HPHWD

"May 31 is World No Tobacco Day. This year’s theme is tobacco industry interference, chosen, in WHO’s words, “to expose and counter the tobacco industry’s brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)”. In its 2008 report Tobacco industry interference with tobacco control, WHO outlines “the long history and the extent of tobacco industry efforts to avoid, delay and dilute” effective tobacco control policies. Key methods include lobbying, political donations, exploiting legislative loopholes, undermining or countering research, and funding groups or individuals to advance the tobacco industry’s objectives. Examples include the industry’s attempts to counter research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that showed the link between passive smoking and lung cancer, and to undermine the US Environmental Protection Agency’s assessment of the risks associated with second-hand smoke. Direct funding of business analysts, scientists, and even historians has been important in promoting the interests of the tobacco industry over those of public health."

"Among those who favored health care repeal, support for judicial review increased markedly with increasing political knowledge. This is not an unexpected pattern. Political scientists have long recognized that “Democratic beliefs and habits are obviously not ‘natural’ but must be learned,” as Herbert McClosky put it in a classic 1964 article on “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics.” They are more likely to have been learned by people who are sufficiently attentive to public affairs to know, for example, that John Roberts is a judge rather than a representative, senator, or cabinet member (54% of the YouGov sample)."

"Le chef de l’État a également nommé le Pr Olivier Lyon-Caen comme conseiller sur la santé et la recherche médicale. Chef du service de neurologie à l’hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière de Paris, coordinateur du pôle des maladies nerveuses, il a déjà occupé le poste de conseiller médical au cabinet de Lionel Jospin, Premier ministre. Le Pr Lyon-Caen avait cosigné l’an dernier un « manifeste pour une santé égalitaire et solidaire » avec notamment André Grimaldi et Didier Tabuteau."

"Bipartisan politics” takes many different forms: the Affordable Care Act passed with a strong majority of Democrats in the House and Senate, but not a single Republican voted for the legislation. This is more than a bit ironic, since the stamp of Conservative ideas and policies is all over the legislation. That odious individual mandate, for one, was first championed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation and the overall legislative blueprint comes from Romneycare. They may deny it now, but several Republicans in the Senate – Olympia Snowe, Charles Grassley, and Mike Enzi to name three – had a heavy hand in drafting the legislation (which they ultimately did not vote for). Although this backchannel contribution of Republicans has not softened the partisan bickering about the law, it signals that there may be more bipartisan agreement around social policy than roll call votes reveal."

"The case is argued in Dismantling the signposts to public health? NHS data under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the article also available on the City University site. Its authors are Professor Allyson Pollock of Queen Mary University of London, Professor Alison Macfarlane of City University and Sylvia Godden, honorary senior research fellow at QMUL."

"Second, as a my student Joe DiGrazia pointed out, extreme partisanship entails the evisceration of Republican policies. For example, healthcare reform via mandates became the baseline for reform because it was the only version of health care reform that Republicans in the 1990s would seriously consider because they were the ones that came up with it. Once the other party appropriated it, that policy became illegitimate. The result is the bizarre situation of Republicans fighting the policies that they created and promoted for almost two decades."

"If we take this study seriously, and I believe we should, it invites serious reconsideration of the apparent finding in Whitehall that occupational status causes health in adulthood. This does not mean that inequality in social status does not matter. To the contrary, the Case and Paxson results highlight the centrality of early life health exposures on late life outcomes. This is a different causal mechanism, and would result in a greater focus on interventions focused on poor children than on promoting greater workplace equality later in life as a means for improving adult health."