Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The Medicalisation of Life
Sir: David Martin Jones (September 2020) writes splendidly of “the medicalisation of life”, with particular attention to plagues and pandemics from the late middle ages to the present. He correctly states that after 1945 WHO programs “reinforced the authority of science and the medicalisation of life”.
However, the roots of the medicalisation of life are not simply the plagues and pandemics. In 1946 the WHO moved the goalposts, defining “health” as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. So, health is defined in terms of “well-being”, which is taken to mean the absence of distress and the experience of a little flourishing.
Formalising this definition of “health” was benevolent, but mistaken. Now, everybody who loses at the races (or similar real-world experience) has a well-being issue, that is, a health issue, and accordingly they can expect help from doctors, nurses and…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
