I had the misfortune to be the inaugural chair of one of the series of Lancet Commissions, this one into nursing. This was one of the many mistakes I have made in my professional life and not one of my proudest aspects of my Wikipedia entry which some charitable souls curate for me. I tried to stick with it for about a year. I received considerable criticism from a few of my nursing colleagues, all to a man (and they were all men) jealous that they had not been asked to chair the commission, and that I had not requested their presence on it. But since I have long been an outcast from the nursing profession that did not bother me. After a painful year of herding cats, I decided to step down from the commission. Having been promised the earth by the inventor of global health, the utterly deluded Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet Richard Horton, I soon realised that my refusal to buy in to the global health agenda, what I saw around me at the offices of The Lancet and the total lack of (promised) support from the staff plus stacking of the committee with arch globalists nurses against my wishes prompted me one evening from a hotel in Hong Kong to phone The Lancet and tell them to get stuffed.
While I was swanning about the world telling all and sundry that I was chairing a Lancet commission, one of the parallel commissions into liver disease, announced that no amount of alcohol consumption was safe. Where they got the idea that anyone considered alcohol ‘safe’ I don’t know, but it was not this nanny state attitude that impressed—or depressed—me as much as the effect it had on the staff at The Lancet. At my swan song meeting, trying hard not to have any hard feelings, when I drew the meeting to a close, I suggested we retire to the nearest pub for a farewell drink. I was genuinely unprepared for the reaction of the member of The Lancet staff who had been assigned to sit in on our deliberations. She was extremely vexed and made those ‘cut it’ signs across her throat, came over to me and said that, since the liver disease commission had reported, there was no more drinking at The Lancet. I realised at that point, thankfully my point of departure, that in The Lancet I was not dealing with an academic journal, I was dealing with a cult. I regained my life after a year of Lancet induced torture and carried on drinking alcohol assuming that I would hear no more from them. Until…
You probably don’t read Global Health Now, the daily newsletter from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I’m sure that the preceding combination of words has struck fear into the heart of any conservative middle of the road normal person, and I hope you are glad that I read these things to ensure that you don’t have to. The most recent edition, as I write, reports that the health fascists of The Lancet have been at it again with a series of the most incredible claims that—even as a committed scientist—I really begin to wonder if these medically qualified wankers are simply making stuff up. According to a recent study in The Lancet, ‘Young people should completely abstain from drinking’. Fair enough, my wife and I resisted putting whisky in our babies’ bottles (despite the temptation) and try our best to steer our grandchildren away from the wine rack. But, in the case of the recent report, ‘young people’ includes anyone aged under 40. Two issues arise immediately: 1) how is anyone expected to survive to the age of 40 without alcohol? I most certainly would have hung myself in my mid-20s without it; 2) how are young couples meant to conceive without the aphrodisiac properties of the demon drink? I have eight children but…fill the gaps in yourself.
But there’s more, and I quote verbatim: ‘Men ages 15–39. For them, more than a small shot glass of beer carries health risks…while a safe daily limit for women under 40 is about 2 tablespoons of wine.’ Luckily, I have a colleague who is an expert in public health who I asked to give his considered and professional opinion on these figures. After much deliberation he announced with confidence that this was ‘shite’. And I agree. Along with my school pals from an age way below the legal limit I drank my way through sixth form (ok, I lied, we started around fourth form), continued this through university and—now in our late sixties—drink ourselves into oblivion every time we meet. Along the way we have lost a few good friends. Some have wrapped their car round a tree or fallen to their death, one drowned, some have dropped dead at Sunday lunch, others have died with ignominy in a hospital bed. But none of these deaths has been alcohol related except the one who drowned, but I believe he went down with a smile. The only glimmer of hope in the article is that ‘Modest amounts of alcohol—think a small glass of red wine a day—may help healthy adults 40 and older slightly reduce their risks of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and diabetes.’ Provided a whole bottle of Rioja constitutes a ‘small glass’ then I think I am well within the limit. My secret for a happy and healthy life is simple: stop reading The Lancet, and get the drinks in!
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
