The health gap: the challenge of an unequal world

In Aldous Huxley’s dystopia, Brave New World, there were fi ve castes. The Alphas and Betas were allowed to develop normally. The Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons were treated with chemicals to arrest their development intellectually and physically, progressively more aff ected from Gamma to Epsilon. The result: a neatly stratifi ed society with intellectual function, and physical development, correlated with caste. That was satire, wasn’t it? We would never, surely, tolerate a state of aff airs that stratifi ed people, then made it harder for the lower orders, but helped the higher orders, to reach their full potential. Were we to fi nd a chemical in the water, or in food, that was damaging children’s growth and…