PATIENTS who are overweight or smoke should be denied operations until they are fitter, the health secretary has declared.
Patricia Hewitt says it is right for doctors to order individuals to lose weight or give up cigarettes before they are treated.
In an interview with The Sunday Times she described the move as “best practice” because operations are less likely to succeed on people who are very fat or smoke heavily.
It is the first time the health secretary has explicitly endorsed the policy, which has been adopted by some health trusts. Hewitt: smokers should stop before they’re treated by Isabel Oakeshott
Mark Alexander
2 comments:
Calm down Mark!
While what she says may sound pc correct to some, I think your health secretary is sadly misinformed. How can she advocate this position and at the same time saying "it would be “dreadful” to deny treatment on the grounds that patients were to blame for their condition.?"
Recent studies have shown that not all obese people are the gluttons most people assume them to be.
Gut bacteria levels may contribute to obesity
I also remember reading several years ago about a gene variant that causes some people to become less addicted to nicotine than others.
Gene Variant Found That Can Help Protect Against Nicotine Addiction
Unless and until she can find a way to differentiate those who are wantonly harming their health, and to provide real help to those who can't control it, she will face major problems enforcing her proposal.
Hello Heather:
Calm down, you say. I really am quite calm. I just get irritated by these pc clowns who seem to think that they are whiter than white and point the finger at others.
I also get irritated by this government, since it has banned so many things since coming to office. It has also passed some laws that many in mainstream might take exception to.
I feel that my rights are being taken away from me. They keep bashing the smoker, for example, but do nothing about the druggies!
I am told that it is not a pretty sight to behold all the drunks in the A&E departments of hospitals up and down the country on a Saturday night. What is Little Miss Hewitt going to do about those people, I wonder?
Britain must be about the only country in the world in which it is okay for a man to marry another man, yet he cannot have a fag in public! How rational is that? (And I am not being homophobic, either. I am merely pointing out an anomaly.)
Why the hell can't governments stop meddling in people's private lives? I have never lived through such an unsettling period before. Almost on a daily basis now, we hear about the noose tightening around smokers' necks, and of some idiotic scheme to ban some activity or other. Last week, the EU came out with the idea of making it an offence, Europe-wide, punishable by a jail term, for picking wild flowers! Imagine how stupid that is! Have these CLOWNS got nothing better to do than regulate others? They should learn the motto, live and let live.
PS: I would LOVE to learn about their foibles. The bloody hypocrites!
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