The British Medical Association finds dissent "unacceptable"

Extraordinary, but maybe not so extraordinary coming from the British Medical Association...

A retired GP has been suspended from the BMA Welsh Council until 2014 after he questioned the evidence behind the BMA's campaign to ban smoking in vehicles on BBC Radio.

Dr Brendan O'Reilly, a retired GP, has also had his BMA membership suspended until he provides ‘an acceptable written apology' to four named BMA members, including Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of the BMA science and ethics committee.

In a hearing held yesterday a BMA Council panel said they considered Dr O'Reilly's language when describing his opposition to the BMA's use of statistics on the risks of passive smoking in cars as 'unacceptable'.

How I hate that word 'unacceptable'. Like 'inappropriate', it is used by the prim and the passive aggressive to silence anyone who disagrees with them. What I wouldn't give to see these overpaid, sanctimonious quacks knocked off their high horse. Bear in mind that the "evidence" O'Reilly was criticising was later retracted by the BMA for being a complete fiction.

In its determination, the BMA admitted it did, at a later stage, have to publicly revise some of the data in its briefing paper Smoking in Vehicles. But it said Dr O'Reilly's use of the term manipulation was ‘detrimental to the honour and interest of the BMA'.

Well, tough. How detrimental to public discourse has the BMA's repeated manipulation (sue me) of statistics been over the years?

The panel also said it found ‘unacceptable'...

That word again.

...a comparison made by Dr O'Reilly between ‘the statement of Dr Vivienne Nathanson and the dossier that allegedly led to the Iraq War'.

Ha ha! Nice one Dr O'Reilly. Do we have to wait for every GP to retire before they tell the truth in public? Both documents were deeply misleading and factually incorrect pieces of propaganda designed to instigate wrong-headed public policy. Sounds like a fair comparison to me.

But Dr O'Reilly said he was being ‘harangued' by the BMA for simply expressing a difference of opinion.

They've been doing it for years.

‘BMA members should be able to debate differences in opinion without being threatened or harangued for doing so,' he added. ‘There is a massive issue here about free speech.'

That argument may have cut some ice when Dr O'Reilly started practising all those decades ago, but the BMA today has zero interest in free speech, or any other kind of freedom for that matter.

I would rather join the International Pederasts Society than join this vile group of messianic medics, but if by some bizarre misfortune I found myself involved with the BMA I would consider it a badge of honour to be suspended for speaking the truth. Furthermore, I would pray for expulsion in every waking hour of my gardening leave. So well done, Dr O'Reilly. Don't let the bastards grind you down. If anything is unacceptable, it is this jumped up trade union. If they were capable of shame, they should be ashamed of the way they have treated you. They are, alas, not.

My special t-shirts are still available by the way...

Taking Liberties has the full story about this episode which seems to date back to November last year.

Speaking of organisations which shamelessly lie to the public, the FDA has completely abandoned science and should be shut down.

UPDATE

Michael Siegel adds his two cents...

Readers of the Rest of the Story will recognize that Dr. O'Reilly's experience in being expelled from the BMA is similar to my own experience. I was expelled from a number of tobacco control list-serves for expressing dissenting opinions. Interestingly, the opinions which most directly led to my expulsions were also criticisms of exaggerated facts about secondhand smoke.

It appears that secondhand smoke claims are a sacred sacrament in the tobacco control movement and that you absolutely can't criticize them. Doing so represents heresy and you must be ex-communicated from the movement on the spot.

Share

Tweet

A shove is not a nudge

A mere five weeks after it happened, Michael Bloomberg's ban on large sodas has attracted the attention of Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian, who thinks it's all a fuss over nothing because the corporations are more powerful than the politicians, man.

The money that Coke spends on advertising and sponsorship surely shape that architecture far more powerfully than anything Bloomberg could ever do.

Er, no. Bloomberg can have the police bust a place and arrest its owner for selling a drink, just like he has the police arrest bar-owners who allow their patrons to smoke. Coca-Cola, by contrast, can put up adverts trying to persuade people to drink their drink. Corporate advertising and state power are in no way commensurate. As big a corporation as Coca-Cola is, its executives do not have the power to caution, fine, arrest and jail citizens on a whim. Bloomberg does, and by God does he use it.

But the reason for this post is not to rake over the coals of Bloomberg's latest piece of draconia (summary: people with principles hate it, everyone else either admires it or doesn't care). It is because Burkeman has committed one of my pet peeves and got Nudge wrong. He is hardly alone in this—many libertarians fear the book because they find it sinister while many, er, 'liberals' like it because they see it as a cute word for illiberalism—but Burkeman is unusual in that he actually seems to have read it and still misrepresents it.

...it makes no sense to see Bloomberg's policy as an incursion on anyone's liberty. The proposal is a classic example of a "nudge", as defined by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler in their famous book of that name. It doesn't stop you guzzling as much Coke as you like, but it modifies your "choice architecture" – the context in which you decide how much Coke to guzzle – so as to guide you towards the healthier option. Likewise, as Sunstein and Thaler explain, you can transform the dietary choices of school pupils by making salads slightly easier to reach for than fries; nobody's deprived of their right to fries. You can transform savings habits with bank accounts that move a portion of wages into a separate account unless the user opts out.

To see this intrinsically as a restriction on liberty is to misunderstand "choice architecture"...

I wonder who has really misunderstood "choice architecture"? Burkeman or the guy who invented the term?

Oliver Burkeman has offered a sort-of mea culpa here and here.

Later in the year I'll be speaking a Spiked event where I'll be defending Nudge from this kind of thing. Details to follow in a few weeks.

You can read my review of Nudge here. And this was my experience when I appeared on the Moral Maze talking about Nudge in 2010. Everyone got the book wrong then too, except one of the other guests, a certain Richard Thaler.

Share

Tweet

Dr Aseem Malhotra: Still clueless

Won't someone please think of the children?

You may recall Aseem Malhotra from his numerous ill-informed articles on the subject of obesity. On the last occasion we met him, he managed to attribute every single death from heart disease, cancer and diabetes to diet—a special schoolboy error that managed to get by the Guardian's sub-editor.

Undeterred, Dr Malhotra will be appearing on Newsnight this evening calling for 'junk food' and alcohol companies to be banned from sponsoring the Olympics. As an hors d'oeuvre, the BBC has given him an editorial pulpit from which to spout his views online.

And the song remains the same...

The scale of obesity and diet-related disease around the world is alarming. According to the United Nations, diet-related diseases such heart disease, diabetes and cancer pose the greatest global threat to our health; contributing to a staggering 35 million deaths per year, dwarfing the six to eight million smoking-related deaths each year.

As I said in April, it is disingenuous—indeed it is plain wrong—to suggest that those 35 million deaths are caused by diet, let alone by 'junk food'.

35 million is the total number of deaths caused by "obesity, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cancer, and diabetes" worldwide, representing 60% of all deaths every year globally. In other words, he has combined the total number of deaths attributable to the diseases of old age and defined them as 'diet-related'. It is true that they can be diet related - just as they can be related to a number of other factors - but that hardly justifies presenting the bald statistic as if all these deaths could all be prevented by modifying diet, let alone drawing the conclusion that 'junk food' is more dangerous than smoking. Doing so suggests either appalling ignorance or a degree of mendacity.

And let's see how that obesity "epidemic" has led to a surge in heart disease in the UK over the last forty years...

Terrifying stuff.

He continues...

In Britain, one in three children are either overweight or obese by the age of nine, with six out of 10 adults in the same category.

Without effective intervention this figure could affect 90% of the UK population by 2050...

Every prediction about obesity has been wildly wrong and the "90%" prediction—which is only endorsed by a few quacks on the fringes of the debate—will be no different.

...and cost the NHS and the tax payer £45bn a year.

Like many a campaigning medic, Malhotra does not understand the difference between social costs and financial costs, nor can he grasp the difference between private and public costs (see also Sarah Wollaston).

For what it's worth, the study he is referring to claimed that obesity would cost the NHS, and therefore the taxpayer, £6.5 billion a year by 2050. A sizable sum, but a fraction of what Malhotra is claiming, and certainly not enough to cripple the NHS as we know it.

Unless we get a grip of this public health emergency I believe it will cripple the NHS as we know it.

Furthermore, as I explained at length in The Wages of Sin Taxes, such calculations never take into account financial benefits. With obesity, as with smoking, premature mortality results in net savings to the taxpayer. That is not a reason to encourage it, but it is a reason not to claim there are negative externalities which require urgent action from the collective. But since Malhotra thinks 90% of taxpayers will be overweight or obese by 2050, they could hardly be called externalities anyway.

So what is the biggest culprit?

More and more evidence is emerging that it is sugars, more specifically High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS), which is added to almost all processed food.

Oh dear. Yes, there are some people in America who think that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is somehow worse (more fattening) than normal sugar. It is certainly true that the amount of HFCS in American foods has increased greatly in recent decades thanks to a "near insane system of subsidy". But in Europe we don't use HFCS very much at all, partly because we don't subsidise it and partly because the European Union sets strict quotas on the amount that is allowed to be imported. HFCS makes up less than 2% of the EU's sugar consumption.

Anyone who blames HFCS for Europe's obesity "epidemic" is regurgitating things they heard from the American media and shouldn't be taken seriously. As Tim Worstall pointed out recently when a Guardian writer made a similar claim, they simply don't know what they're talking about...

People are mixing and matching the US and not US experience. Evidence in one place is being used as evidence in the other. But the two experiences are entirely different.

The US has indeed been swamped with High Fructose Corn Syrup: HFCS (actually, sod all to do with the corn industry, it’s the cane and sugar beet industry which maintains the import barriers to the much cheaper world supplies of cane sugar). The rest of the world hasn’t. So almost all of the US panicking about HFCS simply does not apply to the rest of the world.

So where did Malhotra pick up his theories from? Step forward our old friend Robert Lustig...

Earlier this year, paediatric endocrinologist Dr Robert Lustig published a paper in Nature stating that sugar consumption has trebled worldwide in the past 50 years...

However, as was noted at the time, the world's population has more than doubled in the past 50 years and countless millions have been lifted out of poverty, so a trebling in sugar production is neither amazing nor scary.

...and is so damaging to our health that it should be regulated like alcohol.

See here and here for my thoughts about Dr Lustig and his peculiar theories.

As a cardiologist I treat heart disease on a daily basis.

Well you would, you wouldn't you?

Of course the Olympic sponsors cannot be held accountable for Britain's poor health, but their connection with the Games sends a dreadful message.

If they can't be held responsible for Britain's "poor" health (which has never been better, but anyway...), then why does it send a dreadful message? If these companies and their non-existent High Fructose Corn Syrup are not making us fat then there can be no justification at all for restricting their freedom of speech. But clearly you do blame them, so why so tongue-tied? Worried about getting sued?

In the context of an obesity epidemic I find it obscene that the Olympics chooses to associate itself with fast food, sugary drinks, chocolate and alcohol.

Tough luck, sonny. Society has no interest in what you find obscene. The Olympics is a spectator sport. Watching it is an entirely sedentary experience. I have never understood the argument that people who watch sportsmen have to live up to some ideal of physical fitness and nutrition themselves. How did this ridiculous notion take hold?

Labour shadow minister for public health Diane Abbott, whose constituency is in East London close to the Olympic village, is equally scathing:

"I think it's quite shocking that McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Cadbury's, and Heineken are the main food sponsors," she says.

You're seriously quoting Diane Abbot to me?! I'm no more interested in what she finds shocking than I am in what you find obscene, but if I'm going to be lectured on nutrition I'd rather it wasn't by a woman who weighs about twenty stone. Still, it's good to be reminded of what Labour's ban addicts would be doing if they were still in power.

I also believe it is wrong for sporting role models to endorse junk food such as sugary drinks, chocolate and crisps. Of particular concern is the negative impact this has on our children.

You look after your children, Malhotra, and I'll look after mine. In the meantime, I refer you to Grandad's Law...

The first person to mention “the children” in an attempt to sway public opinion has lost their case.

He continues...

And it is naive and ignorant of sports men and women to blame obesity on lack of physical activity.

I encourage the health benefits of regular exercise, but this is not the solution in tackling obesity.

Really? Because that's not what the World Health Organisation thinks:

What causes obesity and overweight?

The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. Globally, there has been:

- an increased intake of energy-dense foods that are high in fat, salt and sugars but low in vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients; and

- a decrease in physical activity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation, and increasing urbanization.

The only reason medics like Malhotra dismiss the importance of physical inactivity is that they have not yet found a way to ban it.

It is time for regulation that has an impact.

A ban on firms such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola from sponsoring major sporting events and the prohibition on the use of celebrities to sell unhealthy food and drink to children would be a good start.

But only the start, eh, Malhotra?

Only the start.

UPDATE:

Malhotra's Newsnight report was even worse than the above article implied. You can watch it here.

Share

Tweet

Not going very well, then?

"I smeared my opponents, bribed the press to be on my side, and threatened to torture the electorate if we lost. I fail to see what more a decent politician could have done. "

— Pitt the Even Younger (Blackadder III)

The government has spent a fortune on billboards trying to persuade us. The Department of Health has engaged in a year-long crusade to push the policy in every corner of the media. Its sock puppets have been out on the street trying to sign people up.

And yet the plain packaging consultation has still not provided the mandate the government wants. So what next?

Over to Anne Milton, the Public Health Minister...

"The Government has been asked to provide more time for people to respond to the consultation. We want to maximise the opportunity that people have to provide their views and evidence. The Government is, therefore, extending the consultation period for an extra month. The new closing date of the consultation is Friday, 10 August 2012."

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Who has "asked"the government to give them more time? Not the Hands Off Our Packs lobby, that's for sure. I wonder if this hasty decision has anything to do with 30,000 retailers putting their names to the NO campaign? Or 34 Conservative MPs writing to Andrew Lansley to express their concerns about the policy? Or 90 per cent of policemen saying that plain packaging would help the illicit trade?

"The Government has an entirely open mind on standardised packaging"

Excuse me while spill my pint, but if the government had an open mind it wouldn't be spending many hundreds of thousands of pounds of our money promoting the policy, would it?

What a Mickey Mouse country this is. Still, it gives you all the more time to tell them to swivel.

Share

Tweet

Do your own blogging...

...in which I look at all the stories I've been meaning to write about and finally admit that I never will. So instead, here are some webpages that caught my eye last month with some very brief comments. You do the rest.

From the New York Times, an admission that decades of anti-salt propaganda has been based on pathetically little evidence:

“You can say without any shadow of a doubt,” as I was told then by Drummond Rennie, an editor for The Journal of the American Medical Association, that the authorities pushing the eat-less-salt message had “made a commitment to salt education that goes way beyond the scientific facts.”

Still, where's the harm in telling people to eat less salt?

With nearly everyone focused on the supposed benefits of salt restriction, little research was done to look at the potential dangers. But four years ago, Italian researchers began publishing the results from a series of clinical trials, all of which reported that, among patients with heart failure, reducing salt consumption increased the risk of death. Those trials have been followed by a slew of studies suggesting that reducing sodium to anything like what government policy refers to as a “safe upper limit” is likely to do more harm than good.

Oops! And what do you suppose the anti-salt lobby resort to when their hypothesis is questioned?

Proponents of the eat-less-salt campaign tend to deal with this contradictory evidence by implying that anyone raising it is a shill for the food industry and doesn’t care about saving lives. An N.I.H. administrator told me back in 1998 that to publicly question the science on salt was to play into the hands of the industry. “As long as there are things in the media that say the salt controversy continues,” he said, “they win.”

Sound familiar?

In the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, former BMJ editor Dr Richard Smith and colleagues make the obvious, but rarely acknowledged, point that maybe—just maybe—people in public health have ideological and political goals which makes them a teensy-weensy bit biased. An interesting article and one which mentions public choice theory, so hurrah for that.

Our message is simple: we must recognize that we are all conflicted and declare accordingly. A view of the world that sees employees of private for-profit companies as conflicted and doctors, or employees of public or academic bodies, as not, is naïve, potentially deceptive and likely to distort reader response to new information.

Meanwhile, a study has found that, contrary to popular belief, smoking and drinking do not affect male fertility.

Smoking and drinking has 'little effect' on sperm counts

Lifestyle advice given to tackle male infertility may be futile and could delay other options, according to researchers in the UK.

Their study in the journal Human Reproduction said smoking, alcohol consumption and being obese did not affect semen quality.

It's a good job we waited for some empirical evidence before sticking dodgy warnings on cigarette packs, eh?

What? We didn't? Oh well.

Down in New Zealand, a man has been caught growing tobacco worth $2 million. And this is the country that wants to go for all-out tobacco prohibition by 2025? Hey, what could go wrong?

On the related issue of counterfeit cigarettes, ASH Scotland's lie-fest continues with this particularly ill-informed and dangerous remark...

The Transcrime report argues that ‘counterfeit tobacco products have been proved to cause even more serious damage to human health’ than legal cigarettes. This is simply not true, indeed research by the Canadian government has concluded that contraband tobacco poses the same risk of harmful health effects as legal cigarettes.

Utter nonsense, as the briefest fact-checking reveals. These ASH cretins really need to be stopped before they cause any more damage. F2C Scotland has more on this.

In California, Prop 29 has been defeated. It would have added an extra dollar to the price of a pack of cigarettes. In an extraordinarily close contest, it was finally rejected. This was a very interesting outcome as it shows that a large proportion of nonsmokers are prepared to vote against what appeared to be a free ride. The money raised was supposedly earmarked for cancer research, but it seems that Californians realised that what this really meant was that Stanton Glantz and his cronies would be given untold millions to add to their already lavishly funded tobakko kontrol programmes and decided that the dollars would be better kept in the pockets of taxpayers.

Stanton Glantz himself accepted the verdict with good grace and commended the electorate on its collective wisdom. I'm joking of course. He blamed it all on the tobacco industry and the media. He was particularly angry about the LA Times, which approves of higher tobacco taxes but disagrees with giving hundreds of millions of dollars to UCSF to research seventh-hand smoke. Glantz was so lost for words that he started making them up.

The LA Times perseveration reminds me of a kid who knows they did something wrong and is coming up with constantly changing explanations for why.

I guess it's too much for a University professor to know a word like 'perseverance'.

Speaking of the LA Times, here is another of those 'treat food like tobacco' opinion pieces...

Over the last few months, we’ve weighed in on how best to curb the growing obesity problem in this country: peer pressure, educating kids, banning sugary drinks, going retro. Perhaps the solution is simpler than we think. Identify the enemy (sugar, corn) and kill it. Stop eating it, stop subsidizing it, stop promoting it. In fact, slap warning labels on processed foods and put 'em in the same category as tobacco, so that at least consumers will know that microwaveable low-fat creamed corn isn't the good idea they think it is.

And speaking of California, the Golden State has found something else to ban: foie gras...

It is the kind of furtive atmosphere that might have been found in 1920s speakeasies as miscreants knocked back homemade liquor.

But this is California almost a century later – and this time it is not drinkers who are being driven underground, but subversive gourmets who cannot live without a quick fix of foie gras.

From July 1 the golden state will be the first in the US to outlaw this controversial delicacy, made from the livers of specially fattened ducks, but enthusiasts are not letting it go without a fight.

They have dubbed the ban "foie-mageddon" and a final stand has been launched in the form of secret last minute dinner parties.

It's hard not to agree with this gentleman...

"I think in California they just love to ban everything. If someone looks like they're having more fun than them, they'll ban it. I'm going to have to go to Las Vegas or Reno in future."

Over in Alberta, Canada, it looks like the tobacco control snake-oil still isn't working...

Youth smoking on the rise in Alberta, Stats Can says

More young Albertans are taking up the smoking habit, Alberta Health said in its annual report released Thursday, particularly those aged 20 to 24.

While the smoking rate for that age group declined between 2003 and 2009, it started to trend upward in 2010.

Alberta brought in a tobacco display ban in July 2008. This is hardly the first time a rise in youth smoking has occurred after displays are banned — see page 31 of The Dark Market (PDF).

And finally, after it was revealed that the Causeway Cannibal was not on 'bath salts'—or any other strong street drug or legal high—there are questions that need answering.

"There is no doubt in anybody's mind the guy was on something or he was totally insane," Aguilar said Wednesday.

Clue: he was totally insane. But that isn't good enough for some folk...

Although toxicology tests searched for many known drugs and compounds, Aguilar said further investigation may be warranted. "My guess is that this is a drug they don't know the compounds of yet," he said.

Yeah, that'll be it. Don't let science get in the way of your insupportable hunch.

Share

Tweet

These aren't real cigarettes

You can see the plain pack campaign's latest use of your tax money in the video below. In addition to treading on Marks and Spencers' intellectual property, it portrays a series of cigarette brands which do not exist and have never existed.






These state-funded shysters presumably think that the public will be more outraged if they believe that cigarettes are sold under such names as 'Rebellion' and 'Allure', rather than actual brands such as 'Lambert and Butler', 'Marlboro' and 'Benson and Hedges'. To compound the deceit, they have sexed up the packs by giving them health warnings which are half the actual size and by not showing the mandatory graphic images at all.

As the public consultation on this risible policy draws to a close, it is fitting that a campaign based on shoddy evidence and innuendo has descended into outright fabrication.

It ends on July 10th. Make sure you give nanny a slap in the face by responding here or here before then. Ta.

Share

Tweet

The smoking ban is wonderful, says the BBC

On the fifth anniversary of the English smoking ban it is fitting that the two media outlets which did the most to campaign for the ban have published pieces saying how marvellous it's been. The Guardian produced theirs yesterday and today the Beeb has got in on the action.

The BBC's article begins with some outrageous whoppers from Amanda Sandford of the state-funded 'charity' ASH:

"When it started people wondered why we'd waited so long to do it."

I don't remember anyone saying that, but then I didn't work at ASH headquarters at the time.

"Non-smokers always found it unpleasant breathing in other people's smoke."

Some do, some don't. In my experience, most don't care.

"It is one of the most important public health acts in the last century."

A ridiculous statement that reveals an appalling ignorance of medical science and health legislation since 1912. The smoking ban did not lead to a fall in the smoking rate, nor did it help reduce any of the maladies that are claimed to be linked to secondhand smoke. It was always a question of preference rather than health, combined with a failed attempt to coerce smokers into quitting. At best, it pleased some of those nonsmokers who don't like the smell of tobacco smoke, but it has displeased many nonsmokers—such as the Pub Curmudgeon—who lament the closure of thousands of boozers.

The ban was popular with British adults when it was implemented - and a recent poll of more than 12,000 people found that 78% of adults still support it.

Fine. Let's have a smoking ban in 78% of pubs then. Landlords would kill for a smoking license.

We then move onto Linda Bauld of the state-funded Tobacco Control Research Group who wangled the job of assessing the smoking ban for the Department of Health despite having no relevant qualifications in the fields of health, economics or statistics (she is a professor of socio-management, whatever that is).

Prof Bauld's report concluded: "The law has had a significant impact."

"Results show benefits for health, changes in attitudes and behaviour and no clear adverse impact on the hospitality industry."

No clear adverse impact on the hospitality industry. Truly, these people have no shame.

The BBC then parrots the usual tripe about heart attack miracles (discussed in the previous post). All ancient history, but there is one new piece of sophistry added into the mix. The article concedes that "there is no evidence as yet that smokers have given up smoking in huge numbers because of the legislation", but...

While overall levels of smoking among adults in Great Britain remained constant at 21% between 2007 and 2009, the north east of England saw a different trend.

There, the smokefree ban proved to be a trigger for some adults to quit with the largest drop in smoking in England - from 29% in 2005 to 27% in 2007 and down to 21% by 2011.

What's this - the 'Newcastle miracle'? By what magical process was the smoking ban a "trigger" to quit in that region of the country, but not elsewhere?

Now, I'm no Carol Vorderman, but if the national smoking rate did not fall between 2007 and 2009 (and it didn't) and the north east smoking rate fell substantially, then the smoking rate in some other parts of the country must have risen. Are we to assume that in these places the smoking ban acted as a "trigger" for people to start smoking? I think we should be told.

Or is this just another example of the type of cherry-picking and post hoc ergo propter hoc logic that has defined all attempts at rationalising the most draconian, counterproductive and illiberal piece of legislation in living memory?


UPDATE

How did I miss this from the Guardian (via Tim Worstall)? The slippery slope argument made explicitly and shamelessly. After applauding the smoking ban, the newspaper looks to the future...

But the next campaign for better public health is in a different league. Alcohol and obesity – what we eat and how much we drink – these are the stuff of our very souls. From warning of the public implications of personal actions to changing the actions themselves, The campaigners have to cross a boundary more contentious than any they have overcome before. They have to tackle problems linked with poverty without swelling the populist clamour against the poor. They have to frame a debate about the health implications of overeating and problem drinking that doesn't dwell only on a cost-benefit analysis on behalf of the NHS. And they have to do it when most people think Whitehall, far from knowing best, knows little of real life at all. So the complexities of public health are being devolved to local government and the food and drinks industries' own sense of responsibility. It will not be enough. And it must not take 60 years to get it right.

As the first person to comment on the editorial says...

So all the people warning first they'll come for your fags, then they'll come for your booze weren't wrong.

One more time for the world...

We did try to warn you.

Share

Tweet