Posts tagged…Health
Evidence on State hospital administration
Thu, Apr 15 2010Adam Cresswell in The Aus. offers us the data instead of spin. The impression of 'excellence' in Victoria fades in the light of the evidence.
"...[H]ealth experts say official comparisons show no evidence that Victoria's system is any better: whether cheaper or, the more important question, whether patients emerge healthier on the other side" Extract from Diagnosis: state of mediocrity | The…
Read more…Caloric restriction diet doesn’t work
Mon, Jul 13 2009Reports this week that a "nutritious but reduced-calorie diet blunts aging and significantly delays the onset of such age-related disorders as cancer…" are a perverse account of a study that showed no statistically significant effect of calorie restriction.
Sandy Szwarc shows that the supposed benefits appear only if the results are cooked by 'cherry picking' the trial's mortality records. She…
Does the data show ‘epidemic’ obesity risks?
Tue, May 12 2009The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has just published the summary results of the National Health Survey for 2007-08. The interesting thing about this year's data is that it includes actual measurement data (as well as self-reports by survey respondents) of 'body-mass indices' (BMI).
Superficially the BMI data in the new ABS survey seems to show that the loud alarms about an 'epidemic of…
How creepy can big Pharma be?
Mon, May 04 2009Firms in the industry that leads a global clamor about the theft of patents have much slipperier standards when it comes to passing off on their own account.
Testimony in a current Australian civil suit against Merck, the creator of Vioxx (below), shows that Merck sponsored a fake medical journal. The phony 'Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine' collected reprints of favorable mentions…
The facts on flu
Wed, Apr 29 2009Most pandemics just aren't what they're cracked up to be.
Sandy Szwarc has published a fascinating dissection of the panic over Mexican 'swine' flu. She points out that if you check national health data, you'll find that influenza kills about the same number of people in pandemic and in non-pandemic years.
"In fact, most of us have lived through a flu pandemic and never even realized it. The Hong…
Evidence on obesity and HIV prevention
Mon, Apr 20 2009
Two notable evidence-based re-assessments of medical risk that deserve your attention—if only as antidotes to policy-based or dogma-based spin.
The first is a journal article by Katherine Flegal, a senior researcher at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, who examines the evidence from a large study of the U.S. population on whether obesity is strongly linked to death from disease,…
How to manage without targets
Wed, Apr 01 2009
Is anyone really surprised that Victoria's biggest public hospitals have been caught manipulating surgery waiting lists?
They're using a variety of devices such as holding surgery clients on 'not ready for treatment' lists to keep the reported surgery waiting times low. Because the Department of Health rewards them for keeping the surgery waiting-lists short. Markets are wonderful, aren't they?…
UK plan to raise price of alcohol
Sun, Mar 15 2009"The government's top medical adviser has drawn up plans for a minimum price for alcohol which would double the cost of some drinks in England" Extract from BBC NEWS
More dumb nannying. Expect to see it here soon. No prize for guessing the impact on bathtub-gin production. Touch of methyl with that?
The fresh fruit mafia
Sun, Feb 08 2009Now that people smoke less, VicHealth—a statutory authority set up by the Victorian Parliament in the late 1980s to reduce the use of tobacco—has to find other ways to suck up our taxes. Over the years they have apparently become convinced that they are guardians of what's good for us and they're willing to go to dramatic lengths to ensure we conform to their views about... fresh fruit…
Should you be worried about salt?
Thu, Feb 05 2009This post is may seem a little 'off-topic'. But please bear with me a moment. It's about 'evidence-based' public policy.
I find that working on international trade and trade policies places a premium on good evidence as the basis of good public policy. There is a lot of b.s. in the political economy of trade (no surprise). The very first thing to do is to look at the evidence—"who gains and who…
Health entitlements threaten US long-term growth
Wed, May 21 2008The U.S. Congressional Budget Office has provided some important projections of the impacts of current U.S. health entitlement programs on budget balances and growth over the next three to five decades. This is a much greater threat to United States growth and its contribution to global growth than the current crisis in financial markets. There is still time to avoid the crunch by cutting health…