The WHO last week released its long-awaited report on the "Social Determinants of Health" - that is, the social and economic factors behind disease.
The report claims that 'social injustice is killing people on a grand scale', and advocates a vertiginous list of government interventions to help iron out inequality, from town planning to the regulation of sandwich shops.
Unfortunately, their recommendations hover somewhere between the fantastical and insane. The authors make the case that only a wholesale socialisation of society, business and trade will create a harmonious, healthy planet.
Chaps, chaps. We tried this before from the 1950s til about the 1980s. I can't see many governments being terribly keen on rewinding the clock back to the good ol' days of shortages, militant labour, strikes and declining living standards. Except, perhaps, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Cuba. (hang on,Cuba gets significant praise in the WHO report).
How can economic decline - which the report seriously seems to be advocating - be good for health?
While many of the Commission's recommendations can be dismissed as reheated 1960s socialism-lite, the section on free trade is actually offensive: it recommends an end to free trade, and that the governments of developing economies reorient their economies away from exports towards 'domestic production'.
Never mind that free trade is one of the most powerful engines of economic growth and improved health. The WHO's policy, also known as 'import substitution industrialisation', has wreaked economic havoc wherever it has been tried. It is also partly responsible for the creation of slums in countries like Brazil, something the Commission has strong words about.
I have an op-ed on the topic over at the CFD, and readers might also like to examine my longer monograph on "the real determinants of health".
Tim Worstall is also less than impressed with the Commission's more ludicrous suggestions.
So there we have it. The WHO is telling us we can only be healthy if we follow the example set by the comrades in Cuba.
File this one under 'B' for bonkers.
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