Soaring diabetes - is there some good news?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Diabetes We heard earlier this week that there had been a 60% rise in the number of cases of diabetes in the last ten years. But is there actually some good news in these figures? Odd (attempted) burglaries Police in Leicestershire have been only sending forensic teams to attempted burglaries at houses with even numbers. The papers reported it as a scandal driven by money saving. But is it a scandal or a sensible attempt to work out how to deploy the police's tight resources? Men who pay for sex Do one in 10 men regulalrly pay for sex as a Channel 4 Documentary claimed? Loop The ancient Greeks saw magic in the geometry of an ellipse and now mathematical writer Alex Bellos has but this to use in a specially designed game of pool.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this program from BBC Radio 4. I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:05.2 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, the program that pans for statistical gold in the wet |
| 0:11.2 | silt of political spin and media reporting. This week, amid dire warnings |
| 0:16.4 | about the growing problem of people with diabetes, are the numbers actually good news? |
| 0:21.8 | We ask whether one in ten men is regularly paying for sex and |
| 0:25.5 | whether a mathematical perspective can give us a very different kind of pool. |
| 0:33.0 | Magic! |
| 0:34.0 | That was fantastic. |
| 0:35.0 | For two things, one, it's amazingly satisfying and fun. |
| 0:38.0 | And two, the geometry works. |
| 0:40.0 | But first, we heard this week that cases of diabetes have soared by 60% over the past 10 years, |
| 0:48.0 | sparking yet more talk of an epidemic. |
| 0:51.7 | The figures come as part of a warning from the Charity Diabetes UK |
| 0:56.4 | that the costs of treating diabetes will continue to spiral out of control |
| 1:00.8 | and threaten to bankrupt the NHS. |
| 1:03.6 | In response to the figures, Martin McShane, the National Director for Long-Term Disease at NHS |
| 1:08.9 | England, called it a stark warning, saying that evidence is piling up that added sugar and excess calories |
| 1:16.4 | are causing avoidable increases in obesity and diabetes. But what does this rapid increase in the number of people with diabetes actually mean? |
| 1:25.0 | Well Wesley Stevenson's here, hello Wes, |
| 1:28.0 | hello Wes. All a bit bleak, isn't it? |
| 1:30.0 | Yeah, it does seem that way, doesn't it? |
| 1:31.0 | Between 2004 and 2014 2014 the number of people diagnosed with |
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