Rebuke over rubella debate

Press, 24 October 1980, Page 4

Rebuke over rubella debate

Parliamentary reporter The Minister of Health (Mr Gair) and the Health Department have been sharply rebuked • for ■ their roles in 'seeking to suppress public debate over the department’s immunisation programme to protect pregnant women against rubella infection.

The criticism was made by the president of the Association of Scientists, Dr W. Green, at the Association’s annual meeting.

In 1978, the principal medial officer of virology with the National Health Institute (Dr W. M. Hamilton) had expressed the fear that “ a . . some rubella . . .

could be a hydrid virus carrying part of the genome of another virus, and that this extrapeous, unwanted fragment could have a significant potential -for deleterious effects . . .” Dr Green said it was too early to say whether Dr Hamilton or the department was correct in the controversy. However, the initial response of the Minister and department to Dr Hamilton’s public expression of concern about a."potential risk” had, been strong attacks on Dr Hamilton’s professional competence, attacks made from their protected positions as employers.

The department had also ■ started its own inquiries 1 into the evidence behind Dr Hamilton’s allegations, and ■ had since denied Dr Ham- • ilton access to that evidence, Dr Green said. > It would have been more • appropriate to set 1 ' up an : open process to evaluate the - evidence of risk and to have included Dr Hamilton in that • process, in the interests of I balance, along with special ; interest groups such as i women’s health organisaI tions. ’ This had not been done, he said, and the strategy of rubella immunisation, which 1 had been one of Dr Ham- ! iiton’s main concerns, remained unchanged.

“The reactionary, and at times vindictive, response of the department really comes as no great surprise,” said Dr Green.

“It would have been a radical departure from tradition for it to have set up an evaluation process to investigate a charge of departmental short-coming. Government departments are not used to working that way. “Instead, we saw the predictable response of a bureaucracy which is obsessed with maintaining a public image of infallibility and which relies to an unhealthy extent on secrecy as its modus operandi," Dr Green said.