MIM Notes 194      September 15, 1999

Pseudo-science promotes religion: Study shows bankruptcy of 
Amerikan health research

by MC53

A pseudo-scientist at Duke University studied the health of people 
65 and older, and recently concluded: "attending religious 
services may be as big a factor in increasing longevity as 
refraining from smoking cigarettes."(1) Science under the control 
of the bourgeoisie only serves to prolong the death of 
imperialism. With half a million people in the U.$. dying as a 
result of smoking-related illnesses each year,(3) bourgeois 
science thinks encouraging people to attend prayer services is a 
worthwhile endeavor.

Promoting genuflecting bolsters support for imperialism, as many 
religious ideologies justify exploitation of the majority for the 
benefit of the minority. Mysticism also encourages the masses to 
look toward salvation in a mythical afterlife instead of 
struggling against real imperialist slaughter and surplus value 
extraction. MIM encourages readers to take up materialist analysis 
to critically examine bourgeois claims. All progressive people 
should study successful systematic solutions to health problems, 
and work toward an end to the most pernicious source of death in 
the world: imperialism.

Researchers studied the health of 4,000 u.$. citizens over age 65. 
The study reports a 46% lower chance of death during the six-year 
study for respondents attending religious services.(1) Yet because 
the Duke study did not control for increased activity as a result 
of attending any social function, it cannot even answer whether 
senior citizens would achieve the same longevity benefits from 
attending a college class.

Most people in Amerika have generous resources for survival. Their 
parasitic consumption levels have led to more overweight, inactive 
and sedentary people. The majority is distanced from the 
production process and engages in little or no regular physical 
activity. They are left scouring for diet pills, stomach-stapling 
surgeries and now, religious services to keep them from exploding 
in Amerika's chocolate factory.

Revolutionary China cut a better path to longevity

During the revolutionary period of the People's Republic of China, 
the government and masses emphasized social solutions to health 
problems. High death rates, preventable illnesses, malnutrition 
and other health problems were treated not with mysticism, but 
with proletarian science and struggle. As a result, the life 
expectancy in China was higher than in the united snakes during 
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution(GPCR).(2) Participation 
in building socialism continued into old age. The elderly were 
respected as persons fully capable of working in production and in 
community development.

The experiences of revolutionary China show that productive social 
interaction, physical activity, and participation in social 
development can keep individuals healthy and alive for more 
years.(2) Religious activity may be social and it may keep older 
people more in touch with others, but it does nothing to help them 
contribute to society. People with mental illnesses in 
revolutionary China also received much more respect than they do 
in Amerika. The mentally ill were not drugged and locked in 
prisons as they are in Amerika. Individuals and their local 
communities worked together and helped individuals with mental 
illnesses to develop skills and to better integrate into society. 
Dealings with both the mentally ill and the elderly in China from 
1949-1976 reflected a deep understanding that for all people, deep 
involvement in productive social life is the best preventive and 
therapeutic medicine.

Without anti-religious coercion, the reactionary notion that the 
masses must attend religious services was crushed during Chinese 
liberation. The Chinese Communist Party led the people to 
understand that religious services and ceremonies were a way for 
landlords and religious leaders to extract more wealth from the 
toiling masses. Religious leaders and landlords would demand 
payment for god to help bring in good harvests, cure illnesses or 
sustain life. The peasants recognized and eradicated such 
exploitative ruses.(5) 

Despite its feudal legacy and imperialist war, China made huge 
strides in popular health care. It increased its hospital bed 
capacity by 800% between liberation in 1949 and 1965.(2) Because 
of the enormous population relative to medical resources, the 
Chinese trained doctors, nurses, barefoot doctors and other 
medical technicians to meet the masses' needs. This is the 
opposite of a "trickle down" approach, in which doctors spend six 
years studying something obscure such as the effects of religious 
ceremonies on people over 60 and then go on to work with only the 
elite population that can afford their specialty services. 
Instead, research, medical training, medical system organization, 
and distribution of care were conducted for the purpose of 
improving the living standard of the majority.

During the GPCR, Mao led the masses to fight against elitism and 
reactionary science through advancement of science for the service 
of the masses. The Chinese people emphasized treatment through 
collective help, self-reliance, drug therapy (traditional and 
modern), acupuncture, "heart to heart" talks, follow-up care, 
community ethos, productive labor, the teachings of Chairperson 
Mao, and revolutionary optimism. During the midst of the GPCR, 
infant death rates of oppressed nationals in New York city were 
more than twice the rate in Shanghai. Infant mortality in Shanghai 
was one-third lower than the rate for whites in New York city.(2)

Individualist approach to medicine is a failure

In typical Amerikan style, the Duke study directs its attention to 
longevity as a result of individual, as opposed to systematic, 
improvements. In the next study we could expect the imperialist 
scientists to conclude that if people in the Third World "get 
religion," the problems of u.$. military expeditions, 
exploitation, natural resource robbery, inadequate medical 
attention and other effects of imperialism will evaporate. But 
u.$. economic practices reveal the falsity of this approach.

In the united snakes, indigenous nations have the highest rates of 
smoking and smoking-related deaths. The Amerikan rate of smoking-
related deaths is among the highest in the world according to the 
American Cancer Society -- though health statistics in 
imperialist-dominated countries are inadequate. Between 1986 and 
1997 the united snakes increased tobacco exports from about $2.1 
billion to $4.9 billion.(4) Exports to Japan have increased nine-
times, and exports doubled to the former Soviet states. As Amerika 
exports its cancer rates for profit, it promotes anti-scientific 
understanding.

In an embarrassment of science under capitalism, a study separate 
from the Duke one has reported that several types of physical and 
social activity promote health and long life. This second study 
includes social, physical and productive activities (such as 
volunteer community work) as life-extenders for older people. It 
also draws more correct attention to the role of stimulation and a 
sense of purpose in life as important factors in physical well-
being.(6) In the name of individualism, both of these studies can 
be funded, and both can no doubt spawn future research positions 
studying more details of the same initial questions. This is 
because private academic research thinks in terms of promoting 
individual health -- so attending a religious service and 
volunteering at a home for runaway kids are weighted equally as 
means to improve the individual's life.

MIM encourages scientists to learn from the advances of the masses 
made under proletarian dictatorship. We need researchers to expose 
the myths of the bourgeoisie. We need medical technicians to 
create better health care for the masses. Those who are interested 
in promoting proletarian health care but do not have medical 
skills, are welcome to support MIM in resuscitating Serve the 
People healthcare programs like those established by the Black 
Panther Party and Young Lords Party. Already, prisoners we work 
with have taken an interest in developing health-related campaigns 
for those under lock and key.

Mao said that the art of the old society should be kept as an 
educational tool for future generations during the GPCR. The same 
would be true of such non-sensible pseudo-scientific reporting. 
Just as people would now scoff at cures through alchemy, the 
future generations of proletarians will learn how bourgeois 
science heralded mysticism to bolster imperialism in the 20th 
century. The difference is that the alchemists did not know 
better. Now, we have the lessons of the Chinese people under the 
leadership of the communists to learn from.

Notes:
1. New York Times, "Paths to a Higher Plane and Longer Life." 17 
August 1999, p. D9.
2. Victor and Ruth Sidel, Serve the People: Observations on 
Medicine in the People's Republic of China. Boston: Beacon Press, 
1973. (Available from MIM Distributors for $13)
3. American Cancer Society website: http://www.cancer.org.
4. http://www.cancer.org/statistics/cff99/tobacco.html#export
5. See Fanshen by William Hinton for useful accounts of peasant 
struggles against reactionary religious, feudal and imperialist 
exploiters. (Available from MIM for $20)
6. New York Times 24 August 1999. Science Times.