Public Health.

“The Greek physician Hippocrates has been called the father of epidemiology.^[4] He is the first person known to have examined the relationships between the occurrence of disease and environmental influences.^[5] He coined the terms endemic (for diseases usually found in some places but not in others) and epidemic (for diseases that are seen at some times but not others).”

Epi = over. Demi = people. Epidemic = on the people (which could be the people of a particular area or district).

Thus we see that epidemiology has been with us for a long time. It is particularly used, of course, for health matters, but does not have to be so. Thus, we often see phrases such as a ‘gambling epidemic’. Care, however, must be taken to understand that, in that phrase, the word ‘epidemic’ in no way relates to an actual disease. It is an interesting observation, however, that gambling, for example, has sometimes been described as a disease – literally. I wonder if the anti-gamblers deliberately  use the association of the word ‘epidemic’ with health in order to obscure the facts? It seems likely to be so to me, since we have often recently seen smoking described as ‘an epidemic’, and thus, by implication, a disease.

So we can see that the idea ‘Public Health’ has been around for a long time.

However, it was only in the mid 1800s that any real attempt to deal with matters of ‘Public Health’ took hold. In Victorian England, London had become the largest city in the world. Unfortunately, the sewerage system had not kept up with the growth of the city. The city stank. The river Thames stank. Outbreaks of cholera were frequent and often fatal. At the time, people thought that cholera was caused by a ‘miasma’ – yes, much the same as the idea that ‘malaria’ was thought to be caused by ‘ bad’ (French word, ‘mal’) and ‘air’. ‘Bad Air’ and ‘miasma’ are the same thing. It was a Dr Snow who was convinced that it was ‘dirty water’ which caused cholera, and not some vague ‘miasma’:

“Unlike many of his contemporaries, Dr John Snow was no miasmatist – he publicly stated in 1849 that cholera was transmitted through water. He was already researching links between water supply and deaths from cholera when the disease returned in 1854. This time, a single water supply – the Broad Street pump – was contaminated by a single domestic sewer pipe. As a result, hundreds of local people were rapidly poisoned after visiting the well, or from eating or drinking the products made using its waters. The outbreak provided Snow with the epidemiological ammunition to confirm his theory.”

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/publichealth/cholera.aspx

The URL briefly describes the awful sewerage problems of Victorian London.

Even then, as far as I can tell, there was no understanding of ‘bacteria’ – his idea was simply that excreta in the water supply caused the illness.  Eventually, as a result of his findings, a new system of sewerage works was commissioned for London, purely as a matter of Public Health.

And so the phrase ‘Public Health’ had a particular meaning, which was ‘the health of the public in general’. In that sense, lots of events have occurred leading to laws to protect ‘Public Health’. An obvious one was the Clean Air Acts of the 1960s. In that case, it was factory chimney smoke, mixing with fog, and settling in the streets of towns and cities which was causing serious health problems.

And then something really odd happened. The meaning of the phrase ‘Public Health’ changed – or rather was  changed – was deliberately changed. Instead of referring to actual, immediate diseases and conditions affecting all the people and  caused by specific factor which was real, it morphed into vagueness.

It is hard to pinpoint when this change occurred. I can only think of a few possibilities. There was a time, not very long ago when the word ‘cancer’ never saw the light of day. Not even newspapers said that word. At some point, references started to appear, usually stated as ‘the big C’. As time passed, the word started to appear more and more frequently. Other diseases started to be talked about which had, again, never been seen in print. I speak of the so-called ‘sexually transmitted diseases’ . Further, drugs like heroin were never mentioned.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the floodgates were opened, and these things were openly talked about.

Was that the opportunity that Tobacco Control seized, or was the change deliberately engineered by Tobacco Control? I do not know, but it seems odd that the moment that cancer started to be talked about openly and in print, the evils of tobacco started to promulgated.

The result has been that the phrase ‘Public Health’ is almost meaningless, like the word ‘abuse’. ‘Child abuse’ can mean almost anything from a telling-off to rape. ‘Alcohol abuse’ can mean getting completely slat-at or having more than one glass of wine per day. ‘Obese’ can mean weighing 40 stones or 15 stones, or even 5 stones in children. Even the word ‘child’ has been used to mean 18 year-olds-minus-one-day.

What group of people have been responsible for these aberrations? Certainly, the press have contributed, but have the press actually been at the root? Politicians have always used verbal trickery, but they normally are not allowed to actual abuse words and phrases – they are soon jumped upon if they do. Who then?

Normal people call a spade a spade. They do not call it a digging implement. They differentiate between a spade and a shovel. ‘Digging implement’ does not. The police also seem to use language to make offences seem to be worse than they are. For example, in the Mirror today, there was a report of some ‘pervert’ who had ‘obscene’ material in his home. There was so much ‘obscene material’ that a 7 ton truck was needed to take it away. And yet, the article in the Mirror described this material as being ‘hidden’ in his home. How can you describe so much stuff as being ‘hidden’? Only if you mean that it was not stacked up outside could you so describe it, but, in that case, it would not be in his home.

So who have we seen most distorting the meaning of words and phrases? Would I be wrong in thinking that it is the quack professors and quack doctors? Since ASH is just a front group for the Royal College of Physicians, the fact that ASH distort the meaning of words only reflects the deliberate ‘intentions to distort’ of the Royal College of Physicians, the WHO and Tobacco Control in general. For example, most of us would think of the phrase ‘health inequalities’ as meaning ‘more likely to catch diseases or suffer conditions than others’, but that is not what the quacks mean. The quacks mean ‘need to be forced, bit by bit,  to change their ways so as to be more healthy’. There is a world of difference between the two. The wealthy can behave as they wish since they have immediate availability to the best doctors and treatments, whereas the poor do not, and so the poor must behave themselves. ‘Health Inequality’, therefore, is not a description of a state of being; it is a perceived reason to persecute.

Public Health used to mean ‘The Health of everyone under the influence of external forces’. Now it means ‘the health of individuals who are behaving badly and the vague possibility of some effect on others’.

Aren’t those definitions vague? Yes they are, and that is what Tobacco Control has deliberately engineered.

The conclusion that I arrive at is that we must not allow ourselves to permit Tobacco Control to ‘frame the debate’. We must not use the phrase ‘climate change’ – we must use the phrase ‘global warming’. We must not allow 17 year-olds to be referred to as ‘children’ . When people like Williams MP talk of ‘children’ being attracted to cigarette packets, we must say, “10 year olds are only interested in eating sweats and stuff, and not eating fag packets”. Make the likes of Williams MP define the word  ‘children’. Go on and on about what children  like so that, eventually, he has to say, “I don’t mean ‘children’.

In every respect, as regards Tobacco Control, we must challenge them in that way. Challenge them on the meaning of word as we all understand them. Challenge their attempt to change the meaning of the phrase ‘PUBLIC HEALTH’.

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