Having spent several decades as a researcher in the health equity field, I was irritated to see that well-worn, misleading trope about personal responsibility for poor health being given the oxygen of publicity by the Guardian (At least 80% responsibility for ill health in old age down to individual, study says, 20 May).

The Oxford Longevity Project’s study gave the impression that the main cause of poor health and its unequal distribution is an open question. That is not the case. The weight of evidence accumulated over decades is clear: the primary causes of inequalities in health, driving poorer health for poorer groups, are the material conditions in which people are born, live, work and grow old. It is growing inequalities in access to material resources, power and privilege, not irresponsible behaviours, which have created a 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least advantaged groups in the UK.

It would also have been useful to have been told more about the project’s main sponsor, Oxford Healthspan, a company that sells “whole-food spermidine” supplements. Good-quality research suggests these show great promise in laboratory and observational studies, but the benefits shown in clinical human trials are mixed.
Jennie Popay
Professor of sociology and public health, Lancaster University