I was a little busy yesterday with various things and, as it was Budget day, I wanted to get something posted about the budget as soon as I could but if there was one thing that annoyed me more than anything yesterday it was the reports of a call by doctors to ban smoking in private cars.
This was supposedly to protect children - but the call was not for a ban on smoking in private cars when children are present. No, they want to ban smoking in cars regardless of who is in it and whose car it is.
Leaving aside the obvious about personal intrusion, it's none of the doctors damn business what we get up to. They are not elected, they are not paid to decide legislation and their views are no more relevant or valid than those of anyone else - they are just members of the public like you and I.
What is more, when literally thousands of people are dying each year simply because of their incompetence and the failure of the institutions where they work, they really should concentrate in putting their own house in order before giving their opinions on areas which are absolutely none of their business.
The NHS is a disaster zone. Their hospitals are infested with superbugs. Patients are stuffed in cupboards and left to starve. Basic care is forgotten and dignity for patients non-existent. GP's work less for more and half of the people brought in to cover the work they refuse to do can't even speak basic English.
If they were genuinely interested in saving lives they'd start by sorting out that mess - not interfering in what you and I do while alone in our cars. I don't even smoke, but I'm happy to let smokers light up in my car. If I was going to spend my life fretting about carcinogens then the ones I'd be more concerned about are those pumped out by diesel engined vehicles - trains, buses, lorries and cars - far more than the odd B&H in my presence.
Incidentally, one of the illnesses in children that doctors attribute to second hand cigarette smoke is asthma. If that is true then why have the rates of asthma risen so dramatically in the last 30 years while the rates of smoking (as well as the places one can smoke) have declined considerably.
When I was a kid, most of us spent most of our time in the company of smokers, but somehow we didn't all get asthma or diseases of the middle ear. If there was a genuine link between the two then you would have expected to see asthma rates decline at a similar rate to smoking - but it hasn't. It has gone up. That sort of thing sets off my bullshit detector.
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Friday, February 13, 2009
Before you tell us how to live, check your own backyard
Doctors are calling for "airbag" jackets to be made compulsory for motorcyclists claiming it could save "dozens of lives".
Personally, I think these doctors should take a long hard at their own environments and at the thousands of lives that could be saved from hospital acquired infections if only they made clean hospitals compulsory.
Personally, I think these doctors should take a long hard at their own environments and at the thousands of lives that could be saved from hospital acquired infections if only they made clean hospitals compulsory.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
We live in strange times
Liz Hunt on The Telegraph recounts an unsubstantiated anecdote to explain why she thinks nurses shouldn't offer to pray for sick people.
Caroline Petrie, the community nurse who offered to pray for an ailing pensioner, has failed in her duties, and the Royal College of Nursing is wrong to back her in the forthcoming disciplinary hearing.
Failed in her duties? Because she cared about someone? As far as I'm aware there was no question of Ms. Petrie providing an insufficient level of care - which, as a nurse, is her duty. Hunt uses her own experience as a "pre-registration student" at a teaching hospital to explain why she thinks this is so.
Each of us "pre-regs" was assigned a mentor. I was lucky: "Martin" was a dedicated pharmacist with a wide breadth of therapeutic knowledge, and a warm way with patients. I looked forward to shadowing him on the wards each week, as he blended anecdotes from his career with knowledge about drugs that is acquired only through long experience in a clinical setting and never from a textbook.
Of course, Martin had my respect, too – until one particular day. A theatre nurse arrived at the dispensary hatch with an emergency request for a drug used to terminate pregnancy. Martin, the most senior pharmacist present, went into a very public melt-down, refusing to dispense the drug because "I'm a Catholic and abortion is not something I can condone".
I'm not sure how old Liz Hunt, but it sounds as if this took place quite a long time ago. If it is true and had been a relatively recent thing then we'd surely have seen poor old Martin spread across the front pages of The Grauniad and Independent by now.
I understood Martin's conflicted feelings – I'd spent seven years at convent school. What I didn't understand was him putting his religious principles before the wellbeing of his patient, and insisting on such a grandstanding fuss about it all. The man I had thought of as the ultimate professional had failed in my eyes – just as Caroline Petrie has done.
Hmm - putting "religious principles before the wellbeing" of a patient, eh? Well, let's just consider the case of Ms Petrie in respect to this anecdote. Ms Petrie at no time failed to provide the level of nursing care required as far as I understand it. She showed exceptional levels of concern and care for her patient to such an extent that she offered to say a private prayer for the patient if they so desired. That person wasn't the least bit put out by that - but someone else, not the patient, was.
So, what we have is someone - not the patient, nor the nurse involved - having a "meltdown" and putting their "religious principles" ahead of the wellbeing of a patient just so they could score points for being more diversity sensitive.
And Liz Hunt thinks that is OK?
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has been in hospitals and care homes and seen patients left sitting in their own excrement for hours at a time - probably because the nurses and carers were all busy with diversity training - and I have many personal anecdotes I could share about the level of care my father received and the way his dignity was stripped away in the last days of his life, but those are private and are staying that way. Let's just say that my father's lifelong belief in the NHS failed him the one time he actually needed it.
But what really annoys people like Liz Hunt are people who pray. The world really has gone mad.
Caroline Petrie, the community nurse who offered to pray for an ailing pensioner, has failed in her duties, and the Royal College of Nursing is wrong to back her in the forthcoming disciplinary hearing.
Failed in her duties? Because she cared about someone? As far as I'm aware there was no question of Ms. Petrie providing an insufficient level of care - which, as a nurse, is her duty. Hunt uses her own experience as a "pre-registration student" at a teaching hospital to explain why she thinks this is so.
Each of us "pre-regs" was assigned a mentor. I was lucky: "Martin" was a dedicated pharmacist with a wide breadth of therapeutic knowledge, and a warm way with patients. I looked forward to shadowing him on the wards each week, as he blended anecdotes from his career with knowledge about drugs that is acquired only through long experience in a clinical setting and never from a textbook.
Of course, Martin had my respect, too – until one particular day. A theatre nurse arrived at the dispensary hatch with an emergency request for a drug used to terminate pregnancy. Martin, the most senior pharmacist present, went into a very public melt-down, refusing to dispense the drug because "I'm a Catholic and abortion is not something I can condone".
I'm not sure how old Liz Hunt, but it sounds as if this took place quite a long time ago. If it is true and had been a relatively recent thing then we'd surely have seen poor old Martin spread across the front pages of The Grauniad and Independent by now.
I understood Martin's conflicted feelings – I'd spent seven years at convent school. What I didn't understand was him putting his religious principles before the wellbeing of his patient, and insisting on such a grandstanding fuss about it all. The man I had thought of as the ultimate professional had failed in my eyes – just as Caroline Petrie has done.
Hmm - putting "religious principles before the wellbeing" of a patient, eh? Well, let's just consider the case of Ms Petrie in respect to this anecdote. Ms Petrie at no time failed to provide the level of nursing care required as far as I understand it. She showed exceptional levels of concern and care for her patient to such an extent that she offered to say a private prayer for the patient if they so desired. That person wasn't the least bit put out by that - but someone else, not the patient, was.
So, what we have is someone - not the patient, nor the nurse involved - having a "meltdown" and putting their "religious principles" ahead of the wellbeing of a patient just so they could score points for being more diversity sensitive.
And Liz Hunt thinks that is OK?
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has been in hospitals and care homes and seen patients left sitting in their own excrement for hours at a time - probably because the nurses and carers were all busy with diversity training - and I have many personal anecdotes I could share about the level of care my father received and the way his dignity was stripped away in the last days of his life, but those are private and are staying that way. Let's just say that my father's lifelong belief in the NHS failed him the one time he actually needed it.
But what really annoys people like Liz Hunt are people who pray. The world really has gone mad.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Smoke screen
Remember how, a year after the Scottish parliament banned smoking in public, the MSM widely reported the news that this had led to a cut in heart problems in Scotland? Well it was bullshit.
However, not everyone was convinced by the study. In November 2007, routine data from Scottish hospitals suggested the fall was much smaller – about eight per cent. And, as Michael Blastland pointed out in an article for BBC News, there has been a long-term fall in acute heart cases, which suggests smoking ban had an even smaller effect than first assumed. Blastland also noted that even bigger drops in cases had been reported in earlier years.
It actually gets worse.
The latest figures suggest a rise of 7.8 per cent in the second year of the ban, cancelling out the earlier drop. Putting the full picture together, we find that in the last 12 months before Scotland enacted its smoking ban (April 2005 to March 2006), there were 16,199 admissions for acute coronary syndrome. In the second year of the smoking ban (April 2007 to March 2008) there were 16,212 admissions – slightly more than there had been before the legislation was enacted.
The smoking ban has done nothing to improve the health of people in Scotland, but it has done much to damage legitimate private businesses as it is now doing in England too. We're being lied to by the people we elect to serve us. Whether you're a smoker or not and whether you approve of the ban or not the question is simple - are you prepared to accept being governed by people who deliberately lie to you to impose their own personal discriminations on you?
However, not everyone was convinced by the study. In November 2007, routine data from Scottish hospitals suggested the fall was much smaller – about eight per cent. And, as Michael Blastland pointed out in an article for BBC News, there has been a long-term fall in acute heart cases, which suggests smoking ban had an even smaller effect than first assumed. Blastland also noted that even bigger drops in cases had been reported in earlier years.
It actually gets worse.
The latest figures suggest a rise of 7.8 per cent in the second year of the ban, cancelling out the earlier drop. Putting the full picture together, we find that in the last 12 months before Scotland enacted its smoking ban (April 2005 to March 2006), there were 16,199 admissions for acute coronary syndrome. In the second year of the smoking ban (April 2007 to March 2008) there were 16,212 admissions – slightly more than there had been before the legislation was enacted.
The smoking ban has done nothing to improve the health of people in Scotland, but it has done much to damage legitimate private businesses as it is now doing in England too. We're being lied to by the people we elect to serve us. Whether you're a smoker or not and whether you approve of the ban or not the question is simple - are you prepared to accept being governed by people who deliberately lie to you to impose their own personal discriminations on you?
Friday, September 12, 2008
More money is not the answer
The Telegraph reports today that the NHS has become less efficient despite ever increasing funds being pumped into it.
Official figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics show that the amount of treatment the NHS delivers is lagging behind the pace of increase in the service's budget.
NHS productivity fell by 2.0 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, according to the Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity, the ONS unit that monitors public spending. That was the period of the biggest funding increase in NHS history.
Despite all this extra money the NHS continues to lag behind just about every decent western nation in health care standards and NHS hospitals remain places where you are just as likely to catch a life threatening illness as you are to be cured.
The NHS costs each and every person in Britain around £1500 a year. That means your average family of four is paying some £6000 a year for the NHS. At least, they would be if we all paid the same, but the reality is, of course, that many people pay nothing at all or very little while many others pay far more. The irony being that those who pay the most are the least likely to use the service.
No one denies that health care in Britain before the NHS was very hit and miss, but it was also one of the best in the world. Now it's one of the worst - and the more money it gets, the worse it gets. And yet, every major political party is pledged to supporting the NHS. They all claim they can "reform" it and make it more efficient - they've all been saying that for 30 years, but every year it gets a little more bloated, a little more inefficient and a lot worse.
Isn't it time we ended this love affair for what is, by virtually every measure, a failing organisation?
Official figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics show that the amount of treatment the NHS delivers is lagging behind the pace of increase in the service's budget.
NHS productivity fell by 2.0 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, according to the Centre for the Measurement of Government Activity, the ONS unit that monitors public spending. That was the period of the biggest funding increase in NHS history.
Despite all this extra money the NHS continues to lag behind just about every decent western nation in health care standards and NHS hospitals remain places where you are just as likely to catch a life threatening illness as you are to be cured.
The NHS costs each and every person in Britain around £1500 a year. That means your average family of four is paying some £6000 a year for the NHS. At least, they would be if we all paid the same, but the reality is, of course, that many people pay nothing at all or very little while many others pay far more. The irony being that those who pay the most are the least likely to use the service.
No one denies that health care in Britain before the NHS was very hit and miss, but it was also one of the best in the world. Now it's one of the worst - and the more money it gets, the worse it gets. And yet, every major political party is pledged to supporting the NHS. They all claim they can "reform" it and make it more efficient - they've all been saying that for 30 years, but every year it gets a little more bloated, a little more inefficient and a lot worse.
Isn't it time we ended this love affair for what is, by virtually every measure, a failing organisation?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Health nuts
Politicians and journalists serve several purposes - supposedly. Politicians are there to consider the prospects and needs of the people they govern and legislate accordingly while journalists are there to inform us. One thing we don't really need them to do, though, is state the bleedin' obvious.
Disease pandemic 'inevitable' in Britain warns House of Lords.
Noooo! Really? Sorry, but this isn't news. Of course a pandemic will hit Britain at some point in the future. We all know that - but what we want to know is what are our government doing about it? The answer is that they are actually doing very little - seemingly preferring to leave that to a transnational body.
The Lords intergovernmental organisations committee says the "dysfunctional" World Health Organisation needs to be better organised to cope with the threat.
I'd personally prefer my own government to be doing something about the threat - like curbing the unrestrained immigration which has led to a huge surge in TB and AIDS related cases. It doesn't help the fight against pandemics to be doing this either.
When it comes to dysfunctional government we should take a look at ourselves first.
Disease pandemic 'inevitable' in Britain warns House of Lords.
Noooo! Really? Sorry, but this isn't news. Of course a pandemic will hit Britain at some point in the future. We all know that - but what we want to know is what are our government doing about it? The answer is that they are actually doing very little - seemingly preferring to leave that to a transnational body.
The Lords intergovernmental organisations committee says the "dysfunctional" World Health Organisation needs to be better organised to cope with the threat.
I'd personally prefer my own government to be doing something about the threat - like curbing the unrestrained immigration which has led to a huge surge in TB and AIDS related cases. It doesn't help the fight against pandemics to be doing this either.
When it comes to dysfunctional government we should take a look at ourselves first.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Priorities
This was kind of inevitable given the priorities of politicians these days.
You see, you and me - the people formerly known as British subjects - are no longer the priority of the British government. Far from it. Top of the list of priorities is "saving the planet" - which is odd seeing how the planet doesn't vote for them, has been around for several billion years without any help from the Labour party, is remarkably adept at looking after itself and will be around for several billion years long after we're gone.
You think I'm over-reacting to a minor piece of legislation? Just look at the names of the acts involved.
The act that gave us the right to weekly bin collections - The Public Health Act of 1875.
The act (being amended) that takes away that right - The Environmental Protection Act of 1990.
The environment trumps public health.
You see, you and me - the people formerly known as British subjects - are no longer the priority of the British government. Far from it. Top of the list of priorities is "saving the planet" - which is odd seeing how the planet doesn't vote for them, has been around for several billion years without any help from the Labour party, is remarkably adept at looking after itself and will be around for several billion years long after we're gone.
You think I'm over-reacting to a minor piece of legislation? Just look at the names of the acts involved.
The act that gave us the right to weekly bin collections - The Public Health Act of 1875.
The act (being amended) that takes away that right - The Environmental Protection Act of 1990.
The environment trumps public health.
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