Via PharmaTimes | EU to probe pharma over “false pandemic”, this deserves a longer post:
The WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,” according to Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, chairman the PACE Health Committee, who introduced the parliamentary motion. “The definition of an alarming pandemic must not be under the influence of drug-sellers,” he adds.
Is this really the best way to secure public health?
Via Late cancer diagnosis kills 10,000 a year according to government tsar | Society | The Guardian, another tragedy:
Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.
Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week. The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.
We need to set clinical professionals free to look systematically at these problems and deal with them, which is surely why they went into medicine in the first place.
The CPS on the health quangos: Recommended reading: “Freedom for Public Services”
The problems caused by the withdrawal of services from Wycombe Hospital are becoming very real:
TWO women gave birth in the back of an ambulance because of changes at Wycombe Hospital – leading them to warn that lives are at risk.
via Hospital cuts: babies born in back of ambulances (From Bucks Free Press).
Today, I attended the NHS Buckinghamshire overview and scrutiny meeting and I now look forward to a number of follow-up discussions.
Via Plans for swingeing hospital cuts as NHS on brink of ‘Armageddon’ – Telegraph:
Health service managers warned of an “Armageddon scenario” facing NHS finances as they draw up secret plans for swingeing hospital cuts.
Senior officials have set “aggressive” targets to reduce the number of patients referred to specialists, or treated in Accident and Emergency departments, while GPs will be asked to cut down on the amount of time spent in consultations.
The plans are being issued as senior managers warned that the NHS is about to face the greatest financial pressures since its inception.
They fear that when the current spending round ends in 2011, the impact of an anticipated real terms freeze or cuts – coming as the demands on the NHS of an ageing population increases – will be devastating.
Right now, my stepfather is terminally ill with lung cancer. I spent last week with him and Mum. This gave the opportunity for several conversations with NHS, Marie Curie and Macmillan nurses. They already know services are on the brink and that substantial, frankly unacceptable cuts in front line services are planned. For example, one of the home nursing services will be reduced to telephone support.
The money has run out. Too much money is being spent on management. Too much emphasis has been placed on degree qualification for nurses, a feature which experienced and very good nurses know would have excluded them.
Each of the nurses with whom I spoke wants to see NHS reform. In each case, I recommended Nurses for Reform.
The BMA demand a resort to force:
A total ban on alcohol advertising must be introduced by the Government to halt an epidemic of problem drinking, doctors’ leaders said today.
A report from the British Medical Association (BMA) has called for a sea change in the approach to alcohol regulation to halt promotions including happy hours and sponsorship of music and sports events.
The move is necessary to stem the invidious ways it is promoted, particularly to young people, it said.
via Doctors demand ban on all alcohol advertising – Times Online.
There are who knows how many possible bad decisions in life; are we to resort to force to avert each one? Would anyone disagree with the assertion that over-consumption of alcohol is not only harmful in itself but leads to behaviour with harmful consequences? Of course people should drink in moderation — but where does the path of all-round compulsion lead? What else shall we protect people from?
What matters if we are to have a good society — a free and open society — is what lies within us: our values and beliefs, our thoughts and ideas, our emotions. This constant resort to compulsion will not deliver a healthy, happy society. It will create a destructive cycle of resentment, harmful actions and exhortation. Enough.
It is time for a change of heart. It is time for personal responsibility and freely-made good choices. That means letting people carry the consequences of their actions and punishing them when they trespass on the liberties of others. It means the government getting out of the education system permanently so that teachers can get on with delivering a good education to the satisfaction of parents. Maybe where parents and teachers do not know what good choices look like, special action will be unavoidable, but that is possible without resorting to the total state.
Via Dizzy Thinks: Grow up you morons, a rather unfortunate title:
Sadly, unlike what’s going on in USA right now, the structure and delivery of healthcare services is not even a matter for discussion in the UK anymore. Instead, the snobbish and arrogant British superiority complex rears its head, and stupidly deems that the structure we have is the best possible. Bland, meaningless and nonsense statements about it being the “envy of the world” are rolled out, and the debate is simplified down to “spending more money is good, spending less is bad”.
Essentially we have an infantile level of debate on the subject in the UK, and hilariously we have the balls to start trying to preach to a country on the other side of the Atlantic about how wonderful our system is and how terribly evil theirs’ is? Frankly, it’s pathetic. On one side we have a system being caricatured and used as a political football, whilst on the other we have panty wetting screaming and shouting about how terribly unfair the caricature is, and equally silly caricatures thrown back. It makes everyone look like complete and total morons.
I couldn’t possibly comment.
New Labour’s Andy Burnham appears to be referring to a different NHS from the one that concerns the NHS Confederation:
The health service will face the most severe and sustained financial shortfall in its history after 2011, a report by NHS managers warns.
The NHS Confederation report says the health service in England will not survive unchanged, the BBC has learned.
Managers at its conference will be told they face an “extremely challenging” financial outlook.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham said NHS funding had tripled since 1997, putting it on a strong financial footing.
Interesting comment at the Guardian, but people are taking this very seriously:
We appear to have lost all ability to judge risk. The cause may lie in the national curriculum, the decline of “news” or the rise of blogs and concomitant, unmediated hysteria, but people seem helpless in navigating the gulf that separates public information from their daily round. They cannot set a statistic in context. They cannot relate bad news from Mexico to the risk that inevitably surrounds their lives. The risk of catching swine flu must be millions to one.
…
Meanwhile a real pestilence, MRSA and C difficile, was taking hold in hospitals. It was suppressed by the medical profession because it appeared that they themselves might be to blame. These diseases have played a role in thousands of deaths in British hospitals – the former a reported 1,652 and the latter 8,324 in 2007 alone. Like deaths from alcoholism, we have come to regard hospital-induced infection as an accident of life, a hazard to which we have subconsciously adjusted.
MRSA and C difficile are not like swine flu, an opportunity for public figures to scare and posture and spend money. They are diseases for which the government is to blame. They claim no headlines and no Cobra priority. Their sufferers must crawl away and die in silence.
The term ‘nanny state’ is not normally used as a compliment.
But public health expert Dr Alan Maryon Davis says we need more nannying, not less.
The Church of England sustains its stand for morality:
They were joined by the bishops of Winchester and Carlisle, who claimed ministers had squandered their opportunity to transform society and run out of steam, sacrificing principled politics and long-term solutions for policies designed to win votes.
Right now, I am part way through James Bartholomew’s “The Welfare State We’re In”. It is a devastating critique of the state’s failure to centrally-plan cradle to grave education and care: for example, the author claims that the avoidable deaths in the NHS amount to a daily train wreck. We can do better but we must be bold if we are to restore humanity to social provision.
See also: http://www.stevebaker.info/2008/12/recommended-reading-freedom-for-public-services/
From the Telegraph:
Hospital blunders are involved in the deaths of up to 40,000 patients a year, MPs have been told.
I wonder whether the professions will be allowed to take responsibility for improving this desperate state of affairs.
From the BBC:
Gordon Brown is not ruling out a change in the law on organ donation even though a panel of experts has rejected the idea of “presumed consent”. The UK Organ Donation Taskforce said assuming organs could be used unless people opted out was unlikely to boost donation rates.
From the Daily Mail:
Joyce Robins, co-director of Patient Concern, said: ‘This should be welcomed by anyone who cares about patient choice. It is ridiculous to talk about “donation” and “presumed consent” in the same breath. A donation is something willingly gifted. Presumed consent means requisition.’
read more at the BBC | digg story | read more at the Daily Mail
From the Telegraph:
Roadside ‘greasy spoon’ vans will be forced to close unless they offer healthy alternatives like salads and low fat yogurts.
The snack vans, often found in busy lay-bys, must also limit the amount of mayonnaise served – because it has been branded a “very high fat product”.
Environmental health officers in Guildford, Surrey, will inspect menus during routine hygiene checks.
And traders who fail to meet the strict new standards, will be refused a street trader’s licence when it comes up for renewal each year.
Has our country come to this, that we approach compelling people to make the “right” choices on what they eat, as determined by authority?
Of course we all want to help our fellows. Of course we are all impatient with suffering and want to see less obesity and disease. But we must all be free to make these choices for ourselves if we are to claim we live in a free society.
The source of this well-intentioned authoritarianism is, of course, a QANGO: the Food Standards Authority. They have, for example, “a new vision for enforcement”: “The aim is to provide [local authorities] with flexible interventions for improving business compliance, enabling them to focus resources more effectively.” Whatever these moral busybodies may think, people are not victims: they are, and they must be, responsible for themselves.
To be fair to the particular council, their spokesman stated on the Vine show that they have no intention to close businesses over this, despite the Telegraph’s claims. But imagine the scene when the inspector turns up at the roadside van with a range of “flexible interventions” at his disposal.
A free society, an open society, a democracy, relies on persuasion. People who want to encourage healthy eating might consider persuasion before they resort to coercion. Perhaps they might separate persuasion and coercion. They might consider forming an educational charity, establishing a network of healthy eating vans and getting out there to make their case in the market, without forcing money out of everyone’s pockets to do it.
World Bank president Robert Zoellick urged governments to act to contain a mounting “human crisis” today, as he warned that 44 million of the world’s poorest people would be driven into malnutrition this year, as a result of high food prices.
Jamie sets out to transform British eating:
Can’t cook? Start with the basics. Pick a recipe. Pass it on.
Just watching the show: the look on people’s faces is fantastic when they find they can cook a good meal.
The funny thing is, we used to do this at school. What went wrong?
The survey, by the magazine Legal Business, also says that there is evidence of “cocaine clubs” in law firms’ basements and of partner-led games of poker and taking cocaine with clients. But it also finds that law firms are ignorant or indifferent to the problem. One lawyer is quoted: “I spanked £100,000 on cocaine in one year and no one noticed.”
What they are not talking about though, is the endemic misery the drugs trade causes among the least privileged. I heard just last week, how middle-class drugs money distorts behaviour on the most run-down estates.
Time for a change of heart?
It is currently reported that 66 per cent of UK adults are either overweight or obese but based on our research, it is more likely to be at least 75 per cent. This clearly highlights that health care professionals must adopt body composition monitoring at an individual level to avoid mis-classifying patients with excess body fat as non-obese. If we do, we miss the opportunity to intervene and reduce the health risk in such individuals.
Do miss the opportunity, please! What’s next, mandatory exercise in front of the telescreen?
In the last 10 years, funding for mental health services has risen sharply. But a new report from the King’s Fund today concludes that if the government doesn’t rethink the way services are delivered and focus more resources on prevention, it will be unable to meet soaring future demand.
Preventative mental health delivered differently? A job for the Church?
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