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Health Bill

Does the noble Lord accept that the history of medicine is littered with the broken reputations of those who have been misled by the post hoc, propter hoc argument: that because one thing is done at some time and something else changes, that implies it is the result of the first? There is absolutely no evidence whatever to support the medical claims made in that article. But there is evidence that in the past it has been shown that the smoking of tobacco and nicotine may have had a very minor beneficial effect in the prevention of Parkinson’s disease. That is statistically quite well proven. But the risks of smoking tobacco greatly outweigh any potential therapeutic benefits it may have had. I am afraid that that particular argument does not medically hold water.