Posts Tagged ‘personal autonomy’

Nobody “Owes” Anybody an Explanation for Their Body

February 28, 2024 — We are getting a bit fed up. This impatience comes with the presumption that people owe the world an explanation for their body. Is it fit enough? Is it fat enough? Are we wearing the right kind of body positive attitude? This comes from living in an excessively fat-conscious culture. But it also comes from […]

Worshiping a False God of Healthy Choices

December 5, 2021 — Who can possibly argue with the virtue of healthy choices? And yet, that’s precisely what Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal are doing in a provocative commentary about the root of our problems in coping with a public health emergency. Much of the world has fallen into a trap: walking away from the common good of […]

Mandates, Choices, and Shared Decision Making

July 31, 2021 — Mandates are very much in the news this week. We’re hearing a lot of angst about vaccine mandates and mask mandates. In some situations, it seems there’s not much room for debate about what to do. Yet we find that even when reality is unyielding, people still have choices to make. So in between the […]

Respecting Truth and Personal Autonomy in Obesity

April 18, 2018 — Step right up! Many people are handing out unsolicited advice about obesity and what’s best for you. This sort of advice comes from two dramatically different extremes. We hear it from ignorant, biased individuals who think that solutions are easy. But it also comes from people who say, forget it. Obesity is no big deal […]