But here are a few responses, explanations, retorts, dismissals and general discussions of points made on this site in the past few days.
First let me dispense with the topic of the MMR, where my advocacy of sympathy for parents perplexed and isolated by government policy has led to several misunderstandings and misrepresentations of my position. I feel I ought to put a stop to this.
First, and most important, I have never offered any advice to parents on whether or not to let their children have the MMR, since I first wrote about this subject in the Mail on Sunday on 28th January 2001. I have never said that the MMR is dangerous. I have never said that it causes Autism. I haven't said these things because I do not know them to be true. I have always been extremely careful to make it clear that I do not know the answers to these questions.
My concern, from the start, has been that the authorities, by airily brushing off the fears of parents who are worried, have damaged their own cause for no good purpose. My solution to the difficulty has, from the start, been to urge the availability of single vaccinations on the NHS.
My resolve was strengthened some years ago by a particularly slimy attempt (recently recounted here) made by persons unknown to accuse me of influencing a mother into refusing the MMR, with the result that her children were damaged. This was a fraud, involving the theft of a real woman's identity and the deliberate, ingenious and malicious concoction of a false address, an untrue letter, making terrible accusations, and a fake signature. If I were able to find the culprits, I think criminal charges could successfully be brought against them. It was all most professionally done and it took a lot of spadework and foot-slogging to uncover the deceit, methods the authors plainly hoped or believed I would not use. Tough luck. I am a reporter by trade.
I decided that people who resorted to such methods must by their very nature be suspect, and their cause flawed. Had this not happened, I might by now have let the matter drop.
But since then (see below) I have also been repeatedly struck by the wanton exaggeration of the danger of measles, a danger which exists but which is not as great as they say it is, by the pro-MMR lobby, another factor which has persuaded me that they themselves suspect their own case to be weak. Good causes have no need of such overstatement.
I have, for more than eight years and quite consistently, long before any substantial outbreaks of measles in this country, said that the NHS should make single vaccines available if its main aim is to create 'herd immunity' against measles. I have been utterly unconvinced by the extraordinarily thin and bureaucratic arguments advanced against this reasonable and practicable suggestion, all of which depend on the mistaken belief that all the worried parents will eventually come round if enough pressure is placed upon them. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart, typical of authoritarian utopians. If the single vaccine suggestion had been followed when I (and many others) first offered it (I did so first in my January 2001 article), many measles cases would unquestionably have been avoided.
The authorities, as is well known, made this problem a great deal worse when Anthony Blair (whose government was at the time using large amounts of taxpayers' money to promote the MMR, while refusing to offer single vaccines) refused to say if his son Leo, then due for the MMR, had received it.
I am particularly grateful to Vikki Boynton for kindly making this point on my behalf. But in case any reader is in any doubt on this matter, I have restated my position above.
Now, to Mr Hadley, whose determination to carry on fighting two hopeless battles at once is admirable, if his arguments themselves (and some of his debating methods) are not. But before I can properly engage Mr Hadley, I must quickly deal with Mr McCarty and the person concealing his or her true identity behind the silly appellation of 'Joe Blogs'.
Mr McCarty accuses me of being 'picky' about the measles statistics I display, as if I were trying to conceal or misrepresent something. This is not so. Mr McCarty also suggests that I have in some way sought to minimise the effect of the foundation of the NHS on measles deaths. I have also done no such thing. It never crossed my mind. I cannot be sure there is any particular connection. The verdict of the measles statistics doesn't really come down firmly either way, and one must remember that the early years of the NHS were also the years of a coal shortage, bread rationing, one of the coldest winters on record, major London smogs, etc. This country had an extensive health service before the NHS, by no means restricted to the wealthy (see James Bartholomew's interesting book The Welfare State We're In for details).
Accurate statistics on measles outbreaks and deaths in this country can be obtained from several different sources with two or three clicks of a mouse. Only an idiot would try to falsify or conceal them, and I am only too happy for anyone to check them. They show quite clearly that the major reduction in deaths from measles in the last century (from thousands of deaths a year to dozens per year and less) took place long before immunisation of any kind was introduced. Variations in the interim depend mainly on the size and scale of measles epidemics, which vary considerably from year to year. But the deaths are demonstrably much lower by 1950 than they were in 1914. This is a simple, undeniable, unavoidable, enormous *fact*. It emphasises my point that the main danger to children comes not from measles by itself, but from the combination of measles with malnutrition and general ill-health, associated with the sort of poverty now virtually abolished in this country. This is consistent with my other argument, that measles is not a killer in a modern, civilised country except when there are rare complications, or where the victim is already seriously ill or malnourished.
I started my figures at 1950 because I was arguing with Mr Hadley at the time about what had been going on the period when I was a child. I didn't think I had room to reproduce the lot.
Mr McCarty makes a curious assertion in his posting of 22nd June (3.00 pm). It is this: 'The fall between 1950 and 1968 has nothing to do with improved hygiene; the trend that can be credited for that can be seen at the beginning of the HPA graph starting at 1940 and it stops before 1950.' What is this trend? He does not say. I am genuinely interested to know what alternative explanation he offers. By the way, I contend that the end of malnutrition, and better general health (rather than hygiene), are the main influential factors.
The person styled 'Blogs' makes a confusion (one I have many times pointed out on this site while 'Blogs' has been contributing). In the tiny number of grammar schools now in existence, heavily oversubscribed , with the ultra-competitive entry which results from the huge demand for them, I have no doubt many parents resort to private tuition to get their children into them. Under the system which once existed and which I wish to restore, of grammar schools being generally available, there will be no need for this to happen, and I do not think it will. If 'Blogs' does think it will, perhaps he or she can explain? I can only assume this confusion is wilful, of the 'none so blind as those that will not see' school of delusion. The 'Blogs' person wonders why I so seldom respond to his or her intemperate, inaccurate, incoherent and ad hominem railings against me (many of them casting doubt on the quality of my religious faith).
Now he or she has licensed himself or herself to decide what my inmost thoughts are on any subject, even, perhaps especially, when I have never expressed them. Thus: 'As for the point on insulting the poorer, less talented children. Well, I have to admit you may not have said it outright, but I feel sure :) that you are of this opinion.' I am not sure what the colon and the bracket signify here. But the words make it plain that it is pointless to respond to 'Blogs', since he or she will decide what I think regardless of whatever I say or don't say.
Oh, and 'Frank M' (another hider behind a pseudonym) explains exactly why the London Oratory is not a normal comprehensive school, while absurdly maintaining that it is one. Thanks, Mr 'M'. He should be aware but a slow but relentless regulatory and legislative process is in being, making it harder and harder for such schools to behave in this way, and forcing them slowly into the comprehensive mould. Once that process has succeeded, he'll wish like anything it wasn't a comprehensive. And it may not presently be 'full of the New Labour elite' (I don't think I said it was. I said correctly that one of their number sent his children there) but even Mr 'M' must be aware of the fact that Anthony Blair sent his sons there, so as to avoid Bog Lane comp in Islington (and also to avoid going private). As for 'rich and influential', I would be interested to know the average incomes, and the occupations, trades or professions, of the parents at the Oratory, and the numbers of pupils there receiving the EMA. He shouldn't be so tiresome. He knows perfectly well what I mean, and that it's true.
At last, to Mr Hadley... first on the MMR: He says: 'Suppose this is the nearest Peter will ever get to making an admission that he was wrong in the correction to his earlier statement that measles had ceased to be a killer in this country when he was growing up.'
I concede unreservedly that I should have used the phrase 'major killer'. Measles can kill even today, as I am well aware. I trust he will accept (with reference to all my past statements on this subject) that this was a failure of precision on my part, rather than a deliberate attempt to conceal or avoid a fact. That is certainly the point of the argument, as he knows. I have never denied that children can die from measles. Readers here will know that I have maintained that they don't normally die from it in advanced rich countries.
Mr Hadley then says: 'From his own figures there were 2005 deaths from measles in England and Wales from 1951 to 1967. The declining trend had ended in 1954 with the death rate actually slightly increasing from then to 1967. In that period there was an average of 93 deaths per year.'
I am not sure I can discern an increase in the *rate* between 1954 and 1967. 1954 is a misleading starting point for a series. The 45 deaths in 1954 were well below average for the time (1953 had suffered 242; 1955, 174). What Mr Hadley completely, utterly, totally and determinedly ignores is the point about how these deaths were themselves enormously lower than those of 50 years before, and that the major fall in the 20th century took place long before there was any immunisation. It is very hard to allocate a single cause for the fall in deaths after 1967. I would happily credit immunisation for some of it, but the general improvement in health and nutrition, which had already made such a difference, cannot be left out by any reasonable person as a possible joint cause.
It is definitely absurd for Mr Hadley to argue as if the relatively small fall in measles deaths after 1967 is a greater or more significant triumph of human action than the fall from thousands to dozens which took place between 1914 and 1954. He just refuses to see this. Why? I think it is because it doesn't suit his case to do so. Once again, none so blind etc. I don't deny that immunisation helped reduce measles. Why should I? It's obviously true. It also doesn't damage my case, that measles in advanced countries is not a major killer. Why can't Mr Hadley acknowledge that advances in nutrition and general health achieved much more? Because **his** argument depends completely on an exaggeration of the dangers of measles. When his argument is not supported by the facts, he should change his argument. Instead, he ignores the facts or (see below) claims not to understand them. He also (see below) uses tactics of a kind I personally find contemptible.
Mr Hadley again: 'In previous posts he has argued correctly that the children who died were usually those with pre-existing vulnerability, as if to say that somehow this made their deaths less important.'
This is an astonishing use of the lowest smear tactics. We are not arguing about the importance of these deaths as such. At least I am not. I am arguing about what they mean in the argument about the MMR, and about the dangers of measles. The death of any child is a terrible thing, as all civilised people agree. Equally, it is a severe breach of the rules of debate, for Mr Hadley to suggest (as he has attempted before by implication and as he now explicitly does) that I am personally callous about the deaths of children. I call upon him either to substantiate his innuendo, or to withdraw and apologise in full. I wouldn't object to a handwritten private letter of apology as well as a public one, but the public one is essential if he wishes me ever again so much as to acknowledge any contribution he makes here.
Mr Hadley continues: 'He does not address the point I made about a measles epidemic still having a death rate of one in five hundred even in the developed world - as was shown in for example in an epidemic in America twenty years ago.'
How would he like me to address it? Does he regard the USA, now or 20 years ago, as a country entirely without poverty? The USA, as I have stated here, has a welfare state and many other features of a modern social democratic country. But its social inequalities remain quite different from those of Western European countries, partly due to ancient racial inequalities and partly due to the huge numbers of illegal migrants now living there. Is he aware of the considerable differences between the medical facilities available to the poor and the rich there? Do these statistics differentiate in any way between poor and rich? If he will offer me a general or specific point following from this fact, then I will know what it is I have to answer.
Mr Hadley correctly concedes: 'A proportion of measles cases lead to complications such as pneumonia and convulsions and about one child in 70 is admitted to hospital. Nowadays most children recover from these complications.' Somehow he seems to have omitted to state the size of the proportion he mentions. Perhaps he could oblige. I am sure it is helpful to his case.
He then asserts (and, boy, does he love to assert) that 'In 2006 a 13 year [old] boy from the North East died of measles. I have seen in the past Peter attempt to minimize this by pointing out that the boy had problems before he caught measles. He had been taking immunosuppressive drugs for a lung illness which reduced his ability to fight infections. I really cannot see the relevance of that point.'
Oh, can he not? Well, first, I don't think I've ever gone into much detail about this case (though there have been unsourced reports suggesting that Mr Hadley's facts are broadly right, except that it was the North West) because the authorities, when I asked them for those details, flatly refused to give them to me, claiming that this breached patient confidentiality - though it was the child's medical condition, not his identity, I sought. There are several unsubstantiated stories about this case, including one suggestion that the child came from a traveller community and almost certainly wouldn't have been vaccinated anyway, whatever Dr Wakefield had said, because immunisation rates in traveller communities are generally low, due to the nomadic nature of their existence meaning they have no regular contact with the NHS. But as to the relevance, I should have thought it quite clear. If the child was, as suggested, taking immuno-suppressants, he was presumably suffering from some quite serious ailment or he would not have needed to take them.
I also believe (and am open to correction here) that immunisations are not in any case given to children taking immuno-suppressant drugs. Our conclusions on this matter must depend on what that ailment was. What if his general health was such that he might have died even if he had not contracted measles? It was in pursuit of these facts that I contacted the relevant authorities. They refused to help me in any way (see above). I have subsequently had similar experiences when I have tried to check later claims of the same sort. Bold statements dissolve into vagueness and evasion. Why should this be, if this is the unadorned truth?
I made these checks, because of the checks I had made on the two children who famously died in a Dublin measles outbreak in 2000. The Irish authorities, more open than those here, eventually told me as follows (I quote here from my article of January 2001): 'One of the victims was a 12-month-old baby girl from a very poor family living in grim conditions on a large Dublin housing estate and was, incredibly for a European capital in the year 2000, malnourished. The other was also exceptional and seriously ill before he contracted measles. He was a two-year-old with a severe malformation of the throat which linked his windpipe with his oesophagus and who had to be fed by a tube let into his stomach.
'The Irish epidemic also revealed another unsettling fact for the "MMR at all costs" lobby. At least ten per cent of those who developed measles had been given the MMR jab. One in ten is a pretty high failure rate for a treatment that is being pressed on the public as a great social duty.'
Mr Hadley accuses: 'That boy died of measles because of the Andrew Wakefield bogus paper and the ill-informed nonsense that was written about it afterwards by people like Peter Hitchens. If those campaigning against MMR were to be more successful every year many other weak children would die of measles.'
I think this is false in almost all particulars. It is perfectly possible, so far as we know, that the child might have died even if Dr Wakefield had never spoken. The fact that we cannot be sure is attributable to the authorities, who unjustifiably refused to reveal important details. Why were they so unwilling to say? Could it be precisely because the details, if known, would have shown that this sort of accusation is unjustified?
This lack of facts is not attributable to people such as me, who diligently sought to obtain them. If his point is that Dr Wakefield's allegations allowed measles to spread, which may or may not be the reason for the child's death, I'd be equally entitled to say that Mr Blair's coyness about the immunisation of his child, and the authorities' stone-faced refusal to license single jabs on the NHS, could just as well be blamed for this outcome.
I'd also like Mr Hadley to come up with just one example of what he alleges was 'ill-informed nonsense' written by me. About what was I ill-informed? He should be precise. He should produce supporting quotations. I'd offer him a free run through my archives, but he apparently doesn't need it. He already knows enough to pronounce me guilty.
So he can presumably answer these questions from his own records. Or withdraw the accusation.
As for his pay-off line: 'Surely Peter is not going to say that their deaths would be unimportant because they were sick anyway.' This second attempt, by slantwise innuendo, to cast me as callous and unfeeling about the deaths of children is (see above) beneath contempt. By the way, I do wish this person, whom I have never knowingly met, would not repeatedly refer to me familiarly as 'Peter'. It sits ill with his general attitude towards me, and makes me feel faintly nauseous.
Now to education. Mr Hadley's position seems to me to have been reduced to nothing more than a series of assertions about might-have-beens which cannot be tested. Even so, they seem absurd to me and to most other contributors.
Here are some samples: 'On comprehensive schools Peter ignores the point I made that the comprehensive schools with the lowest levels of attainment -- the Bog Lane Comp -- have relatively very few families in their catchment areas who are passing on to their children any aptitude for academic success. Sixty years ago there would have been lots of families in the homes near the school headed by people like my parents. They were living in poor circumstances because they had had little or no chance of a decent education. After sixty years of greater opportunity almost all those who were most likely to pass on to their children the ability to profit from higher education will have moved away, and will have been replaced by people who may down on their luck, but are often unable to provide homes in which children can grow up with a love of learning.'
How does Mr Hadley know this interesting thing, which would seem to me to involve years of painstaking research of both past and present living conditions and educational patterns? What are his sources? It's not that I ignore it. It's that it's of no value in a serious argument. There is nothing to be said about it, any more than if he started giving us his theories about social systems and educational attainment in undiscovered galaxies.
He then adds: 'However even Bog Lane Comp gets around 20 per cent of its pupils through 5 A-C GCSEs.' Yes, and we've established that even Mr Hadley accepts that the GCSE is a devalued examination, and such results reveal nothing of any significance about what those 20 per cent actually know, let alone suggests that such results are equivalent to a grammar school education.
He adds: 'Knowing some schools like Bog Lane, and my parents, I have not the slightest doubt that both my parents would have been star pupils at such a school.'
How can we treat this expression of opinion as, in itself, any kind of support for his earlier opinion on the same subject? He might as well say 'This is true because I think it is' and be done with it.
And so what need have we of facts, of the exposure of Anthony Crosland's misunderstanding of the comprehensive idea in my recent book, or the research of Durham University and others on falling exam standards, so well described by Jenni Russell in The Guardian in her article 'Drilled, not educated', or of Dr John Marks on the general collapse in standards, or comparisons between modern exam papers and those of 30 years ago, or comparisons of Northern Ireland's selective system with England's comprehensives one in 'the Betrayed Generation' or indeed any facts at all? Mr Hadley (a bit like 'Blogs') just knows. And we must bow to his knowledge. Or not. In my case, not.
He then further asserts first this unsubstantiated and indeed untestable expression of opinion: 'They would have gone on to pass A-levels and do well at university.' (Which itself ignores the important question of what is nowadays meant by 'university', and whether *that* is the same thing it was 50 years ago, or even a comparable experience), followed by yet another, which I personally regard as wholly laughable: 'Schools like Bog Lane nowadays take great care of the minority of bright and willing pupils. Whatever anyone thinks of OFSTED, it has been effective over the last fifteen years in identifying and closing those schools that did not do this.'
Once again, there isn't a fact in sight. When did OFSTED ever set this, taking great care of the bright minority, as an objective? Surely that's exactly what comprehensive schools don't do, and aren't seriously expected to? The bright must hide from the bullies, share classrooms with yahoos, and hope to survive without too much damage. Special treatment for them would be 'elitism'. There is, by law, to be no selection on the grounds of academic ability. How many schools has OFSTED closed with this alleged aim in mind? When did it state this? No OFSTED document I have ever seen, and I have seen many, would even use such language.
I am tempted to describe this thin stuff as ill-informed nonsense. I hope to deal with other issues, the EU and the jury system, before long.
