Health fascism on speed - the BMA votes to ban cigarettes (but not for everyone)

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When you were at school, you remember the swottish, science sorts who did all their homework, attended the extra revision classes and got top marks in everything? You know the ones who went on to medical school? Turns out they're pretty dumb after all - at least going by the latest utterly bonkers piece of health fascism proposed by the British Medical Association:

Delegates at the British Medical Association (BMA) annual conference voted in favour of a motion to prohibit smoking to anyone born after 2000.

Now the sharp-witted amongst you will have noted that this is a monumentally stupid idea. After all those people born in the 21st century aren't yet of an age to buy and consume tobacco products. Yet we are reminded that most smokers (nearly all of them I reckon) start smoking before they reach the age when they're actually allowed to smoke. And this means that they're getting cigarettes illicitly - either by the time-honoured method of lifting them from Mum's packet, buying them using false ID, asking someone to buy them for you or purchasing them from the bloke in the van who doesn't care about age, ID or much else.

Do these ever-so-clever doctors really think that anything will change? Except that smoking will become even more hidden and illicit than it is at the moment. From a product subject to quality control, regulation and licensing we will have moved to a product sold surreptitiously to young people in dark alleys - or else simply passed on by grandpa, mum and assorted aunts.

This is health fascism on speed - a sort of frantic, desperate, headline-grabbing proposal designed to give the impression of action rather than actually respond to the question (why do young people start smoking). And as Ian Dunt points out, this policy isn't about children at all:

...this policy, which is targeted at adults by definition, is being defended on the basis of what it would do to help children - the one group who would find themselves outside its remit.

But at least the lobby is finally daring to state its objective: the criminalisation of smoking. From now on, the debate is not about public health. It is about the rights of the individual against the frenzied paternalism of those who would interfere in other people's lives.

Everyone who smokes knows the risks. The health message has been banged into children almost from the day they walked into school - smoking kills you. That some people decide to smoke regardless of this risk says something about people but is a reminder that we all have choice in our lives. And if we choose - for hedonistic reasons - to do something dangerous that is, in the end, entirely our business.

Yet again we are reminded that the debate isn't about health but about control, about prohibition about other people deciding they know better how we should live our lives. This is the agenda of nannying fussbucketry, the manifesto of health fascism.

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BMA silent on e-cigs evidence...

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The BMA wants to ban electronic cigarettes. Recently 'Sense about Science' wrote to them:

We sent this letter to the BMA on November 15th asking for the evidence behind their claims about ‘re-normalising smoking’ and ‘passive vaping.’ Despite a number of reminders, we have not yet received a response.

This is probably because there isn't any evidence to support their ban proposal. None.

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We sent this letter to the BMA on November 15th asking for the evidence behind their claims about ‘re-normalising smoking’ and ‘passive vaping.’ Despite a number of reminders, we have not yet received a response. - See more at: http://www.senseaboutscience.org/news.php/364/whats-the-evidence-for-banning-electronic-cigarettes#sthash.qa29sXWF.dpuf

So the BMA prefers people to die...

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Or so says its nannying fussbucket in chief, Vivienne Nathanson:

"I would either take them off the shelves or I would very heavily regulate them so that we know the contents of each e-cigarette were very fixed,"

Dr Nathanson would, of course, prefer people to die.

Not everyone agrees:

"Nicotine itself is not a particularly hazardous drug," says Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians. 

"It's something on a par with the effects you get from caffeine.

"If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It's a massive potential public health prize."

As I said the anti-tobacco fundies would rather people died.

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I always knew a lot of doctors were in it for the money...

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Not all, of course, as this comment shows:

Dr Dan Poulter MP said: "As a doctor, my first duty is to my patients. That is why I would not participate in strike action. Doctors have taken the wrong decision today, urged on by their trade union the BMA.

"Industrial action will harm patient care. With the Government's final offer to doctors being a pension of £68,000 a year, the public will simply not understand why doctors have called for strike action over pensions that private sector workers and many other frontline NHS workers can only dream of."

I watched a row of wealthy men in suits - the BMA bosses - lined up at a press conference claiming to be hard done by because some doctors will have to wait until they're 65 (like the rest of us do) to get their pension of nearly seventy grand a year (like the rest of us don't).  And I wanted to put a bar stool through the telly. How dare these people act in this way, how dare the BMA - usually so ready to lecture us on how we're living our lives wrong - threaten patient care so they can retire to the golf course or the Dordogne a few years early. How dare they....

...they're only in this for the money it seems so perhaps they'll shut up with all the "caring public sector professionals" rubbish now. I do hope so.

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In which the British Medical Association lie to you again...

The ban fans are off again, this time calling for a ban on smoking in cars.

Smoking in all cars across the UK should be banned to protect people from second-hand smoke, doctors say. The British Medical Association has made the call following research that shows the level of toxins in a car can be up to 23 times higher than in a smoky bar.

This is, of course, a complete fiction - no, a lie:

In a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal entitled 'Second-hand smoke in cars: How did the “23 times more toxic” myth turn into fact?', MacKenzie and Freeman showed that the "fact" was entirely without scientific evidence and stemmed from a, obscure quote in a local newspaper in 1998 (as I had revealed on this blog two months earlier).

Doesn't stop them using it, does it!

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Another cash cow for doctors to trough on!

It seems that that those who run the NHS are either rent-seeking doctors or else idiots (I'll leave you to choose):

From next year, GPs will receive a payment for every obese patient they advise to lose weight - on top of money for keeping lists of those who weigh too much. 

That's right dear reader, next time you toddle along to see your locla quack you'll be told you're a little chubby and to lose weight. You hear the sound of doctors' wallets fattening nicely there, don't you?

Even the nannying fussbuckets think this is crackers - here's Tam Fry from the National Obesity Forum:

“I am in favour of GPs referring more patients to weight management schemes, like Weight Watchers and Slimming World, where there is good evidence they work, as there increasingly is. But I think it’s appalling that GPs need to be paid extra to do this - and even worse that they can get the same reward just from telling a patient to lose some weight.” 

You really have to hand it to the BMA. Probably the most successful trade union of the lot - even Bob Crow must look on in awe as they continue to feather their members nests with taxpayers' cash while pretending to be a body concerned only with the betterment of health

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The British Medical Association talking rubbish about drinking again!

I’m going to say it because it is a self-confirming piece of research* – the BMA are at it again:

Dr Alan McDevitt, deputy chairman of the BMA's Scottish General Practitioners Committee, said: "Those who suffer from alcohol related health problems are not just alcoholics or heavy binge drinkers. By regularly drinking over and above recommended limits, a significant proportion of the adult population is at risk of experiencing health problems that are linked to the alcohol they consume whether it is high blood pressure, breast cancer or even domestic abuse.

"In just one day, nurses and doctors working in general practices across Scotland saw more than 5500 patients where alcohol had contributed to their ill health. But the patients seen in general practice are just the tip of the iceberg. The impact of alcohol misuse across the rest of the NHS, in hospitals and in our communities is far greater."

What we need to understand is that these dreadful statistics are collected by doctors and nurses. And they are rising because those doctors and nurses are told to ask, again and again, about patients’ drinking.

When my son was mugged in Bradford City centre – hit on the head with a hammer – he was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary. And, dear reader, do you know what the first question asked of him by the nurse was (once he came round enough to answer) – you’ve guessed it: “have you been drinking.”

And, when a doctor finally got around to seeing him – and bear in mind he had a serious head injury – what was the first question that doctor asked? You’re right, it was “have you been drinking.” You see a pattern emerging here don’t you. A pattern reinforced by a huge image of a glass of wine plastered on the wall.

My son needed a specialist face doctor. And – if it wasn’t so crazy, you’d laugh – the first thing that doctor asked was “have you been drinking.”

And, since my son had been drinking – he’d been into town to a pub quiz with his mates – I’m pretty sure that him being hit on the head by a nasty thug has gone down in the books at ‘partly alcohol related’. That is why, despite alcohol consumption falling significantly over the past 10 years, we have this terrible, awful rise in ‘alcohol-related’ ill-health. It is a self-fulfilling activity – the more you require doctors and nurses to ask patients whether they drink (mostly for no good medical reason), the more you identify ‘alcohol-related’ ill-health.

And it’s not a problem for the young either – the fall in consumption has been greatest among the 16-24 age group whether you look at exceeding “recommended” limits or “heavy” drinking.

On the average weekly measure, heavy drinking is defined as consuming more than 50 units a week for men and consuming more than 35 units a week for women. In the 16 to 24 age group there were significant falls, between 2000 and 2006, in the proportion of men and women drinking heavily (from 14 per cent to 7 per cent for men and from 9 per cent to 5 per cent for women).

And the fall has continued since 2006 - even under a new methodology for measuring alcohol consumption. So perhaps one of these clever doctors could explain why it is that, with heavy drinking falling so rapidly, there is an increase in ‘alcohol-related’ ill-health. It makes no sense and I simply don’t believe a word of what the BMA are saying, not one word.

*The "study" collected and added up raw figures from just 31 GP practices - no consistent methodology, no back check, no patient data. Pretty poor really.

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