I just read this story:

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/soft-drink-addict-william-kennewell-loses-all-his-teeth-at-the-age-of-25/story-fneuzkvr-1226570295887?from=igoogle+gadget+compact+news_rss

Basically this 25 year old man reckons he became “addicted” to soft drinks and would drink 7 to 8 litres a day because he worked in the hotel industry and had easy access to it.
His teeth rotted so badly he got blood poisoning. He had them all removed and replaced with dentures.

It astounds me that someone so utterly moronic is still alive by the age of 25.
It seems that without a mother to tell him not to drink too much crap and brush his teeth every day his whole life just falls apart…?

Could this sort of thing be part of the obesity epidemic? People simply needed a surrogate mum to smack them on the wrist and tell them not to be naughty?
Is self control really that hard to a skill to learn?

Oz self control and common sense are dieing art forms, that's why fatty foods have a health warning on them now days.

And personal responsibility too it seems.

I honestly love a government that regulates things sensibly:
- Restricts gun and explosives ownership so it's less likely that some fool will hurt me or those I love and care about.
- Regulates banks so they don't damage the economy and make everyone's life shit.
- Regulates food companies so they don't put stuff in food that makes us go blind or mutates babies.
- Regulates petrochemical companies so they don't pollute the environment so the rest of us don't spend our lives paying for the cleanup and healthcare costs just so some cheap CEO could cut 5% from their outgoing costs and not take care of their own shit.
- laws against harming animals, children, spouses, of course.

But when it comes to things that are personal responsibility and involve self control that should be down to the individual.
It's really one of the things where it's needed that we foster a culture of personal responsibility and self reliance for things that we really do have personal control over. Fitness drives and healthy eating just aren't going to cut it because it deal with the symptoms not the causes. It doesn't matter much what you eat as long as it's not to excess and you use most of the energy that you consume. It's not hard.
Need for exersise, when it comes to health is often a sign of failure (obviously not always)- you are consuming more energy than you need and so need to find another way to get rid of it, and/or you are less active/too lazy, than you should be.

perhaps he should have done some of the following…
visited a dentist regularly.
brushed his teeth.
flossed.
used mouth wash.
even with that amount of consumption taking care of his teeth would have made them last considerably longer.
Perhaps he should sue his parents for not teaching him to take care of himself. XD

He could sue the education ministry for failing to properly educate him regarding proper dental hygeine.

In the US without government healthcare a dentist visited the school's health class and we all got toothpaste and a toothbrush as little kids. Then that fee for service dental check-up every six months because my parents watched public service spots by the American Dental Association. Proctor-Gamble proposed to the ADA and US government to put up the PSA's so they could sell more of their product (Crest tooth-paste) They also provided the tooth brushes and sample toothpaste to the schools and dentists so they could sell more of their product.

Capitalism at its best, no nanny state needed.

Bravo- in Australia it's exactly the same, except government sponsored.

Education on a subject doesn't always teach you self control though.
I talked to a friend at work about this and it turns out the guy who had my position before me used to drink that same amount of soft drink daily. She said once he had to be rushed from work for an emergency operation because of it… apparently his urine had crystallised or something and he needed an operation to remove objects from his bladder area.

Everything in moderation is a very important aspect of individual responsibility. And one can teach and preach and yell and admonish but the lesson will still not be learned. There's indivdual responsiblity and then there's just plain stupid. Give this guy a Darwin runner-up award (because he didn't die, just lost his teeth)

As time goes on, the probability that every stupid deed imaginable will actually be done approaches 1.

Guys, self control is something that can be affected by a myriad of variables that have nothing to do with cleverness or the will to do well by your body.

For one thing, there's the issue of depression. A depressed individual will not have healthy self control, or any self control. That's part of what it means to be depressed, you give up trying to stay in control of your life. In such states the jump to an addiction or any unhealthy behavior is extremely easy, and it has nothing to do with intelligence or even awareness of a problem. So that's one factor you need to keep in mind before you condemn as irredeemable a person that finds themselves in such a predicament. In today's society, getting depressed is easy; keeping yourself from becoming so is the tough task. And that's not the individual's fault, but society's. We can discuss that if you like :)

Another thing is awareness of impact or effect. It doesn't follow that excessive soda consumption will cause urine to crystallize or change metabolism rhythms or cause extreme nerve irritability (all of these have been known to be effects). It doesn't even follow that it will cause teeth decay. People need to be aware of the causation relationships first to be held responsible and this fellow apparently had very poor education- just mentioning that he had to be told the standard number of adult teeth to notice he had ten less is indicative of his basic education level.

I don't agree that there isn't at least some familial and state responsibility. This guy is 25, but clearly nobody taught him to take care of his teeth when he was 5, when these habits develop, nor when he was 10, or 12, or 15 or 18. I expect he wasn't told how to take care of himself either, so there goes prevention out the window. The family (parents) were supposed to teach him these things, so they bear a big brunt of the responsibility for his poor personal hygiene habits, and they were supposed to raise him educated. That's what it means to be a bare bones decent parent. On the other hand, the state is there to ensure the citizens (no matter how moronic) don't die of the plague because they don't know how to keep themselves clean. Social services, for when this kid was a minor, were responsible for this if the parents were incompetent.

What I mean to say is that we are being brainwashed to always blame the individual for everything, and nobody else, and when mentioning of the state's responsibilities, be accused of wanting a nanny state (btw, only dictatorships are nanny states. Bad nun nanny states. Liberal states are there to provide amenities and shortcuts to a better, easier life, and keep making it better and easier). Or having the parents blame the children as if everything comes packaged into the kid's gene code.
I agree that there is needed moderation in everything- therefore of course we consider the existent responsibility of the individual, but we should not, cannot close our eyes to the responsibilities of every other variable that brought about this result.

It's all the dude's fault, plain and simple. It even says right there in the article that he ignored his dentsts' warnings (plural) about the damage he was doing to himself. Seriously, I don't see that there's much anyone could have done for him. I don't believe for a minute that his parents and teachers didn't teach him basic hygiene, and anyway it's not society's job to make sure a grown man brushes his teeth and wipes himself. There still are some things you DO need to take personal responsibility for.

No surprise, I'm sure, but I'm not a huge fan of most regulations. They basically just give more unnecessary power to bureaucrats who have no real interest whatsoever in whether they're truly helping. The power to regulate usually translates to a power to extort, because they can choose where and against whom to enforce things, based on who's giving them more money and more votes. It might work out better in practice if people weren't, well, people! At any rate, if they're planning to put warning labels on soft drinks, they'd better put them on juices as well, because orange juice will rot your teeth just as fast as most soft drinks will!

Well, what you believe or don't believe at this point has little to do with objective evaluation, and passing judgment on the word of a single article without any further data, pretty much means you are passing judgment on a lot of arbitrary indications and personal assumptions than an actual evaluation of the particular case.
That said I think the subject's pretty much exhausted. The guy clearly has responsibility for what happened to him, but how he ended up so incapable of looking out for his own health and self is a whole different can of worms that cannot be opened with this article as the only can opener, assuming the goal is to stop this from happening again rather than just point and laugh and feel superior in intelligence to the particular person. That's all there is to it.

How lucky we are that you're here to tell us when our discussions are over!

I think Ozone was using this colorful story to segway into a broader discussion on personal responsibility, and I think there's still plenty of room for people to contribute their thoughts, opinions, and zany anecdotes.

(though as light as the forum traffic's been, I wouldn't hold my breath on it!)

The most successful school of therapy is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. One aspect is learning how to control ones' impulses through cognition. Being aware of circumstances and results of actions as well as the false feelings that lead to depression and the resulting impulses. Postive versus negative self-talk as well as being aware that drinking gallons of sugarery beverages will rot your teeth.

It is situational awareness. This is who I am, this is what I'm doing and the eventual results of my current actions are not good for me. I have control over that so I can change my thoughts and self-talk and stop drinking sugarery beverages before my urine crystalizes and my teeth rot. Cognition. It works for those of us with severe biologically based depression. There is no denying that there are other circumstances that influence belief systems and behavior but you have control over how you let them affect you. My hideous childhood happened and I feel very negative about my self and abilities but that is a false assumption and destructive behavior does not help me cope with that. There are better ways to cope that do not involve self-destructive behavior like addiction to beverages or drugs or what have you.

There is one consideration that he only lost his teeth and not his liver from alcohol poisoning.

This can even be taken a step farther by accepting the humanity of one's body and it's reactions and knowing it will do what it will do and not letting that affect one's mood or choices. This in part is Dialyectical Behavioral Therapy and sounds a lot like Taoism and Buddhism which it is. I'm still a work in process with that.

Or all those therapists, psychologists and social workers are wrong but study after study says they ain't.

There are lots of good mental health solutions for people with these kinds of conditions, but the problem is how do you get them to seek help? Like, with the guy in the article, it wasn't a matter of adequate physical and mental health facilities not being available; he just wasn't taking advantage of them. He wasn't listening to his dentists, he didn't seek help for his sugar addiction, he didn't (so far as I can tell) maintain his personal hygiene properly. There's no helping people like that. It's that tired old saying, “you can bring a horse to water…”

Yunno, they've actually looked at cloned cattle in herds and noticed that even though they're all genetically identical, they still develop different personalities and behavior patterns. That really tells you a lot. Identical DNA, identical surroundings, different personality traits. Even under those kinds of circumstances, the animals will have different experiences, with people, with predators, with each other, which ends up shaping them differently.

When we talk about people being “shaped by their environment,” that means literally every single external factor impacting that person from cradle to grave, and you just can't account for that, or use it as an excuse to “blame society.” Too much of it is just plain random. You end up in an absurd reductionist argument that boils down to saying nothing is anyone's fault, because they didn't choose to be born. (and sadly, I've heard some very intelligent people make exactly that argument)

El Cid wrote:
You end up in an absurd reductionist argument that boils down to saying nothing is anyone's fault, because they didn't choose to be born.

Obviously one was born or one wouldn't be here to make any argument therefore it's a moot point. Also the choice of being born is an unknown because no one is aware of any existence before birth so again the point is moot. The person is using nonsense to avoid the debate because they have nothing of substance to offer in opposition and dare not admit they were in error.

Never not debate a fool, they are too ignorant to know they're wrong and too stubburn to admit it.

An important part of CBT is situational awareness so one has to be aware of something wrong and seek help. Need education for that or at least simple knowledge of when something is fucked up.


Is it supposed to burn this much when I pee? No. go to the doctor and get checked out and get some Penicillan.
Am I supposed to feel like I was just kicked in the balls all the time? No, you have a hernia
Am I supposed to be gushing blood from my forefinger? I changed X-acto blades on my hobby knife and cut myself.
Are my teeth supposed to be rotting? No, brush them regularly and get a dental check-up

Can't lead a horse to water? Sure you can if it knows it's thirsty. Horses are stupid but not that stupid. Wake-up your life is calling.