Date published: 2007/05/15
The BBC says:
People who feel they are treated unfairly, including in the home and community, may have a higher risk of developing heart disease, a study says.
University College London researchers studied 8,000 people, says the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
They found those with a profound sense of injustice had a 55% higher chance of suffering serious heart disease.
Experts believe a sense of unfairness engenders negative emotions which may prompt biochemical changes in the body.
However, lead researcher Dr Roberto de Vogli said more research was needed to confirm the mechanism linking unfairness to health.
The team looked at a study of 8,000 senior civil servants working for the UK government.
However, they were not assessing unfairness experienced at work and used statistics to remove the effects of this factor, and of risk factors such as obesity and smoking, from their tests.
The results showed that unfair treatment in other aspects of life was linked to increased risk of heart disease.
...
Dr de Vogli said perception of unfairness in all areas was important."I understand that this is a long shot, but the key message is that we must try to promote fairness in society."
Neil Poulter, professor of preventive cardiovascular medicine at Imperial College London, said: "I would think that if you are treated unfairly by society then that would be a likely stress factor which could adversely affect your health."
But he warned it was difficult to separate the effects of unfairness from other risk factors.
Yet another (pointless) health study which confuses correlation and causation. The game runs like this. Everybody believes that A causes B. So show that there is a correlation (link) between A and B and report your finding in such a way that everybody is led to believe you have proven that A causes B. But the causation could perfectly well be the other way around, or (the most likely case) it is something else entirely which just happens to correlate with both A and B. Here, for example, it's possible that people of poor health are grumpier than people who are not and therefore are more likely to feel that the world is out to get them. And the de Vogli take-home message that "we must try to promote fairness in society" is so devoid of any meaningful content as to be not worth uttering except by a politician trying to win office.
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