2 NOVEMBER 1974, Page 4

From Mrs B. M. Palmer

Sir: Sir Keith's words concerning youthful delinquency and related matters may or may not be due to a desire to be prime minister. But he is playing with fire.

We ask why the views of a woman doctor, possibly the greatest authority on these subjects, are consistently ignored? Dr Louise Eickhoff has, for years past, shown that wilful ignorance of the meaning of sex maturation on the part of would-be experts has led to the one-sided development of the pitiful children they are supposed to be -educating."

The result is, in the words of a report presented by Dr Eickhoff to a Department of Social Services at a Scottish University: "From the time of open teaching on this subject the birth.rate, the illegitimate conception rate and gonorrhoea, the disease of promiscuity, have rocketed."

Dr Eickhoff continued that this result has followed in Sweden, Denmark, America and Canada after the introduct ion of sex education. Premature knowledge enables children to begin practising at an earlier age, boys at nine or ten, and girls from ten onwards. Farmers use the equivalent to ensure an increase in he yield of their flocks.

It has been said, "There aren't any children nowadays." Dr Eickhoff added that the simplest and least expensive method of population control is to take all sex out of school teaching and general publicity and replace it where it belongs, in mature adulthood, private, and the love context.

Who shall right the grievous wrong that has been done to countless of our children, robbing them of their childhood, robbing them of the wonderful experience of young love in early manhood and young womanhood, and in many instances setting them on the road to serious delinquency in later life? The girl delinquent is indeed much worse and less recoverable than her boy counterpart. Can the widespread distribution of contraceptives be the answer, when the victims are too childish to understand their responsible use?

It has been said that we cannot change people's habits. Surely the present situation is the result of trying to change human souls in accordance with some satanic theory.

B. M. Palmer Editor, Housewives Today, 49 Birchwood Avenue, Sidcup, Kent