I won’t be a guinea pig!

Aug 30 2009 Sunday Sun

I WONDER which Government minister will be the first to have the new swine flu jab on live TV?

Maybe Health Secretary Andy Burnham will follow in the footsteps of former Tory Agriculture Minister John Gummer, who famously fed his four-year-old daughter a burger in front of the Press in 1990 to allay fears about Mad Cow Disease.

Mr Burnham has a son and two daughters, so perhaps he could line them up and have each of them injected with the – as yet untested – vaccine.

That’s the sort of crass and desperate PR stunt the Government may be forced to consider to convince a sceptical public of the need for mass vaccinations.

The first batch of the vaccine has just arrived in the UK, around 200,000 packs. And eventually we’ll have enough to vaccinate half the population.

Yet no one knows whether it’s safe. The current farcical situation is that the vaccine must be stored for more than a month while the manufacturers wait to see if it is granted a licence.

Obviously, there will be a lot of red faces in Government if it doesn’t and we’re stuck with a mountain of useless drugs.

So – unless the vaccine causes you to grow a second head - I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before it will be given the all-clear.

The question then will be how many of us are prepared to take it. I can tell you now I have absolutely no intention of becoming one of the Government’s docile guinea pigs.