Pack less. Weigh less. Pay less.
That's the idea behind Derrie-Air, a spoof advertising campaign that has recently launched in Pennsylvania. The adverts aim to tackle global warming as follows: But not only will we do our part to protect the environment, we will expect you, our passengers, to do your part as well. The magic comes from our one of a kind "Sliding Scale"—the more you weigh, the more you'll pay. After all, it takes more fuel—more energy—to get more weight from point A to point B. So we will charge passengers based on how much mass they add to the plane.
A joke yes. And maybe not even a funny one. But here are the brainiacs at Freakonomics on why this is something airlines might actually want to seriously consider.
Alice Fishburn
Can this really be true? Can it be serious?
What an outrage. What a disgrace. What a weak minded, pathetic piece of petty politics. And what a tragedy.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill contains a clause forbidding couples from screening their embryos and then deliberately selecting ones with a serious medical condition.
Who would want to do such a thing, anyway? Well may you ask. But the answer is - certain deaf activists.
And now, according at least to the Sunday Telegraph, the Government has succumbed to pressure from deaf groups.
It has decided to exclude deafness from the list of medical conditions. That's right. The Government is accepting the bizarre argument that being deaf is not a disability.
The deaf groups argue that the Bill is discriminatory. Of course it is. It discriminates in favour of babies being able to hear. It discriminates against parents choosing to make their children deaf. Only in a world gone mad can such discrimination be regarded as a bad thing.
Apparently the Government has been taken aback by the ferocity of the campaign by deaf activists.
But this isn't about the rights of deaf people.
It is about the rights of their children. It is about the rights of newborn babies not to be deliberately handicapped by their parents.
I think this right should be protected against parents wanting to deafen their children in pursuit of a combination of their own selfish interests and extremist political dogma.
And I am certain that my position is that held by the vast majority of people, deaf and hearing, in this country.
It beggars belief that we are to be overidden because the Government is running scared of lobby groups.
 I am not making this up, I promise.
The Government has established a surveillance scheme to assist in the investigation and prevention of hospital infection.
It's name? The MRSA Enhanced Surveillance Scheme. To save time it is referred to in official documents by its acronym.
MESS.
I'm not kidding.
One of the things that has persuaded me to take a tough line on passive smoking is the evidence on heart disease, pressed on me by the British Medical Association, among others.
Now the New Scientist reports: Washington DC-based Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) states in its promotional material that a single exposure to tobacco fumes lasting just 30 minutes can raise a "non-smoker's risk of suffering a fatal heart attack to that of a smoker".
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) makes similar claims.
Can the risks of such a brief exposure really be that high? Not according to tobacco researcher Mike Siegel of Boston University, who examined statements made by nearly 30 anti-tobacco groups including ASH (US) and the BHF, as well as clinical studies upon which the statements were based.
He believes the anti-tobacco groups distort the science to make their point (Epidemiologic Perspectives and Innovations, DOI: 10.1186/1742-5573-4-13).
Although a half-hour exposure does cause measurable changes in blood flow, the effects are only transitory and blood circulation returns to normal within hours, sometimes immediately, Siegel says.
There is no evidence that a single exposure causes any meaningful damage in the way that the groups claim. "It is certainly not correct to claim that a single 30-minute exposure to second-hand smoke causes hardening of the arteries, heart disease, heart attacks or strokes," he says.
How am I supposed to believe anything these people tell me in future?
Hat Tip: Mick Hume
Grumbling about the wait in the doctor's office? Well, in the UK, there are around 440 people per doctor. Compare that to parts of Africa where are around 50,000.
Look at this map to find out all the figures. To see the enlarged version, click here.
(Hat Tip: Rebecca's Pocket)
An interesting row has developed in the United States about Rudy Giuliani's prostate cancer.
Actually it's about his prostate cancer figures. Rudy argued that his chances of survival were much higher in the US than with the "socialized" medicine in the UK.
Not so, argue a range of critics.
His survival stats are meaningless. Five year survival is higher in the US because of early diagnosis. But the number of deaths from the disease per 100,000 head of population is broadly the same.
So Rudy gets four Pinocchios from the Washington Post.
But should he have? The FT's Clive Crook, whom I've always greatly admired, thinks not. His essential point about surviving cancer is correct argues Crook. If you look at your chances of beating all types of cancer, they are significantly greater in the United States.
Tyler Cowen, master of the Marginal Revolution blog, has found this amazing story in the The Boston Globe about suicide help-lines: In 723 of 1,431 calls, for example, the helper never got around to asking whether the caller was feeling suicidal. And when suicidal thoughts were identified, the helpers asked about available means [like whether they owned a gun] less than half the time. There were more egregious lapses, too: in 72 cases a caller was actually put on hold until he or she hung up. Seventy-six times the helper screamed at, or was rude to, the caller. Four were told they might as well kill themselves.
There were 33 evident on-line suicide attempts, yet only six rescue efforts, sometimes because the caller ended the communication. In one case, a caller who'd overdosed passed out, yet the helper hung up.
Jaw-dropping.
Murad Ahmed
But only if smoked in their "normal amount", ten to forty a day...
Murad Ahmed
(Hat Tip: VideoSift)
If you’re not already a regular reader of the Foreign Policy magazine website, you really should be. It’s particularly fascinating on international comparisons. So now it turns its attention on the pastime that unites the world: football sex.
The graph below (click on it to enlarge it) shows the national average of sexual partners for various countries. Bottom of the shag pile come India and China, with an average of 3 sexual partners each. The top bedpost knotchers are Turks, with over 14 sexual partners each on average. And we Brits are pretty virile, averaging around ten sexual partners each.
A few other things come out of the data. It comes as no surprise that the greater the level of unprotected sex, the greater the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases. Norway is the biggest culprit, with 70 per cent of Norwegians admitting to having unprotected sex without knowing the other persons sexual history. That explains why their rate of STDs is at a huge 21 per cent.
Fascinating stuff. But then it always is though, isn’t it?
Murad Ahmed
My body is worth $3,475. Well, if I was dead and in America.
ScienceBloggers have been having fun discussing the (admittedly unscientific) Cadaver Calculator, which works out the value of your body parts to medical researchers. Take the test and see how much you can posthumously make for your family. If only there was a free market in dead bodies in Britain.
Robbie Millen
 Andrew Wakefield turned up to the General Medical Council surrounded by a sadly deluded group of parents still campaigning against the MMR.
But there was an irony in their campaign (beyond the irony that persuading people not to use the MMR endangers the children they are campaiging to protect).
Up before the GMC at the same time as Dr Wakefield was his research colleague Simon Murch. But Doctors Murch and Wakefield disagree about the MMR with Murch arguing that the initial research did not demonstrate a link.
The disagreement got personal, with Wakefield suggesting that Murch had only argued against the link because he came under pressure from his bosses.
Maybe I should get down there with a pro-Murch placard.
While I search for a felt tip pen and a piece of wood, I've been looking at Wikipedia's list of cognitive biases to see how many apply to the anti-MMR campaigners:
- Bandwagon effect — the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour, and manias.
- Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.
- Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
- Focusing effect — prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
- Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
- Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
- Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
- Omission bias — The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
- Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
- Reactance - the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
- Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
- Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
- Ambiguity effect — the avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".
- Anchoring — the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
- Anthropic bias — the tendency for one's evidence to be biased by observation selection effects.
- Attentional bias — neglect of relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.
- Availability heuristic — a biased prediction, due to the tendency to focus on the most salient and emotionally-charged outcome.
- Clustering illusion — the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.
- Illusory correlation — beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.
- False consensus effect — the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
But I've probably missed out a few.
 Our new Health Secretary has begun his term in office by setting up a review and offering to listen to staff.
Fortunately his remarks during that brief period of candour known as the Deputy Leadership election allow us to discover who exactly he thinks we should be listening to: Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, called for a “proper dialogue” with health workers, who still felt undervalued. He suggested that the Government “listened a bit too much to the BMA [British Medical Association] and not enough to unions like Unison. Maybe what we should be doing is bringing the unions in the health service much more closely into the social partnership”.
In return here are the words used by Unison to explain why they backed Mr Johnson in that contest: He’s someone we can do business with.
Great.
Over on the Spectator's Coffee House Blog, Fraser Nelson rightly draws attention to some striking figures on abortion. He points out one in four conceptions are terminated by abortion, an extraordinary proportion.
The same set of stats also contain this fact - that more conceptions take place outside marriage (54.9 per cent) than within it (45.1 per cent).
 Not so long ago, Alan Johnson was being touted as the "Blairite" alternative to Gordon Brown. So complete his sentence, delivered during the contest for deputy leader.
On the NHS, he said, the Government had: listened a bit too much to the BMA [British Medical Association] and not enough to.....
Patients? No.
The experience of other countries? No
Innovative doctors? No.
Click here to discover the much-celebrated Mr Johnson's view of the voice we need to listen to in order to improve the health service.
The lead story in The Times this morning is really quite extraordinary. To remind you of it: Women who are pregnant or trying for a baby should stop drinking alcohol altogether, the Government’s leading doctors give warning today.
The new advice radically revises existing guidelines, which say that women can drink up to two units once or twice a week. Fiona Adshead, the deputy chief medical officer, said that the change was meant to send “a strong signal” to the thousands of women who drank more than the recommended limit that they were putting their babies at risk. But she admitted that it was not in response to any new medical evidence.
This is merely the latest instalment of an extremely dangerous development. The public health profession has long seen itself as having a political role in making us behave as it wishes, rather than simply providing us with information.
Now it has moved on to using deceit as a tactic to advance its various causes.
I am a strong supporter of the MMR vaccination. How, now, do I respond to readers who say that the medical profession is quite willing to lie to them when it wants to get its way?
Do you want to know how long you've got left before you shuffle off this mortal coil? Ronald Bailey on Reason discusses the science behind it. He links to an interesting life-expectancy calculator site. I'd recommend it, especially since it said I'd live to 80 - not bad for a smoker and drinker. Go play on your boss's time.
Robbie Millen
 Oliver James has replied to my criticism of his (I am sorry to say terrible) new book Affluenza with the following point:
Daniel Finkelstein from the Times and Tim Worstall state that there is no connection between national inequality and mental illness, contrary to my evidence. But my claims concern this relationship in developed nations. Obviously if, as they do, you add in developing nations such as Nigeria, it is a different matter - my arguments regarding affluenza apply to developed nations.
On top of that, wilfully or because they have not read the book closely enough, they misrepresent my argument as being based on inequality. Rather, my point is that selfish capitalism (of which inequality is a consequence) is what is doing our heads in.
Well, wilfully or because he has not read my article closely enough, Dr James misrepresents my argument.
I did not state that there was no connection between national inequality and mental illness. Instead, I argued that Dr James had not demonstrated that national inequality caused mental illness. This is, as I pointed out, an entirely different thing.
Dr James now says that it is selfish capitalism that is the real issue and that I misrepresent him as making an argument based on inequality.
Funny that.
In his introductory chapter he describes the relationship between mental illness and inequality as being one of the two "fundamental facts about Selfish Capitalism and emotional distress" that the book reveals. He says that "since Selfish Capitalism is the main cause of inequality in developed nations, this strongly suggests that Selfish Capitalism is not a good way to run things". (Just for completeness, the other fundamental fact is that emotional distress is higher in English speaking nations than in Western Europe)
His assertion of a causal link between inequality and mental illness is absolutely central to his book and he does not demonstrate it to be true.
In this morning's Times, Tim Worstall takes issue with Oliver James's new book Affluenza. If you want to read James himself - he set out his main point in a short Guardian article yesterday, justifying the link he makes between mental illness and capitalism (although annoyingly calling the former affluenza and the latter Blatcherism).
The money quote from James is this: Follow the logic? Selfish capitalism infects populations with affluenza; it fosters mental illness; English-speaking nations are more selfish capitalist - ergo, more prone to illness.
Earlier in the piece, he appears to be suggesting that the privatisation of public utilities causes mental illness. I am not a professional psychologist but I must say I find this, ahem, a surprising assertion.
I am ready to believe, however, that economic and political freedom is associated with a greater number of incidents of medical illness.
Can I recommend Tim Lott's fabulous book The Scent of Dried Roses? A moving and funny account of the author's own experiences with mental health problems, the book also provides a convincing account of the cause of nervous breakdowns.
Lott suggests that we tell each other stories about who we are and have trouble coping when reality makes those stories impossible to maintain. This is why bankruptcy, divorce and other traumatic incidents can lead to suicidal breakdown.
If this theory is correct it might explain the Danish experience, which James makes a good deal of. The BMJ article I linked to the other day (here) contained a different explanation to James's (he asserts that their happiness is a function of their welfare state). The doctors suggested that the Danes had low expectations and were constantly surprised when they were exceeded. In other words, the story they tell themselves about who they are was rarely challenged by bad news.
Yet if Lott's idea is right then there are likely to be more breakdowns in fluid, dynamic free societies. Greed and money aren't really the point - more the difficulty of maintaining your identity in a rapidly changing environment. And Lott subscribes to this view himself. It's a constant theme of his writing.
James, I think, expects us simply to accept that we should move towards a form of social organisation that reduces mental illness. But if such illness is a regrettable by-product of freedom then things aren't nearly as simple as he suggests.
Altogether, given that he is qualified, respected and widely quoted, I thought his Guardian contribution unbelievably superficial.
Those working outside the medical profession may be unaware of this research on why Danes are smug.
The other day I discovered underneath my floorboards a packet of cigarettes that I reckon had lain undisturbed for at least a quarter of a century. Being a cheapskate, I immediately checked to see whether there were any fags left to smoke. Alas no, but inside the old packet was an Embassy vouchers slip with some health advice from H.M. Government: If you do smoke cigarettes leave a long stub. Remove from mouth between puffs. Inhale less. Take fewer puffs.
On the packet itself, in a 45mm x 15mm box, smokers were warned that "Smoking may cost you more than money". Compare that with a modern packet of Camel cigarettes: on one side, inside a 45mm x 55mm box, the words SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER scream out in bold type, and on the other side we are warned that SMOKING KILLS in a 35mm by 55mm box.
So why am I telling you this? Well, I think that tale of two cigarette packets shows us something about the changed relationship between Joe Public and the State.
The old Government advice is restrained and treats smokers as adults capable of making choices. The new Government advice treats smokers as witless idiots who need to be bossed and scared into correct behaviour. The new advice, at heart, treats the taxpaying public like a problem that needs to be managed from Whitehall. Little wonder that the State thinks it now needs to teach us how to be good mummies and daddies or how to cross the road or put out our rubbish.
Maybe it's just an old fag packet, but to me it's a reminder that the State has forgotten that it is supposed to be the servant of the public.
Robbie Millen
You may also find interesting: "Yet more ways to be killed by smoking!"
I've never had much time for life's Chicken Lickens: after all, the sky never seems to fall on our heads. But perhaps we really ought to worry about chickens falling from the sky; certainly the report on what must be done to combat an outbreak of avian flu, published today by the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, is pretty robust. This article from The Times last year by John Oxford, a leading British virologist, makes unnerving reading about the scale of the flu threat.
Robbie Millen
 Earlier this year a High Court judge ruled that all expert witnesses should be immune from disciplinary action and that Sir Roy Meadows, whose evidence was used to wrongly imprison mothers and break up families, was not guilty of serious professional misconduct and his striking off by the General Medical Council should be quashed.
Today the Court of Appeal overturned that ruling over immunity for expert witness, but dismissed the GMC challenge to the High Court finding that Meadows was not guilty of serious professional misconduct. So what should we make of the latest twist in the travails of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the Dick Dastardly of "expert witnesses"?
Clearly expert witnesses must be held responsible for their intellectual errors and their blind faith in theories that don't actually make sense of the muddy world of family life. It's worth rereading this article by Camilla Cavendish about the terrors of Meadows and expert witnesses with pet theories. For the contra view turn to Theodore Dalrymple in another Times comment piece. He argues that Meadows is a scapegoat for a society that cannot cope with the hard truth that parents do wicked things to their children.
Robbie Millen
 Did you see the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm when Larry David refuses to shake hands with Ben Stiller because the latter had just blocked a sneezed with his? Well, their relationship never recovered.
I learn from this intriguing article by Glenn Reynolds about hand sanitisers that Donald Trump loathes the handshake greeting I think it's barbaric, shaking hands, you catch colds, you catch the flu, you catch this, you catch all sorts of things
So as flu season approaches, the big question must surely be: should handshaking be suspended for the Winter? And what should replace it? A bow? A nod of the head? I favour a Germanic click of the heels.
Robbie Millen
Tomorrow is World Menopause Day. I will be celebrating quietly at home.
The other big issue for debate in Manchester will be Labour's health reforms. Polly Toynbee thinks they are an electoral disaster: The reform timetable will crash right into the electoral timetable, unless a wiser hand slows things down. But no, the message from inside is: "Go faster!" At this pace the markets, the debts and the closures may all crash into the election barrier at full tilt.
Today comes the news that the expanded use of the morning after pill has not reduced the abortion rate.
Well, for goodness sake, of course it hasn't.
It is an elementary point. People adjust their behaviour in response to policy. If you give people a benefit that only kicks in when they have small amounts of saving, then people will save less in order to be eligible and if you make it safer to have unprotected sex, they will have more if it.
A similar point is made by Mary Ann Sieghart this morning in respect of child seat belts. And last week we heard of a study which suggested that cars drive closer to you when you cycle with a helmet (though I rather suspect that the cyclist got closer to the cars).
John Adam's book Risk explains this point in detail. But the regularity with which this obvious point is overlooked never ceases to amaze me.
Daniel Finkelstein
is Chief Leader Writer of The Times and writes a weekly column. Comment Central is his rolling guide to the best opinion on the web. Click
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