On a purely statistical views of health, the health of a bodily system is its functioning near the average or median. This leads to the absurd conclusions in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”: we should push those who are above average closer to the average.
A better view is Bourse’s semi-statistical view on which non-statistical facts determine the direction in which functioning counts as better and the direction in which it counts as worse, and then one says that the health of the system is its functioning either better than average/median or sufficiently close to the average/median.
The semi-statistical view has the following curious consequence. A government program to promote exercise if successful in significantly improving cardiac function in a sufficiently large number of participants and thereby raising the average/median is apt to make some non-participants who would otherwise have been marginal with respect to cardiac function fall below the norm. Thus, some non-participants are literally sickened by the program, and non-consensually so.
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