Real Nice

This was in the Daily Telegraph Monday:

NHS may not treat smokers, drinkers or obese

People who are grossly overweight, who smoke heavily or drink excessively could be denied surgery or drugs following a decision by a Government agency yesterday.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) which advises on the clinical and cost effectiveness of treatments for the NHS, said that in some cases the "self-inflicted" nature of an illness should be taken into account.

People who are grossly overweight, who smoke heavily or drink excessively could be denied surgery or drugs following a decision by a Government agency yesterday.

The Nice. Creepy. And even creepier when you remember that the "N.I.C.E." was the space demon-controlled "National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments" in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength. Philip E. Johnson recalled in 2000 that Lewis's N.I.C.E was

empowered to solve all sorts of social and genetic problems without being bothered by "red tape." Mark and Jane Studdock are a young childless academic couple at Bracton College, whose faculty’s Progressive Element is willing to sell its woods and its soul to entice the NICE. Mark and Jane’s marriage is unhappy because, like most modern people, they see marriage as a contract for mutual advantage rather than as a sacred union. Mark’s consuming desire doesn’t even involve Jane. He wants to be a big shot, a member of the "inner ring" first at his college and then at the NICE. He gets his chance because he is good at writing propaganda.

The NICE turns out to be demonic in inspiration, and intends to impose upon England a regime of ruthless social engineering that Joseph Stalin would have admired. The apparent "Head" at the NICE’s mansion at Belbury is the head of a guillotined murderer, kept alive with advanced life support systems, but this gruesome object is merely the conduit for orders from the dark powers. Belbury’s human leaders recruit and flatter Mark, but the human resource they really want is Jane. She is a seer, whose visions involve the return to life of the magician Merlin, long entombed under Bracton Wood. If Belbury can unite its materialist magic with Merlin’s old–fashioned kind, it can achieve its dream of freeing the mind from messy organic life. "In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it."

But Johnson misses the satire of bureacracy in Lewis's N.I.C.E., which culminates in the N.I.C.E.'s board of directors, already panicked by Merlin putting the Curse of Babel on them, being trampled and eaten by enraged zoo animals. It's great. It's even funny; as funny as the NHS's Nice, anyway.

Update: Yes, there was also The Nice, who were pretty scary, too.

(via Taranto)