Saturday, 27 October 2007

Rants

"Intelligent guess" becomes policy, excuse for raising taxes. Who'd-a thunk it?

Neoprohibitionists in England make it up, get caught:

Guidelines on safe alcohol consumption limits that have shaped health policy in Britain for 20 years were “plucked out of the air” as an “intelligent guess”.
A “guess,” huh? How “scientific!”
The Times reveals today that the recommended weekly drinking limits of 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987 and still in use today, had no firm scientific basis whatsoever.
...
The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.
(sings:)“Feelings! Yo-oh-oh...” Oops, sorry!
He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.
And what about that data?
...Subsequent studies found evidence which suggested that the safety limits should be raised, but they were ignored by a succession of health ministers.
By then it's “policy, right?
One found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another concluded that a man would have to drink 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine a day, to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.
And all this is of interest because...?
Mr Smith’s disclosure casts doubt on the accuracy of a report published this week that blamed middle-class wine drinkers for placing some of Britain’s most affluent towns at the top of the “hazardous drinking” list.

The study, commissioned by the Government, relied on the 1987 guidelines...
erm... “intelligent guesses?”
...when it suggested that men drinking more than 21 units a week and women consuming more than 14 units put their health “at significant risk”.
And... DRUMROLL!!!!
In a further attack on Britain’s drinkers, it was revealed yesterday that a coalition of health organisations is mounting a campaign to force a 10 per cent increase in alcohol taxation.
Aha!



The story in The Times:Elsewhere:Via: Teresa

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[1] Good summary of subsequent research findings in this article.

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