In a year which began with David Bowie’s death and went precipitously downhill from there, this is hardly a contender for 2016’s most depressing headline. But were there an annual award for Most Eye-Rollingly Drivelling Fool Of A Headline, my nomination would be this, from today’s news: GPs Will Order Liver Scan If You Have Two Drinks A Night.

Apparently, the boys and girls at NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) – the sweethearts who deny terminal lung cancer sufferers immunotherapy that could give them extra years of more years of high quality life on purely cost grounds – want potential liver damage to be detected long before the emergence of such blatant symptoms as terrible itching and turning canary yellow.

The first cause of vexation with this notion that GPs will order scans for moderate drinkers is that they won’t. Not the ones I know, anyway. There may be GPs who are not yet aware that the NHS, being a little strapped for cash at the minute, isn’t madly keen to sanction expensive diagnostic tests for the well.

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Better informed physicians might give a mild drinker a liver function blood test, which is cheap. But they won’t order a scan for somebody who, despite putting away a schooner of sherry before dinner and a small Bailey’s before bed, appears to be in sound health.

If you want to test this, go to the doctor and tell him or her you have a couple of beers each evening, and demand the liver scan which the folk at NICE think you require.

Most patients with alarming signs of illness – what we professional hypochondriacs call “red flag symptoms” – have to wait weeks or months for a scan, because hospitals have far too few scanners and not enough staff to operate those they have. The only medical response a GP who ordered a liver scan for a symptomless person would expect is a psychiatric referral for him or herself.

But even if there were ten million CT and MRI machines, and phalanxes of idle radiographers sitting idly about knitting and whining about scandalous NHS overstaffing, would it be wise for a GP to order a scan on the off chance that a mild drinking habit might one day compromise hepatic function?

The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol Show all 10 1 /10 The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 10. Poland Results from an OECD report The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 9. Germany Two competitors face off during the 60th annual Bavarian finger wrestling championships (in German: Fingerhakeln) on August 11, 2013 in Feldkirchen-Westerham, Germany. The sport involves two competitors matched in class according to age and weight who sit at a specifically-designed table across from one another and pull at a small leather band with one finger until one player has pulled the other across. The sport is traditional in Bavaria and Austria. The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 8. Luxembourg Mandatory Credit: Photo by WestEnd61/REX (2694653a) Luxembourg, People sitting near restaurant VARIOUS Rex Features The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 7. France The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 6. Hungary Mandatory Credit: Photo by Juergen Hasenkopf/REX (507890e) Hungarian alcohol bottles URGARN, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY Rex Features The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 5. Russia Russian World War II veterans drink vodka as part of Victory Day celebrations in Vladikavkaz on May 9, 2008. The occasion reflects the trauma of World War II in which millions of Soviet citizens died before driving back the Nazis, but also a large measure of Soviet-style propaganda which airbrushed dark aspects of the story -- not least Stalin's massive wartime repressions. AFP PHOTO / KAZBEK BASAYEV (Photo credit should read KAZBEK BASAYEV/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 4. Czech Republic BREZNICE, CZECH REPUBLIC - JULY 19: Competitors down a bottle of lager July 19, 2003 during a beer drinking competition at the Herold Brewery in Breznice, Czech Republic. Pub life and beer are an intrinsic element of Czech culture, and contribute to the Czech Republic's first place world ranking in annual consumption of beer per capita, at 156 liters, well ahead of second-place Ireland (125 liters per head) and third-place Germany (120 liters per head). (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 3. Estonia Mandatory Credit: Photo by Mood Board/REX (3916338a) MODEL RELEASED Bartenders working at counter in restaurant Tallinn, Estonia VARIOUS Rex Features The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 2. Austria SALZBURG, AUSTRIA - JULY 27: Ben Becker (Tod) broaches the beer barrel at the launch party at Krimpelstaetter tavern after the 'Jedermann" premiere during the Salzburg Festival on July 27, 2011 in Salzburg, Austria. (Photo by Martin Schalk/Getty Images) Getty Images The 10 countries that drink the most alcohol 1. Lithuania Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite (Rl) and members of her delegation hold glasses of wine on November 22, 2011 during a document-signing ceremony after their talks in Kiev. Grybauskaite is in Ukraine for a one-day working visit to meet with Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and to attend the fifth session of the Council of Presidents of the Republic of Lithuania and Ukraine. AFP PHOTO/SERGEI SUPINSKY (Photo credit should read SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images

The liver, as everyone knows, is the tough guy of the vital organs. Unlike Captain Scarlett, it isn’t indestructible. But it does, like Doctor Who, regenerate. Long before Carla Lane’s sitcom, the very first Liver Bird was the eagle sent by Zeus to punish the titan Prometheus for giving humanity the gift of fire. Every day, the eagle pecked out the poor sod’s liver. Every bleeding day the bugger grew back.

Despite limited access to computed tomography and magnetic resonance imagery, those prehistoric, myth-inventing Greeks had instinctive trust in the liver’s resilience. They were right. While two drinks a day will raise the risk of various cancers and other illnesses, we all have elderly friends and relatives who have drunk moderately and daily for decades without developing cirrhosis.

Yet this isn’t at heart (albeit there is a connection between excess alcohol consumption and coronary disease) a medical issue. It’s a philosophical one. What Ecclesiastes had to say about eating, drinking and being merry has stood the test of time. A couple of millennia after the New Testament was written, it remains the case that tomorrow we die.

The difference is that tomorrow tends to be much further away now than then, when 40 was a fine age – and in too many cases heartrendingly so. Obviously it is right to target wildly excessive alcohol intake, because that disables and kills the relatively young, and costs a fortune to treat. But why frighten moderate drinkers out of a nightly brace of drinks if the best outcome from that is eking out an apology for a life in senescent misery in a hideous care home, or as an NHS bed-blocking victim of the unpardonable failure to provide adequate social care?

The way to address serious alcohol abuse is through vastly increased taxation. And the way to deal with people who use small amounts to relax and make human existence that smidgeon less gruesome is to explain the risks, give them the odds, and let them decide.