Abstract
To the Editor.— I oppose the suggestion by Mr Seessel 1 that JAMA readers write to their senators and representatives requesting that the willful misconduct label be removed from alcoholism as I believe the Supreme Court's decision on April 20 was a good one. The fact that the Court relied heavily on the writings of University of California philosophy professor Herbert Fingarette's book Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease is a strength, not the weakness intimated by Mr Seessel. Simply calling alcoholism a disease does not make it one, even if it assists in creating sobriety. Advocates of the disease model of alcoholism love to use diabetes as a metaphor to describe the behavior of an alcoholic. The analogy is not reciprocal. A diabetic is not like an alcoholic. A person does not will the onset of diabetes, essential hypertension, or the presence or absence of a
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