Spontaneous generation.

Way back when the world was even more stupid than it is today (although in many ways, considerably less stupid), people believed in spontaneous generation. They believed that if you wanted to create mice, you merely had to leave a pile of grain in a barn and mice would form in it.

That's the correlation equals causation fantasy that is still prevalent in the minds of many today. Leave grain around, mice appear in it, nobody saw them arrive, therefore mice are spontaneously formed in piles of grain.

This was especially true of disease and spoilage, and was understandable because nobody had discovered bacteria yet, nobody had made a microscope and nobody had worked out how to make culture media. These things just spontaneously appeared.

Even when the first 'animalcules' were discovered, there were many in high position who believed they spontaneously formed from the material around them. Pasteur did a great job of knocking down that idea by making a glass sphere with a long spout that was open to the air, but which curved away from the main vessel so nothing could just fall in. He filled the sphere with broth and boiled it repeatedly. Then he left it alone. Nothing appeared. With that simple experiment he proved that microbes don't appear from nothing but are carried on the air. You can try it yourself by following this simple method. There aren't many who can afford Pasteur's specially blown glass vessels nowadays but the same result can be achieved with simple modern apparatus. Even with a (heat-proof) glass bottle and plastic tubing.

So you'd think that nowadays, in our modern, scientific times, there would be no utter morons in positions of high office and influence, wouldn't you? Unfortunately they are all still there, just as pompous and self-Righteous and arrogant and utterly, utterly stupid as they have been throughout the centuries. It's enough to make you believe in reincarnation.

Asthma is on the rise, and smoking is on the decline, yet smoking causes asthma. Nothing else. Not the exhaust fumes, the plasticisers, the chemicals we now use more and more for cleaning and air freshening, the myriad sprays and foams and vapours we are expected to apply to our bodies, that 'scent of Jasmine and Rose' that has been about as near to a flower bed as the Sun has been to an ice age, and all the rest of those modern chemical concoctions that have increased in use along with asthma prevalence.

None of those can be accused of causing asthma. No, it's because of smoking, which is declining as asthma increases. If that's science then I am an exceptionally dextrous camel. Or maybe a camel with a really big keyboard.

In 1668, Fancesco Redi proved that flies did not spontaneously generate from rotting meat.

In 1864, Louis Pasteur proved that bacteria did not spontaneously generate in broth.

In 2010, the chief medical officer for Wales, Dr. Tony Jewell, not only believes that a declining cause has an increasing effect, but that even being in the presence of a smoker causes the spontaneous generation of infectious micro-organisms in the middle ear. The part behind the eardrum. Something that was proven impossible in 1668 and again in 1864. He believes it.

As an encore, he delights in telling parents whose babies have died of that mysterious and absolutely unexplained phenomenon known as 'cot death' that it's their fault, they smoke and they have killed their own baby. Just like the Green October terrorist group, he needs no evidence, nothing at all, to blast his spiteful message of hate, blame and guilt at those he disapproves of.

This man is the Chief Medical Officer for Wales. He believes in something Pasteur disproved in 1864 and a rather marvelous Italian disproved nearly two hundred years earlier. (yah boo, Frenchie). He believes in the exact opposite of scientific and epidemiological logic. He believes in laying blame where it is not warranted for his own amusement.

If you're in Wales, get the hell out of there before you get sick. Your health service is overseen by someone less versed in modern medicine than was Merlin, and whose primary delight is the torment of the bereaved.

Our government, and the Flabber / Prawn Curry government-type-thing in Wales believe every word he says. So do the Cleggeron Coagulation and the Ed Moribund Group. Also the Fish who run Scotland. No need to ask about the Dreadful Arnott. If it means smokers get a kicking, she'll accept statements to the effect that smoking causes dandruff, rickets and shiny elbows on tweed jackets without question.

This man of the Tiny Jewels is an absolute, total, blithering, unthinking, gibbering moron with the scientific credibility of a Neanderthal who argues that the wheel would work better if it was triangular, the intelligence of a sloth on five bottles of cheap sherry a day and a conversation level that extends to 'Graaa!', the wit and presentation skills of those baboons with big red arses and all the sympathy and understanding of Jack the Ripper on a bad day.

The politicians who lap it up... there are no words yet. I'll have to think of some.

It might take a while for grammar to reach into the abyss of stupid they have dug for themselves.