ABSTRACT
The typical tragedy goes from a hopeful situation to a disastrous ending. Public health should work in the opposite direction, starting with a bad event and moving towards a happy outcome, such as when the forces causing disease and suffering are overcome. This idea of looking at public health as a tragedy in reverse may help us to understand what has happened during the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis from a public health practitioner’s viewpoint. There are close similarities between public health and tragedies: both are about human endeavor, human weakness, and human suffering; both are public performances which are intended for audiences-and in modern times would not be funded without an audience; both are artificial, in the sense of being manmade, and yet both usually are influenced by natural forces; both are a subtle mixture of randomness (“luck”), and of inevitability (“fate” in tragedies, natural laws in medical science).
