This has been a good thread. It hasn't changed my mind but it has changed my range of views. The new view is appalling and disturbing
to me, but it's one I hadn't actually achieved before.
Marie's comment above was the catalyst. That's right. At the point
you are facing and accident of disease, all bets of odds are called
off. If you are heading at highway speed toward the car that has just run a stop sign, you ARE going to have an accident and statistics suddenly lose all meaning.
How big are those groups? The literature I read and the examples I know would tell me that the third group is quite large, I'd say over
99% of the population for any given condition. My suspicion is that
many participating in this thread would put the number much lower. But that's of no real importance to my point.
What about individuals? What about the person who despite of taking
every precaution and making very prudent choices still falls victim
to some malady? Likewise what about the person who flaunts all caution to the wind and yet lives a charmed life? And that's were I
had such a boggling time focusing on the point because it is so foreign to me.
The thing is, there's no accounting for it. It happens, we all know
it and have witnessed it.
some beans or cabbages in the garden and one day several of them just
die. Can't tell why, they just die. Who hasn't gone to their coop
to find a chicken, young and doing fine the day before, just keeled
over dead. Likewise we have a cat that early this year got into
(and lost) so many fights he was nothing but a mass of open sores, swelled and inoperative joints, and could not stand. We made him comfortable to let him die in peace and gave him no treatement of any
kind. He's fine now and besides a small notch in one ear, you'd never know he'd ever left the porch. Things happen for no reason and
things happen in defiance of all the stats and rules.
had the precancerous condition for colon cancer, would I then throw two steaks on the grill because ..... I'm an individual case and all
the stats are suddenly called off?
I am truly sorry. But those who wreck their health and
That's the view I am struggling to focus on. But here's my view: For people who really try to promote their health and make all the right choices and still get sick, I have all the sympathy and support
possible.
flare up in indignation that they contributed to their sickness ... and (this is the part) refuse to give up the bad choices because after all they are an individual and the prevailing wisdom doesn't apply to individuals ... I have .... less sympathy.
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