This is for Your "Health and Safety"

Why undefined slogans erode health freedom, autonomy, and opportunity.

“We are doing this for your health and safety.”

Talk about a scary statement coming from a person in politcal power.

What does this even mean?

Politicians, governors (WA, CA, OR are especially stuck on this phrase), and public agencies use this as their why for every health policy that seems ridiculous on paper and traumatic if actually carried out.

But what does it actually mean? Undefined words and phrases are meaningless to the critical thinker.

For me, health doesn’t mean more insurance premiums, more doctor appointments, or more access to injectable foreign objects.

I define health as:

I wake up with strength, have access to real food, the capacity to cook my own meals, the ability and space to get in a great workout.

The endurance to run a mile under six minutes, or play soccer with my kids. It means I can sleep peacefully, not reliant on medications, and carry my body with vitality into old age.

All these measures manifest when I am taking personal responsibility for how I spend my time, energy, and money. There is no medical intervention that can offer me this state of living.

And safety?

I define safety as:

Freedom to make my own choices about food, drink, and medical interventions for myself and my children—without the threat of losing a job, finances, or basic human rights.

It means that if I offer my educated or personally experienced opinion in a public space, I can be confident that governmental agencies will be supportive of my right to have a voice.

It means that if my kids drink water from a school water fountain, I don’t have to worry about city officials pumping a drug like fluoride into the water supply or excess concentrations of pharmaceutical or known cancer promoting agents in it.

However, what I am finding is that when leaders use the phrase “health and safety,” they usually mean something else.

They mean collective control: mandates, rules, and definitions written as if we all share the same genes, the same risks, the same needs and the same understanding of what health and safety looks like.

Health is individual.

And when government policies remove freedom and choice, they don’t just reshape healthcare—they undermine the ability of the individual to experience “health” on their own terms.

I remind my patients over and over when facing a big medical decision (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, experimental drug) that only they, will have to live in their body. Their doctor go home at the end of the day and will likely forget about their health dilemma.

So, when everybody is expected to receive the same medical intervention across the board, “health and safety” for the individual, seems to be on the chopping block.

What is the risk vs benefit ratio for the particular intervention on the table for you?

Whether it’s mandating experimental injections, fluoride in the water supply, or vitamin D, the needs of individual humans vary.

Right now we have a war between a multitude of factions all saying they are “following the science” for our “health and safety.”

So how do we decide who to fall in line with?

The real test is this: does a policy empower me with more personal accountability and personal power for my health, or does it take it away?

If my health trajectory is being taken out of my hands and put into faceless agencies, I am not following the science those agencies are promoting (even if it is the WHO or CDC). They may have all the good intention in the world, but only I will have to live in my body.

I am getting behind, even if the science isn’t completely settled (it rarely is) those politicians and public health policies that promote personal health autonomy and ease of getting my hands on real food.

True healthcare outside of acute emergency interventions, rests on the simplest foundation:

• Support the body’s innate capacity to heal rather than usurping it

• Do not trade acute benefit for chronic illness down the road

• Promote personal responsibility for one’s health trajectory

There are too many fingers in the money jar to make blanket undefined statements like, “we are doing this for your health and safety.” This phrase sounds more like an agenda, than it does individual or community health empowerment.

What is “health and safety” to you?