01:47
Tieng Anh Vui
Health checks offered to millions of people over 40 are a waste of time, says the UK's leading GP.
Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, says the government is promoting its NHS Health Check programme "against good evidence".
Her comments come after The Times newspaper published a letter from Danish researchers criticising the programme.
The Nordic Cochrane Centre group found health MoTs did not reduce deaths.
In England, people aged 40-74 are offered a free health check.
The initiative, launched in 2009, is designed to spot conditions such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes by looking for silent risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Ministers have said the scheme could save 650 lives a year.
But Danish researchers are questioning the policy and say health checks have no proven benefits.
Their review, published in October 2012, looked at health checks offered in a number of countries, including some pilot trials in the UK a decade or more ago, though not the post-2009 programme.
It concluded that general health checks failed to benefit patients and could instead cause them unnecessary worry and treatment.
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