Health and Fairness in Society

About the Book

This pamphlet draws on recent reports of soldiers as ‘bad apples’ and from my work as a physician. Current politics and economics threaten medical traditions. Their assumptions dispose us to problems in health care and society that we avoid only with planning and more individualized commitments to each other. Planning fails because social priorities privilege economic and political interests over the needs of the persons who comprise society. We do not understand our commitments to each other because we have lost touch with the humanizing traditions of Hippocrates and biology of Darwin. Each supports fairness in health care and society as ways for us to live respecting each other as individuals.

About the Author

The author attended Princeton, McGill University School of Medicine, trained at Yale in psychiatry and has held positions at Yale, New York University and Rhode Island College of Pharmacy. He was Chair of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine where he developed an Alzheimer’s disease research center. He developed and directed community clinics, engaged in private psychiatric practice and carried out clinical pharmacology research throughout most of his career. He currently researches the topics covered in this book.