Little progress has been made over 20 years

BMJ 1995;311:945 (7 October)

Letters

Little progress has been made over 20 years

EDITOR,--Action on Simon Chapman's rational argument that medicalpractitioners should practise those things that they (should)preach is long overdue.¹ It is questionable whether there hasbeen much progress on many aspects of this in 20 years.

In 1973 I raised the issue of doctors who smoke for debate inthe correspondence columns of the Lancet² but received onlya caustic riposte.³ This included the confusion of advocacyfor public health with morality, a claimed enhanced qualityof life for smokers, and the cynical view that there are toomany people on this planet anyway; the medical practitionerwho wrote this reply concluded that the balance lay in favourof smoking. Five years later, in an academic department of communityhealth in Nottingham, I suggested that nicotine addicts werenot ideal recruits to masters' programmes in community health,let alone future possible careers as epidemiologists, healtheducators, and managers. I . . . [Full text of this article]