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94
SECTION IV
PERSONAL HEALTH AND RELATED SERVICES
After a century or more of health visiting, sanitary improvement
and social advancement, hazards to infant life arising from environmental
factors such as malnutrition and communicable disease
have, for all practical purposes, been mastered.
In this almost self-satisfied and euphoric atmosphere there is a
real danger that the present fashionable concentration of resources
on social security and welfare could be at the expense of the
furtherment of health. It must be said that, however great the
contribution of environment to man's welfare and the advances
in services for his medical treatment, this is not enough. Indeed,
even as long ago as 1910, a writer commented upon the fact that
"every improvement of environment has lowered the death rate and
increased the net birth rate of the unfit".
Despite Abraham Lincoln's dedication to the proposition that
"all men are born equal" history and experience have established
beyond doubt that this is not so. Inheritance of creative skill and
imagination, powers of memory, intelligences courage, physical
prowess and proneness or resistance to disease, etc., all point to
the falseness of such a proposition.
Biologically, we are a balanced community in that, as individuals,
we have all received our genes from a common group of antecedents.
In certain circumstances, this balance is disturbed, namely,
by mutations arising from radiation or chemical factors, by
emigration or immigration, by survival from disease attacks as
determined by genetic constitution and from "selectivity", etc.
Generally, like attracts like and over generations the genetically
well-endowed mate with others equally endowed, with the converse
also being true. This "natural" selection inevitably leads to
a stratification of society where the tendency is for tallness to beget
tallness, smallness to beget smallness and intelligence to beget
intelligence, etc. This could hardly have been put better than in
the 19th century adage which runs "If you wish to live to a healthy
old age you should choose your parents wisely".
Every new infant inherits factors upon which its health and the
quality of its future life will largely depend and it is within this
field that the greatest benefits to mankind will eventually be found.