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Tag: public health

Britain Coronavirus Global conflict 

We didn’t learn the lessons from Salisbury

Melanie, , ,

The subject of the current BBC three-part series, The Salisbury Poisonings, was always going to unsettle an audience. Against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, its effect is even more frightening. The drama reconstructs the events in 2018 after a Russian double agent for MI6, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok at his house in Salisbury. It’s remarkable that this series was largely made before the Covid pandemic erupted. For the parallels are astonishing. It focuses on Wiltshire’s director of public health,…

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obesity Britain 

Obesity is a national obsession, not a disease

Melanie, ,

The Royal College of Physicians has said that, in order to bring obesity under control, it should be viewed not as a result of lifestyle choice but as a disease. Statistics about obesity are contestable and should be treated with caution. There is no doubt, however, that being overweight exacerbates both the incidence and severity of certain conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. To call obesity itself a disease, however, is an abuse of language. A disease is an organic disorder that affects a particular function and happens…

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