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∂AILScience↓1515 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.↓Washington D.C. 20005∞

To the Editor:

	Bruce R. Zimmerman in his letter (10 Mar., p. 1026) comes
close to saying that people whose illnesses result from smoking,
failure to exercise, or eating a lot deserve them.
At a give level of medical technology, there may be no other
way of avoiding certain diseases than changing one's life style.
However, the campaign to get people to change their life styles
has acquired harmful moralistic overtones.  For example, lines of
research that would, for example, permit a person to eat what he
pleases or smoke if he pleases and still be healthy may be neglected.

	It is the duty of medicine to tell us the medical consequences of
of different behaviors, but it is also its duty to develop, if it can,
ways of preserving people's health, whatever life style they may
choose.

.sgn