Thank God for research - Duh!

Privatization kills, or so say UK academics who published an article in the Lancet. Examining the death rate in countries undergoing sweeping economic reform, they noticed that periods of privatization apparently coincided with an increase in the death rate among the population.

Now, when jobs that provide pay and healthcare vanish it is all too obvious that unemployment will rise, the quality of healthcare will deteriorate and th morbidity may increase. With less tax income, doctors in a public health system will be paid less and resort to taking bribes for faster treatment, or leave the profession altogether. Unemployed people may take to the bottle or illegal means of procurement. Diets veer toward the unhealthy side (as the paper rightly points out).

However it is an unsanctioned reasoning leap to suggest that economic reform leads to death. It is contrary to any academic standard, and flies in the face of the old axiom that correlation does not imply causation.

Questions for the scientists:

1) Should countries therefore not undertake economic reforms and go under?
2) Should economic development (e.g. building factories) be shunned in favour of less-risky forms of economy such as call-centres and basic agriculture?
3) How large was the spike in mortality, if any, in Britain during the Thatcher years? I bet my testicles it was not large, if there was any at all.

Bad privatization causes havoc. Bad science kills. Bad policy can cause huge damages. The moral of the story is that when you screw things up the population loses out. We certainly didn't need a team of academics telling us the bleeding obvious and getting the wrong end of the stick in the process.

DUH!