Slashdot Mirror

There were headlines last year along the lines of "caesarean birth increases chance of asthma by 80%".

The science behind the headlines is here: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/12December/Pages/Caesereansandasthma.aspx

This research too is potentially flawed, but it suggests there are definitely factors other than TV to blame.

The problem is that they didn't do this. They just jump straight to the scare tactic of saying you will die if you play video games.

No they didn't. This campaign has been running since the new year, and they started with telling you how to modify your lifestyle in a positive way. They used no scare tactics, favouring a utopian vision. I'm guessing this resort to standard NHS tactics* means it didn't work.

Besides, I think we have to face the truth here. Gaming to the exclusion of exercise is unhealthy, this campaign has a reasonable point. Denying this makes Slashdotters look like oil executives denying global warming by straw-manning the opposition.

"Oh, so the advert campaign is saying that if you play games you'll certainly die right away! How stupid!" +5 Insightful.

The point of the campaign is that a sedentary lifestyle is harmful to your health, which is true! The self-deluded rage expressed in the summary is moronic.

*I wish it didn't have to be the Daily Mail, but they had the best example.

I would even say that it is absolutely valid for a public health agency to advocate substituting physical activities for video games, board games, reading, and other non-physical activites for purely health related reasons.

The problem is that they didn't do this. They just jump straight to the scare tactic of saying you will die if you play video games.

They actually do do this: The problem is the summarizer in the original column saw the picture of the kid with a controller and jumped straight to the scare tactic of saying the government says you will die if you play video games. What the campaign is actually attacking is the sedentary lifestyle that some parents let their children lead these days. These were a series of magazine ads placed in mags to reach the extreme end of their target market - there is also a much more positive get your kids active for 60 minutes as part of this campaign. I don't have a problem with this.

my 1.5% not only pays for much better medical outcomes than the US but also pays for preventative programs to educate these slobs

Question for an American: are there any public health campaigns in the USA?

I saw an NHS anti-smoking poster yesterday in a nightclub (in a corridor amongst some movie posters etc). There's a poster telling teenagers (or anyone else) to use a condom on the bus shelter outside the nearest school, which also reminds them they can get a free, confidential sexual health checkup. I don't watch enough TV to have seen the most recent don't-be-a-slob campaign (video, by the Wallace and Gromit people).

Tetris sounds like a safer way to deal with that

UK in the past 10 years? How many people s died because they couldn't get health insurance?

In the UK? None.

You can't indict the u.s. health care system for lower life expectancy among americans. Its not the fault of the system that americans stuff their faces with double whoppers meals, super-sized coca-colas and serving sizes at restaurants that could feed a horse. No matter what medicine or treatment is available those people will die a lot sooner than a cuban.

Because most healthcare is paid for by taxes in the UK, techniques to prevent people getting ill are used. For instance, free vaccinations, monitoring of babies/children's health, screening for cancers, STI checks, diet advice, stop-smoking stuff, etc.

Also, if you have to pay to see a doctor, you're less likely to go, and any problem you have might get worse. If you don't get free advice during pregnancy your child might be less healthy (infant mortality is quite high in the USA).

umm...the UK NHS or Nation Health Service which also happens to be the largest employer in the WORLD uses SharePoint internally as well as for their public facing website infrastructure. I think it looks good. I agree, out of the box, SharePoint needs better templates.

http://www.nhs.uk/

I've worked on a number of large sites such as that: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/ = hand coded. http://www.thesun.co.uk/ = hand coded. http://www.nhs.uk/ = hand coded. http://www.metrofrance.com/ = hand coded. I could go on but I think you get the idea. Sure those sites use CMS systems and templates that spit out the HTML but it was all hand coded in a text editor before being added to the back end. I would guess that this is actually far more common than using a WYSIWG editor for HTML & CSS creation these days.

In the UK, we call it the NHS.

Microsoft has won a nine-year contract, worth an estimated £500m, to put its software on 900,000 National Health Service computers, the Department of Health announced today.

How about a free-at-the-point-of-use universal health care system funded through taxation?

NHS, we love you!

That's exactly why some companies have "service standards" or similar rules (for example the NHS in the UK does, although I'm not sure whether they abide by it) in which they guarantee to contact you in the process of a certain number of days, minutes or rings depending on the medium. Other companies could do the same, and if they don't abide, you'd get something for free.

I agree, I hope they make this available on the National Health Service.

"Who ever thought the stodgy old British government would be this... progressive?"

They'll be getting free health care next! It's almost as if they come up with these ideas themselves.