Earlier this month, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee lived up to its name, and beamed a professor into one of its hearings. G’day Gilmore was down under, in the land of amber nectar and rich red shiraz, and by a miracle of technology he was also present in Westminster. Asked by the committee Chair whether he could hear those stuck in good ol’Blighty, G’day assured him that he could. ‘Yes, Chairman, very clearly thank you,’ he said. It was probably the clearest statement of the day.
The occasion was the taking of oral evidence by the STC in the matter of alcohol guidelines, and as ever the troupe of temperance tut-tutters headed up by G’Day were in on the act.
The Care Quality Commission have 
One of Dr No’s retired medical friends, not teetotal, but almost, inherited an adequate wine cellar, mostly reds, from a relative. Given a science backed consensus that small amounts of red wine would be good for him, he decided not to dispose of the cellar on favourable terms to Dr No - Dr No is always happy to help an old friend out - but to indulge in a spot of self prescribing: ℞ vinum rubeum, 1-2 glasses nocte.
Storms of protest have greeted recent ‘leaks’ that NHS trusts plan to shoo existing smokers and fatties off waiting lists, and ban new and returning entrants until they have done time in a get fit quick boot camp. Herr citizens who fail to comply vill be sent down ze salt mine, and the key (but not their matches and crisps) thrown away. 
Two old stories by a curious but telling coincidence made it into the top news last week. One re-ignited the ADHD isn’t bad parenting or poor diet, it’s an illness (and genetic to boot) debate; the other reminded us just how determined Big Pharma can be when it comes, as they say in financial circles, to helping us grow our GDP. The theme which unites these two stories is medicalisation – that tendency to transform the vagaries of human nature into ‘real’ illnesses.
As a medical student, Dr No was greatly impressed by a particular surgeon. This surgeon was that rare thing, a surgeon whose mind was even sharper than his scalpel. He taught Dr No perhaps the most important surgical lesson of all: that surgery is not about how to operate – any competent surgeon can do that – it is about when to operate; and it is fidelity to that decision that distinguishes the great surgeon from the average surgeon. That same great surgeon taught Dr No much else, often in the vernacular, and none more certain than that which holds that the only sure-fire way to advance one’s medical career is to apply regular and consistent negative pressure at the anus of one’s superiors.
‘The only function of public health,’ JK Galbraith might have said, ‘is to make cranial osteopathy look respectable.’
Warning: post contains economics. Some readers may find themselves bored silly. In such cases, Dr No recommends taking a tea-break and returning to the post only when the sense of boredom has completely dissipated.
Another voice has been added to the hue and cry for a minimum price for alcohol. Within days of Rubber Duck stepping down from his CMO post, the better to quack his favourite message, NICE, the National Institute for Health, Clinical and Anything Else Anybody Will Pay Us For Excellence, has jumped on the wagon. Voluminous guidance, published earlier this week, recommends a raft of measures that, NICE says, will ‘significantly decrease alcohol consumption’ if implemented. A top tip for government is to make alcohol ‘less affordable by introducing a minimum price per unit’. There was much talk of growing tides of unassailable evidence. Dr No began to fear he was now King Canute, alone on the beach, his once half full glass now half empty. Until, that is, he heard an interview on the Today programme. Suddenly the glass was half full again.
That smuggest of colleges, the Royal College of Physicians of London, already infamous for its part in the MMC/MTAS disaster, has of late been cozying up ever more closely to the Department of Health, and its chief pongo, Sir Liar Liar Pants on Fire Donaldsong. Earlier this week it moved still closer, issuing an right-on report damning callous smokers who