Certainly individuals can be held to primary responsibility for their own health, IMO. That includes taking precautions against disease (since so many are now understood in some measure, and avoidable), and taking measures that tend to promote, not worsen health. Example, eating plenty of fiber, getting adequate (even if painful) exercise, as opposed to ingesting large amounts of alcohol or using tobacco.

Remi:(quoted):"Language is a clear advantage, but no one is born with language."

I am not so sure of that. I have a 20 years or so old Scientific American publication about language and writing (that I keep in the car and read snippets of) that suggests that all infants have an inborn structural tendency toward a grammatical logic that is like "baby talk" or the various pidgin versions of English, Spanish, etc.

Sage answered to the same paragraph:"Says the human. Bears do learn language, just not as sophisticated and efficient as yourself. However, I have yet to see a bear that when introduced to a new bear couldn't understand what the other bear tried to convey to him. In this way, perhaps bears have the upper paw?"

Certainly animals have instincts, and even humans have rather strong but not infallible instincts to even do something complex, like merging of the sexes and doing things that tend to reproduce themselves. :-)))>

Anyway, even when following instincts and poorly understood motivations, I believe that humans, in line with/along with B.F. Skinner-ian principles of behavior should be reinforced when they do good behavior and not be rewarded for their bad behavior.

The welfare states, IMO encourage one parent families, and that is overall detrimental to individuals, f'rinstance. Picking up the tab on an abortion does tend to take the sting out of "accidentally" getting pregnant (instinct overpowers?), and it is going the wrong way as far as how we would like people to manage their lives more rationally and self-reliantly.