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Unnatural Causes
Unnatural Causes
UNNATURAL CAUSES, a seven part series, sounds the alarm about the
extent of our glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and
searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might
expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary
supplements and new medical technologies, UNNATURAL CAUSES
crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up
conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick.
UNNATURAL CAUSES is a medical detective story out to solve the
mystery of what's stalking and killing us before our time, especially
those of us who are less affluent and darker-skinned. But its
investigators keep peeling back the onion, broadening their inquiry
beyond the immediate, physical causes of death to the deeper,
underlying causes that lurk in our neighborhoods, our jobs and even
back in history.
The perpetrators, of course, aren't individuals but rather societal and
institutional forces. And theirs are not impulsive crimes of passion.
These are slow deaths the result of a lifetime of grinding wear and tear,
thwarted ambition, segregation and neglect. But this is also a story of
hope and possibility, of communities organizing to gain control over their
destinies and their health.
The good news is that if bad health comes from policy decisions that we
as a society have made, then we can make other decisions. Some
countries already have, and they are living longer, fuller lives as a result.