Favoring fitness …

GILBERT MEILAENDER'S complaints about a "Fitness fixation" (Oct. 16) indeed make the point that physical conditioning and health concerns can be exaggerated to create another division of humanity--between the Fit and the Unfit. That being said, the suggestion that healthy lifestyles should not be promoted seems wildly off the mark. It would seem incontrovertible that unhealthy lifestyles and choices unnecessarily burden individual lives, health care institutions and society in general. I doubt that a medical educator like Richard Gunderman would disagree. Two other figures whom Meilaender quotes--Joseph Addison, who resigned due to ill health and died at age 47, and G. K. Chesterton, whose body mass approached that of Jackie Gleason--were hardly experts on public health.

Jim Burke

Spokane, Wash.

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