THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

PROFESSOR KAROL SIKORA

CMO of Rutherford Cancer Centres and Former Director of WHO Cancer Programme

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

WHEN I was head of the World Health Organisation’s cancer programme, I had to deal with the usual bureaucratic nonsense that you would expect from such a body.

I don’t think they’ve covered themselves in glory during this pandemic, but the organisation’s most recent proposal leaves me scratching my head.

They have suggested that women of “childbearing age” should avoid alcohol entirely. Not pregnant women...any woman who presumably could give birth.

A wide age range indeed. It has been widely ridiculed and deservedly so. However it underlines a worrying trend during the pandemic. Government telling us how to behave, what to eat, who to see, what to do. At some stage we have to stand up and say we’re all big enough to make our own decisions.

Lunacy

Arguments about lockdowns and restrictions aside, I find it deeply concerning that bureaucrats and politicians think they know how best we should live our lives. By all means give advice and highlight the risks, but we have to move away from this nannying and patronising new culture.

There are plenty of things potentially bad for your health – excessive alcohol, smoking, driving too fast, stress. What is the next crazy suggestion? Limit all cars to 30 miles per hour? Ban stressful activity?

The person best placed to make the decision about what is right for their health is the person in question. Not some bureaucrat in Geneva.

If your actions affect someone else, then that is a different question, but attempting to ban women of “childbearing age” from drinking is just the latest example of public-health lunacy. It needs to stop.