Notebook
II seems odd on the face of it that Miss Rhona Ritchie should ever be pro- ,seeuted. According to the Attorney- eneral, 'her behaviour in the Crown's v`' diew was more foolish than wicked'. He ad- in court on Monday that most of the in- °r1nation she passed to her Egyptian lover While she was serving as a British diplomat lin Israel A would have become public anyway co, "Ile course. 'The damage to our ItuntrYs interests was not great,' he said. n would seem from this that the Crown did in°,it really have its heart in the prosecution. deed, the normal procedure in such a case A'''nuld be for the Foreign Office simply to unIsiniss the offending diplomat with Case A public trial would appear, in the ttt i of Rhona Ritchie, both an excessive _n shment for her and an unnecessaryeim- hdrrasstnent for the Government, which as, suffered quite enough embarrassments °tat this sort already. Why, then, did the trial I( ke Place? One can only guess. But we write% that it was the Israeli security services 20.1Incovered Miss Ritchie's indiscretions, ;Id n Could nt,,,,""tu Perhaps have been Israel which isab.'" the affair brought into the open. It „Card, at last, to think of any other ex- "Anatiun.
Most Fleet Street newspapers have been Cold rather snooty about the 'Circle of ()b' chain letter which is apparently Thsessing half the population of London. n eY tell one it is too late to join and sug- 6inest that hardly anybody in fact wins any whnneY. However, I keep hearing of people u a,'"3 have received very substantial sums, if sUPPosed to get if everything goes ac- are t the maximum of £164,000 which you coa irfring to plan. The temptation to risk the conial i .nvestment of £40 therefore remains ,._nsiderable, particularly as you can get Your CA", , ,..."-; back straight away by finding two te"ple to buy lists from you. Con- g, as as I do night and day, the in- s.erests
of the impoverished Spectator, I u
two°,,nder if the Circle of Gold could be used 10eta c. ur advantage. I think perhaps that the wk3n,ctor should buy its way on to a list, toen, in due course, its name gets to the stir:: of 4,06 lists, and 8,192 people each rood us £20, they will get in return a nine- Would subscription to the paper. This ti ringbring an unexpected bonus to par- doll? ts in the chain, while more than sUbsberi-rib8ers number the b num of Spectator As everybody knows, the telegramme a t has been replaced by something called to e'etnessage. The other day a friend tried Jfo nlake use of this mysterious new service . the first time but was told by an "liable oPerator that it would take 48
hours for the message to travel from Lon- don to Brighton. 'This is ridiculous,' she said. 'It would be quicker to send a letter.' 'Maybe,' the operator replied, 'but then you would have to go to all the trouble of writing the letter, putting it in an envelope, buying a stamp and going to the post-box, whereas you can send a telemessage just by talking to me.' All that is no doubt true, but one feels there should be better arguments to justify the existence of the telemessage.
Having gone the other day to see a moving cartoon film called The Plague Dogs, based on a story by Richard Adams about the evils of an animal research establishment in the Lake District, I was glad to read that the Government has been reducing the budget of the Institute of Animal Physiology near Cambridge at which, among other distasteful ex- periments, scientists have grafted the udder of a goat on to its neck. I find myself veer- ing to the side of the anti-vivisectionists. But there is no doubt that many animal liberationists, or whatever they care to call themselves, are a little unhinged. Ostensibly they shrink from cruelty and violence, but in reality many of them seem to be obsessed with it. They drool over photographs of animals being tortured. And while they are so concerned for the welfare of the lesser of God's creatures, they have no qualms about inflicting bodily harm upon such superior creatures as the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition. It is all very hard to understand. Even Mr Adams, the Presi- dent of the RSPCA, lists fly-fishing among his recreations in Who's Who. I am not, I hasten to say, trying to suggest that Mr Adams is in any way abnormal. He is a reasonable and sensible man. Nor do I have
anything against fly-fishing. But a report commissioned by the RSPCA itself con- cluded last spring that fishes can and do feel pain. The mouths of fishes, it said, are full of nerve cells. So Mr Adams may be held responsible for cruelty to fishes, without even the justification that such cruelty is in the interests of scientific research. The pro- blem is clearly a complex one.
The news that a French wine salesman is still alive — although several cen- timetres shorter — after a heart transplant 14 years ago must be exciting for the practi- tioners of this controversial operation. I have been arguing for some time that heart transplants are not worth their cost, given their abysmal success record. If every pa- tient was still alive 14 years after his opera- tion, I might perhaps revise that opinion. Reading about M. Emmanuel Vitra and the party he has been holding in Marseilles to celebrate his survival, I am reminded, however, of the case of Mr Andrew Barlow who died last week three years after being given a new heart. He was described in the popular press as a 'heart op Romeo' because immediately after his operation he left his first wife and started pursuing other women. 'He didn't know how long he had to live,' said the wife he left. 'So he hit the drink and drugs. He was like a madman. He told me he wanted to go to bed with as many women as possible.' He was ap- parently persuaded by the beleaguered Cambridge heart transplant surgeon, Mr Terence English, to change his ways. But too late. While I do not commend Mr Barlow's behaviour, I respect his realism. He did not believe that he would be blessed with a long life. He believed he had been granted a short respite, and that indeed is what most heart transplant patients have been granted. Considering his self- destructive life-style, Mr Barlow is to be congratulated on living so long. Most pa- tients with faith in the future have been a good deal less lucky.
Both at the Helen Smith inquest in Leeds and at the 'dingo baby' murder trial in Australia the limitations of medical evidence have been revealed. In both cases pathologists have offered widely divergent opinions. It must be very difficult for juries under these circumstances to know how much importance to attach to what they say. On the other hand, theirs has been the only sort of evidence in either case likely to throw much light on the cause of death. Whatever the outcome of the Helen Smith business, her father, Mr Ron Smith, is already vindicated for having fought to get the inquest re-opened. There has been enough evidence supporting his allegations of foul play to justify a proper hearing into Miss Smith's death. He is to be con- gratulated on his extraordinary tenacity.
Alexander Chancellor
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