Doctors Urge NHS Not to Treat the Promiscuous

In a stunning development, doctors responding to a questionnaire have urged that promiscuous people be denied certain treatments based on their unhealthy lifestyles. From the story:

I agree, it is absolutely outrageous. But to get your attention, I lied about the proposed targets. It isn’t the promiscuous who doctors in the survey want to punish—whose behaviour is at least as dangerous as that of smokers, at least in the short term—but others with unhealthy lifestyles or too many years under their belts. Here is how the story actually reads:

Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide ding free care to everyone.

If we are to punish lifestyles in health care, we should not just pick on those without political power such as smokers and the obese, or people who are deemed “style crimes,” a wonderfully evocative term that I stole from Secondhand Smokette. But my real message is: Doctors should not be mutated into some kind of lifestyle police force. Their jobs are to treat patients as they find them, not judge why they are sick nor withhold proper care if they don’t approve.