[Confessing doubt]

The author expresses doubts about the messages some health educators try to put across. For instance they tend to take a positive attitude founded on the concept of health as opposed to the negative one based on disease. Such an attitude entails the risk of becoming intolerant to sickness and therefore to the sick. There have been historical examples of this. Moreover, it is useless for health educators to influence the behaviour of adolescents by stressing risk factors associated with disease since youngsters feel that to take risks is one way of asserting themselves.