Anything but the truth
Government policy is not only failing to tackle major health issues of the day - it is making them worse
When parliament holds a debate on asylum seekers or immigration controls, you can guarantee a packed house and plenty of strident posturing. Call a debate on global warming, as happened in July, and only 20 MPs bother to turn up. Tony Blair might well identify this looming catastrophe as ‘…the most important issue we face as a global community’, but his policies on transport and food have made it worse.
The Daily Mail’s July headlines that 20,000 people in the UK now die every year from MRSA and VRSA hospital superbugs, caused about as much excitement as the global warming debate. The only official comment made was that hospitals must improve hygiene.
One subject which did grab the headlines was obesity and child obesity in particular - heralded more than a year ago by the VVF’s own scientific report on this and other childhood ailments, Safeguarding Children’s Heath. The only official advice on this devastating epidemic was to recommend more exercise.
The one thing the Government has felt able to boast about is the reduction in deaths from heart disease. Despite its gloating, one-in-eight people have the condition and one-in-five men and one-in-six women will die from it, according to the British Heart Foundation.
Britain still has one of the highest rates of heart disease in Western Europe and death rates are significantly higher if stroke fatalties - also caused by clogged arteries - are included. Almost the entire population is at risk of developing one or other of these killers. Although deaths have fallen due to better intervention, the number of cases has been increasing remorselessly since 1989.
“I am pleased that the figures recognise the success we are having in reducing the number of deaths”, says health secretary Dr John Reid. “We are ensuring that this positive step continues by allowing statins - a drug that reduces the risk of heart attack - to be available without a prescription.”
Whooppee - more treatments and still no attempt to wipe out a disease that is almost entirely preventable.
There is a common thread that binds all these issues together but the Government steadfastly refuses to accept it - not because the supporting science is weak but because of its own political agenda. That common strand is livestock production and the consumption of animal products.
Global warming has huge implications for health, both directly through fatalities from storm, tempest, flooding and loss of crops but also through the spread of deadly diseases such as malaria. The Worldwatch Institute in Washington, which monitors the state of the globe, has issued a chilling report on the role played by livestock production in all the world’s environmental problems. Not only is it a major consumer of fossil fuels but cattle and other ruminants produce vast quantities of methane - a gas 23 times more damaging than carbon dioxide in the warming process. The world’s 1.3 billion cattle between them produce the equivalent of nearly two billion tons of C02 - in fact they probably constitute the second largest source of greenhouse gases.
If you can find even a passing reference to this in Government pronouncements, you win a big clock. What you will find is that cattle farming is the most heavily subsidised area of agriculture. ‘Destroy the world and we’ll pay you for it’ just about sums up official policy.
Hospital superbugs owe their existence to the medical overuse of antibiotics but mainly to their liberal use in pig and poultry farming. Two major reports have condemned the refusal of farmers to curb their extravagant use of antibiotics and their continued insistence on using them as growth promoters. The cruel and unhygienic conditions inherent in all factory farming ensures that antibiotic use will continue. The increasing reliance on these appalling systems ensures that the problem will get worse. I lay money that factory farming won’t even be mentioned in then next manifesto.
The average daily calorific intake of children is about 1,000 more than it should be. Telling them to exercise more, to walk to school and play sports can’t be argued with but it won’t solve this problem. That can only be done through diet and reducing the amount of fat eaten, particularly saturated, animal fat. Research consistently shows that vegetarians are leaner than meat eaters and far less prone to obesity but vegetarian is another word you won’t find in the health secretary’s lexicon.
And, of course, the end result of obesity is heart disease - and cancer and a string of other degenerative diseases including diabetes. Dr Reid smugly tries to put a spin on figures which clearly show that Government policy on heart disease has been an abject failure.
Government’s refusal to tackle any of these issues effectively is not accidental. It is calculated not to harm the profitability of a massive industry. But Blair & Co. are not alone. The Bush administration recently attacked the World Health Organisation for its recommendation that people should increase their fruit and veg intake. There’s no such thing as a bad food, said Mr Bush, only individual responsibility. Clearly, there is no such thing as a bad donor to Republican party coffers!