thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/thunderer/article4137025.ece Tom Whipple Published at 12:01AM, July 3 2014 Pope Francis is not short of non-Catholics telling him how to run his church. Some entreaties, such as softening his stance on contraception, are theological problems; others, such as getting tough on paedophile priests, are organisational ones. But there is one with no such difficulties that would instantly improve the world, saving potentially hundreds of lives. And he probably does not even know about it. In the 1990s a group of Filipino health workers were told that they were part of a nefarious plot to sterilise the entire female population of the developing world. They had thought they were just vaccinating mothers against neonatal tetanus, which kills babies born in unsanitary conditions. Yet the local Catholic Church said that they were vaccinating women against having babies at all and demanded a boycott. More that a quarter century later in Kenya, where a new neonatal tetanus drive is beginning, bishops are repeating the same accusations — citing their Filipino colleagues as inspiration. What they do not cite is that the claims were proved by independent scientists to be wholly baseless. Oh, and that several hundred babies died through a lack of the injection. Alas the accusations that killed them live on. Vaccine conspiracy theories are not a preserve of the Catholic Church alone. In the Muslim world, polio eradication, one of the most successful health programmes in history, is imperilled by those who claim that it is a cover for CIA agents. In the West measles eradication, genuinely achievable, is barely an aspiration thanks to middle-class parents who claim drug companies are covering up the vaccine’s link to autism. Like all conspiracy theories, the idea that neonatal tetanus vaccine causes infertility is phenomenally tedious in the laboriousness of the circumlocutions that explain it and the dogmatism of those who make them. Yet it can be stopped — and stopped instantly. Its adherents also adhere to a higher dogma: if the Pope says it is safe, it is de facto safe. It is rare to be able to achieve unambiguous good at almost no cost. Pope Francis has that chance. He has the authority, he has a scientific service that can confirm the nonsense of the claims — and he has the imperative. To put it bluntly, the inflammatory rhetoric of his bishops is killing babies. If stopping that does not fall within the remit of a pro-life organisation, I don’t know what does.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 09:42:29 +0000