Normally I like the Health Report, it’s interesting, well presented and well researched. It rarely gets me shrieking imprecations and throwing things at the radio.

There’s a first for everything I guess.

This weeks’ edition had some mad anti-smoking evangelist was talking about how he is trying to get the Australia death certificates changed to record the smoking status (current smoker, ex smoker, never smoked) of the deceased. This, he argues, will help the government establish smoking as a primary cause of death more often.

Not a bad idea, you might think?

Well you’re WRONG. It’s an appalling idea.

The death certificate does not record currently record any lifestyle factors relating to the person’s death. Things like diet, alcohol consumption, exercise, working conditions, family background and childhood nutrition. All of which can contribute to early death and should not be dismissed as irrelevant because they’re not as easy to fix with a pharmaceutical company product (just spell checked “pharmaceutical” and “parasitical” was suggested as correct spelling. Hmm…).

Anyway, back to my point. Currently a death certificate records the deceased identity details, the primary cause of death (eg falling), secondary cause of death (eg metastatic bone cancer which caused the fall) and the root cause (eg the initially diagnosed cancer such as liver or kidney cancer that subsequently spread to the bones).

If the only lifestyle factor you record in addition to this is smoking status you will end up with not just skewed, but actually falsified cause of death data. Every smoker or ex-smoker who dies of any disease would be recorded as a smoking related death, regardless of any other contributing factors – because there is no other information available.

Smoking would be labelled as the number one cause of preventable death, and all the other lifestyle factors that could contribute slip away from public awareness.

This is great for the makers of anti smoking products and the anti smoking zealots who want smoking demonised as the cause of all evil, but it’s not so great for the rest of us.

It would push vast amounts of research and government funding dollars into smoking prevention and away from things like reducing childhood obesity, increasing exercise facilities, improving working conditions, providing assistance for psychological problems and reducing alcohol consumption.

It would make proving other lifestyle causes of death far more difficult, because trying rather than just trying to find them, you would have to start with the premise of disproving smoking as the major one – and that is not going add to any medical researcher’s popularity or credibility.

And the most infuriating thing about all this? It’s utterly pointless!! We don’t need to prove that smoking is bad for you, that’s already been done! We all know this! The most dedicated of smokers does not pretend that their habit is harmless. Huge amounts of money and effort are already put into public awareness campaigns and quit programs and they’re working!! Smoking rates are declining and we don’t need to falsify the fundamental cause of death data to do all this IT’S ALREADY BEING DONE!!

GRRRR!!!! Nothing gets me angrier than self righteous knobs inflicting their twisted prejudices upon a helpless world.

Except maybe the Vista operating system, but that’s a story for another day.

BTW, if you're interested in more ranting about the idiocy that occurs when anti smoking campaigns become a moral crusade rather than a factual warning of a medical hazard, have a look at this: In Defence of Smoking

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