The 'miracle pill': how cycling could save the NHS

Cycling can make people healthy and live longer, and cut public health costs, so why can't it be prescribed to the nation?

Imagine if a team of scientists devised a drug which massively reduced people's chances of developing cancer or heart disease, cutting their overall likelihood of dying early by 40%. This would be front page news worldwide, a Nobel prize as good as in the post.

That drug is already here, albeit administered in a slightly different way: it's called cycling to work. One of the more puzzling political questions is why it is so rarely prescribed on a population-wide level.