Mail makes a storm of a non-issue on Lord Sumption remark
The ‘right'-wing’ press claims to be the most opposed to the underhand tactics of the outrage mob. Yet, time and time again it cries ‘outrage’ when none is warranted, even against those figures it should be trying most to defend.
The ‘right'-wing’ press claims to be the most opposed to the underhand tactics of the outrage mob. Yet, time and time again it cries ‘outrage’ when none is warranted, even against those figures it should be trying most to defend.
You will remember the cancellation of Sir David Starkey last year, and the uselessness of the ‘right-wing’ press in this sordid affair. It seems these papers have not learned a thing.
The latest victim of those who live to be offended is the esteemed Jonathan Sumption, who featured on yesterday’s cover of the Daily Mail: ‘Outrage as ex-top judge tells cancer patient, 39: ‘your life is less valuable’.’ Highly insulting, I quite agree. Only, it is a gross misinterpretation of what was really said.
Lord Sumption did not claim that Deborah James, a podcaster, lived a less valuable life because she had cancer, as the headline rather forcefully suggests. His comments related simply to age.
Indeed, his argument was far less specific than the Daily Mail has made out: that policy makers (especially in matters relating to public health) use the tool Q.A.L.Y. (quality-adjusted life years) in order to determine how much spending on a particular form of medical intervention can be justified, and to find the least damaging of alternative courses of action. NICE and the NHS make decisions based on Q.A.L.Y.s everyday (as George Cooper recently discussed on The Conservative Woman here when he examined the huge cost of lockdown if measured in Q.A.L.Y.s. An example may help: in a scenario where two hospital patients need urgent treatment but stretched resources are only able to cover one, health professionals will — at the least — take into account the fact that one patient is 98, and the other is 24. This is not a comment on the moral value of each patient, nor on their value as human beings. (Lord Sumption has since pointed out in a painful-to-watch ‘interview’ with the purposefully ignorant Piers Morgan: ‘one thing that policy makers can’t do is say, ‘we will look at the life history of every patient in hospital and we will work out whether they have contributed more to society’, and so on… They have to operate on metrics, and they do, all the time’.) It is simply a fact of decision making in public life.
The whole point of Q.A.L.Y. is to make a judgement of cost effectiveness which does not take into account moral worth, and does not consider one's life achievements. It is used as a simple, objective and dispassionate measure of the most appropriate allocation of resources.
Whether you think that this metric is fair or unfair, it is clear that Lord Sumption’s words have been taken completely out of proportion.
Most dispiriting about this is that the Daily Mail knew its headline was misleading, since it also published (near the end of its article) a statement from Lord Sumption which clarified the matter:
'I object extremely strongly to any suggestion that I was inferring that Miss James's life was less valuable because she had cancer.
'I thought she was responding to my earlier comments about older people being protected by a total lockdown which is causing immense harm to the young who are unaffected.
'That harm can be to their mental health or through cooping undergraduates up at university or through the loss of jobs.
'I was saying this should not be inflicted on the young to protect old people like me.
'If Miss James has misinterpreted that then I can only apologise to her as it was not my intention to suggest she was less valuable. Sometimes on video links it can be difficult to hear what the other person is saying.'
But the Mail published the story — along with a photo of Miss James in a hospital bed after a recent operation — anyway.
Shamefully, The Times has even decided to publish another jab at Lord Sumption today by the increasingly disappointing writer Melanie Phillips.
The only ‘story’ here is that two thinking adults had a misunderstanding. Every such thinking adult has such a misunderstanding every day of their life. It is part of the very process of thinking. It is part — for better or for worse — of being human. Once the misunderstanding has been understood, it should be commented on no further, not splashed on the cover of a newspaper.
