-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4325252,00.html
}}}>Begin
Come clean, Mr Blair
The Prime Minister's acute discomfiture over the MMR vaccine is no
one's fault but his own
Mary Riddell
Sunday December 23, 2001
The Observer
For those wanting a more traditional fable than The Lord of the
Rings, this Christmas features a Nativity story, complete with a
baby, three Magi and some sheep. The child is Leo Blair. The kings
are the Health Secretary, the Chief Medical Officer and the Prime
Minister, who have exchanged gold, frankincense and myrrh for the
contemporary offering of phials of measles, mumps and rubella
vaccine. The sheep are played by Britain's parents, who are supposed
unquestioningly to follow an edict from on high to give their infants
a triple shot of MMR while ignoring whatever the Blairs might be
doing.
But the sheep are running amok. The script has developed Herodian overtones of damage
to children. The battle of Leo's jabs, like the War of Jenkins' Ear, has escalated.
Last week, Tony Blair declined to tell the Commons
whether he and Cherie had flouted government advice and chosen single injections for
their son. Now in the face of mounting suspicion, senior Whitehall sources have hinted
strongly that Leo has had the triple injection af
ter all.
This is all very curious. Why should the fact that the Prime Minister's son had a
treatment recommended for all babies ever have been secret. What's the point of the
contortions of the past week? Alan Milburn is threateni
ng to boycott the Today programme, in protest at its inquisition of Jacqui Smith, who,
like other Ministers, has apparently been urged not to disclose whether her children
had the triple jab. The odd excuse for enforcing
privacy by edict is, supposedly, that answering questions would lead to further
impertinent inquiries on intimate family health matters, including whether Ministers'
teenage children practised safe sex.
It is obvious that politicians should not have to disclose which brand of disposable
nappies they favour, let alone anything more personal. MMR is different. The
Government has used strongarm tactics to persuade people th
at they should give their children a controversial drug linked, despite overwhelming
evidence to the contrary, with autism. It has declared the alternative, single, jabs
unsatisfactory and made them unaffordable to most (
except for those who can pay up to �500 for all three shots). At that point, choice
and privacy expire. Politicians must openly treat their children as they exhort us to
treat ours, or explain why.
Michael Brunson's story of how Mr Blair once traded shots of Euan playing the piano in
return for scrapping Cherie's thoughts on a Downing Street life is often cited as
proof that the Prime Minister is a selective invader
of his children's privacy. It is hard not to be. When every radiant family Christmas
card subtly bolsters Mr Blair's lustre, protecting privacy is a grey area. Except on
MMR, where there is no privacy to protect.
By keeping single jabs off the NHS, the state has chosen the rare course of
countermanding private choice. Parental judgment is deemed to involve such serious
consequences - a return of the measles that used to affect 76,
000 children a year and kill 16 - that individual freedom has been subjugated to the
public good. Unlike universal primary education, which some parents also resisted, the
triple jab could not quite be introduced by compu
lsion.
The Government has done the next best thing, in spending �3 million on promotion.
Health visitors warn parents that selfish non-compliance makes a deadly epidemic more
likely. The fact that the Blairs, it seems, heeded th
is advice, does not remove the Prime Minister from his bind. His unwillingness to
confirm his choice of treatment is bound to make parents more doubtful. To what end?
If the triple MMR jab is as obligatory as the Governme
nt claims, then asking whether a child has had it is no more intrusive that asking if
he or she goes to school.
To turn a drug endorsed as safe throughout the world into a catalyst for national
suspicion is some feat. How did Mr Blair do it? How did Cherie? Sexism and, perhaps, a
wish to needle Mrs Blair, made her the first target
of media truth-seekers. She, increasingly high-profile, has written in this paper on
bullying. She has spoken out on her preferred dress code for Afghan women (no burkas)
and, for charity, revealed her own sartorial wish-
list for Christmas (a silk nightie from Selfridges). She has also consolidated her
reputation as a crystal- wearing devotee of alternative medicine who recently
persuaded her husband to join her in seeking their inner sel
ves while being plastered in mud and passion fruit in a Mexican pyramid.
One minute, she is a fan of Flowtron trousers and destressing ear studs. The next, she
is the most enlightened immunologist since Edward Jenner started injecting people with
live cowpox. For the press steeply to upgrade h
er medical credentials is unsurprising. Anyone who sends for men in MoD serge when a
teenage son needs help with a nuclear essay is likely to have done her own homework.
If she will not endorse the triple jab, then parent
s inevitably think there is something amiss.
Cherie Blair's choices are her own. Her husband's are not. As a parent skilled in
dealing with nappy changes and post-exam hangovers, he is party to all policy
decisions on his children and other people's. When parents ar
e told, by diktat, that injecting their babies with MMR is their public duty, it is
axiomatic that the Prime Minister openly follows suit. To opt for single jabs and
non-disclosure would have been indefensible. If informa
tion that he chose the triple jab is correct, his silence is barely explicable, given
the consequences. Already, the vaccination rate is down to 84.2 per cent, the lowest
since the combined injection was introduced in 198
8.
But the story of Leo's jabs is not only for worried parents. It resonates with all
those who find that their own immunity to cynicism over Labour's tactics could use a
booster shot. The MMR fuss has been fuelled by a beli
ef that, in assorted ways, the Government preaches one thing while doing something
else. To take only the most recent example, Blair's conference assessment of Africa as
'a scar on the conscience of the world' translates
with alarming ease into an export licence for a military air traffic control system
that will enrich British Aerospace at the expense of starving Tanzania.
Meanwhile in Britain, at Christmas, one baby's bogus privacy is jealously guarded,
while millions of less prominent infants are shooed off to have their MMR jabs done
for the public good. It is not meant as any jibe to an
xious parents, let alone to those of children who, for whatever reason, are autistic,
to say that the Blair- driven fixation on slight or non-existent risk seems oddly
disturbing at this time of this particular year.
British troops in Kabul may symbolise peace on earth, but their
arrival will not halt the death of many Afghan babies displaced by
war. According to the World Health Organisation, eight million lives
lost every year to preventable diseases such as malaria and
diphtheria could be saved, given the global investment of $66
billion. As for MMR, the best research and the latest evidence point
to this conclusion. The triple vaccine has proved much safer for
babies than for politicians.
Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
End<{{{
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