The Blessing of Life by Kane Brian;

Author:Kane, Brian;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Health and Social Responsibility

The broader community, then, must play a significant role in helping us to achieve health. The structuring of choices and the ability of everyone to join together in the pursuit of a common goal is significant. Our physical health is a gift, both from God and from other human persons who enable us to be born healthy, to develop our bodies in the way in which they are supposed to grow, and to maintain whatever abilities we can.

The community, then, has both rights and duties when it comes to health. We can assist the individual person in developing his or her physical, mental, and spiritual gifts. We cannot replace the individual free will, but we can mold it so that the correct choices are made, not in a deterministic way, but in a way that will allow each person to truly know what he or she does choose. For example, while individuals do have the free will to choose what they eat, food service businesses must also take the lead in offering an array of choices that support the ultimate goal of being healthy. While “supersizing” makes strong economic sense in the short term for an individual business, in terms of the broader social goods, we lose by the same measure. Obesity increases fuel consumption and health care spending and diminishes productivity. So while a business makes a quick profit, our society has long-term losses.6

The community has several obligations that it ought to fulfill. First, it has a duty to inform. Health education should focus upon empowering individuals to make the healthiest choices that they are able to. Second, where the evidence for certain kinds of healthy choices is clear, the community has the responsibility of enacting laws that will safeguard the community. Third, the community should devote its resources wisely in order to enable the greatest number of people to be able to be healthy. Decisions about the use of resources should emphasize low-cost, high-benefit needs. For example, immunizations should be preferred to cosmetic surgery. Finally, social responsibility demands that natural, human, and monetary resources should benefit the society as a whole and they should not only be used by the wealthy minority.

The first duty, then, of the community is to educate. By sharing objective knowledge about how different choices affect our health, the community empowers the individual person to make better decisions. The first teachers are, of course, the parents, who impart basic lessons. Obviously, they ought to also practice what they say! Family, schools, government, business, and other social groups will also teach lessons that are proper to their role.

When simply offering choices is not enough, there is also an obligation to then compel certain decisions. This should be done in a way that most indirectly compromises the decision-making of the individual person. The purpose is not to eliminate the person’s free will, but to influence it. Most laws work not by direct intervention, but by influencing the culture in which decisions are made. By structuring choice, the society points the way toward self-sufficiency.

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