There is of course a major difference between the intellectual groundwork of the eighteenth century and that of the twenty-first: Our predecessors proceeded from an assumption of human helplessness in the face of a judgmental and all-powerful God who could swoop down and kill tens of thousands at will, while today’s assumption is one of almost unlimited human power. We can, or think we can, understand the causes of disease in cellular and chemical terms, so we should be able to avoid it by following the rules laid down by medical science: avoiding tobacco, exercising, undergoing routine
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