A_10_Jan-28-08_grey
1/27/08
8:48 PM
Page a10
C M Y K a10
A10
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS,
MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2008
COMMENT EDITOR:
Gerald Flood 697-7269
[email protected]
EDITORIALS
Freedom of Trade
Liberty of Religion
Equality of Civil Rights
winnipegfreepress.com
Vaccination
still best bet
A
new study by a University of Manitoba professor has found a worrisome link between
early vaccination of infants and the rise of
asthma among children. This is a single study, the
results of which need to be verified. But alert parents may be drawing conclusions of their own,
already.
Vaccinations have always enjoyed tentative support among the public — a mile wide, but an inch
deep, so to speak. As robust vaccination programs
took hold in the mid-20th century, the evident benefits of an ounce of prevention drew the medical
community and then parents into the fold. Children
today do not have to
fear becoming disabled
from polio or dying
from diphtheria. The
fetus of a pregnant
mother exposed to
rubella (German
measles) was at risk of
being born with multiple impairments,
including deafness,
which was also a rare
complication of mumps.
Today’s parents have little memory of the days
when epidemics ravaged the young, a good
fortune that also limits
their experience when weighing the risks and benefits of injecting toxoids into two-month-old babies.
Prof. Anita Kozyrskyj’s study of children born in
1995 and vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis
and tetanus found that those who got their first shot
at two months (as recommended) were much more
likely to develop asthma compared to those who got
their first shot more than four months after birth.
Why that is remains the stuff of theory: Perhaps the
immature immune system needs time to develop;
others note that the pertussis, or whooping cough,
vaccine in 1995 caused fever, also linked to asthma.
Asthma is not a frivolous disease and is a common
cause of hospitalization for children. But it is rarely
fatal and it largely can be controlled. This study
needs to be replicated for validation. Further, the
makeup of the pertussis vaccine changed in 1997.
But the government’s faith in its vaccination program cannot rest upon the hope parents will coolly
deliberate scientific facts. Parents now are confronted with a potential new risk and will be considering their own baby’s benefits. They will be
making the very personal decision of vaccinating
their two-month-old child, or waiting until he is a little older, bigger and more hale. In recent years,
other countries have seen whooping cough infections soar after parents pulled away from early vaccinations, resulting in misery for kids.
Ms. Kozyrskyj’s study poses an intriguing question about the link between the DPT vaccine and a
worrisome disease. It needs to be studied further.
In the meantime, the province should tell parents to
maintain the course, reminding them the very
young were most vulnerable when many of these
diseases were free to spread among children.
Poor way to spend
CANADA’S school boards have, as a group, proposed the elimination of income tax after high
school to motivate aboriginal students to stay in
school. The idea arises from the concept increasingly embraced by provincial governments — use the
power of the public treasury to get their young to
stay and work in their provinces. The school boards,
however, should be looking a little deeper for the
root causes of poor high school graduation rates
among aboriginal people.
Indeed, school boards have considerable power to
influence the factors that lead to children becoming
discouraged with school. Money is an issue, but not
in the way the school boards think.
Aboriginal, and particularly First Nations, children
are much more likely than non-aboriginal children to
be from low-income homes. Poverty has a powerful
impact on a child’s readiness to start school and ability to stick with it. It is closely associated with poor
housing, frequent moves and hopping from school to
school. Also, many struggling families are led by single parents with little education. A Manitoba Centre
for Health Policy study, published in 2004, found that
in Winnipeg’s low-income neighbourhoods, children
fell behind as early as Grade 3. Studies across Canada indicate high-school dropout rates among aboriginal people range as high as 50 per cent compared to
the 80 per cent graduation rate of non-aboriginals.
The allure of tax breaks for a student who feels he
failed at school is very limited; more likely, school is
another problem in a complicated life. Dropping out
looks like a solution.
Money can make a difference. Overcoming the
hurdles that children in poorer neighbourhoods
face is not cheap: Get toddlers into full-time nursery school where they can be prepared to start
school; Reduce the size of a class, allowing teachers
to spend more time with those struggling; put in
special supports for developmentally delayed children. This latter step is expensive, but a child who
needs speech therapy faces hurdles in learning to
read and write. The barriers aboriginal students
face can get higher as they move through the
grades.
The level of funding in schools within the same
school board needs adjusting — a provincial and
local concern. A bigger problem with high-school
dropout rates exists for reserve-based students.
First Nations education authorities receive federal
funding that is thousands of dollars less per student
than their public counterparts. This, while dealing
with more pupils lacking basic reading and writing
skills. The national association of school boards
should join in the push by First Nation educators to
boost spending on education in those communities.
HAVE YOUR SAY
The Free Press welcomes letters from readers. They must include the author’s name, address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited. Letters to the Editor, 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, R2X 3B6. Fax 697-7412. E-mail [email protected]
Letters represent the opinions of their writers and do not reflect the opinions of the Winnipeg Free Press or its staff.
Prohibition bound to fail
I was impressed to see retired American
police officer Howard Wooldridge speak out
against wrong-headed drug prohibition policies (I apologize for drug czar, Jan. 24) in
which he calls the American policy on drug
prohibition the most dysfunctional and
immoral since slavery. I find it astonishing
that both Canada and the U.S. continue to
support a policy of prohibition on drugs
when it is so well accepted that prohibition of
alcohol in the 1920s was a catastrophic failure. Alcohol prohibition in the 1920s gave
organized crime its biggest boost. Drug prohibition today, as alcohol prohibition was in
the 1920s, is a complete failure — it has created a vicious industry that preys on our children. I call on our government to stop
supporting the development and growth of
organized crime.
BILL MARTIN
Gimli
Meaningless numbers
Re: Now sweat the details, Jan. 22.
This editorial attempts to connect trustee
Mike Babinsky’s ridiculous suggestion
regarding body mass index numbers on
report cards with the equally ridiculous idea
of standardized tests. Neither idea serves the
interests of the students, the people who are
affected by these meaningless numbers.
The writer suggests that individual report
cards should represent the quality of the
school the student is attending. Why? There
are countless other factors that affect a student’s grades, from study habits, extracurricular activities, to family situation. How
well a student does at school may be partially
represented by their grades, but it by no
means is a complete picture.
The writer then feels that standardized
tests are the best way to study a school’s performance. Has this writer seen the Grade 12
provincial English exam? After spending a
semester studying works of literature, students write an exam based on none of this, to
test their “literacy” skills. To do well is to
respond in a way that the marker of the exam
wants to see. Some schools spend the semester teaching to the exam in hopes of their students doing well. Exam results tell you
nothing about the quality of education at
schools, only how well students can follow
instructions. There are many other ways to
study the quality of education at our schools.
Let’s hope that if this debate continues, those
ways get explored.
DIANNE SAWATZKY
Winnipeg
Hold parents responsible
Re: Help for reserve families urged, Jan.
18.
I am amazed that the failure of the federal
government to supply money is being blamed
for so many children on the reserve being in
foster care. Neither money nor poverty nor
any other reasons that one may wish to postulate will ever replace the obligation of parents who have created babies to be
responsible for the care and upbringing of
their offspring. To blame the government for
the problem of children being put into foster
care is ridiculous. If parents have a child, is
money, I couldn’t help shed tears for the
executives who only make a few million dollars a year. Closer to the truth is that the
industry has to suck it up and deliver safe
products no matter what the bottom line is. If
it’s too tough at the top, step aside. Marilyn
Baker needs a reality check.
RICK HISCO
Winnipeg
Nuke dangers exaggerated
PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES
LETTER OF THE DAY
Good luck to Friends
Before Queen Elizabeth Way, the new
Main Street and Norwood bridges, was
built, there was a deep hole dug in front
of our building. As I watched from a
second floor window of 100 Main I
could make out figures at the bottom of
the excavation. There, deep down,
archaeologists dug, measured and
feverishly did whatever else it is they
do. At the hole’s bottom were the foundations of Upper Fort Garry and they
needed to hurry before eight lanes of
pavement, once again, interred our heritage.
I still wonder how this site would
have been treated were it somewhere
important like Central Canada or, for
that matter, in the province of Quebec. I
imagine politicians tripping all over
each other trying to throw money at
projects to preserve a piece of our
country’s heritage. What might The
Forks have been with the gateway to
Canada’s West restored to its former
glory. Then I wake up and realize that
this is Manitoba, the fort’s in Winnipeg!
What was I thinking?
Good luck to the Friends of Upper
Fort Garry; good luck to Winnipeg and
Manitoba.
ZBIG KOWALISZYN
St. Clements
it not their responsibility to take care of the
child and provide as best they can for that
child? I think they do have this responsibility
and this is where the blame resides. No
amount of government money is going to
change that responsibility.
EDWARD ANHALT
Winnipeg
Don’t back Big Pharma
Marilyn Baker’s Jan. 20 column about why
she likes Big Pharma and doesn’t understand
why others despise them smacks of a person
who has had a healthy existence and is currently able to sit in her ivory tower and pass
judgment on the “little” people. Ignoring the
facts of Big Pharma’s true history and focusing only on the good makes her a prime candidate for a position within the industry. She
mirrors its advertising tactic of trumpeting a
product’s miraculous properties while whispering side effects such as rectal bleeding or
vomiting.
As Baker twists her topic to a melodrama
about how the industry struggles to make
Winnipeg Free Press ▼ TODAY’S QUESTION:
POLL
Who should make the final decision about whether a minor
should receive a blood transfusion?
Vote online at www.winnipegfreepress.com
Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890
VOL 136 NO 78
Previous Question: Regarding: Should the Kapyong Barracks
land be developed as a First Nations urban reserve? Results
are unavailable because of a statistical error.
© 2007 Winnipeg Free Press, a Division of FP Canadian
Newspapers Limited Partnership
Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue,
Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 697-7000
A member of the Manitoba Press Council
Re: Nukes neither clean nor safe, Jan. 14.
The letter to the editor by Greg Carter
does a good job of illustrating the disconnect
between anti-nuclear rhetoric, which is easy
to find on the Internet and reality, which is
often more difficult. The Chornobyl reactor
accident was a disaster but was the result of
a flawed reactor design, unlike any other in
the world, lack of a containment structure
and grossly negligent operation. The death
toll is a subject of great debate. Although
Greenpeace will tell you that 250,000 people
will die, according to the independent World
Health Organization the death toll will be
much smaller. The cited figure more closely
resembles that of the Union Carbide accident
in Bhopal, India. Both are comparable to the
world’s annual fatalities from coal mining. In
the aftermath of Bhopal, the world did not
stop making chemicals. The death toll from
Three Mile Island was much easier to determine. It was zero. The latter is the only
major industrial accident in the world in
which no one died — the reactor’s final safety system, its containment structure which
Chornobyl lacked, worked.
There are huge disagreements about the
cost of nuclear power as well. If it were
expensive, as many suggest, then it would
stand to reason that those countries that have
a lot of nuclear power would have very
expensive electricity. Good examples would
be France (80 per cent nuclear) and Sweden
(50 per cent nuclear). However, these countries have among the cheapest electricity in
Europe. Simply put, if nuclear electricity is
expensive, then why doesn’t it cost a lot in
those countries that depend on it the most?
The answer is simple. Because it is not
expensive!
The nuclear waste that is stored at nuclear
sites is in no danger of leaking into the environment because it is in ceramic form, like a
dinner plate. Solids don’t leak. Eventually
that which cannot be reused will be buried
somewhere. Waste disposal has been well
studied for years and most countries have
settled on technology that mimics and
improves on what Mother Nature does. The
richest uranium deposit in the world, for
example, is near Cigar Lake, Sask. This
radioactive deposit has been isolated from
the environment since before the Rocky
Mountains were formed.
Nuclear waste needs to be isolated, at
most, for 1/1000th of this time and the technology to do so is developed. It is only the
location of such a depository that has not
been decided. It is easy to find reasons to be
against something. However, if reasonable
human beings look a little harder, they will
find many reasons to support nuclear energy
as I, and the 900 scientists and engineers that
I represent, do.
VINCENT TUME
Society of Professional Engineers
& Associates
Mississauga, Ont.
BOB COX / Publisher
MARGO GOODHAND / Editor