Seasons Greetings

...and may your God go with you (or not) depending on your persuasion.

Best wishes

Joe

...and a child was born to save us!

A nine year old girl in Norfolk has been given a life-saving treatment thanks to a transplant from a sibling. On the face of it, this is not a particularly newsworthy story. It must happen pretty often. However, in this instance, the transplant came from a 'saviour' sibling - a baby created specifically to provide a match for the sick child. Without this treatment, Megan Matthews would have died.


Megan suffers from Fanconi Anaemia, a rare inherited condition which can cause bone marrow failure which makes it impossible to produce blood. The condition meant that Megan was unable to fight infections and she required blood transfusions every three weeks. The BBC reported that since the transplant, Megan has not required any blood products and now attends Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge for a weekly check-up.


Megan's parents are reported as saying that they always wanted another child but were concerned that he or she could be born with the same condition. Also, a naturally conceived child would have had only a one-in-four chance of being a match for Megan's bone marrow. Instead, the parents worked with teams at three hospitals in Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham. using IVF techniques, CARE fertility in Nottingham took cells from three day old embryos and tested each one to see it it was a suitable for transplant. Two embryos were implanted and a baby boy, Max, was born. Max was a perfect tissue match and in July an operation took place in Bristol to transplant cells to treat Megan's blood disorder.


Megans's life has been transformed by the operation. She no longer has to have regular transfusions and she can now fight off infections so will not have to spend so much time in hospital. However, the transplant is not the end of her difficulties. Over 20% of people with Fanconi Anaemia develop cancer, often acute myelogenous leukemia. About 60-75% of FA patients have congenital defects, commonly short stature, abnormalities of the skin, arms, head, eyes, kidneys, and ears, and developmental disabilities. The median age of death is 30 years old. 


In an interview with the BBC, Kate Matthews said: "Max is loved for being him and not for what he has done. He has completed our family and now I have a bubbly and healthy girl." However, as Josephine Quintavalle, Director of Comment on Reproductive Ethics said of Max: "He owes his life to his capacity to be of therapeutic use to his sick sister, otherwise he would not have been chosen in the first place." The fact is that, Megan is facing a life of illnesses that could possibly resolved because of Max. What if, as is possible, she needs a kidney transplant in the future?


The guidelines for living donor transplants in the UK state, 


'the age of consent for medical treatment was clarified by the Gillick case. This determined that minors who are able to understand fully what is proposed and are capable of making a choice in their best interest could give medical consent irrespective of their age. However, even in the case of a “Gillick competent” minor where there is parental consent for donation, it would be advisable to seek consent from the High Court before proceeding. The British Medical Association considers that “it is not appropriate for live, non-autonomous donors (minors) to donate non-regenerative tissue or organs'. 

At that moment the regulations would appear to be pretty clear. However, it was only in 2005 that the House of Lords changed the law and ruled that it was lawful to create 'saviour siblings' in order to treat genetic disorders. Already the live donor guidelines provide a degree of ambiguity that could be exploited in the future: twins and 'Gillick competent' children. This is a rapidly changing field of medicine and has wide legal and ethical implications. 

How far do you think it should go? 

Truth or dare?

Brian Hanrahan

What is the role of a journalist? The question came to mind on the news of Brian Hanrahan's death aged 61. His death has brought tributes from across the country. Colleagues in Northern Ireland praised his commitment to integrated schools - mixing Catholic and Protestant children, while John Simpson wrote, 'Brian Hanrahan was the kind of journalist BBC correspondents aspire to be - always precise in his use of words and facts and scrupulously honest.' 

For many of you, like me, Brian Hanrahan's death will have brought back memories of the Falklands War, where he became famous for his report of a Sea-Harrier operation, "I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid but I counted them all out and I counted them all back. Their pilots were unhurt, cheerful and jubilant, giving thumbs up signs." It was one of the most memorable quotes from the conflict.

Peter Snow

Meanwhile, 7000 miles away, in the UK another battle was taking place, between the BBC and Mrs Thatcher's government. On 2nd May 1982, Peter Snow, presenting Newsnight, had commented that information provided by the Argentine government was unreliable but he also brought into question the veracity of information from the British government. This was objectivity taken too far according to the government who complained that it was 'too neutral.' Tory MPs went further and argued that the BBC were guilty of treason.

Novelist, Julian Barnes, who at the time was a Guardian journalist, called the Falklands War, 'the worst reported war since the Crimean'. He argues that while the 'armed forces defeated the Argentinians, the Ministry of Defence was putting to rout the British media.' For 54 of the 74 days their were no images of the conflict available at home. He goes on, 'If bad news couldn't be hidden, it was certainly repositioned: thus the estimate of casualties at Bluff Cove was covered by heartening shots of the QE2 returning home. Reports were censored, delayed, occasionally lost, and at best sent back by the swiftest carrier-turtle the Royal Navy could find. Michael Nicholson of ITN and Peter Archer of the Press Association prefaced their bulletins with the rider that they were being censored. This fact was itself censored.'

During the war, Britain suffered 258 deaths (over 300 Falklands veterans have subsequently committed suicide) and 777 wounded. In addition, 2 destroyers, 2 frigates, and 2 auxiliary vessels were sunk. For Argentina, the Falklands War cost 649 killed, 1,068 wounded, and 11,313 captured. In addition, the Argentine Navy lost a submarine, a light cruiser, and 75 aircraft. The cost at the time was £2 million per islander. However, the Falklands were saved and Britain once again asserted itself on a world stage after years of decline. The Argentine military government fell soon after and democracy was reintroduced. Why don't you weigh up the cost / benefit. However, domestically the most profound effect of the war was the turnaround it produced for Mrs Thatcher.

At the start of 1982, 48% of respondents in a Gallup poll had rated her as the 'worst' Prime Minister ever, 12% more than Neville Chamberlain. The ten weeks of war saw her approval rating soar to 84 per cent. The pollsters noted that her rating improved after the war was mentioned during the poll interview. Meanwhile, the Labour Party had sunk to its lowest ever rating and support for the emerging SDP - Liberal Alliance had stalled. In the 1983 General Election, the Conservatives and Mrs Thatcher's brand of 'conviction politics' stormed to a massive 144 seat majority and the miners strike, privatisation and yuppies followed.

Conviction politics? Political theorists have concluded that there was no such thing as 'Thatcherism.' There was never a coherent ideology. Rather than convictions she had an instinct for taking opportunities as they arrived and exploiting them. The Falklands is a case in point. Britain had been trying to get rid of the Falklands for decades. As Julian Barnes notes 'the ardent Thatcherite, Nicholas Ridley, presenting a leaseback solution to the House of Commons only two years previously, was forgotten. The fact that we'd traded with the junta, welcomed its leaders and sold arms to them, but now realised that it was a filthy dictatorship after all, was swallowed without a burp.' 

Following the war the 'Franks Report' exonerated the government for any responsibility for the war. It is not a surprise, how many commissions ever criticise the government that appoint them? Given that the military junta in Argentina had published full plans of its intention to invade the islands three months earlier in their national newspaper La Prensa, it is difficult to believe the argument that no member of the government was informed by a civil servant of the impending disaster. Mrs Thatcher had also sent disastrous signals to the Argentinians by announcing the withdrawal of the the UK's only naval presence, HMS Endurance, from the area and replacing the full British citizenship of the Falkland Islanders with a more limited version. 

The day after Brian Hanrahan's death, Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian's security editor, argued that  the MOD still make it difficult to get access to sites when something goes wrong. However, as in the Falklands, there are very few restrictions on reporters embedded with troops. He describes the experience of living alongside the soldiers and sharing their risks as being seductive and believes the natural tendency is for correspondents to be sympathetic. However, he notes that relations are not so cosy that issues such as 'friendly-fire' deaths, which took weeks to be reported in the Falklands, are now reported immediately. For Norton-Taylor, 'the question is whether restrictions of the kind asked of Hanrahan in the Falklands should have been accepted by journalists.'

It is a fair question. The government's stranglehold on the news from the Falklands is demonstrated by the Boys Own lexicon that  developed during the conflict. How many men of my age still don't get a frisson of excitement at the word 'yomp'? Most of the media were happy to crank up the nationalist rhetoric and the thrill of a fight filtered throughout society. Brian Hitchen, editor of the Daily Star caught the mood when he said, "Most people would have been pig-sick if there hadn't been a fight." The blood-lust reached its height with the famous 'Gotcha' headline in the Sun on the news that the Belgrano had been sunk and 1200 men had died. Even the Sun realised it had gone too far and retracted the headline in later editions. 

What is the role of a journalist? Surely, in a democracy it is to reveal the truth, no matter how unpalatable that may be to vested interests. Brian Hanrahan's most famous quote 'I counted them all out and I counted them all back' was also part of the nationalist rhetoric. It is stirring but ultimately vacuous. As a journalist, if you can't reveal the bad news - should you reveal the good news? Isn't that called propaganda? I think it is highly telling that, in her memoirs, Mrs Thatcher called Brian Hanrahan 'an excellent BBC correspondent' for his Falklands reports. How many times did Mrs T use 'excellent' and 'BBC correspondent' in the same sentence? It is right that we should celebrate Brian Hanrahan's life and work but please let's try and leave that phrase out of it. 

Of course, even I can't blame the Tories for starting the Falklands War. The war was an attempt by a tyrannical leader to shore up their government by distracting the population with an aggressive foreign intervention. Oh hang on a minute...