Actually, I copied the headline from the article where I read about the research - but I didn't post a link to the original article. This way, it made me look as if I'm the one that made the causality conclusion, while it wasn't.
However, I have discussed the issue of causality with one of the main responsible for prevention in Denmark, and as he told me, even though it is wrong to assume causality, in many cases there really isn't a tool to prove causality. Therefore, if the correlation is good and the logic is present and simple, it is often forwarded to a conclusion about how to prevent problems. In average, this has demonstrated to be a good idea, but, of course, sometimes it leads to wrong prevention measures. I guess the food pyramid with a lot of carbonhydrates at the bottom, is such one.
However, if you look at most other kinds of treatments, especially medical treatments, it works exactly the same way. Some drugs cannot be explained, they just work and nobody really knows why. Side effects of drugs are often virtually unknown and based on vague reports, especially for small patient segments, and many drugs have never been tested on new born children but are used on those anyway. Interaction between food and drugs is usually unknown, even though food sometimes contain more powerful substances than some drugs.
If you apply mathematical logic to health care, and only treat based on mathematical logic, most patients would be untreatable. Health care is basically "let's try this and see if it works", and if it seems (!) to work on most patients, keep going.
To anybody that is used to apply strict logic, this is a system that simply has to fail. But it doesn't. The world's health care system delivers impressive results. What many tend to forget, only math can prove something, other sciences cannot. Big Bang is basically just a mathematical model that enables us to deliver new LED colors and stuff, but it is not truth. In the same way, there is no universal truth in health care on which you can build logical conclusions. I see many parts of health care, where I think that it is obvious, that we will laugh at today's medical books in 50 years. The best knowledge today will be perceived as the old age in the future, just think of the recent proteine research, which seems to change almost everything - and that is just an example. Epilepsy is another area that seems to be on a stone-age level compared with what is coming up.
So, does driving cars make obese? I would say that it is a very, very good theory, and driving a car definitely makes it harder to comply with several official health advices :-)
Is the uninformed consumer confused? Definitely. But sometimes even they make healthy decisions sometimes. Like when the doctor cannot find the proper treatment, and the patient goes to an alternative health care provider with unauthorized methods, who really cares and tells the patient to do things that actually work - like drinking more water, exercising or simply giving attention to the patient. I know a lot of people who were cured by non-doctors. Just like your tire-expert can tell you that your car's steering doesn't work right, the optician can sometimes cure migraine.
Can we create an economic system that promotes good health instead of promoting treatment turnover? In my opinion, people will have worse health than necessary, as long as they don't take charge of it. I have only seen insurance systems and socialised systems that work against that - and I don't think that we will ever get rid of insurance systems, because it makes people feel safe, the second level of Maslow. I believe that Nannyism and health cooperation outside the health care sector is vital to lower health care costs. Increased demand by people who live unhealthy lives, increases prices, it's that simple. Priorities should be based on economy, which means that if you're old, you have less chances for getting an expensive life-saving treatment for free. |
