So, in the wake of the nasty little fascists seeking to tell us how much we should drink, we now find that the data upon which their safe limits are based… were made up.
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”.
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.
“No scientific basis whatsoever” indeed. Well, that hasn’t stopped a succession of slimeballs politicians making pronouncements on the back of it.
It hasn’t stopped Dawn Primarolo deciding that current drinking habits are too high and this “has to change” – by which, she means the government poking about in our private affairs; by which, she means yet more legislation designed to restrict the freedom of the individual; by which, she means another little step towards a fascist state.
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.
As opposed, that is, to saying the sensible thing when you have nothing useful to say; nothing.
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”.
Fine. Can we now have a period – preferably and extended one – whereby politicians and health fascists shut the fuck up and let us decide for ourselves how much we wish to imbibe, please? Or is that just too much to ask?
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.
That sounds suspiciously like an oxymoron to me. If they had no scientific data and were unable to make recommendations based on fact, then they should have refrained from making recommendations.
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.
Well, quite. Is Dawn Primarolo going to shut up now? Frankly, it is politicians who are a hazard to our health, not booze.
This is proof that the Conservatives are no alternative to Labour. They’ll still be telling us how healthy to be. As for how many units of alcohol is okay, it depends on the individual.