How to reduce flies? Here’s one way:
A Chinese city suburb has set a bounty on dead flies in a bid to promote public hygiene . . . Xigong, a district of Luoyang in the central province of Henan, paid out more than 1,000 yuan ($125) for about 2,000 dead flies on July 1, the day it launched the scheme with the aim of encouraging cleanliness in residential areas. . . An Internet user said that although the office had good intentions, the action itself had made the district a laughing stock.
“The key point is the government should encourage residents to clean up the environment so that no flies can live there, instead of spending money on dead flies,” the Internet user wrote.
Yes. This gets back to Erika Schwartz’s criticism of Gina Kolata and the NY Times for not mentioning prevention in an article about strokes. Kolata’s article accurately reflected the situation: far more interest in (i.e., money spent on) cure than prevention. It makes as much sense in America as it does in China.
Norman Temple and I wrote about a related problem: more support for high-tech than low-tech research, even though low-tech research has been more helpful. The low-tech research is more prevention-related.
More health-care absurdity.
I think that one reason for the emphasis on cure rather than prevention is that the beneficiaries of a cure get to see the benefit while the beneficiaries of prevention generally don’t have access to high credibility information confirming the effects of not taking the preventative action.
Too much low quality information or interested propaganda, for instance the sort of “health” education that takes place in public schools, goes under the guise of prevention. It isn’t easy or convenient for individuals to state outright disbelief, due to authoritarian pressure, but it is easy for them to base their behavioral decisions on the imitation of others rather than on an attempt to infer the behaviors implied by official dogma. This is, sadly, terribly costly, as it prevents them from benefiting from legitimate prevention.
I agree. Not only the beneficiaries. I spoke to a doctor who works in a hospital. We can’t really help most of the people we see, she told me. So why do you do it? I asked. Why not do something that helps, such as prevention? Because I like to be thanked, she said.