Examination of Witnesses (Questions 500-501)
MR JOHN
BRYSON, PROFESSOR
ADNAN CUSTOVIC,
DR PAUL
HARRISON AND
MR GRANT
AGER
7 FEBRUARY 2007
Q500 Chairman: Earlier on, Mr Bryson,
you spoke about the group of the population who are living in
poor socio-economic conditions and the difficulty of educating
them to adjust their lifestyle. I wonder if you have any more
comments to add to that.
Mr Bryson: I think one of your colleagues mentioned
about possible incentives to do that. Unfortunately we live in
a world where often people need some sort of incentive and unless
it is possible to explain to them the direct health benefits,
some other incentive may be required to try to put the message
across. I would never suggest it is easy, but at the moment I
am not sure there is enough effort being put into that to try
to make sure that people can help themselves to a certain extent.
Q501 Chairman: If we look at the
concepts of genetic and environmental interactions and research
do you think eventually we will see a turnaround or even prevention
of allergic diseases?
Professor Custovic: My aim as a physician is
to make physicians obsolete; that is what we are there for. Then
my career would be fulfilled. Yes, we will get there but if we
stop allergies today there will still be a lot of patients for
the next 30 to 40 years and the real tragedy of today is this
little rule of numbers: we have a conservative estimate of 15
million patients; we have an optimistic estimate of 24.9 allergists
in the country. That is a real, real scandal and tragedy of our
situation. Our patients need to live three thousand years in order
to be able to see allergists. If there is something we could do
now, we could make a big difference in a very short period of
time. Do I believe we will prevent allergies? I most sincerely
hope so because that is what we have devoted our careers to do.
It will come too late for the 15 million people who have the disease
now and what are we going to do about that now?
Mr Bryson: Could I partly echo what Professor
Custovic has just said? It does not go down very well with colleagues
when you say that ultimately you want to reduce the number of
them that are required, but that is also part of our philosophy:
prevention is far better than cure and some of the work that we
want to try to do is to prevent those situations rather than constantly
be on the curative side.
Chairman: Can I thank you all very much
indeed for having come today to give evidence to us. You will
be sent a transcript in draft form for you to correct if necessary
and if there is other information you think the Committee may
find helpful after today then please do send it in and we can
circulate it to the Committee as part of your evidence from today.
Thank you very much indeed.
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