Newspapers greet Cam and Sam’s baby cam

The headline writer’s had a carte blanche for silly headlines  recently when the shallow David Cameron and his wife announced their happy news that they were bringing a baby on to the campaign trail.   I suppose it would be churlish to think it was yet another publicity stunt from the shallow man – but it can’t do him any harm in the ratings.

More interesting was his sound bite that sometimes it takes longer than you might think for the stork to drop its little parcel down the chimney.  Some of us groaned inwardly and hoped Cameron’s grip of where recessions and crises come from is firmer than his knowledge of where babies come from.

Others though dipped into the issue of infertility – and came up with some surprising statistics.  Apparently infertility is more common than diabetes.  And there are just as many newly-diagnosed cases of infertility every year as there are of coronary heart disease.  Yet nobody is talking about it.

We are all being encouraged to go to the doctor to see if we are at risk from breast cancer and heart disease.  But you’ll wait a long time before you hear or see the government urging you to go and see the doctor with your infertility problem.

Another little scandal luring in the healthcare woodwork is IVF.   A Norwegian study has recently revealed that waiting for IVF is just as likely to result in pregnancy as IVF itself.  Which means that the NHS is enriching fertility clinics at our expense for achieving not very much at all.

Another issue is the vogue for green thinking and fear of global warming.  Surely the best way to save the planet if you believe in global warming is to not bring quite so many people into the world.  And perhaps politicians who preach about global warming  have a responsibility to do exactly that.