Public Health: ethical issues

A report was published by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics today. It's job was to "consider the responsibilities of governments, individuals and others in promoting the health of the population."

Their conclusion was that, left to their own devices, people do not lead healthy lives and that there needs to be some state intervention to help people make healthy choices. The Council looked at four case studies obesity, infectious diseases, fluoridation of water and (the reason I'm typing this) alcohol consumption and smoking.

It's an interesting report actually. It's been put together by a bunch luminaries including doctors, health economists, lawyers, philosophers and other experts. There's a lot of professors listed which is always reassuring. They've come up with the 'Stewardship model"

They recognise that some public measures are intrusive in their nature and considers the ethical issues involved in deciding in what circumstances those measures should be used.

As far as the govt's alcohol strategy is concerned this bit is quite damning:

the Government’s alcohol strategy has focused on public information campaigns and voluntary labelling schemes – measures that have been shown not to be effective.

and as an (effective) alternative the report recommends "increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages and restricting hours of sale". Of course, the govts current stock response is to refer to the pending review and change the subject.

The Sun have jumped on this in their amusingly shrill fashion and the Guardian have reported on this too. If you want to have a read of the reports for yourself (and they are pretty interesting - maybe just read the 'short guide' if you're busy) then you can download them here.

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