Research Body Calls For More Government Intervention To Tackle Public Health Problems, UK

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 15 Nov 2007 - 4:00 PDT

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A report by the well respected Nuffield Council on Bioethics concludes that the Government and industry are not doing enough to prevent binge drinking or obesity and should promote healthy lifestyles through stricter measures and deterrents.

The authors, a group of doctors, lawyers, philosophers and other experts, argue that the much maligned "nanny state" should be replaced by a new, more sensitive idea of "stewardship".

The council, which considers ethical questions raised by advances in medical research, looked at alcohol, obesity, smoking, infectious disease and fluoridation of water.

Lord Krebs, who chaired the report committee, said yesterday: "People often reject the idea of a nanny state but the Government has a duty to look after the health of everyone and sometimes that means guiding or restricting our choices."

The central concept of stewardship differed from the nanny state by being "more sensitive to the balances between public good and individual freedom," he said. The report concludes: "The stewardship model provides justification for the UK Government to introduce measures that are more coercive than those which currently feature in the National Alcohol Strategy."

The report, in preparation since February last year, says that the arguments used to justify banning smoking in enclosed public spaces would also apply to banning smoking in homes. This would be extremely difficult to enforce, but local authorities and the courts could preside over exceptional cases where children with a respiratory illness could be at such a risk that intervention may be ethically acceptable.

The UK Public Health Association welcomed the report, saying that it represented an evidence-based approach that could counter health inequalities. But Simon Clark, director of the smokers' lobby group FOREST, said: "Politicians should take care not to overindulge in social engineering. Potentially, this report is a manifesto for a bully state in which people are increasingly forced to behave in a manner approved by politicians and evangelical health campaigners who want unprecedented control over our daily lives."

http://www.ash.org.uk