From the Nanny State to the Bully State | Patrick Basham | Cato Institute: Commentary

From the Nanny State to the Bully State | Patrick Basham | Cato Institute: Commentary: "Providing health information has not failed. What has failed is the state's expensive attempt to instill fear in the minds of its citizens about many of their dietary and recreational choices. Serious health warnings are diluted when consumers are deluged by 'warnings' about every imaginable item, ingredient, and eventuality. There is already evidence that consumers are confused by warning labels, for example. Clearly, most of these labels should come with their own warning: 'Caution: Bureaucrats at Work'.

Prevention has failed to ward off lifestyle illnesses for the fundamental reason that such illnesses are multifactoral and, therefore, it is clinically impossible to identify the sole cause of a disease. Consider, for instance, the multiplicity of risk factors for both lung cancer and heart disease-thirty for the former and over three hundred for the latter."

"The standards of scientific evidence required to justify public health interventions are far, far higher than those employed by policymakers. Evidence-light, photo-op policymaking often makes for good media coverage and, at times, good politicking, but it rarely makes for good public health."