The British Medical Journal for 28 October is interesting reading for those with a sense of irony. It demonstrates, if proof were needed, that we do not live in an entirely rational world.
Two articles cast doubt upon current government policies. The first concerns the use of so-called 'expert patients' in the treatment of osteoarthritis in the middle-aged and older. The expert patients teach new patients how to cope with their own chronic disease. The government wants 100,000 people to be enrolled in such a treatment programme for osteoarthritis by the year 2012.
The researchers found that such a programme did not improve the pain or mobility of sufferers, though they experienced a slight decrease of anxiety, of doubtful significance. As usual, the government policy preceded evidence that the policy was likely to be effective.
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| Medical evidence casts doubt on recent government health policies |
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Another article questioned the evidence that the vaccinations against influenza currently provided to people at risk of complications during an epidemic are clinically effective. Analysing the published evidence, it found that it was either defective or insufficient. Yet again, government policy ran ahead of any proof of efficacy.
The irony is that this issue of the BMJ also reported the return of measles to Britain (including the first death from the disease since 1992), even though an indubitably effective vaccine against it no doubt exists. But since the spurious connection between measles immunisation and autism was first reported, the use of the vaccine has declined in Britain, but not in America, where measles has been eradicated.
We do those things that ought not to be done, and do not do those things that ought. 
FIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 8, 2006
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