Prevention is the highest form of healing. Drugs and surgery have their place in the holy art of healing, but the need to resort to invasive treatment must also be regarded as a failure in prevention. God is saying here that He is preventing disease. Since, in preventing disease, we are emulating God, prevention is the highest form of healing. Physicians do not usually discuss lifestyle changes with their patients.
Prevention is on the back burner, and someone has to get burnt to get treated.
Our secular society deems it reasonable to pay tens of thousands of dollars for coronary bypass surgery but unreasonable to pay a few dollars for prevention. Nutrition is the primary determinant of health and the backbone of preventive medicine. Nutritional management should also play an important role in the treatment of disease. In this regard, a vegetarian diet, the ideal diet from medical, ethical, and Torah standpoints, should be offered, with various modifications, to every patient. Physicians themselves should be vegetarians, not only to serve as exemplars to their patients but also to develop and reinforce a respect for the sanctity of all life and a desire to prevent suffering in the world.