Friday 17 December 2010

How's that Scottish heart miracle going?

Being in the mood to look back on the effectiveness of tobacco control efforts (see Ireland's Abject Failure below), let's see how that Scottish heart attack miracle has been coming along. You'll recall the professorship-winning study by Jill Pell which claimed that hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome  fell by 17% in the first year of the ban.

Pell didn't go down the traditional route of finding out how many cases were admitted to Scottish hospitals and comparing rates before and after the ban (the data are readily available). That would be far too obvious and accurate. Instead, she went to the elaborate effort of limiting her sample to a selection of hospitals and then extrapolated the results across the whole of Scotland. After all, why use the actual data when you can create your own?

The answer, of course, is that there wasn't a 17%, or anything like it. And now, with three years post-ban data in the can, let's see how that heart miracle looks using the real NHS admissions data.




And, just to be sure, let's look at the rates of acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks).




Is any further comment really required?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes but unlike the original Pell study this acurate one will not be published in the MSM for the benefit of the sheeple.
This is so sad .

George Speller said...

Can't Pell be confronted with this in some way?

JJ said...

Any chance of boiling Pell's original study down in fish oil...and force feeding her every rotten scrap?!

Chris Oakley said...

Thanks for the update Chris. No doubt it will be ignored by the UK media and specifically by the BBC who insisted in a recent response to an unrelated complaint of mine that they value impartiality very highly. I am waiting to see any signs of impartiality from their public health news editors. I suspect that hell will freeze over first.

I note that the mendacious Pell is still employed as a "professor" at the tax payers expense, by Glasgow University, that Anna Gilmore is still employed by Bath and that Kevin Barron is also supported by the tax payer and will no doubt be afforded the future privilege of speaking in parliament despite misleading that house on more than one occasion without reprimand or consequence.

Yet Cameron et al remain puzzled as to why the public remain apathetic towards mainstream politics?

I think that an analysis of the anti-smoking industry might provide a clue in the form of the triumph of spin, division and blind evangelism over truth, tolerance and rationality but I don’t think David wants to listen. To even acknowledge that there is an issue requires a degree of courage that is sadly lacking in the corridors of power both in the UK and throughout the Western World.

Belinda said...

Am I the only one to be confused about the distinction between acute coronary syndrome and acute myocardial infarction?