BMJ  2005;330:1331 (4 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7503.1331-a

Letter

Who needs health care?

Preventive medicine has potentially big role

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—I am frustrated at Heath's and Godlee's view of preventive medicine.^{1 2} They both argue against excessive drug prescribing and treating risk factors, seeing these as aspects of preventive medicine. What is preventive medicine, and why does preventive medicine have to be practised by the medical profession?

I agree with both of them on the futility of merely postponing death while undermining health. A recent paper in the BMJ showed how medical knowledge can be used to improve people's health, but only if the government is willing to make big changes in cooperation with big industry.³

Medical knowledge should be used to be truly preventive. Government policy needs to be changed to make it easy for the nation to stay healthy. Schools need compulsory nutritional standards, increased hours of exercise on a daily basis, and improved overall levels of education. The government needs to work with the food industry . . . [Full text of this article]

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Radley College, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 2HU djdeeno1979@yahoo.co.uk

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