House of Lords committee finds Nudge Theory for improving health is not good enough

BBC News reports that The House of Lords science and technology committee finds Nudge Theory with regard to improving the nation's health is not good enough, and that legislation is also required. Well I'd certainly go along with that. - The current health nudges/snippets of advice include that increasing exercise levels helps with reducing obesity - but it doesn't! - and that saturated fat causes heart disease - but it doesn't! - and that high cholesterol levels should be treated by taking prescribed statins - although these drugs do most people more harm than good and cost a lot of money.

Another nudge is called voluntary agreement, and that is when the manufacturers of unhealthy food agree to reduce levels of harmful additives/contaminants/poisons in the processed junk/food they inflict on consumers, and then do this reduction by miniscule amounts at the speed of an exhausted snail on tranquillisers. - My especial grouse about this is the continued presence of toxic synthetic transfats in manufactured biscuits, cakes, etc. Adding these factory-produced poisons to food intended for human consumption should be banned by Law, and that Law backed up by criminal sanctions against the CEOs of any companies that continue to add them to their products.

If the continued rise in incidence and severity of obesity that wreaks havoc on the economy and great, unnecessary suffering on huge numbers of individual people, is ever to be stemmed, and, hopefully, reversed, then any nudges/advice given should be supported by reliable evidence that it is correct, and not just the repetition of unproven mantras, assumptions and misinformation.

Pressure from scientists and consumer groups for reduction in the use of bisphenol A (BPA)

See article in the Independent. "Andrew Watterson, professor of environmental health at the University of Stirling and a signatory to the letter, said: "It's worrying, considering the weight of the scientific evidence, that strong action to reduce human exposure is yet to be taken. Hundreds of academic studies have explicitly raised the risks of developmental harm to foetuses and young children from exposure to BPA and this should dictate a strong precautionary policy response from European regulators.""

Interesting article about the Climate Change Row

Special Investigation on Climate Change issues and manipulation of the data, published in the Daily Mail. Well worth reading.

After reading a very interesting article by John Kay about the undesirable outcomes that, in practice, tend to result from seeking Consensus

I came across this very interesting article by John Kay, about Consensus and the undesirable outcomes that, in practice, tend to result from seeking Consensus. I do urge you to read it. He summarises his thesis in these words:

"Just as universities need to tell people to stop quibbling and work towards a common objective, companies need to realise that clustering around a corporate conventional wisdom that has not been subject to analysis and debate is also not a recipe for success."

Earlier today, on Radio 4, I heard someone (sorry, I didn't catch who he was) speaking critically about Wikipedia, and, if I remember correctly, criticising it essentially for tending to move towards Consensus, rather than towards Truth. Like him, I favour Truth, backed up by Evidence, rather than Consensus, backed up by Assertion.

The Climate Change Science Scandal that has featured prominently in the news recently, rested in essence on one set of scientists, led by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, seeking to manipulate access to data and interpretation of data in order to bring more scientists to a consensus favouring his views, in the hope/expectation that consensus would be accepted as truth, even though the data had been doctored.

When I use the word 'doctored' in this context, I do so advisedly. - For many years, law courts and judgments were over-influenced by so-called 'expert' opinions expressed by 'expert' witnesses, in particular by 'expert' medical opinions. Such was the deference the judicial system accorded to these expert medics, that in practice the opinions they expressed were mostly accepted as evidence, rather than opinion. This institutional prejudice was compounded by what was called 'The Bolam Test', which was adopted by some other countries - former British colonies, I believe - as well as Britain.

A doctor, dentist, nurse, etc is deemed to owe "a duty of care" to the patients they treat. But when a doctor, say, was negligent in the way he treated his patient, according to the Bolam Test, it did not necessarily amount to negligence if support could be found for it among other members of his profession - even if there was not a lot of support. This ruling meant in practice that a doctor accused of medical negligence needed only to find an expert who would testify to having done the same thing or would testify that he would have made the same diagnosis as the accused doctor.

Obviously this ruling was widely abused and there was no shortage of venal health professionals willing to testify in such a way as to favour a fellow member of their profession. - I remember when I was on the Steering Committee of the RSI Campaign that we had a young lawyer come to speak to us one evening and he told us that lawyers could always find a doctor to give any opinion their doctor client wanted to be given, provided they paid him enough.

This, of course, is disgraceful and unjust enough, but the Bolam Test spread its baleful tentacles into the clinical sphere, and has had the effect of increasing the incidence of medical negligence. Medical and dental practitioners regarded themselves as pretty safe from being found guilty of negligence because all they had to do when a patient made any charge or complaint of negligence against them was to ensure that colleagues in the profession would back them up in the course of action/inaction they had taken. This was easily achieved because there tends to be a feeling within their profession that "there but for the grace of God, go I", and a tendency to support erring colleagues in the profession, in the expectation that if you got into the same situation, your colleagues would similarly support you.

Thus it was that when I suffered sustained negligent and appallingly cruel treatment at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital years ago, it proved almost impossible for me to get the treatment I desperately needed, despite seeing several dentists well able to have provided the treatment. See Fighting the System, my first Mensa article.

One of the negligent dentists, Stephen Hatt, Head of Restorative Dentistry, sneeringly invited me to write a letter of complaint about him. - "Much good it will do you!" he jeered, in complete confidence that nothing whatever would be done about his cruel treatment, which had caused me such long, agonising pain. And he was right. Nothing at all was done about the letter I arduously compiled and sent.

I talked about the matter to a young dentist from a different town long after this and asked him why it was that whenever I tried to get help from another dentist at that dreadful hospital, they scrupulously examined the notes about my treatment, instead of examining my teeth! He explained that the system was that they would all say that they would have made the same diagnosis as the negligent senior dental staff who had harmed me, and so that treatment would have been considered correct and they would not have been deemed to be at fault. - This is an example of the law of unintended consequences, and leads to the extraordinary probability that if ALL would have treated the patient badly, then NONE is considered negligent!

Officially the Bolam Test is no longer part of the legal process, but in practice its spirit lives on, and most health professionals do not worry much about getting into trouble about their poor treatment of a patient, because there remains the implicit assumption that doctors and dentists are altruistic, omniscient beings who do not make errors, or if they do, it is not their fault. You have only to remember the terrible harm done by the arrogant, ill-informed Professor Sir Roy Meadow in the case of Sally Clark, and to realise that even now, despite all the tragic consequences of his flawed testimony, colleagues in his profession continue to defend him!

I remember reading years ago - I think it was in The Politics of Schizophrenia by David Hill - that the only time doctors/psychiatrists all agree on a psychiatric diagnosis is when they are all wrong...(o:

You will have gathered that I do not favour consensus as being a reliable guide to the truth of any belief. I look back on those two very famous errors of hundreds of years ago that held sway because of being the consensus view, namely that
1) the Earth is flat, and that
2) the Sun goes round the Earth.

I rest my case.

Psychiatric drugs compulsion queried because not backed by evidence

The practice of forcing psychiatric patients to take medication is not backed by evidence, say UK researchers. Very few rigorous investigations of the use of coerced medication have been done despite it being widespread, the Journal of Advanced Nursing reported. The dearth of evidence is "unacceptable" and more should be done to find alternatives, the team said.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)

BBC report finds bias within corporation - Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"After a year-long investigation the report, published today, maintains that the corporation’s coverage of day-to-day politics is fair and impartial.

But it says coverage of Live 8, the 2005 anti-poverty concerts organised by rock star campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono and writer Richard Curtis, failed to properly debate the issues raised.

Instead, at a time when the corporation was renegotiating its charter with the government, it allowed itself to effectively become a promotional tool for Live 8, which was strongly supported by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Geldof, Bono and Curtis were attempting to pressure world leaders at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, which was taking place at the same time, to help reduce poverty in developing countries under the banner 'Make Poverty History’. "

I've found the BBC, in my own dealings with it, heavily biased in favour of entrenched medical views about obesity, even though these views are completely unsupported by scientific evidence. So it is next door to impossible for me to get onto a phone-in about obesity to explain about fluid retention/salt sensitivity being the real cause of obesity, rather than overeating and/or inactivity. - The hate-filled callers who like to give vent to insults about the 'greed' and 'laziness' of fat people are always allowed time for an impassioned, ill-informed rant, but I am not given airtime to give the true, safe message that the best and fastest way to lose excess weight is to cut down on salt and salty food, give up dieting and eat plenty of good food, including fruit and fresh vegetables. This information is literally vital to some members of the groups vulnerable to salt, namely the steroid victims, who will suffer morbid obesity and many attendant painful chronic illnesses and an early death, unless they learn the facts about their bodies' inability to cope with salt and the need, therefore, to minimise the amount of sodium they consume. - ALL obese people need to know that dieting/'slimming' is dangerous, unnecessary and counter-productive. - 'Slimming' DOES NOT WORK and is harmful.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Evidence-based medicine? - You're joking...)o:

Medical 'experts' who assert their arrogant, prejudiced views with no scientific evidence to back them do terrible harm. Unfortunately there are far too many people who lack the courage to dare to believe them to be other than saints...)o: - Their biased opinions should not be called evidence at all. Very often their 'diagnoses' are mere guesswork. But doctors are extremely powerful and most people are scared of criticising them in case they 'get into trouble' in some way for doing so.

Think back to what doctors used to advise about how babies should be placed in their cots. - They used to advise mothers to lay their babies on their stomachs. - There was no EVIDENCE for the correctness of this advice. It was later shown that it is safer for babies to be laid onto their backs and not their stomachs. - Were there any apologies from the medical profession? - Of course not! - It was Anne Diamond who, after sadly losing a baby to cot death, fought for the truth to be told about how best to lay a baby down, and since her successful campaign there has a significant fall in the incidence of cot death in the United Kingdom. - Many people have reason to be profoundly grateful to Anne Diamond and her 'Back to Sleep' message.

Similarly, it was Esther Rantzen that fought to curb the terrible consequences of the medical profession's reckless overprescribing of tranquillisers, which even decades later are still wreaking havoc on many, many lives.

I am myself struggling to draw attention to the horrific harm that prescribed steroids, HRT and many other drugs do when prescribed by doctors unfamiliar with the side-effects and negligent about monitoring patients who innocently take these dangerous drugs because the doctor has prescribed them. My website is www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk

If you visit my website you will see that there has never been any scientific evidence to support the usual medical advice about how to reduce obesity. See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html and Obesity and the Salt Connection

I wrote to the Power Inquiry about the abuse of power by the medical profession, but they did not pursue the matter at all...)o:

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Warning (from Mr Edward Leigh, British MP, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee) of obesity risks to entire generation

Warning of obesity risks to entire generation

Extract:

"An entire generation of children now at primary school is heading towards increased rates of serious health problems, an influential committee of MPs says today.

It criticises the departments of Health and Education and Skills for doing too little to stem the "alarming" obesity epidemic. At least one primary school child in seven is now classed as obese."

I started writing about the increase in the incidence of obesity, and in particular about child obesity, to MPs - scores of them (all three major parties), and to journalists, broadcasters, scientists, medics, appropriate agencies, nutritionists, etc - in the summer of 2001, and explaining that the assumption that obesity is caused by overeating is incorrect and that obesity cannot, therefore, be remedied by undereating. I also wrote to Mr Edward Leigh, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the initiator of this news item, and to other appropriate parliamentary select committees. - Unfortunately my evidence and my argument were, and continue to be, disregarded. People fail to realise that there has never been any scientific evidence to support the overeating theory of obesity. Nor has there ever been any scientific evidence to support the theory that obesity is lessened by calorie reduction. Both of these theories are mere assumptions, and both are false.

I explained to them that obesity results from sodium retention and water retention in people who are vulnerable to salt. These days I often refer to these vulnerable people, of whom I am one, as sensitive to salt.

The 'Obesity Epidemic' would best be reduced by giving the correct advice about how to prevent/lessen obesity. Obesity is NOT caused by eating too much! - It is caused by fluid retention, usually in people who are sensitive to salt.

The most severe obesity - morbid obesity, as it is usually called these days - is mainly caused by the widespread prescribing of steroids and HRT and other drugs which cause weight gain, often in far too high a dose, and the failure of doctors to adhere to the protocols connected with the prescribing and monitoring of steroids. But pre-eminent, in my opinion, is the catastrophically damaging calorie-reduction advice that continues to be given despite such a wealth of evidence that it is bad advice.

It is over 50 years since steroids were first prescribed and it is beyond belief that most doctors are still unaware in practice of their potential for causing sodium and water retention and morbid obesity and the many other serious health problems attendant on these...

Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 BMJ article about Leeds University research for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting. - Even the ones who manage to lose weight do not usually improve their health. - See Guardian article for a report in The Guardian of Monday, June 27th 2005. It is about a huge research study of nearly 3000 people over a period of 18 years. The study found that overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat. It also found that dieting causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits of the weight loss.

Another possible factor in the increasing incidence of obesity is the increase in the amount of oestrogen in the water table.

If overweight/obese people seriously and genuinely reduce their salt/sodium intake, they all lose weight fast - and even faster if they also make sure they are eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, because these high potassium foods help to remove excess sodium from the bodies of salt-sensitives.

Eating less and counting calories hinders, rather than helps with the problem of obesity, as it usually increases salt sensitivity. - That is why, as countless unfortunate 'slimmers' have found, 'dieting makes you fatter.'

Read my 'political' page The 'Obesity Epidemic' - I ACCUSE! and my Mensa article Obesity and the Salt Connection and my page about child obesity http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/ The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)