I hope you get to see the
movie about Jackie Robinson’s baseball’s career wearing the only number retired
by all teams, number 42.[1]
What does it have to do with
the health of our country? Let me explain.
ridiculed and grossly abused because of being the first African American to
join Major League Baseball. Of course, those attacking him were a product of
their culture; they could not help themselves. But, they did not make any
effort to transcend their culture, as others did who sensed the innate
injustice of discrimination. The latter were enlightened enough to go beyond
the injustices that the Constitution had only partially addressed 100 years
before.[2]
Whenever I review any case
or historic episode where ambition, fanatism and ignorance oppress the human
mind I am deeply moved, as I was when first standing in Thomas Jefferson’s
rotunda 3 decades ago. The immortal words therein inscribed had a profound
impression on my young heart (they still do):
of tyranny over the mind of man.”
And so it was that the same emotions
were stirred in me watching this film and reading a recent article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association. It states what I have consecrated
my career to, and for which I have been reviled, and still do by the most
ignorant and prejudiced sectors of our rapidly changing society:
health and health care,” JAMA 2013;309:1121
- “Health Care delivery accounts for only 10%
of preventable deaths, with the remainder attributable to personal behaviors,
social and environmental determinants, and genetic predispositions. As
currently constituted the Health care delivery system has little direct control
over these other factors. However, consensus is developing that truly
controlling health care costs and improving the overall health of Americans
will require a much closer partnership, permeable boundaries, and increased
interdependence among the health care delivery system, the public sector, and
the community development and social service sectors.” - “To create a culture of health will require
creating a market for health, moving away from the current market for treating
disease.”
No, I have not suffered as
much as #42 did, but, as an ethnic man, I have had a taste of what he went
through in that respect. But, the anguish of being rejected when I only
expressed what more brilliant minds have documented in the best of medical,
anthropologic and science journals since I graduated from medical school, can
be equally wounding and distressing.
who “know not what they do.” I also
have forgotten them. Truly; but, I cannot fight the tears when such movies
touch my soul.
