Who needs WHO?

Monday July 18, 2011

Brian Monteith takes the World Health Organisation to task for inspiring many of the public health scare stories that blight our lives

Teenagers use them, grannies use them, lovers use them and Dom Jolly has a really big one that helped make him famous. Curious? I am of course referring to mobile phones – the indispensable accessory of modern living.

They have been in the news again, not because they have been banned in top class restaurants or in first class train carriages, nor because they have caused fights in the schoolrooms or have revolutionised life for the better in developing African countries, although all of these things are true. No, the World Health Organisation has issued a warning that they may be dangerous for our health.

Should we sit up and listen, should we switch our mobys off, never to hear them play those catchy, humorous and highly irritating little ring-tones again? No. My unscientific but entirely dependable advice to the doctors at WHO is, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

I know I can say this, for the so-called research should come with its own health warning. It is just the latest example of scary science being used by busybodies to tell us how to live our lives.

The WHO is the out-of-control public health wing of that World government in waiting, the United Nations – you know, the body that allowed Colonel Gaddafi’s men to run its Human Rights commission. (I kid you not.)

Dealing with collective public health issues such as Malaria and HIV/AIDS in continents like Africa requires co-ordination to be effective, so if we didn’t have the WHO we’d have to invent something like it, but when it starts dealing in our lifestyle choices we should begin to ask just who is it accountable to?

Back in 1997 the WHO issued a warning about a possible increased risk in having cancer from eating pickled vegetables. Yes, that’s right, forget that gherkin with the salad, cut out the capers in your beurre noir and take a pass on the olives on your pizza. It came from a study of the use of pickles in the Far East but meant that the offending appetizer was added to a list of possible carcinogens.

Fortunately nobody listened to this advice, for like so many of these research studies it was laden with qualifications that made it meaningless.

The WHO also classified coffee in the same way and listed talcum powder as another risk. Given the latter’s ubiquitous use on baby’s bottoms and the widespread consumption of coffee in all its many guises it’s a wonder mankind still exists. But it does; and it is the same example of humankind failing to display any increase in brain tumours following the use of cellphones that challenges the ‘possible’ health risk alarmists.

When it comes to mobile phones there is in fact no reliable evidence that shows a causal link between their use and any cancers of the brain (or testicles, given that men often keep their moby in their pocket).

If we consider just how many people use mobile phones, how often they are used and for how long, if there was some association with the growth of tumours in the head we could expect the incidence of these cancers to have grown in a measureable way.

They haven’t.

Nor is there any evidence that shows brain cancers have a tendency to develop on the side of the head that the cellphone is most often used.

If you wear ill-fitting shoes for long enough you’ll get bunions and blisters. If you use a mobile phone all day, seven days a week, you might lose your friends and annoy anyone within earshot but weals on your face, and a fried brain? No, there’s no evidence and no experience of it. But there is a great deal of pub talk and hearsay, and because scientists cannot be 100 per cent certain they refuse to rule it out.

Of course politicians don’t need hard evidence to act, which is why San Francisco authorities voted last year in favor of an ordinance requiring cell phone retailers to disclose a phone’s specific absorption rate. Frankly, I think any rental deal with unlimited free texts is what people are really interested in. At the same time the state of Maine tried to make warnings compulsory, but this was voted down, although an attempt is being considered again this year.

The WHO’s intervention is undoubtedly annoying to cellphone manufacturers and telephone companies, but most people will dismiss it in the same way as they consign so many past health scares to the dustbin of history. Just like those studies that told us that on the one hand sex is good for us and on the other that sex can increase one’s risk of a stroke. Or like those examples of people believing running is good for fitness and yet seemingly healthy people occasionally collapse and die when running.

More troubling is how the WHO actually sets policy targets that governments are expected to adhere to and are castigated for if they don’t.

Ever wondered why taxes on alcohol and tobacco keep rising? Ever thought for a minute why restrictions on how we live here in Britain are also being suggested across the world? Simple, the WHO is regularly pushing for such policies, campaigning for governments to control our lives more, meanwhile spending our money that governments pass on to the WHO.

It is the WHO that Botswana cited when its government said it should raise taxes on alcohol to meet international best practice, it is the WHO that Trinidad and Tobago cited when it introduced its smoking ban (that ironically had little effect because it’s so hot most people stand outside ‘liming’ with a cool bottle of beer). It is the WHO that is driving countries to move from ‘developing’ to ‘developed’ status by introducing public health policies that the electorates have little knowledge of.

Health warnings? Unelected and unaccountable and using unproven evidence – it’s the WHO we should be afraid of.

Brian Monteith is author of The Bully State: The End of Tolerance, published by The Free Society (2009) and available on Amazon