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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19751

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Greenhalgh T.
Beware cloth devils.
BMJ 2000 8;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127742/?tool=pubmed


Abstract:

My son wanted to know why the cloth devils in the butter were going to get only Grandma, not the rest of us. Initially, I couldn’t work out what he was on about.
The cloth devils were apparently already in Grandma. She hadn’t always had them—they had got into her from the food, because she hadn’t checked it properly. Whenever she came to see us she looked in the fridge to see if there were any devils there.
The Indians at the local curry house had them, so we couldn’t get a takeaway when Grandma was staying. The devils inside her were quite bad, but the ones in the food were even worse and could make her very ill. He had often heard me ask her how bad her cloth devils were this week.
I was still puzzled, and beginning to be offended on my mother’s behalf.
Of all the family members to be infiltrated with evil, Grandma, an upstanding member of her local Methodist church, is probably the least likely contender.
But my son was adamant. When we went out for a meal with Grandma, he reminded me, we usually chose the restaurant that had symbols on the menu that meant No Cloth Devils. Why would the symbols be there if the devils were all in his head? The penny dropped. The symbols were for the low cholesterol options.
There is, I think, more to this misconception than the need for me to wash out my kids’ ears.
Cloth devils made sense to my son not just because “devils” rhymes with “levels” but because the malapropism reflects the linguistic and cultural undertones of society’s reaction to risk factors for disease.
The same subconscious moral reaction occurs when someone we know reveals that they have diabetes, high blood pressure, or even a minor abnormality in a cervical smear.
As my son was trying to explain, if you have been identified as “at risk,” you become bad inside and different from normal people.
It’s partly your own fault, because you weren’t careful enough, and you will generally need to make up for it by foregoing pleasures and privileges from now on.
The rest of us, who are morally better, can carry on as normal.

 

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