A man who passed his medical in 1996 with flying colours has four diseases today, and not one number in his body has changed. Blood pressure 135/85. Cholesterol 210. Fasting blood sugar 105. BMI of 26. In 1996 that was a clean bill of health and a handshake. Today the same man, with the same blood, is hypertensive, has high cholesterol, is prediabetic and overweight. Four diagnoses, and he never caught a thing. 1997: the line for diabetes drops from 140 to 126. 1.7 million new diabetics by morning. 1997: high blood pressure drops from 160/100 to 140/90. 13 million new patients. 1998: high cholesterol drops from 240 to 200. 42 million new patients. 1998: overweight drops from a BMI of 27 to 25. 29 million people go to bed normal and wake up with a weight problem. 2003: prediabetes is widened from 110 to 100. It now covers 98 million Americans, more than 1 adult in 3, for a condition the World Health Organization declines to call by that name. 2017: blood pressure again, down to 130/80. Another 31 million. Nearly half the adults in America are hypertensive. When the cholesterol targets were tightened again in 2004, eight of the nine men who wrote them had been paid by companies that make statins. No germ. No outbreak. No change in a single artery. Just a room, a vote, and a tablet waiting on the far side of every line. In every other branch of medicine you have to get ill to become a patient. In this one they bring the disease to you. The last healthy people are the ones who haven't been tested yet.

University debate, "Were humans built to eat meat?", same two chairs, same clock. Vegan: "Anatomically we're closer to the gorilla than the lion. Flat molars, long gut. A gentle plant-eater with delusions." Paleoanthropologist: "Then explain the acid." Vegan: "Which acid?" Paleoanthropologist: "Your stomach runs at a pH of about 1.5. A lion's sits nearer 3.6. Yours is stronger than the animal you've just been contrasted with, by a factor of about a hundred." Vegan: "Stomach acid digests food." Paleoanthropologist: "A cow's rumen sits at about 6.5. That's a compost heap with a pulse. Yours strips the zinc off a coin. Why would a gentle plant-eater carry that?" Vegan: "Protection." Paleoanthropologist: "From what? Lettuce doesn't fight back." Vegan: "Bacteria." Paleoanthropologist: "Which bacteria live in a leaf at a level that needs a pH of 1.5? Name the salad." Vegan: "..." Paleoanthropologist: "The animals that run acid as low as ours are the scavengers. Vultures. Things that arrive at a carcass on the second day and need to kill what's already living in it. We're not built like the lion. We're built like the bird that waits for the lion to finish." Vegan: "Flattering." Paleoanthropologist: "It's a picture of a species with a rock, a sharp flake and no claws. You don't get the fresh kill. You get the femur nobody could open, forty hours late, and you'd better have the acid for it." Vegan: "Acid that strong is dangerous. Look how many people are on tablets for it." Paleoanthropologist: "The only animal on earth that pays to switch its stomach off. You've spent sixty years pouring cereal onto a carcass digester and now you're medicating the digester for doing its job." Vegan: "So your argument is that we're vultures." Paleoanthropologist: "My argument is a number. Yours is a feeling about gorillas. The gorilla eats for most of the day and its gut is a fermentation tank. Yours is done in a few hours and runs on acid. One of you is designed for leaves." Moderator: "Thirty seconds." Paleoanthropologist: "She can keep them. I'm still waiting on the salad."