Bizarre? Absolutely! However, The New Scientist has published statistical research showing a link between farmers (in several countries) and a much lower incidence of lung cancer in this population. They hypothesise that it is linked to farmers breathing in the dust from dried cow manure.
Looks like Farmer Giles may be walking in cow poo but, breathing in gold dust if he diversifies into health remedies! Read more HERE.
Categories: Health · News · Research
Tagged: Health Care, Cancer, cowboys, Manure, Snort, Lung, Lifestyle, Risks, Cow, Poo, Steaming, Pile
Gordon Brown & his Government have a clear track record of regulatory meddling. The response to every perceived problem is to pass a new law. Since New Labour came into power the statute books have groaned with the sheer scale of new laws and regulations. But Gordon clearly does not understand the “Law of Unintended Consequences”.
The law of unintended consequences is what happens when a simple system tries to regulate a complex system. The political system is simple, it operates with limited information (rational ignorance), short time horizons, low feedback, and poor and misaligned incentives. Society in contrast is a complex, evolving, high-feedback, incentive-driven system. When a simple system tries to regulate a complex system you often get unintended consequences.
A recent example of an unintended consequence is the Northern Rock fiasco. In 1997 when Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England (BoE) a degree of freedom and put in place the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The so called tripartite authorities (BoE, FSA & the Treasury) had collective oversight of the UK banking system. For 10 years, Gordon’s reputation was publicly supported by this acclaimed master stroke. However, when we had the first run on a bank for a century the system fell flat on its face and actually made things worse….simply because the system didn’t specify who was in charge.
The disgraceful rise in hospital infections (and the thousands of associated deaths) has been an unintended consequence of seeking to reduce hospital waiting times. Fast turnover of patients in hospital beds gave little opportunity to clean wards. Increasing hospital capacity by substantially increasing the number of patients per ward made cross infection easier.
The message to politicians is clear: regulate what you have to but, beware regulating anything else….it may have an unintended consequence!
More examples of unintended consequences caused by US regulation can be read in the two following articles
Categories: Financial · Gordon Brown · Government · Health · Politics
Tagged: Consequences, Hospital, Infections, Law Of, Meddling, Northern Rock, Regulation, Unexpected, Unintended
