It is unusual to see a tendentious article ("A disease, not a defect," June 1) asserting that a behavior, addiction, should be understood as a medical disease or illness caused by "physiology and biochemistry" without providing evidence of that cause. All the author, Dr. Lee Tannenbaum, provides are speculative pathological correlates.
A behavior is not a disease, as illustrated in psychologist Jeffrey Schaler's work, "Addiction is a Choice," and elsewhere. Nowhere in Dr. Tannenbaum's piece does he prove that the "cravings" of the "diseased" addicts to which he refers are "insatiable." He merely cites people who find quitting difficult, and it is. Smoking is seen as an addictive disease, yet millions have stopped when scared by the occurrence of heart disease or cancer.
The good addiction doctor makes the hoary false analogy to diabetes, heart disease and cancer which are authentic diseases, not a metaphorical ones defined by self-destructive behavior. Unfortunately, such behaviors are sometimes amenable only to persuasion, if that.
Dr. Tannenbaum's argument provides the rhetorical excuse for irresponsible people to begin and continue to engage in drugs and alcohol abuse because they are "ill."
Richard E. Vatz, Towson