Public health demands: all fizz, no sparkle
Hat tip: In case you missed it, do go read a brilliant analysis of Britain’s so-called “tooth decay crisis” by Christopher Snowdon.
As rep
orted in the Sunday Times, according to Nigel Hunt, dean of the Royal College of Surgeons’ dental faculty, we are facing [yet another] health crisis, this time relating to child tooth decay. The basis of theDean’s complaint is that some children are having to wait months before they can have teeth extracted under general anaesthetic in a hospital. As Mr Snowdon says, “This is a disgrace”, but, he points out that this is not due to an epidemic of tooth decay, our oral health has been improving, not declining, in recent years:
“According to a report by the Royal College of Surgeons”….” ‘oral health has improved significantly since the 1970s’. Does that include children? You betcha. ‘The dental health of the majority of British children has improved dramatically since the early 1970s,’ according to a 2005 study, mainly because of ‘the widespread availability of fluoride containing toothpastes’. This was confirmed in a 2011 study which concluded that ‘since the 1970s, the oral health of the population, both children’s dental decay experience and the decline [in] adult tooth loss, has improved steadily and substantially.”
The problem, Snowdon suggests is not our willingness or ability to make kids brush their teeth, but rather the inability of the NHS to conduct the operations required. So the crisis, if there is one, is within the NHS. Rather than accept that the problem lies there, and call for a review of health provision in the UK, or a demand to root out the inefficiencies of the state monolith, Dean calls for… wait for it… graphic photos of rotten teeth to be placed on sweets and fizzy drinks.
This of course echos the demands, issued earlier this week, by the doctors trade union, the British Medical Association, [BMA] to put a 20% tax on sweet drinks, because of the obesity crisis.
Serendipity that two medical groups demand action on fizzy drinks within days of each other? Or a coordinated effort to divert attention away from the failings of the NHS and point the finger at the preferred “evil” industry on which to pile up all the blame?
Or could it be a concerted attack on Government, currently considering “a range of measures to curb the nation’s intake of sugar“. If only the medical profession would apply such diligence and “joined up action” on the real NHS problems, rather than finding ever-new scape-goats.
Snowdon elegantly concludes:
“As Douglas Murray observed in The Spectator last month, victim-blaming has become the medical establishment’s default response to its own failures. The shrill demands for government action are a crude diversionary tactic. Can’t get the waiting lists down? Bring in a sugar tax! Unable to carry out minor operations? Put graphic warnings on Mars bars! It is a shameless distraction from the real issue, but when combined with the media’s gross misrepresentation of the facts and the political class’s thirst for legislation, it is a pretty effective one.”