The Lancet
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60966-0
Book Review
Fat Fate and Disease: Why Exercise and Diet Are Not Enough
By Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson
Oxford University Press
"We need a public debate about what it means to keep markets in their place. And to have this debate, we have to think through the moral limits of markets. We need to recognise that there are some things that money can't buy and other things that money can buy but shouldn't."Michael Sandel, “Market and Morals”
We live in a world where it is increasingly apparent that markets have all sorts of unwanted consequences, but they remain the bedrock of our civilisation. That we should relentlessly pursue economic growth is unquestioned, while the planet is drying up and we are becoming increasingly obese. And by a dominant political account the way to grow is to liberate the markets wherever we can. Thus the planet nears extinction more quickly and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes increases alarmingly across the globe. So is some kind of consensual good will required, as Michael Sandel suggested in his 2009 Reith Lecture?
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We have yet to discover an acceptable way to make markets properly balance all the pay-offs caused by unhealthy production, one of which is to suffer loss at the point of production commensurate with the harm of causing bad health in the longer term. We are not even close. Good will and responsible citizenship are not, I suspect, going to solve this problem simply because profit and growth trump everything.
The entire review and commentary are here.
