Sam Harris has a new article on a science of morality at the Huffington Post. There’s a lot there, but one observation in particular snagged my attention.

I wonder if there is anyone on earth who would be tempted to attack the philosophical underpinnings of medicine with questions like: “What about all the people who don’t share your goal of avoiding disease and early death? Who is to say that living a long life free of pain and debilitating illness is ‘healthy’?

Wonder no more! There is indeed. There is the anthropologist Frederique Apffel Marglin, who once wrote* that

In absolutely negativizing disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific