Today, however, the WHO is adrift in a sea of political correctitude. It gives lip service to Third World needs, but devotes attention to First World concerns like obesity, traffic deaths, cancer and global warming. 

Asian children dying of vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition hardly need to worry about obesity. African villagers are much more likely to be struck down by sleeping sickness than by an errant car. Indian and Bolivian mothers, hacking away from tuberculosis or wasting away from dysentery, won’t live long enough even to get cancer, much less die from it.

Paul Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, examines the flaccid and ineffective response the World Health  Organization grudgingly musters for sufferers of the sudden disasters that periodically erupt.  He looks also at the dismal record of failure in dealing with the long-term health disasters, such as malaria and malnutrition, that the WHO was established to end.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a checklist for countries outlining actions required to implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). In the document, the WHO says countries must take measures to “restrict or prohibit duty-free sales of tobacco products.” According to the International Travel Retail Confederation (ITRC), this violates the final text of the FCTC, which states that countries may choose to implement restrictions on duty-free sales of tobacco, but are not required to do so.

Keith Spinks, the director-general of the ITRC, says, “The WHO is re-interpreting the Convention in an effort to convince signatories to the treaty that banning duty-free sales is mandatory. However, this is not how the final agreed text of the Convention reads.”

We certainly aren't shocked that the World Health Organization is dispensing lies to the signers of the so-called global tobacco treaty.  From secondhand smoke to the "death toll" from tobacco, statements from WHO bureaucrats cannot be trusted.  Seldom, however, does the WHO prevaricate so blatantly while contradicting the very documents he prepared for signature.

Although the global treaty does allow individual governments to restrict duty-free cigarette sales, it does not require them to do so.  The WHO minions distributing guidelines to governments on what needs to be done to adhere to the treaty are purposefully passing out false information.  Perpetrating this fraud should disqualify the WHO from participating further in the implementation of the global tobacco control treaty.

The International Health Reichstag (WHO, that is) is taking care of us above and beyond the call of smoking. Fat, salt, sugar, and a bunch of other foods are in the targeting system of the health Nazis, and of the “experts” for hire, who are busy telling us how much grain, protein, fruit and vegetables we should eat, and imposing it on the food industry which is, of course, blamed for the statistical “epidemic”. Why is epidemic in quote marks? Because this is yet another piece of  statistical con work on the tobacco model. While it is undeniable that certain people are fat (especially in the United States), ballooning individuals certainly are not numerous enough to constitute an epidemic. Where is the rest of the fat people coming from? From junk science, of course! About five years ago, the body mass index (ratio between height and weight) was simply changed with a bureaucratic act, instantly turning hundreds of millions of people on this planet into either “obese” or “overweight”.  Then come the statistical associations, that establish the number of deaths -- based on attributions to diet -- of diseases that have hundreds of concomitant factors. Just ignore those factors, and say that it is all the fault of one cause. Who cares? We have the money, we have the power, we have the authority – and who the hell is going to put us in jail??

In this article from junk science populariser BBC (isn't that sad?) we have a typical example of the misinformation fed to and from the media: "More than a billion people worldwide are now overweight, of whom at least 300 million are clinically obese, according to WHO. In the UK, the number of men considered obese has more than doubled from 8% in the 1980s to 17% now, while the rate for women has soared from 9% to 21%." Of course they have more than doubled. They have changed the standard since the 1980s! That is how the “pinch more than one inch” (a few kilos over the IDEAL, theoretical weight) has been turned into a plague that requires the intervention -- of course -- of the “public health” Nazis who have one more way to blame the bankruptcy of health systems, actually due to corruption, mismanagement and the costs of an aging population, on yet another category of citizens. What a deal -- and, sadly, too many either believe them or do not care.

Bad habits like drinking, smoking and overeating that were once the preserve of the rich are taking an increasing hold in developing nations, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.

But in a report on one of its largest research projects to date, the Geneva-based organisation said life expectancy could be raised by up to a decade by judiciously targeted actions.

It said the top 10 killers, in order of deadliness, were: malnourishment, unsafe sex, high blood pressure, smoking, alcohol, bad water and poor sanitation, iron deficiency, smoke inhalation from indoor fires, high cholesterol and obesity.

Perceptive people can see right off the bat that the above hodge-podge consists of unhealthy environments mixed in with personal choices.  The unfortunate of the world can do little about government policies that lead to malnutrition, dirty water supplies and bad plumbing.  Smoking, drinking alcohol and overindulging are personal choices available to all in affluent societies.  One set of risks is imposed by fate, the other is a matter of choice.  The WHO cannot, or will not, distinguish between them.  For the unfortunate the WHO could provide a service, for the affluent the WHO can only dictate behavior.

Taking a stroll through the WHO's Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life is in many ways an extremely amusing experience.  The ponderousness, the self-importance of the organization shines through the borderline hysterical prognostication of a world sorely in need of a Big Mother to hold its hands and change its diapers.  Big Mother, in the guise of Gro Harlem Brundtland is mighty worried and sees unacceptable risk where normal people see better times for more people.

Referring to the success of mass immunization in eradicating diseases that decimated whole nations, Brundtland concedes that the world, some ways, is a safer place now than in the past.  Don't be encouraged, however, as she ominously notes:

In many ways the world is becoming more dangerous.  Too many of us are living dangerously -- whether we are aware of that or not.  The picture that is taking shape gives an intriguing -- and alarming -- insight into current causes of disease and death and the factors underlying them.  The WHO's research shows how the lifestyles of whole populations are changing around the world, and the impact of these changes on the health of individuals, families, communities and whole populations.

This "dangerous" world is the result of rising standards of living in nations that are climbing up the economic ladder.  The new dangers include too much food, too much booze and too much tobacco.  Gone are the days when the WHO worried about malaria, malnutrition and the ill effects of poverty.  The WHO now is concerned with the same issues that obsess the denizens of Manhattan's upper west side and the nicer sections of London, Paris, Rome and Geneva, elite people all and all with healthy financial portfolios.

To put it in context, chapter five of the WHO's opus, "Some Strategies to Reduce Risk" lists these helpful hints:

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) targeted at all current smokers aged 20--60 years. Nicotine dependence is a critical barrier to successful smoking cessation. As a result, policy interventions to control smoking often aim to strengthen a smoker's motivation to quit (for example, increased health education, price policies and smoke-free policies) as well as reduce dependence-type barriers that stand in the way of quitting (for example, through pharmacological and behavioural treatments). 

NRT includes pharmacological aids used to help smokers in their quest to stop smoking. NRT includes transdermal patches (commonly referred to as nicotine patches), nicotine chewing gum, nicotine nasal sprays, lozenges, aerosol inhalers and some classes of antidepressants, including biuproprion.

To achieve successful and large-scale cessation rates, the introduction of NRT into a society is probably not sufficient by itself. When deciding to introduce NRT into a country's tobacco control policy, policy-makers need to ensure that health professionals (including doctors, nurses and pharmacists) have appropriate training so that they are confident and capable of providing advice and treatment to tobacco-dependent patients.

There's the real reason for the more dangerous world of the WHO.  A more dangerous world results in strategies that deliver the goods to the international pharmaceutical corporations' bottom line.  The World Health Organization should stick to solving the still rampant problem of malaria and leave the rest of us alone.

The World Health Organization cares more about its own life than the lives of the poor

If you read nothing else this month, don't skip this exposé documenting the ills of the Word Health Organization.  Investigative reporter Brian Doherty digs deeply into WHO and what he finds is an agency that is spectacularly ineffective in alleviating human suffering and sickness.  He finds an agency that caters, instead, to the interests and obsessions of the industrial West.  He finds an agency that is more concerned with attacking tobacco companies than in attacking malaria and AIDS.  He finds an agency whose "Tobacco-free Initiative" is mighty profitable for WHO's pharmaceutical partners.  In short he confirms what FORCES has been saying for years.