ANOTHER VOICE

Scientists find link between vegetarianism and Hodgkinson's Disease

AUBERON WAUGH

0 n the seventh day, the Lord decreed that we should abstain from servile labour and spend our time reading about other people's medical problems. The main news in this week's Observer was that the con- traceptive pill may cause cancer of the breast. To press home this point, the Observer's colour magazine carried a seven-page account of one woman's ex- perience of breast cancer, with photo- graphs, from the moment she first spotted • it until her death three years later at the age of 38. We are not told whether the late Dorothea Lynch used the contraceptive pill during the course of her 15-year rela- tionship with the photographer, Gene, who took the pictures, but we are left in no doubt that their relationship was.

But it is all good Sunday reading. Last week, we learned from 'A Doctor' in some remote part of the country that kissing can give you Aids. Nobody was aware of the magnitude of the problem, he said. The Black Death would prove to have been a vicarage tea party by comparison. . . .

For many years I have complained about the Sunday Times's treatment of medical stories. If any substance under the sun was being investigated for possible carci- nogenic properties, the Sunday Times seemed to take pride in warning us against the substance, long before any link had been established. The list includes many medicines of proven efficiency. I thought that the final absurdity had been reached when the Sunday Times gave sensational treatment to some more or less idle inves- tigations into the possibility of a link between the extremely rare Reye's Syn- drome in small children and the common, domestic aspirin.

But this Sunday an entirely new syn- drome emerged in its pages which, for want of a name, I shall label Hodgkinson's Disease, after the medical correspondent of the Sunday Times, Mr Neville Hodgkin- son who, with his wife Liz, appears to have invented it. Perhaps I should explain the symptoms. Liz Hodgkinson has written a book (Sex Is Not Compulsory, Columbus Books, £4.95) describing how she and her husband have not had sexual intercourse for many years. There is nothing very rare or peculiar about married couples who, for one reason or another, have given up sex. I should imagine that a fairly significant proportion of all married couples find themselves in a similar position after 20 years or so. Many wives take against the activity after childbirth, and I dare say that many husbands cannot be bothered to make the effort to win them back. Similar- ly, I believe many husbands are frightened off the activity by what seem to them the excessive demands of their wives. Mascu- line pride — and indeed the masculine sex-drive — may require the male to see himself in the role of hunter, or at any rate instigator of sexual approaches.

Or so they rationalise the problem. My own theory is that it is laziness, not lust, which has always been the predominant vice of the British. As I say, there is nothing rare or peculiar in the Hodgkin- sons' decision to knock off sex. The desire to tell everyone about it is only slightly rarer, but I see no harm in it. The 1960s, against which they claim to be reacting, preached the virtues not only of constant sexual activity but also of sexual frankness. This second virtue has rather disappeared in an age when Sun readers — liars, we may suppose, almost to a person — assure us through their sexy questionnaires that they invariably have sexual intercourse at least five times a week. The excitement and simulated amazement with which my journalistic colleagues have greeted Mrs Hodgkinson's announcement that she has given up entirely make me confident that few of them can claim the average scores put forward by Sun readers, which in our sloppy, unreflective and mendacious age might be thought of as some sort of norm. Perhaps a few rather welcome the thought that a new fashion against sex may be on its way, already spearheaded in the women's movement which tends to condemn most manifestations of sex as sexism or, even worse, heterosexism.

No, there is nothing odd about the Hodgkinsons' decision to give up sexual intercourse, and although it might be thought slightly odder of them to announce it, one might equally well say that it was a brave and admirable thing to do, inviting as it does ridicule and scorn from others who are less honest about their own sexual performance, or who feel that their genuine achievements in this field are being belittled. There is undoubtedly something heroic in Mr Hodgkinson's post- ure, and this heroism shines through the terrible Sunday Times prose in which he describes his heroism:

I have been a willing party in a challenge to one of our age's most strongly held precepts: that sexual intercourse is an essential accom- paniment of intimate human relationships and that without it — or at least the desire for it — you cease to be a fully paid-up member of the human race.

He goes on to talk about the 'dynamics' of his relationship with Liz: 'There was a mismatch of expectations within the mar- riage. Liz was increasingly uninterested in sex, and I was increasingly interpreting this as rejection of me.'

Perish the thought. But it is sad that at the historic moment where a Sunday Times writer — the species NewBrit, which I have lamented in these pages so often — reveals the existence of at any rate a few residual human characteristics, he should im- mediately seek to expunge them in this concept of 'a fully paid-up member of the human race'.

The main symptom of Hodgkinson's Disease is not to abstain from sex. That is a perfectly rational and sane decision to make. I have no doubt that Mr Hodgkin- son is quite right when he argues that sex is a cause of friction and sorrow, rather than joy, in many marriages. Hodgkinson's Dis- ease teveals itself in the desire to prosely- tise and establish a new norm, a new covenant that the Hodgkinsons are still fully-paid up members of the human race:

I do believe that many other men, as well as women, could benefit greatly from choosing to allow sexual activity to disappear from their lives. But there is a proviso: you need an alternative to put in its place.

And what is this alternative?

I also find that the emotional economy that celibacy has contributed to my life compen- sates for the lower energy input of a strict vegetarian diet (which I consider vital for the maintenance of a celibate life) . . . . As I see it, we are only running away from contribut- ing further to the greed, possessiveness, misunderstanding, violence and grief which afflict our society in steadily growing mea- sures and for which I believe wrong attitudes . . . in regard to sex are a root cause.

Oh dear. So vegetables are the answer. Celibacy through celeriac. The Parsnip Path to Dalliance. Here we go, here we go, here we go.