Adult chronic disease and childhood obesity: a life course approach in developing countries?

based the class struggle on domination, the second did it on exploitation. In my work, I don't deal with either theme. I relate the health inequalities that we find in our societies to the different forms of class power, without relating it to exploitation or domination, showing, for example, that countries that are worker friendly (like those governed by the Social Democratic Tradition) have better health indicators than countries governed by capitalist class friendly parties like the US. Marx has had an enormous influence on Western Europe (particularly in continental Europe) where I come from, and I am gratified that my work has been enriched by that tradition. In that respect, I am pleased to be endowed with that tradition. But that is not the point. I will be glad to be defined in these terms when other authors are identified by the traditions that have influenced them. But, the use of that term in the US is not descriptive; it is used to show specific adversity. I find it, therefore, abusive and offensive to the extreme when the term Marxism is always used to define my work in the US (rarely is my name cited without putting the name Marxism before it). That practice translates to ignorance or malice since it aims at stigmatizing and marginalizing any critical tradition. I also find abusive that in a tradition where class is practically non-existent, those who continue labouring on that front are called class reductionists, which ignores the extensive work that many of us have done in other areas as well, such as race and gender. When SS–MW write that class analysis is inadequate, they do not mean it is insufficient (which I would agree with), but rather that it is wrong. That is the meaning of their reply, which fits in with their intent of promoting their social capital work, work that aims at providing an alternative to the critical thinking that has substituted it. A final note to the introductory remarks by the co-editor of the International Journal of Epidemiology, Shah Ebrahim, 5 to my comments to SS–MW when he psychoanalyses me by explaining that my critical comments to the piece by SS–MW (that he refers to in extremely laudatory terms) are due to my supposed anger (he assumes that I am incensed) with the author for not replying to my criticism of social capital made in a previous …