An Example: Why Government Control of Health Issues Is a Recipe for Failure
You know that I am all about personal freedom when it comes to healthcare. I stand for YOU being able to determine what is best for YOUR personal health. When a government (any government) steps in and says that they know best, it is always going to end badly! Governmental dictates are subject to lobbyists, and other political pressures, that usually mean that whatever they end up saying makes NO sense. Here’s a PERFECT example from the European Union (EU.) They have determined that, legally, water can no longer be considered a “cure” for dehydration! Say what?!?
“THE EU was ridiculed last night after it took three years to issue a new rule that water cannot be sold as healthy.
In a scarcely believable ruling, a panel of experts threw out a claim that regular water consumption is the best way to rehydrate the body.
The bizarre diktat from Brussels has far-reaching implications for member states, including Britain, as no water sold in the EU can now claim to protect against dehydration.
Any producer breaching the order, signed by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, faces being jailed for up to two years. It took the 21 scientists on the panel three years of analysis into the link between water and dehydration to come to their extraordinary conclusion.
Last night the decision of the European Food Safety Authority’s panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies was labelled ‘beyond parody.’ Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall, who sits on the European Parliament’s Public Health Committee, said: ‘I had to read this four or five times before I believed it.’
‘It is a perfect example of what the EU does best and makes the bendy banana law look positively sane.’
Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: ‘The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are, highly paid, highly pensioned officials trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.’
‘If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.’
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: ‘Of course water hydrates. While we support the EU in preventing false claims about commercial products, we need to exercise common sense as far as possible.’
German professors Dr. Moritz Hagenmeyer and Dr. Andreas Hahn, of the Institute for Food Science and Human Nutrition at Hanover Leibniz University, applied for approval for the seemingly uncontentious claim that ‘regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration.’ However, bureaucrats refused to back them.
After a meeting in Italy a delegation of scientists concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration rather than a risk factor that drinking water could control. Now their verdict has been turned into a regulation that will become UK law by December 6 and is bound to send shockwaves through the soft drinks industry.”
When I first heard this announced on the radio news on the way to work, I thought it was a joke. But no, “serious” politicians and bureaucrats ruled that water was not an aid to dehydration. Can you imagine warning labels to that effect on bottled water? How long will it be before the uS government does the same thing? The bottom line? Do not trust a politician or bureaucrat with YOUR health!