Expert quack

 

DZ opinion on medical and science journalists is not very high. Their formula for writing an article seems to be.

Scour the journals for any random article.

Sensationalise it to induce outrage/ discontent/dissatisfaction in the reader. This may require some considerable distortion of the original article, but no matter. Misrepresent results, conclusions and implications at will. Misrepresent entirely the writer of the original article one way or another.

Under no circumstances should the journalist take any steps to learn about the subject of the article. Do not verify statistics. If in doubt make it up.

Ignore the corrections offered by true experts.

A prime example is this guy, editor of, among other things, this article. One of the most sloppy, lazy, inaccurate misleading articles DZ has seen in a long time. I’ve sought to find out Mr Bagot’s background and qualifications. From what I’d read I doubt very much he has a medical qualification. Or a science degree. Or O level. I was right. He has a degree in English studies.

So let’s look at the newspaper article in question. The headline reads.”Experts call for the NHS to stop prescribing pills that do more harm than good” The gist of the article is that NHS drug prescribing is massively higher than it used to be and implies that most of these drugs are unnecessary. Apparently drug prescriptions per patient doubled from 5 to 10 items over the ten years from 1996 to 2016. That may be true, and I have no doubt that some unnecessary prescribing does happen. But not, in my perception, to the extent claimed. Also they fail to mention the two main reasons for this.

Firstly, life expectancy in UK men increased over the period quoted from 77, to 79, partly due to modern therapeutics. Since the elderly require medication more than the young this in itself will have an effect.

But far more significant are the advances made over that period in terms of medical and pharmacological progress. I remember for example when anyone having significant gastric  ulcer disease would end up with a horrific operation, the vagotomy and pyloroplasty. The advent of proton pump inhibitors effective, safe drugs, has consigned this procedure to the historical dustbin. Similarly far fewer men now have surgical prostatectomy due to the development of safe medical treatments. And when I qualified there simply were no effective treatments for acute myocardial infarct or stroke, leaving those who were lucky enough to survive these with significant, and often severe disabilities. Prophylactic and therapeutic pharmacological options for these have reduced both mortality and disability enormously.

So who are these “experts” who are promoting the beyond pills campaign. Well despite claiming that the campaign is supported by “doctors and senior politicans” only two politicians are actually named. One is Heidi Alexander, shadow health secretary for a whole year in 2015. A real expert then. Not. The other is Stephen Dorrell, who was briefly Health Secretary over 25 years ago! Another has been who knows fuck all about it.

And which medical big gun has backed this campaign. The Chief Medical Officer perhaps, or some eminent respected physician, or maybe a Professor of pharmacology. No. None of those. It’s this quack, who I’ve written about before. He chairs a pseudo college called The college of medicine and integrated health. This rose from the ashes of the Princes (Charles) Foundation for integrated health which went under amid allegations of fraud and money laundering. Dr Dixon is not an expert in anything whatsoever. I don’t know how many doctors are members of this so called college, but I bet that, if they had a conference they wouldn’t need a big venue.

There are one or two, shall we say, distortions in the newspaper article.

Firstly the article quotes the “national overprescribing review”, a real and reputable document as saying “10% of prescribed drugs are unnecessary and may cause harm” It doesn’t say that. What it actually says is that 10% of drugs prescribed in General Practice are overprescribed, which has an entirely different meaning.

They then quote the review as saying that “Adverse drug reactions now account for up to a fifth of all hospital in patient admissions”. It doesn’t say that either. The sentence quoted does not refer to “all” hospital admissions, but those of patients over 65. As a proportion of all patients the report states 6.5% as the actual figure. Still high, but definitely not one in five, and I’m even dubious about that. This government response cites  the number of patients hospitalised in 2020 as a result of adverse drug reaction as 7270. This report quotes the total number of admissions to English hospitals at 17.2 million. You do the maths.

So between them Mr Bagot and Dr Dixon have produced an article, published in a national newspaper that is misleading, inaccurate, dishonest and allows a known quack to publicise a dubious college. Nice one.

Overprescribing is a genuine issue. This article obscures, not reveals the true state of affairs. The National overprescribing review is well worth a read and sets out goals to reduce the problem and reduce the number of unnecessary drug prescriptions. Perhaps they could start with statins?