I guess this guy's full of shit too. :roll:
JEFFREY A. SCHALER
Silver Spring
The writer was chairman of the Montgomery County Drug Abuse Advisory Council.Schaler, J.A. (1988, October 25). Alcoholism is not a disease.
The Washington Post, Letters to the Editor, p. A26.
It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives recently voted to overrule a Veterans Administration policy calling alcoholism ''willful misconduct'' [''House Votes to Restore Benefits to Alcoholic Veterans,'' Oct. 18].
Contrary to the claim that this is an important victory for all recovering alcoholics, it is first and foremost a victory for the alcoholism treatment industry and a defeat for scientific medicine. Ironically, on April 20, 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the bible of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). AA is one of the strongest proponents of the disease model of alcoholism. The court upheld the authority of the VA to define alcoholism as the result of ''willful misconduct.'' And as The Big Book says: ... the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than in his body."
Although Justice Byron R. White, writing for the majority, said that the court was not deciding ''whether alcoholism is a disease whose course its victims cannot control,'' he also noted that there was ''a substantial body of medical literature that even contests the proposition that alcoholism is a disease, much less that it is a disease for which the victim bears no responsibility.''
A person does not will the onset of diabetes, hypertension, the presence of a malignant tumor. Here it would be wrong to assign responsibility for the disease. This is not the case with an alcoholic or drug addict. A person both enters and exits usage through an act of will.
Since the word addiction is defined as a volitional act and the relationship between the mind and the body is unknown, it is inaccurate to state with certainty that alcoholism is a disease. The mind can't be sick.
Many disease model spokespersons are recovered alcoholics and have an emotional investment in viewing themselves as helpless to their own behaviors. A majority of these people are seriously lacking in scientific backgrounds. They say scientific validity ''interferes with the process'' of helping people who need help and claim special qualification to help others.They perceive any challenge to the disease concept as ''a challenge to the validity of their own emotional ordeal and conversion to sobriety.''
The treatment industry also has a substantial economic investment in maintaining the disease concept. As long as alcoholism is considered a disease, medical insurance pays for treating it.
Is the disease model of alcoholism scientific? No. Simply calling behavior a disease process does not make it one, even if doing so assists in creating sobriety. Is the treatment policy based on bad science? Yes. Is there any chance that this attitude will change in the near future? Bloody unlikely.
Innocence implies the ability to restrain from the initiation of aggression, and to question those who don't.
http://www.MisesRomania.org' target='_new'>Sorin Cucerai