Does 'Health Promotion' Really Promote Health?

摘要

In his comment on Victor Fuch's essay, the late Alvan Feinstein raised the question of whether government-sponsored programs of "health promotion" are always good for well-being. Like many other discussions of the government's role in "health promotion," Victor Fuchs' excellent paper makes the assumption that "promotion" is a well-established entity, so that the main job now is to disseminate it to everyone, at reasonable cost. Since the history of medicine and public health contains many splendid triumphs that followed a long array of errors and blunders, it is always important, in any era of medicine, to consider the possibility that the establishment beliefs are not always correct.