 | | | | |  | An antidote to panics based on dodgy statistics and dubious arguments.
Edited by Rob Lyons. |  | | |  |  |
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| | | 23 September 2004 | Another CJD scare
Panic: 'Thousands warned over vCJD risk,' says BBC News, reporting on new advice from the UK Health Protection Agency. Four thousand people, mostly haemophiliacs, have been warned that they may have received contaminated blood products. The warning follows the deaths of two people almost certainly infected with vCJD from blood transfusions. The government was keen to stress that the risk was very low and that their action was 'the most precautionary measure' - though that didn't stop headline writers from referring to a potential 'epidemic' and 6,000 possible 'victims'.
Don't panic: The government continues to cause unnecessary alarm by taking extraordinary measures to combat a very rare disease.
Since vCJD was first identified in 1995, 143 people in the UK have died from it. The number of new cases has already started to decline, falling from a peak of 28 in 2000 to four this year. Not a single case has been identified in a haemophiliac.
Compare this with the very real problem of infection with hepatitis and HIV suffered by haemophiliacs in the past, with thousands suffering illness and many dying. The risk from vCJD is merely 'theoretical' since the clotting factors given to haemophiliacs may not even carry the prion protein thought to cause the disease, especially after being separated out from the other parts of the blood and treated.
Moreover, there appears to be very little that anyone can do that they don't already do. These warnings say, 'We're pretty sure you can't get it now if you haven't already, but there's a very slim chance you could have a very nasty, incurable disease, one that we can't even test for until you die. We just thought you'd like to know.'
As one haemophiliac told the BBC: 'It is just like HIV and hepatitis C all over again, I now face a lifetime of fear watching for signs of the illness.'
This is not the first time that the government has overreacted in this way, as pointed out previously on the Don't Panic page (see Don't Panic: 6 August 2004). The government always argues that a precautionary approach must be adopted. But this singularly fails to account for the harm that is done by these measures, which have probably caused more harm than the disease itself. It seems that maintaining a sense of proportion is quite beyond them.
Read: |  | Thousands warned over vCJD risk | | BBC News, 21 September 2004 | | spiked-issue: Mad cow panic |
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| | | 13 September 2004 | A pinch of salt
Panic: 'Britons told to cut salt intake', says BBC News, reporting on a new campaign by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). FSA chairman Sir John Krebs told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We have a very simple health message. Too much salt is bad for your heart. There are 26million people in this country eating too much salt and they are increasing their risk of heart disease and stroke.'
The recommended daily intake is six grams per day, but men are eating 11 grams and women eight grams - 75 per cent of which is from processed foods. The campaign follows government demands on food manufacturers and retailers to cut the amount of salt in pre-packaged foods.
Don't panic: The link between salt intake and blood pressure is more controversial than government advice suggests.
A recent report in the British Medical Journal concluded: 'Intensive interventions, unsuited to primary care or population prevention programmes, provide only small reductions in blood pressure and sodium excretion, and effects on deaths and cardiovascular events are unclear. Advice to reduce sodium intake may help people on antihypertensive drugs to stop their medication while maintaining good blood pressure control.'
In short, if you've already got high blood pressure, reducing salt intake might help your hypertension. However, to achieve even these small effects would require large drops in salt intake.
It is easy to forget that salt is crucial to our existence. As Peter Sherratt of the Salt Manufacturer's Association told the BBC: 'You're sitting there with something like a cupful of salt inside you and it makes you work. Without it, you would be in deep trouble. It enables your brain to communicate with your hands and feet, your muscles to operate, your heart to pump and it helps you digest your food. Too much salt is not bad for your heart.' You can survive for weeks without food - but not without salt.
Excess salt is not a problem for healthy adults. If we have consumed too much, it passes out in our urine. If salt is such a big problem, how can it have played a central role in the flavouring and preservation of food for thousands of years?
The kind of reductions proposed by the FSA will almost certainly have no effect at all - except to make our food taste a little more boring and reinforce the myth that what we eat is slowly killing us.
Read: | | Britons told to cut salt intake, | | BBC News, 13 September 2004 | | Systematic review of long term effects of advice to reduce dietary salt in adults, | | British Medical Journal, 21 September 2002 (pdf format) |
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| | | 10 September 2004 | Super Size Fears
Panic: This weekend sees the UK release of Morgan Spurlock's film Super Size Me. Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's super-size meals for a month, gaining nearly two stone and massively elevated cholesterol in the process.
The film has provoked joy from obesity experts and anti-fast food campaigners. McDonald's has responded with big advertising campaigns that criticise the film but concede most of its points. The burger chain has also removed super-size options from the menu, a move it describes as 'unrelated' to the film. 'McDonald's is trying to convince people that their stuff is a legitimate meal, and that you can eat it every day', says Spurlock. He believes McDonald's should be more open about the lack of nutrition in its food.
Don't panic: As Professor Tom Sanders notes elsewhere on spiked, 'the best advice at present is to focus on achieving a balanced diet, rather than demonising or promoting certain foods.' Only an idiot would think that eating nothing but one kind of fast food for a month represented the best possible lifestyle. Spurlock was force-feeding himself, consuming as much as 5,000 calories a day - about double the usual daily requirements for a man - and doing absolutely no exercise. No wonder he felt unwell.
But even an unrelenting diet of McDonald's food is not necessarily bad for you. As Dr Ruth Kava of the American Council on Science and Health notes, such a diet may be low in one or two minerals and vitamins, and higher in saturated fat than is usually recommended. But actually, on most measures, such a diet would be entirely satisfactory. Try eating nothing but fruit for a month - the effect would be much worse.
Super Size Me might make good comedy, but it's feeble science. What is so disappointing is that Spurlock's film, which has more in common with gross-out self-abuse films like Jackass than serious documentary, has been given such a reverent hearing - because it keys into the overblown panic about obesity, and the contempt for big corporations. It also appeals to a certain snobbery about McDonald's, among those who prefer their body to be 'a temple', not look like one.
Like a month of Big Macs and milkshakes, it's enough to make you sick.
Read: | | spiked-issue: Obesity | | Food science, | | by Tom Sanders | | 30-day McDiet: results are in, | | Ruth Kava, Tech Central Station, 9 August 2004 | | McDiculous, | | Esquire, 1 May 2004 [Word format] |
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| | | 2 September 2004 | Unhappy meals
Panic: As children return to school after the summer break, the UK government's food watchdog is telling parents to make lunches healthier. 'Lunchboxes still packed with fat, salt and sugar', declares the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in response to its annual survey of lunchbox contents across 28 schools.
The FSA says that 'children are eating double the recommended lunchtime intake of saturated fat and sugar, and up to half their daily recommended salt intake'. FSA nutritionist Sam Church said: 'We all know that what children eat now can have a big impact on their diet and health in the future and that there is nothing wrong with children having the odd snack, but these should be eaten in moderation and as part of a varied and balanced diet.'
Don't panic: The only reason this story is newsworthy is because of the ongoing panic about obesity. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that what we eat as children has a direct connection with later eating habits or weight.
Children are notoriously fussy eaters, refusing to eat anything they don't like. Parents are mostly concerned with making sure that their kids eat enough at lunchtime, as long as there is some goodness in it, on the basis that they can exercise the usual carrot-and-stick discipline at mealtimes in the evening. So what features in a lunchbox isn't necessarily reflective of children's diets as a whole - nor does it make sense to assume that adults will eat the same things they did when they were kids. Adults usually have enough sense to realise that eating a variety of foods is important both for health and pleasure.
But even if all these assumptions were accurate, there is little reason to believe that eating more than a certain level of fat, sugar or salt is in itself harmful. Human beings around the world, and throughout history, have eaten a variety of different foods, in smaller or larger quantities, and thrived. It beggars belief that a little more salt or sugar could be a major health risk, except perhaps for very young children. And there is no clear relationship between obesity in childhood and obesity in later life. Only 30 per cent of fat children will become fat adults - and even then, only the most extremely overweight and unfit are likely to suffer serious health consequences as a result.
In fact, the FSA report itself accepts that any rise in obesity is unlikely to be due to increasing food consumption. 'The most plausible underlying explanation is a fall in energy expenditure due to the explosion in sedentary computer games, hours spent watching television and parental safety concerns resulting in curtailed activity outside of school hours. Added to this is a fall in time devoted to activity within the national curriculum and a four-fold increase in the numbers of children driven to school.' But facts won't be allowed to get in the way of a good panic. Unlike our kids, it seems, this one will run and run.
Read: | | Lunchboxes still packed with fat, salt and sugar, | | Food Standards Agency, 1 September 2004 | | Thinking outside the lunchbox, | | by Rob Lyons |
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| | | 25 August 2004 | Cigarettes and youth
Panic: 'Young smokers are five times more likely to have heart attacks', says The Times, reporting on work by Finnish researchers published in the journal Tobacco Control. World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics were studied for 132,000 men and women between the ages of 35 and 64 in 21 countries. Of these, 23,000 suffered non-fatal heart attacks. In the 35-39 age group, 80 per cent of heart attack patients were smokers. The researchers emphasised the importance of helping younger smokers to quit, especially since they may believe that their risk of heart attack is little different to that of non-smokers. 'Our data indicates that half of non-fatal heart attacks in men and women younger than 50 years - even more in younger age groups - would be preventable if smoking cessation programmes were successful.'
Don't panic: Smoking is certainly not good for you. It massively increases the risk of lung cancer in later life and substantially increases the risk of many other conditions, including heart attacks. However, even with smoking it is important not to overstate the risks, especially where younger people are concerned.
The most significant factor in both heart attacks and lung cancer is age. Of the 23,000 heart attacks in this study, just 800 - about three percent - were among people in the younger age group. But even this underplays the degree to which age is a factor. In England and Wales, for example, around 80 per cent of coronary disease deaths occur after the age of 65 - in other words, older than anyone covered by this research. So in 2002, around 2,500 people under the age of 44 suffered heart attacks in the UK - or about one in 7,000 of the 17million people between 25-44 years of age. Even if a disproportionate number of these people were smokers, the risk was still very low.
Even the term 'younger people' is rather disingenuous. Most of those in the 35-39 age group will have been smoking for 20 years. However, today there is a particular spin put on any reported research that emphasises the future risk to young smokers, to try to scare them into giving up now. This is misguided, because it fails to appreciate that young people consider themselves, with some justification, indestructible - and it misrepresents the content of the research. What this research actually reminds us is that the absolute risks of smoking, as opposed to the relative risks, are quite low for younger people, and that quitting before your thirties will probably mean your misspent, nicotine-ridden youth has little long-term impact on your health.
Read: | | 'Young smokers are five times more likely to have heart attacks', | | The Times (London), 24 August 2004 |
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