Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

As a culture, we often ignore the fundamental causes of health and illness, and focus instead on how to fund drugs and surgery. Our health-care system really pays more attention to disease than to health. Of the $2.1 trillion spent in 2008 on medical care, ninety-five cents of every dollar was used to treat disease, not prevent it.4 • It is far eas

In the same vein, we’re reminded of author Richard Louv’s description of “nature deficit disorder.” Louv recognizes our alienation from nature, but his choice of language is weak and conventional. His “nature deficit” and “Vitamin N” suggests that nature is something akin to a dietary supplement, something that we can purchase in a health food stor

transforming medicine from a healing-oriented moral practice into a diagnosis-oriented science focused on discernible, and replicable, test results.

This culture snowballs into a distrust of doctors, and a belief that if you eat, drink, exercise, live just so, you can ward off disease. The subtext is, of course, that if you try hard enough, you can stave off death.