IT IS deeply regrettable that with major changes in contract hours junior doctors feel they have no option but to take strike action.

And that within the whole context of hugely rising mass demand for medical services 24/7, increasing year in year.

But what then do we say to those industries that are, with enormous profits, driving huge parts of the whole national demand for medical service ?

For instance supermarkets stacked six foot high aisle after aisle with sugar and fat delivery systems. All the worst products on the planet “product planted” in front of our noses to pick up. And this with obesity and diabetes at epidemic levels.

And of course the tobacco industry. Since the first cancer warnings in the 1940s it’s taken the UK government seven whole decades to put warnings on cigarette packaging : “Tobacco Kills”. But still government will not commit to graphic pictures of cancerous disease on packets.

And the alcohol industry. An enormous consumption culture that over decades has run out of all control. And so it is so many fall victim to alcoholism, or unintended excessive drinking. And so more demand on our NHS - not least from city centres every weekend.

In the end we have the sheer insanity of mass consumption industries, with enormous collateral damage to public health, overwhelming our health service with so much unavoidable demand.

So self defeating – mass consumption of self-damaging products then expecting a “free” health service to cope with all the damage.

JEFF WILLIAMS Jubilee Road, Parkstone, Poole