Alan Johnson considering behavior control Omega-3 supplements in schools
The Independent on Sunday has a creepy report about Government plans for forced mass medication in Schools, for behavior modification purposes.
Brain food: Why the Government wants your child to take Omega-3, the fish oil supplementA tiny daily capsule can have a dramatic effect on pupils who usually play up in class, improving behaviour and work. Now all youngsters may be given them. Marie Woolf and Jeremy Laurance report
Published: 11 June 2006Schoolchildren are to be given fish oil supplements to boost their brain power and improve their behaviour and ability to concentrate under plans being considered by the Government.
Health professionals fear that youngsters do not get enough Omega-3 in a daily diet dominated by modern convenience foods. Increasingly, they believe a lack of these nutrients can contribute to poor learning, disorder and violence in the classroom.
Now government experts are to examine whether daily doses of fish oil in capsule or liquid form might help to improve classroom behaviour and exam results.
The Food Standards Agency, the Government's advisory body on food, is conducting a major review into the effect of Omega-3 fish oil supplements on children's behaviour.
Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Education, who recently met the chef Jamie Oliver to discuss nutrition in schools, has asked to see the results. "The Food Standards Agency is currently conducting a systematic review of research looking at the effect of nutrition and diet on performance and behaviour of children in schools," he said. "This includes investigating studies that have used Omega-3 and -6 fish oil supplements in schools. While this work is not yet concluded, we will of course examine its results with interest.
"The Government is committed to ensuring that children are provided with the healthy food and nutrients they require during the school day, not just to aid their physical health, but to ensure they can study hard and behave well."
[...]
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.
Has nothing been learned over the years from debates about forced mass vaccination, water fluoridisation, vitamin enhanced free school milk etc. ?
It is astonishing that the small scale trials cited in the article are apparently being used as the basis for NuLabour Government policy. The Food Standards Agency has a job to do regarding testing the safety and quality of food,
they will no doubt be conducting a review of existing small scale trials, but they should not be be allowed to conduct large scale clinical trials on our children.
Without such large scale voluntary trials, the Government should not even be contemplating forced mass medication, in the way in which Alan Johnson's statements imply.
This is especially so, since the positive benefit which is being hypothesised is not a health benefit, but a behavioral one i.e. this is a mild form of mind control.
Even if there is scientific evidence which shows that some children are suffering from a lack of these nutrients in their diet, it is a huge leap to conclude, even before there have been large scale studies, that the correct way to overcome this is to administer daily capusules to all children, regardless of whether they need it or not.
Is there really no other way of encouraging healthy eating and a balanced diet ? What happened to all the alleged Jamie Oliver inspired reforms to School Meals ? What about tax policies ?
What evidence is there that a single dosage level is correct even for all children suffering from the nutrional deficiency ?
Such supplements, if really needed, should prescribed individually and monitored by the National Health Service doctors and not by the Department of Education.
Will all NuLabour politicians force their own children to take these Governement supplied mind control supplements, not privately prescribed ones, but exactly the same ones that the rest of the population are to be dosed with ?
What are the long term affects of too high a dose of these Omega-3 supplements ?
How pure are they ? What is the effect of potential impurities which might be concentrated during the manufacuring process ?
What about the percentage of children who will inevitably have an allergic reaction to such supplements or to the capsules in which they are supplied ?
Who exactly stands to profit from a decsion to dose all 12 million children, daily, with these supplements ?
How much will this all cost ? The Independent on Sunday article does mention
They are also expensive - with a retail cost from 40p to £1.20 a day for the recommended dose of half a gram. The Department for Education would be able to negotiate a greatly reduced price for a bulk order, they say, but investing the same cash in extra books or computers might boost school performance more.
As Jamie Oliver's programmes and campaigns have shown, School Meal Budgets are often less than these figures for Omega-3 supplements i.e. around 30p to 50p per child per day. The budget for a school meal was only 37p per child in the school where Jamie Oliver's first TV programme on the topic was filmed.
Even if the cost of purchasing and distributing these daily doses could be brought down to only 25p per child per day, that still equates to about £400 million a year.
How can Alan Johnson be even contemplating spending about the same amount of money as is spent on providing school meals on behavioral modification supplements ?
What are the links between the people who would make such profits and with NuLabour lobbyists and Special Advisors and Politicians ?
Once the precedent of a system of dosing children at school for behavioral purposes is put into place, with , presumably the usual bureaucratic red tape and centralised databases so beloved of NuLabour, in order to force compliance, then it will make things easier for the next Big Nanny State mind control policy.
Will it be daily doses of tranquilisers to try to suppress "Anti-Social Behavior" amonst children and teenagers ?
Will it be bromide to try to reduce teenage pregnancies ?
Footnote:
Alan Johnson is either easily bamboozled by statistics, or he is adept at spinning them the NuLabour way. His Criminal Records Bureau, were to claim that the figures should be seen "in context", even though the Capita Group outsourced CRB refuses to apologise for its errors.
It is reported that there have been some 8 9 million CRB checks.
25,000 checks claim that people are unsuitable to work in schools or a position of trust.
1500 2700 of those were falsely accused of being criminals.
The Alan Johnson / NuLabour spin approach is to divide the 2700 by 9 million and gets a figure of 0.03% , he then claims that this is a statistically insignificant number, which it is.
However if you divide 25,000 "unsuitable" people discovered by 9 million checks, that is also statistically insignificant i.e. only 0.28 %
However if you divide 2700 the number of falsely reported criminals, by the number of alleged criminals (which includes the falesly accused ones) 25000, you get 1 in 9 negative CRB checks are false i.e. refer to innocent people, which is far , far too high a percentage.
If there are 2700 people who have been falsely accused of being criminals due to mix ups with similar names and addresses, it is a reasonable hypothesis that at least the same number of criminals will have been given an "all clear" CRB check result, for the same reasons i.e. a false negative result.
Will Alan Johnson actually understand the Food Safety Agency statistics, or will he try to give them a NuLabour Big Nanny State spin ?
Comments
As George Monbiot pointed out in the Guardian recently pointed out there just aren't enough fish in the sea for these Govt / FSA plans.
Luckily for those who prefer not to take their DHA and EPA omega 3 second hand there is a plant based solution. Pure omega 3 DHA and EPA from Algae
See http://www.vegetarian-dha-epa.co.uk for more details.
Posted by: DonQuinoa | August 11, 2006 11:01 AM