The junior doctors’ dispute has been characterised by a series of extraordinary claims by the BMA. At one time the union claimed that doctors were going to suffer a real-terms pay cut of 26 per cent – a claim debunked by the respected Channel 4 Fact-checking team. A pay calculator on the BMA website which claimed to show doctors losing money was later removed.
Yesterday, in a piece for The Spectator, junior doctor Calum Miller made an extraordinary claim that ‘A&E doctors have a lower life expectancy than poverty-ridden countries like Afghanistan and Haiti’. The World Bank gives a figure for life expectancy for Haiti at 62.70 and Afghanistan at 60.51. So is the average A&E doctor in the NHS really popping his clogs in his 50s?
The claim, it transpires, derives from a paper published in the British Journal of Cardiology in 2009, which is itself based on an analysis of 3,342 obituaries of doctors which appeared in the BMJ between 1997 and 2004.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in