Prevention: A Conservative Value
I grew up in a home of conservatives. No one liked sudden change or novelty and we feared communism. During the Cold War, my father volunteered for the California National Guard and helped maintain the Sidewinder Mine outside of Victorville, California. The mine was stocked with provisions and reinforced as an underground bomb shelter. As a young girl, I imagined living underground for weeks or months waiting for the radiation to subside after a nuclear attack.
My parents adhered to Judeo-Christian values. Patriotism, duty, honor, and hard work were concepts they strove to inculcate in me. My father read Atlas Shrugged when he was 43 while I was reading it at 13. What I derived from Atlas Shrugged was that merit is the most important currency in society. Lazy people are relegated to a lower echelon. The Super-People who populated Ayn Rand’s novels inspired me--I wanted to excel in everything and enjoy the fruits of my labors. I reveled in self-reliance.
Having lived these past 33 years in Utah, I also appreciate what is meant by “fiscal conservatism." Many Utahns do not want a bloated government. They deplore waste and are especially wary of unbalanced budgets and heedless spending. Of course, the very word “conserve” means protecting something of value from deterioration. In the case of economics, we conserve our wealth. In the case of morals, we conserve allegiance to God.
However, I will argue that conserving an optimal level of health involves a focus on prevention, which is not a typical conservative ideal. It should be, as it saves both lives and money.
Some have been reluctant to embrace the idea of healthcare as a human right. Many will argue that the sick make poor lifestyle choices. They smoke, drink, or eat too many quarter-pounders. The Ayn Rand Super-People do not make these poor decisions because they are inherently superior and do not do stupid things.
Unfortunately, this view is too simplistic for today’s world. People in poverty go to McDonalds because it is cheap. Healthy fruits and vegetables cost more and time is limited in households where the wage-earners may be working more than one job to keep afloat.
Lately a new field called epigenetics is challenging Rand’s meritocratic views. Up until recently, our genes were thought to be unalterable, and to only change over eons through slow mutations and evolution. Epigenetics describes how our genes can change during our own lifetimes, and how we can inherit these modified genes from our parents and, indeed, pass them on to our children.
Each individual’s DNA uses a protein baton to direct an orchestra of genes. The instruments playing a passage represent the expressed genes, and the silent instruments represent genes that are at rest. Which instruments play during life is partly dependent upon deep human experiences that modify the genetic score.
Especially compelling is research on children who live in poverty. The experience of uncertainty – of not knowing when one will eat, when one will have shelter, when one will be safe – changes the DNA of a child so that he is predisposed to depression, obesity, and impulsivity. Telomeres, structures at the ends of chromosomes which naturally shorten as we age, are prematurely shrunken and lead to poor health and early aging. These in turn make it even more difficult to escape poverty.
But there is hope. New interventions have made a difference, so much so that brain scans document reversals of prior abnormalities. For example, the institution of rewards for accomplishing increasingly complex tasks confers a sense of confidence and a reprieve from always living from threat to threat. Long-range planning becomes possible, perhaps for the first time.
If we intervened to conserve human potential from the very beginning, with adequate prenatal nutrition, programs that enhance parenting skills, and preschool efforts that aim to detect and correct family dysfunction early on, we could be so much more effective. A comprehensive approach to healthcare throughout life can bring out the best in our genetic orchestra. Furthermore, there are huge economic savings in preventing a lifetime of chronic disease.
Perhaps this, then, is a new definition of compassionate conservatism -- the understanding that Ayn Rand was, in fact, wrong, and that pulling one’s self up by the bootstraps actually entails fixing oneself at a cellular level. The great majority of us cannot do this without help. The bridge between “compassionate” and “conservative” is therefore “prevention.” With a deeper understanding of how stress and poverty alter the human genome, we can find interventions that preserve our own unique genetic score and help it play its finest music. Because, when it comes down to it, any of us can become Super-People, but some of us are yards ahead when the starting bell sounds.
A few references for further study: www.independent.co.uk/…, www.theatlantic.com/…, books.google.com/… , books.google.com/…, www.newscientist.com/...
My name is Kathie Allen and I am a family physician running for Utah State Senate 8. Please support my campaign here: Donate for Senate 8.
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