Unemployed to be given weight-loss jabs to ‘get them back to work’
Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has said the new class of medication could have a “monumental” impact on obesity and getting Britain working.
Mr Streeting has announced a £280million investment from Lilly, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, in developing new medicines and ways to deliver treatment. The plans will include the first real-world trial of the drugs’ effect on worklessness, productivity and reliance on the NHS.
Ah, a real-world trial to see the drug's effect on worklessness, productivity and reliance on the NHS. Jabbed back to work we might say, so presumably faith in the Nudge Unit approach is waning.
Sounds like another poisoned chalice, Wes Streeting being the lucky recipient.
9 comments:
I know where they could start the trial. In our last village, an elderly lady had a nasty fall and broke her hip. She was recently widowed, and very wealthy, and lived in a rambling old cottage with narrow doors, twists and turns, and winding staircases. She had run a successful business in antiquarian maps and books, and so corridors and rooms were further constricted by piles of books and junk stacked along the walls.
Her family finally convinced the old girl that she needed personal care at home, and arranged for a nurse to be sent from a private agency. The woman who turned up was a magnificent example of the Jamaican land-whale; as broad in the beam as a small car, and a rump on her like a parcel-shelf. She could have carried a heavy rucksack resting on her backside without using the straps.
I had difficulty getting round the cottage, and I'm not much more than ten stone. What the nurse actually did there was always a mystery, but she regularly came past our house, very laboriously, on her way to the village shop.
I'm not sure if Streeting is offering the jab to the employed, but you'd need a harpoon.
May I assume (he asked, sarcastically) that there are mountains of competent, honest data proving these drugs to be safe enough to take for decade after decade?
So, after a laughably inadequate 'pilot', the jabbing experiment will be declared a success. When voluntary take-up among the benefit claiming classes stalls, how long before compulsion enters the room?
Jabs for the boys?
Sam - ha ha, "Dr Queequeg will see you now."
dearieme - yes, it would be most unwise to assume this wheeze is backed by any competent, honest data.
decnine - that's the sinister aspect, compulsion. Even to begin with there is bound to be an element of coercion by the nature of what is being done.
Sackers - ha ha, very good.
I have long thought that if huge numbers of people are living on benefits, perhaps, just maybe, the benefits are a bit too generous?
Peter - yes they must be too generous. The number of people must be a measure of that.
I suggest they start with all NHS employees, to give the masses a shining example of what can be done. There's plenty of land whales in the NHS, mostly female. Yes the NHS is 75% female, but I'd be prepared to bet its female land whale proportion outweighs (ho ho) its male one.
Sobers - yes there are plenty of land whales in the NHS and they could be a shining example. Many don't seem to be fanatically keen on being any kind of shining example though - in nursing for example.
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