More drivel about non-communicable diseases

The World Health Organisation's war on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) has always been a quixotic project. When it set its ridiculous and unachievable targets in 2012, I suggested that it was an excuse for a 'prohibitionist’s charter'...

If 194 countries really have signed this quasi-treaty, you can expect to hear much more about our ‘legal obligations’ to control eating, drinking, smoking and - the mind boggles - ‘physical activity’ for many years to come. You may recall last year’s charming article from Jonathan Waxman in The Times titled ‘To avoid cancer, let the State dictate your diet’, which was itself based on the claim that lifestyles cause 40 per cent of cancer. That is only the start and it is, of course, why the puritans, bureaucrats, nannies and headbangers of public health are so keen on the idea of ‘non-communicable diseases’, because it gives them what every trigger-happy army general wants: a war without end.

It is the conceit that anyone, let alone the WHO, can 'beat NCDs' that most annoys me. The only alternatives to death from a non-communicable disease are death from a communicable disease, violence, overdose or suicide. Fifteen million people die from the one of the latter every year, mostly at a relatively young age, but it is those who die from a non-communicable disease, mostly at an older age, that concern the WHO.

I argued in Killjoys that the WHO should not be wasting its limited resources campaigning against diseases of old age in rich countries when people are dying from easily preventable infectious disease in the developing world. Some people hoped that appointing an African as Director-General of the WHO would put the organisation back on course, but instead he is ramping up the rhetoric. Take this ridiculous tweet, for example...

Imagine if an epidemic threatened to kill 41 million people every year.

It’s already happening. This year. Last year. Next year, too.

Noncommunicable diseases are the 🌍's biggest killers.

That’s why this year in #UNGA we are joining forces to #BeatNCDspic.twitter.com/mDdk6w2plL

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) September 17, 2018

It's only a matter of time before he starts telling us how many jumbo jets this equates to. I enjoyed this response...

Imagine if one disease killed 41 million people a year.

It does! It's called "a wide range of multiple diseases, including many linked directly to aging"!

I wholeheartedly support medical research and funding, but this is an awful analogy.

— Murphy (@MurphyAlter) September 18, 2018

This is all part of the build up to a big WHO conference in New York next week which will see the 'NCD Alliance' call for taxes on sugary drinks to stop people dying in their beds at the age of 99. See my Spectator post from May for more on this surreal crusade.