 | | | | |  | An antidote to panics based on dodgy statistics and dubious arguments.
Edited by Rob Lyons. |  | | |  |  |
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| | | 21 October 2004 | Coffee mourning
Panic: 'One cup of coffee a day "risky"' says BBC News, reporting on research linking coffee consumption with heart disease. University of Athens and Harokopio University researchers found drinking more than one cup increased the chances of cardiovascular inflammation.
Subjects who drank 200ml of coffee a day had raised levels of white blood cells and proteins associated with cardiovascular inflammation. 'Our results show that coffee drinkers are at higher risk of cardiovascular inflammation and what we need now is clinical trials into this', said the report's co-author, Professor Antonis Zampelas. 'I would not go as far to say people should stop drinking coffee, but I personally have cut down the amount I drink.'
Don't panic: Even the researchers admit that these findings are very preliminary, and the most they can say is that more research is needed.
The increases in protein and white blood cells are not particularly high, and there is nothing in this report that actually measures illness. The only measures are of proteins that are related to inflammation. But whether there actually is inflammation, and whether this inflammation causes disease, is unknown.
In fact, given the weakness of the study, it should be surprising that it has received so much coverage, with headlines like 'Danger lurks in just one coffee'. But coffee has become an integral part of daily life as a pick-me-up, and there is a widespread prejudice that anything so enjoyable and useful must inevitably have a terrible downside - despite a lack of evidence to back this up.
The only thing about coffee that should keep us awake at night is the caffeine, not an unproven link to heart disease.
Read: |  | One cup of coffee a day 'risky' | | BBC News, 20 October 2004 |
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| | | 13 October 2004 | Caught in the crossfire
Panic: 'Just what sort of country are we becoming when an innocent 14-year-old is shot dead on the street in a hail of bullets?' asks the Daily Express after the killing of Danielle Beccan in Nottingham. It appears that Beccan was killed in crossfire between gangs, when she was walking home from a funfair. The incident has renewed discussion about gun crime, particularly in Nottingham. 'It has an epidemic of drugs, as do so many other towns and cities, but it seems to have an even worse epidemic of guns', wrote William Rees-Mogg in The Times (London). Firearm offences in England and Wales have almost doubled over the past 10 years, from 13,341 in 1992 to 24,070 in 2002/03, with homicides rising from 52 to 80 in the same period.
Don't panic: Killings like that of Danielle Beccan are newsworthy because they are so rare. Although the rate of homicide over the British population as a whole is rising, it is still very unusual. In 1967, there were 7.3 homicides per million people in England and Wales, rising to about 16 homicides per million in the latest figures (excluding the 172 killings attributed to Dr Harold Shipman). Killings with guns are even more unusual. In 2001/02, most homicides were inflicted using sharp and blunt instruments (39 per cent), hitting and kicking (18 per cent), and strangulation (10 per cent). Shootings made up 11 per cent of killings in 2001/2, but this proportion has fallen in recent figures. The chance of being a victim of firearm homicide in Britain is roughly one-in-a-million, ten times less than that of the USA.
Even this overstates the risk to the majority of the population. Around half of all homicides are 'domestics', with the perpetrator being a relative or friend of the victim. Most gun murders seem to be the result of disagreements between criminals, particularly over illegal drug deals, so are likely to have little affect on the rest of the population, except in rare and tragic cases like that of Danielle Beccan.
Government action to clamp down is usually ineffective. Britain already has the toughest gun legislation in the world. Possession of many semi-automatic weapons was banned after the Hungerford massacre in 1987, and the ban was extended to handguns after the Dunblane school shootings in 1996. In January 2003, home secretary David Blunkett announced that illegal possession or use of a gun would carry a minimum five-year sentence. But none of this has stopped the rise in gun crime - or the much steeper rise in panics about gun crime. The response to this latest death is unlikely to be a reconsideration of guns and drugs policies, but yet more high-profile 'Operations' and token initiatives.
Read: | | Police hunt girl's 'evil killers', | | BBC News, 10 October 2004 | | Crime in England and Wales 2002/2003: Supplementary Volume 1: Homicide and Gun Crime, | | Home Office, January 2004 [pdf format] |
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| | | 4 October 2004 | Another plastic panic
Panic: 'Household plastics to blame for asthma, say scientists', reported the Sunday Telegraph. A study by Swedish researchers examined the bedroom dust of almost 400 children, half of whom suffered from asthma or other allergic conditions. In the bedrooms of allergic condition sufferers the levels of phthalates (organic compounds frequently used to make plastics more flexible) were significantly higher than in the bedrooms of children not suffering such conditions.
'There are phthalates in so many different products that if we are right, then all of us are in real trouble', lead researcher Carl-Gustaf Bornehag said. 'The associations between asthma and phthalates are the strongest we have seen. We need more clinical studies.' The report follows hot on the heels of the decision by the European Union permanently to restrict the use of many phthalates.
Don't panic: While the differences found in this study may be statistically significant, it's not clear whether they are practically significant. The Sunday Telegraph states: 'For example, children who suffered from asthma had an average of 0.15mg of one variant of the chemical butyl benzyl phthalate in their bedroom dust...whereas bedrooms of children without allergies [had] only 0.12mg.' The figures for another substance, DEHP, were 0.9mg (associated with asthma) and 0.72mg (not associated with asthma). Why being exposed to a very small amount of these substances causes asthma but being exposed to a tiny bit less doesn't, is not made clear.
The EU restrictions on phthalates are not supported by scientific evidence, but rather came about as a result of campaigning by environmental groups. The EU commission's European Chemical Bureau published a risk assessment of one form of phthalates in 2003, saying: 'The end products containing DINP (clothes, building materials, toys and baby equipment) and the sources of exposure (car and public transport interiors, food and food packaging) are unlikely to pose a risk for consumers (adults, infants and newborns) following inhalation, skin contact and ingestion.' This risk assessment has been ignored by EU ministers, whose ban on phthalates has been described as 'a significant victory for the politics of emotionalism over reasoned debate'.
At present, a variety of different environmental factors have been implicated in causing asthma, including housing, diet and smoking - though none has been proven. Most importantly, asthma tends to run in families, suggesting a genetic component. And increases in asthma in recent years may have resulted from changes in diagnosis. There is much frustration at the inability to solve the problem of asthma. Finding one particular cause responsible for a large proportion of cases would be welcome - but scapegoating a harmless and versatile group of chemicals helps nobody.
Dust in children's bedrooms is a problem - but only for overworked parents desperate for their offspring to clean up once in a while.
Read: | | Household plastics to blame for asthma, say scientists | | Sunday Telegraph, 3 October 2004 | | Switzerland : EU bans toys made from chemicals | | Fibre2Fashion, 28 September 2004 |
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| | | 23 September 2004 | Return of the 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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