John Roughan: Some silver bullets are certainly worth a shot

COMMENT

Some people have a strange aversion to a simple solution. Offer them an incisive suggestion and they will call it a "silver bullet". Apparently there is no such thing as a silver bullet, although I think the Lone Ranger had one.

Long ago when I was an avid fan of the Lone Ranger I was given one, too. I lined up with the other kids at school for injections, and later little drinks, of a polio germ.

Two generations before us, New Zealand kids had suffered an epidemic of polio but by that time immunisation had wiped it out. Still, nobody minded taking the vaccine for a while longer. It did no harm.

These days I read the warnings of the Immunisation Awareness Society with frank amazement and sometimes anger. The discovery that a small dose of a disease triggers the body's immunity is one of those simple solutions that has been demonstrably effective.

This week a vaccine was approved for use against the meningococcal bacterium rampant for the past 14 years. The bug evidently settles in the throat of many of us who are not susceptible to it. But those who succumb, mostly children, can die unless they are treated quickly.

For the past fortnight we have been given an insight into the disease courtesy of the candour of a parent, Perry Bisman, of Waiheke Island, whose baby daughter was normal and healthy a month ago. Last week he and his partner gave permission for her lower legs and arms to be amputated in an attempt to save her life.

By Thursday her prospects were still not good. Doctors were talking of removing more of her legs and the ravaged little body was in so much pain that her father was ready to accept her death.

That same day the Immunisation Awareness Society was telling us vaccination was not the answer. They said it ignored "risk factors".

"We already know what some of those risk factors are," the society's researcher told National Radio, "overcrowding, poor living standards, poverty, the usual sorts of environmental conditions that cause poor health. If you address those factors you might not only reduce the incidence of meningococcal disease but lower the whole range of other health problems."

Well, yes, but why not inoculate the population in the meantime?

What possesses these people? Is it political? Could it be that they know immunisation would be effective against one of the symptoms of social inequity and make it a little harder to change society? Those who don't want to believe in a silver bullet sometimes have another agenda.

TAKE another silver bullet, this one for Auckland's road congestion.

A few weeks ago I was on a panel for a National Radio programme on Auckland's problems. The programme was recorded in front of a liberal, inner-city audience, mostly public transport enthusiasts, in theory if not in actual travel habits.

I put it to them, as I have put it on this page before, that the silver bullet for Auckland's congestion could be an electronic toll on the fast lane of the motorways.

The toll would filter the traffic so that those who stood to lose most from the congestion could pay to escape it, and those unwilling to pay would benefit, too, because there would be less congestion. That is about all you could say in a radio burst but I think the idea got across.

Understood but unwelcome, it was greeted in thoughtful silence until someone asked - jokingly I suppose - which lane was the fast one. There was relief in the ripple of laughter. Any solution that eased car travel would be unwelcome to them. Similar attitudes prevail in the city's transport planning suites. They are Auckland's real problem.

The audience that night also heard the Minister for Auckland, Judith Tizard, and city councillor Juliet Yates argue about the council's proposed eastern highway. Was there ever a sillier issue than this?

Political agendas dog the eastern highway on both sides. Mayor John Banks has staked his re-election on the project; his opponents therefore oppose the highway, too. It is hard to find an impartial assessment of its worth.

The highway has been intended for the vacant valley through the eastern suburbs for as long as Aucklanders can remember. It hasn't been built because Transit New Zealand has more urgent work to do in the region. Now the City Council wants to build it, if a source of finance can be found, and voters at the looming elections will need to decide whether this is a good idea. How are impartial people supposed to know? Tolls could be the silver bullet again.

The road, I suggest, should go ahead only if private investors would be prepared to risk money on it. This is not just to avoid burdening city ratepayers or national taxpayers but, much more important, to get a reliable test of whether the road is actually worth the cost. Private investors would have to weigh up the toll they would need to charge to get an economic return and whether sufficient commuters would use the road at that price.

A consultancy using a computer model has calculated that if the toll is more than $3, patronage and revenue will decline. If that is so, forget it.

Commuters from the eastern suburbs would need to pay twice that amount for the road to cover its cost of capital. If they are not prepared to spend a mere $6 for a faster drive to the city, their existing routes cannot be too congested.

But that question should not decided by consultants with a computer model, either. Give the decision to actual investors. If I was a city voter I would be wary of the mayor's road unless he gives a commitment that it will go ahead only if it attracts private investment.

There is usually a silver bullet. Those who deny it don't want to find it.