The truth about ‘austerity’ deaths
A FEW days ago, I met Jeremy Hunt to talk about the mental health crisis. The Health Secretary said the Government was committed to increasing medical school places and looking at ways to improve the numbers who become psychiatrists.
These kinds of changes take a long time to bear fruit, but it was a refreshing contrast to the short-termism of most politicians.
And while there’s no doubt that Mr Hunt has made mistakes — he completely misjudged the junior doctor situation, for instance, causing unnecessary stress to a group who work incredibly hard — and although I don’t agree with him on many things, my impression is that he really cares.
I certainly don’t believe he’s the pantomime villain painted by some of my colleagues. Seeing people as either all good or all bad makes the world seem understandable, but it’s very childish: in reality, few people are really evil. What surprises me is that so many doctors seem unable to appreciate this.
Doctors are used to working hard for little recognition, having to muddle along in an imperfect system and making tough judgment calls where there’s no right or wrong answer, so why can’t we appreciate politicians are in the same situation? The brutal fact is there’s a mismatch between what we expect from the NHS and what we’re prepared to pay for.
Despite knowing this, many doctors would rather point the finger of blame at politicians.
This was evident this week following research in the British Medical Journal that appeared to confirm everything the Left has been saying about this Government. The study was quoted repeatedly on social media and quickly morphed into ‘120,000 extra deaths per year’ — quoted even on BBC1’s Question Time. Doctors pounced on it and the vitriol was overwhelming.
But, as I discovered after about ten seconds of checking, the 120,000 figure was not per year, but over seven years — it was also partly a guestimate. Most important, the researchers couldn’t say these extra deaths were down to austerity at all.
But ‘austerity is killing people’ and ‘Theresa May murders people’ are such common tropes that they’re assumed to be true. Why are some doctors, usually so cautious about interpreting research, swallowing this line so readily?
Twisting the evidence is a cardinal sin for any scientist. Doctors should know better.