Missed opportunity on 'Any Questions'

Another letter to the Daily Telegraph:

One of the questions, on BBC Radio 4’s “Any Questions?” on Friday evening, concerned Living Wills and their legal effect with regard to the delicate issue of self-determined suicides.

The members of the panel included journalist Matthew Parris and the Health Secretary, Andy Burnham.

Parris who took first stab at answering the question stated quite emphatically, “You can’t treat somebody against their will.”

It would have been a golden opportunity for another of the panel members, Eric Pickles for example, to have jumped at Andy Burnham, reminding him that he, of all people, was doing just that in pressing ahead with water fluoridation – mass medication par excellence.

Treating countless numbers of ‘somebodys’ against their individual right not to be treated en masse; and doing it regardless of validated evidence of its downside effects; of majority public opinion and the outcome of any public consultations, has besmirched any notion of Burnham being seen as an ethical or honest health broker.

Being as he has no medical or other scientific qualifications,it begs the question as to why he was appointed to that cabinet position at all, unless it was specifically to steam-roller this act of public betrayal in the interests of what used to be called Labour Party Democracy.

Bernard J Seward