. That's the sort of double standards that allow BBC newsreaders to refer to "the men of violence" trying to murder our "service personnel", rather than more accurately refererring to "men and women of violence" attacking our servicemen. And just look at what it is that drives many men into soldiering. Is it really “aggression” as the authors of your Editorial say? In the First World War, it was the promise of a kiss from a pretty young lady at a recruitment booth conveniently placed outside a pub at closing time (sexual exploitation of boys as young as 17), posters of women with the caption “Women of Britain say GO!” (drawing on the conditioning to obey maternal figures, instilled in all men brought-up by women), and a propaganda film which depicted the Hun as someone who will bayonet babies and rape women unless put to death. All of these techniques can be seen in the run-up to WW2, the Gulf War, and the current war in Afghanistan. The trouble is, they only really lure men. No effective lure has yet been found which will, however great the threat to their country and its people, persuade millions of teenage girls to leave all luxury behind and, with only a few weeks rudimentary training, board troopships for some hell -hole of a wasteland where they will be ordered to pick up a battle load and stagger into withering machine-gun fire and mortar shot with very little hope of surviving with their limbs and organs intact. Governments conduct not only their military campaigns by using men, but also their fire-fighting, policing, marine exploration, and building programmes -- but who, today, would dare admit that? Unless, of course, someone has been negligent, and then the words "corrupt policeman" and "cowboy builder" will be used. The sheer hypocrisy of the medical profession’s leading journal lecturing us about the absurdity of a some occupations having been “traditionally reserved for men” merely demonstrates that modern doctors are learning their social propaganda while forgetting their history. Countless clinical emergencies occurring where there was no doctor made it very obvious that men could be perfectly good midwives, but the NHS refused to allow men until ordered by the European Court of Human Rights, and even then it shamefully dragged its feet for another decade. Health Visiting was also kept closed to men until the 1980s. And decades after the British Army began proving that men could make perfectly good physiotherapists, the NHS and the entire British Medical profession refused to lift a finger to help the campaign to permit civilian men to train as physiotherapists, every civilian hospital in Britain refused point-blank to accept men for training. Every working day, doctors saw the disgraceful under-representation of men among radiographers, nurses, dental hygienists – but felt no need to redress the gender-gap, until someone pointed out that women were under-represented among doctors – which apparently means something different. “Despite having had most of the social determinants of health in their favour, men have higher mortality rates”, the authors say. The first half of that assertion is wildly erroneous. According to their own argument just two paragraphs later, it was tradition, not biology, which allocated work-roles between the genders – a split which has not entirely disappeared. So “social determinants of health” clearly include work- roles. But in terms of impact on health, were these really in men’s favour as claimed? The Acts of Parliament which banned employers from sending women and children down mines and up chimneys (unhealthy and dangerous jobs par excellence) gave no protection to men. Neither did the statutes limiting weights that an employee could be ordered to lift, nor those compelling retailers to provide seating for their female staff. Driving trains, working as a lumberjack, earning a pittance as a professional fairground boxer, all these occupations were “traditionally reserved for men”, but only an idiot would try and argue that such roles “favoured” men’s health over that of women! Women were not under pressure to “man” (I wonder why that came to be the expression) ships, let alone being lawfully “press-ganged” (kidnapped) and sent to climb the rigging in gales and storms. Soldiering? Well I think that point has already been made – but it’s a damn sight more hazardous to health than being a parlour-maid. Physicians and Surgeons in the UK won’t need me to tell them that their hours are soon to be limited on health grounds. But evidently they do need me to point out to them that this didn’t come about until their profession was flooded with an unprecedented large percentage of women. Women just will not risk their personal health as readily as men have traditionally done, however philanthropic or altruistic the objective might be. As for contemplating a world without men, and implying that such a situation would be men’s own fault, and a jolly good thing, too, are you planning a series of Editorials contemplating entire genetic sections fo the human race who deserve to be extinct, for the general good? Or was this a one-off? The scurrilous propaganda of hate and social division which you published as an Editorial, but which, with a few changes of noun would have been a huge hit in the Volkischer Beobachter in 1933-45, is not the first time that I have seen the medical profession in this country actually blaming men for every shortcoming in their health – even though most of these appear to be inherent in anyone unfortunate to be born with male chromosomes. I wait, now, to see whether you will similarly berate and castigate women for the existence of breast cancer – which, by the way, men do not suffer from, because men are not so negative and antisocial. I think I’m getting the hang of this “medical research” now. Right? At least the authors are correct when they report the “sustained increase in psychosocial disorders in men, including alcohol and substance abuse, mid-life crisis, [and] depression”. Quite so. They could also have added suicide, which has reched epidemic proportions among men. And opening the leading medical journal to find themselves being systematically blamed, as a unified biological sub-group within the human species, for “the spread of AIDS…. wars and conflicts”…. and anything that the reader can imagine is meant by the phrase “the negative behaviours that characterise men today”, is part of that wider picture. Surely any competent medical practitioner is capable of observing a possible causative link here. |
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Sebastian Kraemer, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Tavistock Clinic, London
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The BMJ's focus on men's health is welcome, but it is too preoccupied with consciousness-raising at the expense of understanding the aetiology of the problem. Males are more vulnerable than females even in the absence of social and psychological pressures (which only make them worse). You did not need to look far for the evidence, nicely summarised by me in the BMJ! (The fragile male BMJ 2000;321:1609-1612) Sebastian Krae |
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Duane Fowler, Software Designer
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The article states: "...it is clear that women can perform (and on most occasions outperform) pretty much all the tasks traditionally reserved for men. " "Clear" how? It's been my experience that "Clearly..." is usually another way of saying "I have absolutely no basis for stating...". Is it true in your case as well? Please cite your references if not. Regards, Duane Fowler |
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