Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991 TAG: 9104150249
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They suffered the pricks and then waited, along with a few hundred-thousand viewers, to find out their results.
Perky Paula was the clear winner, with a number well below 200. Poor ol' hapless Harry, though, registered up there in heart-attack country. He looked positively stricken when the numbers were announced, as embarrassed as if he'd wet his pants on air. Perky Paula looked away and tried to assume nonchalance.
For the rest of that morning's show, and for several days thereafter, Harry was harangued re: cholesterol. Perky Paula revealed that she runs a few miles every day; couldn't Harry do that, too? She reminded Harry how much he loves Danish pastry; wouldn't he sometimes prefer plain yogurt? She crossed and re-crossed her shapely legs while she interviewed physicians on fatty abuses and diet.
It was all poor Harry could do to continue holding his head up.
It was all I could do to keep from phoning the network and threatening perky Paula with super-deluxe, extra-cheese, all-meat pizzas, delivered on the half-hour, every half-hour, for the rest of her smug little low-fat life.
Doesn't anyone in this nation remember that good health is as much a gift as it is an achievement? Doesn't anyone remember that there are some questions it isn't polite to ask?
Let's call up CBS and demand to have Harry and Paula weighed on air. Would perky Paula like that? Let's demand to know their shoe sizes, their underwear sizes, their blood types, the results of a few upper GIs. Do Harry and Paula still have their tonsils, their appendixes, their gall bladders, all their natural teeth? Does cancer run in their families? How about insanity?
Humans suffer a multitude of maladies, and a great many of these maladies occur through no fault of the victim - or anyone else. Certainly, none of us is to be blamed for our genes, and, so far at least, none of us can fix our genes, either. Certainly. none of us should be made to feel shame for the way our bodies are made.
And yet, the very same folks who would never embarrass a blind man or a woman with multiple sclerosis find nothing wrong in expressing prurient, competitive and condescending interest in others' cholesterol. "What's your cholesterol level?" now seems as common an opening line as "What's your sign?" once was.
Of course, I know that high cholesterol can be controlled and treated in ways that blindness and MS cannot. But I also None of us is to be blamed for our genes, and, so far at least, none of us can fix our genes, either. know, as should everyone else, that cholesterol levels cannot be "fixed" in all humans.
More to the point, personal health is a personal matter. Each of us has to choose which achievements to stress in our lives. I think the right to choose Danish pastry is equal to the right to choose plain yogurt. I think we each have a right to choose how much we'll let our health control us, too.
So, can't we please stop talking obsessively about other people's cholesterol? Can't we talk about something else?
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB