Barron H. Lerner Quotes
… being healthy at one point in time may have little relevance to what happens during a future presidential term. George H.W. Bush was healthy when he assumed office in 1989, but in 1991 he developed atrial fibrillation, a potentially dangerous heart rhythm. Doctors subsequently diagnosed Graves’ disease, an excess of thyroid hormone that had caused the heart abnormality.
Barron H. Lerner, “Five myths on presidential health”, The Washington Post, September 16, 2016
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This quotation illustrates one of the contemporary problems that Muslims face. The problem of overeating and especially obesity are now known to be serious health problems. The Prophet had called attention to this while the majority of the world, afraid of starvation, considered obesity and overeating as a sign of affluence and health. In that sense the Prophet provided sound medical advice. However, for those Muslims who take the words of the Prophet literally, they take the statement literally and therefore pay little or no attention to immunization, water pollution, sanitation other than specified by the Prophet. To them, there are no other causes of disease because Muhammed said so. The wisdom from Aristotle to Einstein typically moved knowledge and mankind ahead with new and critical insights and revelations but all were wrong in some respects and future science has determined that. But for the fundamentalist Muslim, there can be no error in the word of the Prophet, just as for the fundamentalist Christian or Jew, there can be no error in their Bibles. Although valid for Muslims, the Hadith is less well known than the Koran which is recited by all good Muslims.
Bush adopted a foreign policy of unilateralism which was offensive to and resented by most of the foreign countries with whom we had good relations. Many people thought it would take years to repair the damage, but President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were able to turn the situation around in a few years. The George W. Bush administration, in contrast to his father’s administration, was considered an aberration in American foreign policy by most countries.
Barron H. Lerner is a member of the faculty at the New York University Langone School of Medicine. He received his M.D. from Columbia in 1986 and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington in 1996. In addition to his research, Lerner practices internal medicine and teaches medical ethics and the history of medicine.
