Recently in Technological Magic Fixes Category

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 supplement

A 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 2006

Schoolchildren 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.

Alistair Darling's spin machine seems to have flooded most of the Sunday broadsheets and the TV news with his dubious satellite tracking road toll / mass surveillance plan, which surfaced last year.

Spy Blog has more about some of the obvious security, privacy and technology issues which have not been mentioned by the media, who are concentrating on blithely assuming that the technology even exists to cover the whole of the UK road network, and covering the story soley from the aspect of transport costs and environmental impact, ignoring the inevitable intrusive mass surveillance potential of the scheme.

"Yet again a NuLabour Minister is grasping at unproven technology as a magic fix for social problems."

"Where are the privacy safeguards with this plan ? Where is the consultation with the people ? Where are the alternative plans and solutions to traffic congestion ?"

Since this project is likely to span several Parliaments, we will certainly be keeping a watch out to see if Alistair Darling or any other Ministers or civil servants or NuLabour political commissars and advisors, end up lobbying the Ministry of Transport for a slice of the multi-billion pound contracts that this plan would involve.