A beautiful advocacy campaign to behold…
As a communicator, I’m always impressed when I see the roll out of a good campaign which ‘works’. And I’d rate the current efforts by the anti folic acid advocates as an A+ effort.
Putting aside that we’ve been adding folic acid to breakfast cereal for years without any fuss (came as a complete surprise to me too) and that we went through the whole shall we/shan’t we debate under a previous Government with barely a protest banner in sight, a month before Folic Acid day looms traditional and social media is alive with for and against arguments.
First casualty was naturally those who know the true facts. Now we’re really on to the serious stuff which us lay people can understand.
These are the sound bytes about you needing to eat 11 slices of bread a day for it to be effective (is that thick or thin slices by the way?); children will be getting a quarter more than recommended ‘safe’ levels; and let’s not forget the perennial ‘high doses have been shown to increase the prevalence of cancer among laboratory mice’.
Even that most astute media personality Paul Holmes referred to the folic acid debate twice within three days on his ZB comments slot.
If nothing else the campaign has shown how slow the Government is to react to lightening rod issues. It didn’t see the train coming, and when it did it stood there paralysed in with indecision.
I don’t pretend to understand the rights and wrongs of this issue. However, I’m inclined to the view that we should proceed while the ‘experts’ work it out. After all, the chance of me ending up with cancer is a very minute ‘maybe’ (probably less than from second hand smoke), while we know that it’s a certainty some children will be born with spina bifida if we put it off.
If subsequent research shows the cancer risk is too high, then let’s pull it then. Until then my vote goes for the yet to be born generation.
Tags: folic acid, Newstalk ZB, Paul Holmes, spina bifida