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Book: Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer
Quotes of Book: Natural Causes: An Epidemic of
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  1. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    The scientific argument {...} is that the attribution of agency to the natural world was a mistake, although a useful one in an evolutionary sense. {...} {T}o the contrary, {...} it was the notion of nature as a passive, ultimately inert mechanism that was the mistake, and perhaps the biggest one that humans ever made.
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  2. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    Suppose that preventive care uncovered some condition that would require agonizing treatments or sacrifices on my part - disfiguring surgery, radiation, drastic lifestyle limitations. Maybe these measures would add years to my life, but it would be a painful and depleted life that they prolonged.
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  3. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    {N}o matter how much effort we expend, not everything is potentially within our control, not even our own bodies and minds.{...} The body - or, to use more cutting-edge language, the "mindbody" - is not a smooth-running machine in which each part obediently performs its tasks for the benefits of the common good. It is at best a confederation of parts - cells, tissues, even thought patterns - that may seek to advance their own agendas, whether or not they are destructive of the whole.
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  4. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    {T}he immune system is a metaphor for the self. Its ostensible job is the defense of the organism, but it is potentially a treacherous defender, like the Praetorian guard that turns its swords against the emperor. Just as the immune system can unleash the inflammations that ultimately kill us, the self can pick at a psychic scar - often some sense of defeat or abandonment - until a detectable illness appears, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, or crippling anxiety.
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  5. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    {T}he natural world is not dead, but swarming with activity, sometimes perhaps even agency and intentionality. Even the place where you might expect to find quiet and solidity, the very heart of matter - the interior of a proton or a neutron - turns out to be animated with the ghostly flickerings of quantum fluctuation. I would not say that the universe is "alive," since that might invite misleading biological analogies. But it is restless, quivering, and juddering, from its vast vacant patches to its tiniest crevices."
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  6. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    Combine mind plus body with freshly updated data, some of it perhaps collected on your self-monitoring devices, and act quickly to generate fresh instructions to forestall any looming problems. This, I imagine, is how Silicon Valley "immortalists" spend their time-scanning all the health-related information and instantly applying it-which may seem a small price to pay for eternal life.
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  7. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    Women are supposed to undergo a second, gynecologist annual exam, and this one has been well defined since its inception in the 1950s: breast and external genitalia exams, a Pap smear to detect cervical cancer, a vaginal and perhaps rectal exam. These exams are not always voluntarily undertaken; they may be required as a condition of obtaining or renewing a prescription for a contraceptive: Recall the searing scene in Mad Men where Peggy undergoes a gyn exam in order to get birth control pills and the {male} doctor cautions her that just because the pills are expensive, she shouldn't become "the town pump just to get {her} money's worth." Many women are traumatized by these exams, which in their detailed attention to breasts and genitalia so closely mimic actual sexual encounters. Out-of-place intimacies, like unwelcome touching by a male coworker, are normally regarded as "sexual harassment," but the entire gyn exam consists of intimate touching, however disguised as a professional scientifically justified procedure. And sometimes this can be a pretty thin disguise.
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  8. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    As a teenager, I aspired to be a scientist, but too many things happened to distract me from that goal, so I became instead a science appreciator.
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  9. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    The doctor's detachment is not a defense against excessive empathy, but a "downright negative" emotional stance,
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  10. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    For most people, throughout most of the twentieth century, medical care necessarily involved an encounter with a social superior-a white male from a relatively privileged background.
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  11. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    It's not only "my work"-forgive the pompous phrase-that I bequeath to my survivors but all the mental and sensual pleasures that come with being a living human: sitting in the spring sunshine, feeling the warmth of friends, solving a difficult equation. All that will go on without me. I am content, in the time that remains, to be a transient cell in the larger human super-being.
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  12. Barbara Ehrenreich _ Natural Causes: An Epidemic of

    NK, or natural killer, cells, which, like macrophages, attack targets like microbes, do not always kill. A 2013 article reports that about half of the NK cells sit out the fight, leaving a minority of them to become what their human observers call serial killers.
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