That’s OK then. A pint a day keeps the doctor away. A pint of beer, that is. Yes, it used to be a pint of milk, but that was before milk was bad for you. Go to work on an egg was the same. Now it is our old friend alcohol that is back in favour. Seven pints of beer, or a bottle and a half of wine, dramatically cut whether you get type 2 diabetes. It’s official. Danish scientists say so, and who are we to quarrel?
What should the ordinary reader make of the daily stream of stories bursting from the swing-doors of medical research, usually followed by a request for more research cash? The biggest headlines go to anyone who can stand previous advice on its head. Vitamins are good for you, or totally useless. Exercise is good for your heart, or might kill you, depending on who you are. Carbohydrates are good if complex, bad if not. Cholesterol also comes in “good” and “bad” varieties. As for the microbiome theory, it offers a whole new cornucopia of horrors and delights.
Some things are getting better. Time was when “surveys show …” was preliminary to pure advertising copy. Peddlers of cigarettes, fats, cereals and stout all used pseudo-science to claim health-giving properties for their wares. They probably killed hundreds of thousands. Advertising regulation and scientific peer review have done something to curb such woes.
The new menace is self-diagnosis. Doctors claim that a majority of patients investigate their symptoms online, arriving at the surgery demanding not diagnosis, but prescriptions. Burgeoning health columns in the media have a similar effect.
Huge profits can be made by drug companies from claiming to postpone the approach of death. Big pharma is like the medieval papacy, selling indulgences to reduce time spent in purgatory. Its long campaign against cancer immunology – to protect its lucrative chemotherapy patents – was a scandal of similar proportions. So, too, is the continued condemnation of medicinal cannabis.
Increased knowledge about health must be a good thing. Increased regulation of such knowledge is essential, though not if dominated by big pharma, as it still is. As yet, there is no regulation of the internet hypochondria, which allows scare-mongering and quackery to encircle the world unbridled in seconds.
The wisest response remains the old alliance of sceptic and epicurean. Trust nothing at first sight. Test everything against the evidence. The good things in life are best taken in moderation. But what makes you happy cannot be all bad, whatever the doctor says.
