Inverse and Positive Care Laws

[摘要] FLORENCE Nightingale once wrote that, ‘What we get into scrapes for is not for saying what nobody believes and everybody says, but for saying what everybody believes but nobody says’.1 With similar thoughts in 1970, I wondered if there might be some simple and memorable phrase that might provoke more thought about what everyone knew but nobody said, for example, that communities most in need of good care were least likely to get it. Everyone remembered Newton's Inverse Square Law — at least that it existed, if not what it said. So perhaps they might remember an Inverse Care Law,2 and even do something to get rid of it, for it was not a law of nature, but of our particular human society where civilisation was subordinated to market economy.

[学科分类] 卫生学