Football, Beer and Health Equality

A few years ago I had a conversation, at a local healthy living exhibition, about how to get the health message across to men. The person I was chatting with, apart from being a friend, was also a trained nurse and a health promotion professional.

She had come to the conclusion that holding events, such as the one we were at, was simply not working; men didn’t, by and large, attend and were showing no real interest in their health. The conclusion was that, almost evangelically, the message had to be taken out into the ‘market place’. The market place was broadly defined as football grounds and pubs. In other words, places that the target demographic were likely to be, in large numbers, on a regular basis.

Now, to put this in a geographic context, the demographic in question is situated in the North-West of England where, for a majority of men, football and beer are two of their most important life-aspects. Conversations around healthy eating, the benefits of vegetables, the danger of excessive cholesterol and a regime of regular exercise are fairly rare, and often viewed as deeply un-manly and possible even somewhat feminine.

Imagine my surprise when, having reached that certain dangerous age of such previously unmentionable subjects as furring arteries, expanding waistlines and heart-attacks, that upon enquiring of my GP whether I could have a Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test I was refused.

Now, here was a presenting bloke actually interested in health prevention. I was questioned as to whether there was a reason for asking for the test; had I any symptoms that were worrying me? I hadn’t. Did I know the test was not conclusive? I did. So could I have the test? No.

Over the next 2 years I broached the subject two more times, and the answer was always the same. If you have no symptoms, you can’t have a PSA blood test. In other words, unless the medical profession thought there was a good chance that you might already have Prostate Cancer, you were not going to get a test.

So much for preventive medicine in the male population.

Compare this to health prevention in the female population. Breast screening is now an almost universally accepted option as are cervical smears and even, in young girls, cervical cancer inoculations (but that is a whole other issue). All these measures are now an integral part of female health prevention.

But for men?

So eventually it came to the point where, nearly 3 years after that first conversation with my Doctor, I was discussing another health issue with my GP Nurse, and the PSA subject came up again. I was asked the same questions and gave the same answers. I then asked the nurse whether that, If I was a woman, and I asked you for a cervical smear, would I get one? She thought for a few seconds, and admitted that, yes, I would. She immediately wrote me in for a PSA test. The results were negative, and all is fine.

However, the point of this is not my health. It is to do with the reluctance to offer equal preventative health options to men as to women. Simple as that. As far as I can tell, this inequality still broadly exists. It is not good enough to say that men are just not interested in their own health. It is the job of the health service to be far more pro-active in reaching out to the male population, especially where it is more difficult to connect to that population, with preventative care.

We cannot really talk about equality and diversity, etc., and ignore such an outrageous situation. Men’s health and Women’s health are equally important, other equality means nothing.

Hands Off My Organ(s)

One of the miracles of modern medicine is the ability of skilled surgeons to replace non-functioning human organs with donated human organs.

This is a wonderful thing; the tragic loss of one person saves the life of another, or in many cases, the lives of more than one person. Those condemned to long term disability, those who are blind, those suffering from terminal illness, etc., can be saved and go on to live fulfilled lives.

The current mode of participation is that a healthy person makes a decision to become an organ donor, so that in the event of their death, others, strangers most likely, will benefit. It is possibly the most personal act of charity one can make. And this is the crux of the matter; that it is indeed a personal decision, that one makes a positive choice at some point in their life to become an organ donor.

However, there is now a shortage of voluntary donated organs, and this has led to a radical proposal; that it should no longer be left to the individual to decide whether to donate their organs, but it shall be asummed that everyone's organs will be available for harvesting unless a person 'opts out'. This sounds very logical, very humanitarian. It would solve, overnight, the shortage of organs. Many more lives would be saved. How can this possibly be a bad thing?

Let me name the ways!

It makes the assumption that a person's body parts are not, in fact, their property, but the property of the state/NHS/medical establishment (i.e. nominated organisation) to do with as they will. That the nominated organisation owns the rights to those organs unless the person whose organs they are specifically states that they do not want their organs harvested after death.

It is worth asking whether the harvesting of human organs, without consent, has happened already in the UK. The appalling answer is, yes it has.

In 1998, the news broke that organs and tissue, from babies who had died in two British hospitals, had been harvested without the permission of the parents, sold to pharmaceutical companies for monetary gain, or used for research within the hospitals. The two hospitals involved were Birmingham's Diana Princess of Wales Children's Hospital and the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, in Liverpool. Indeed, the practise was so established as to have been going on for decades.

Lets pause for a moment to contemplate this: That the medical establishment we trusted to look after us and our children in times of illness were routinely cannibalising dead humans for, in some instances, monetary gain.

You can read the full story here.

The proposal by various branches of the medical establishment, that organ donation should be an 'opt out' scheme, has been around for a number of years, and in 2009 the debate became more official when the NHS Blood and Transplant put on their website, that The British Medical Association (BMA), many transplant surgeons, and some patients' groups and politicians are keen to see Britain adopt a system of "presumed consent", where it is assumed that an individual wishes to be a donor unless he or she has 'opted out' by registering their objection to donation after their death. Full article here

Thus does the NHS make the presumption that a designated organisation should have rights over your bodily organs by default, unless you say no, i.e. unless you 'opt out'.

If anything is a breach of human rights, it is this. Once it is presumed that the state has a right over your bodily parts, how soon before it becomes law that the state owns the rights to your bodily parts, and organ cannibalisation becomes legal?

For those who say that this is not an important issue, that once you are dead it really doesn't matter what happens to your body (and putting aside the centuries of traditional respect for the dead) imagine this scenario. You are lying in hospital, near to death, but not dead yet, and along the corridor in a private room is a millionaire/member of the government/important individual also near to death and requiring an organ donation. By happy chance, you are a perfect match, and for a large donation to the hospital, the hospital administration are sad to announce your death, but that happily the aforementioned individual was able to live thanks to the 'opt out' scheme.

The harvesting of human organs for monetary gain in a hospital? Outrageous and could never happen? Sadly, of course, it already has.

My Life Is Your Responsibility

Let me ask you a simple (possibly hypothetical) question. If you go out drinking one evening, and you drink so much that you have difficulty walking, and in you attempts to stagger home you trip up the roadside kerb, fall over, and injure yourself. Is your first thought to sue the council? If you answer, 'yes', then you are like a significant number of people in today's society who believe that their actions, and the repercussions of those actions, are not their own, but someone else's responsibility.

Another question. You are a 15 year old girl. You go out one evening, drink alcohol, get a bit merry, have casual sex, get pregnant and have a baby. Is your first thought going to be: what council house would I like and, what office do I go to for benefits? If you think this is an acceptable line of thought, then you may well be someone who has difficulty accepting responsibility for your own actions.

Personal responsibility is the acceptance that my actions, and the consequences of my actions, are my responsibility. This simple premise forms the very bedrock of our justice system, and as such is a cornerstone of our society.

However, over the last 30-40 years a serious faultline has opened up under this crucial foundation. This faultline has been created through a number of socially seismic disturbances. The removal of discipline in the raising of children is one. The creation of the monster known as the 'Nanny State' is another.

Let's look at the former for a moment. It is a cliché to say this, but 30 years a go, if a policeman told you off for riding your bike on the pavement, and you took no notice, you may well have got a clip round the ear. If you were rude or disruptive at school, you might get the slipper (this writer got several slipperings during his secondary years).

In other words, there were repercussions for bad behaviour. In our 21st century society, discipline has been removed, and with it the vital learning experience that if I do something wrong, there will be repercussions, and sometimes, unpleasant and possibly painfully so. Please don't think that the threat of exclusion is a punishment. It is not, it is a gift. Neither are ASBOs punishments. They are rather badges of honour among a certain social class.

Let's look at the 'Nanny State' for a moment. The 'Nanny State' really came into being on the 5th July 1948, with the creation of the NHS (National Health System). It is not unreasonable to say it was possibly one of the most momentous social changes for the population of the UK. For the first time UK citizens could look to the State for provision of vital health care regardless of their social or economic standing, and let's not deny that this was a very good thing.

But it fundamentally shifted, within society, the fulcrum of responsibility. No longer was the individual responsible for their health care - if they had the means to pay for it - but now the responsibility fell to the state. Of course, every working adult contributed to the NHS in the form of National Insurance and general taxes, but nonetheless, we now looked to the state to look after us.

Nationalisation (euphemistically referred to as, Public Ownership') of industry was a central policy of the Labour government in 1945 and very quickly became more and more of a creeping menace which saw the nationalisation of the Bank of England, and the coal, aviation, telecommunications, Transport, electricity, gas, iron and steel industries, and has continued through to the part-nationalisation, in 2008, of the Royal Bank of Scotland and the newly merged HBOS-Lloyds TSB.

What this has meant is the de-empowering of the individual in favour of an all encompassing enrolment of the state as protector, benefactor..... Nanny.

Thus has our individuality, as citizens of a democratic country, become eroded, and left behind the overwhelming misconception, in the minds of many people, that it doesn't matter what I do, the state (or someone else) will 'pick up the tab'.

So now, children are growing up in a social climate which tells them either explicitly or implicitly, that it doesn't matter what they do, how they behave, who they hurt, who they disrespect, who they rob (and even, increasingly, who they kill) that it's not their responsibility and there will be little, if any, punishment or repercussions.

That is totally unacceptable and is leading us to complete social breakdown.