Denial that the conditions of life are relevant to health has been their main theme, from the eugenics movement to the current fraudulent information about vi ra l diseases. According to the doctrine of natural selection, changes in organisms occur randomly, and environmental conditions allow some of those random variants to thrive, while it eliminates the unfit individuals. This ideology justified sterilization or euthanasia of those judged to be unfit, and it has used state power to suppress, not only the Lamarckian epigenetic idea that better conditions could be assimilated by the organism and its descendants, but also many of the efforts to eliminate disease by improving nutrition and eliminating poverty. -RP