Drinkdriving push does not add up
There is rather more than is immediately apparent in the push to reduce the “safe” limits for drinkdriving from 80mg to 50mg per 100 millilitres of blood – which will restrict drivers to just a pint of beer or single glass of wine. Barbara Castle’s Road Safety Act and the introduction of the breathalyser in October 1967 was undoubtedly the most immediately and dramatically beneficial piece of legislation of the 20th century, reducing the number of fatalities within a year by 1,100 and serious injuries by a whopping 11,000.
Since then, the trend has continued steadily downward and, despite the three-fold increase in the number of cars on the road, there are now only 240 alcoholrelated fatalities a year. Of these, 48 occur in accidents where the driver’s alcohol level is in the 50mg to 80mg range. Thus the claim that lowering the safety limit will save a further 170 lives a year is clearly impossible.
This will not be the first time that campaigners have exaggerated the benefits of their proposed reforms.
But that is not exactly the situation here. Rather, the figure of 170 “lives saved” is based on the supposition that lowering the safety limit will also reduce the number of fatalities in those whose levels are greater than 80mg per 100 millilitres of blood.
One might reasonably wonder why this might be so, but this “population approach” (as it is known) of targeting the many at moderate risk has for many years now been a central tenet of health policy, endorsed by worthy organisations such as Nice (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).
It also underpins the current, officially endorsed enthusiasm for over-treatment and accounts for why two thirds of the several million people in Britain taking antihypertensive drugs have a normal or near normal blood pressure (diastolic 90-99) – though, as noted in this column before, it does not reduce their chances of a stroke, heart attack or untimely death. Ditto for statins and cholesterol levels. Crazy, but true. his addiction to crunching ice cubes might be due to iron deficiency anaemia, a reader wonders whether the reverse situation might also apply.
His iron levels were “through the roof ” when he was recently found to have the excess iron storage condition haemochromatosis – and maybe this could account for his longstanding aversion to iced drinks.
It would be interesting and very useful to know whether there is a connection.
Haemochromatosis is an insidious condition that can cause much damage to the joints and liver before being diagnosed, so an antipathy to ice would be a useful warning sign.
Meanwhile, several doctors have taken me to task for not pointing out that those with iron deficiency anaemia require investigations to identify whether they have chronic blood loss from the gut due to, for example, gastritis, coeliac disease or a benign (or malignant) tumour of the large bowel.
‘This is not the first time campaigners have exaggerated the benefits of proposed reforms’