Right to Be Sick - Most Threatened Right

October 8, 2016

In the quest of totalitarian health and annihilation of death the state and its vassal medicine take more and more steps to take away freedoms and rights of citizens.

One of our most important and most precious rights, and at present one of the most threatened, is the right to be ill - that is, the right to reject treatment, the right to suffer, and the right to die unmolested by the interventions imposed on us by the state acting through its medical (and psychiatric) agencies. In a theological society, we could not sin or die without the cleric, whether we wanted him or not. Mutatis mutandis, in a therapeutic society such as ours, we cannot be sick or die without the clinician, whether we want him or not.

April 6, 2020

I do not recall what prompted me to write the above words. Perhaps, it was the futile "battles" medicine stages upon the bodies of the dying in the United States. Today I want to write about being sick with a cold or the flu in the late 20th-early 21st century in the United States. The accepted approach to such sickness in the young and the old is to suppress symptoms and go on about one's business, studying at school or going to work. Remedies like acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol) suppress the feeling of generalized malaise, aches and pains as well as fever, giving one the impression of being well.

This suppression of a benign illness, foregoing the experience of suffering, taking time to be ill and recover, rejecting medication in favor of feeling sick, letting sickness guide you to healing - all of this was exterminated by mainstream medicine, politics of employment and sick leave, and an unquestioned idea that illness is bad. Yet illness is a sign of health. Healthy people become sick now and then with colds and the flu because they are healthy - they develop reactions that ultimately heal them. We co-exist with a multitude of viruses that cause seasonal illnesses. We learn what it feels to suffer. We learn to relate to others who suffer in ways similar to ours. We develop nuanced knowledge of what normal course of illness is. We learn to respond to the pain, fatigue, stuffiness, cough - finding what makes it better, what makes it worse. Ultimately, we learn that we have innate ability to heal.

Totalitarian extermination of normal undrugged illness without medical supervision led to collective paucity of knowledge of what causes illness, what promotes healing, and exacerbated unfounded belief in magic bullets, in conventional and alternative medicine camps alike, be it vitamin C, colloidal silver, vitamins, or Tylenol Cold. Collectively we believe that we are deficient of a drug, thus providing a drug will lead to a miraculous recovery.

Cold and the flu respond well to rest, sleep, movement as you are able to move, fresh air (open the windows), sunlight, sufficient fluid intake to thirst (and not forgetting to drink) , eating light home prepared from scratch meals, and time. Severe incapacitation from the illness is good - it makes you rest and prevents the spread of infection. Yes, that means that you take time off school and work to focus on being ill.

Yet preparation for any illness, however mild, starts when you are well. You find, cook and eat your own food (not factory processed inedibles), sleep, move, have family and friends, have a purpose in life, spend time doing something fun and meaningful outdoors. If you become sick, you are well-positioned to heal with minor adjustments to your routine.

The current COVID-19 clusterf*ck (for the lack of a better word) is a result of purposeful policies of public health, medicine, and government that produced a severely disabled chronically sick population that lacks any knowledge of what it takes to be responsible for your own well-being. Knee-jerk reaction to force the sick to stay away from the healthy does not work when the normal way of living is for the sick to drug to mask symptoms and mingle with the healthy. Frantic unsuccessful emergency response to the death of scores of run-down people who live in inhumane environments shows the emperor has no clothes. Medicine will not and cannot offer any salvation in face of a seasonal viral disease. Yet communities of people can be prepared to peacefully co-exist with viruses like we did for thousands of years. Few of the old and the frail may succumb, like in the old days, to seasonal pneumonia, for which we must be grateful. Quick delirious death seems to offer more merciful respite from earthly suffering than slow decay from cancer or failing organ debility that medicine has to offer.

NB. Both cold and the flu are contagious before the onset of symptoms. You will be surprised to know that with current state of knowledge we still do not know how flu is transmitted from person to person. Of note, not everybody exposed to the sick gets sick even in close contact. Traditionally, one person, usually an older woman, would be taking care of the sick person who lies in an isolated room, allowing the rest of the family to work and live normally.

Further Reading

Thomas McKeown. (1988). The Origins of Human Disease.