What makes people ill? By illness I mean such things as colds, flu, allergies etc. and not conditions you are born with or serious diseases such as AIDS, cancer etc. I believe that such illnesses, although possibly triggered by bacteria or viruses, are actually caused by a combination of diet, drugs, exercise (namely lack of) and state of mind. I used to be an asthma sufferer as a child and was also very unfit, with the result that I used to get little colds and asthma attacks etc. But I got up off my fat ass and I exercised dare I say religiously. And do I get asthma now? Is the sky green?
Also what bugs me is the sheer number of diseases and disorders that have been invented in recent years to justify people's behaviour and to absolve them of responsibility for their actions. And it seems to me people use any illness and the smallest excuse to be absent from work, and this surely proves that by far the majority of people are in the wrong job.

More on drugs: the problem with taking them to combat disease is that the body itself is a mass of chemicals, so by adding more you are upsetting the balance. Also, drugs tend to not be very specific, they just whack everything on the head, including some bacteria which are useful, and so can also suppress the body's own defences, which means you become reliant on the drug next time you become ill. This will be quite soon, as your body's defences are weakened. When penicillin and other drugs first appeared it was thought that ailments such as colds would soon be completely eliminated, but doctors have started dishing out antibiotics for the mildest infection when there's really nothing wrong with the person. Unfortunately the combination of this with the fact that drugs remain resident in the body long after taking them is that bacteria have become resistant. This means that next time you become ill you have to take more drugs to have the same effect, and ultimately the drugs will cease to have any effect at all. The result is that people are forced to take more and more drugs that don't work, for illnesses that they keep getting because their own bodies cannot cope. And while they deal with the side effects (which are sometimes almost worse than the disease), the drugs companies stand on the sidelines laughing maniacally and at the same time raking it in.

Why is it that nobody ever has anything bad to say about someone who dies? OK, so it's a time for grieving, and the truth may be inappropriate, but this is no excuse for bare-faced lying. If the person was a lousy good-for-nothing old goat, then say so. Take Princess Diana for instance, now I'd be the last one to call her a lousy good-for-nothing old goat. Oh I dunno though. But seriously, everyone goes on about how wonderful and almost Christ-like she was, but she also had bad points, which I shall not go into. But by dying she has become a legend. Still it's always the way isn't it? Think of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Jimi Hendrix, for whom death brought immortality. It brings to mind Gore Vidal's words on hearing of Truman Capote's death: "Good career move".

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