"Yet Another Useless Lifestyle Study"
I am not unsympathetic to this viewpoint: recent research shows that "women should raise their glasses to a healthier old age, but we've heard it all before - and just the opposite. ... This is the conclusion of a study of 14,000 female nurses that started in 1976. The brainchild of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston is the latest result from numerous studies of this nature that have produced all manner of contradictory results. ... In 1976, the [Framington study] is supposed to have shown a connection between menopause and the increased risk of heart disease, which is a bit like saying it found a connection between age and life expectancy - exactly what is one supposed to do with a datum like that? ... At the end of the day, one must ask what is the point of such studies, and specifically what is the point of a study that attempts to link the consumption of wine by women with longevity, especially when Marie Lloyd was telling us a little of what you fancy does you good way back in 1915? Rather than mounting expensive years' or decades' long studies as make-work schemes for medical scientists and their chums in Whitehall, Washington and elsewhere, the governments of the world might be better advised setting them to work to discover the actual causes of disease, and maybe to develop vaccines and other methods of combatting them, or better still, maybe they should follow in the footsteps of gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and his SENS organisation?"