- Email: [email protected]
Lost childhoods
Perspectives
necessary to invent him. Ball puts it well: the biggest hazard faced by the (perhaps too well-funded) bioethics industry is grandiosity. Its employees are addicted to overstatement, to hysteria, and to an ingrained inability to separate fact from fiction. Francis Crick himself claimed that “We have discovered the secret of life!” when he ran into the Eagle pub in
Cambridge to announce the structure of DNA, and some of his intellectual descendants have not calmed down since then. Unnatural ends by reminding us that science has not, in fact, discovered the secret of life, and might find in the end that it is not worth looking for. 10 years on from the completion of Crick’s doubly helical agenda, the scientific journals have
been filled with rather rueful accounts of quite what that molecule has, and has not, told us about the workings of the cell or of evolution with scarcely a word about the sequence that codes for the soul. For the ethicists, though, it’s Brave New World all over (yet) again.
Steve Jones [email protected]
In brief Film Lost childhoods In November, 2009, Kevin Rudd who was at that time the Australian Prime Minister, said he was “deeply sorry” for the hardship and abuse endured by thousands of children as a result of the child migration programme from the UK that the Australian Government had supported during the postwar decades, until as late as 1970. A few months later, Gordon Brown followed suit on behalf of the British Government, calling child migration an “ugly stain” on the UK’s recent history. Last month, Prime Minister David Cameron reiterated those sentiments and announced a fund for reuniting former child migrants in Australia, Canada, and other past British colonies with their relatives. He singled out the dedicated work of Margaret Humphreys, who founded the Child Migrants Trust. Oranges and Sunshine, a raw and disturbing film about the child migrants sent to Australia, is therefore timely, although conceived some years before these political
Oranges and Sunshine Directed by Jim Loach, screenplay by Rona Muro. Icon Films, 2011. On general release in the UK from April 1, 2011. See http:// www.iconmovies.co.uk/ orangesandsunshine See Online for webvideo
Icon Films
For Child Migrants Trust see http://www.child migrantstrust.com
1066
announcements. It centres on Humphreys (persuasively played by Emily Watson), a mother of two and a social worker from Nottingham in the UK, whose job brought her into contact with a former child migrant in 1986. The plot is based on her struggle in the UK and in Australia to get recognition for the injustice done to well over 100 000 children, which she documented in her 1994 book Empty Cradles. The film’s title comes from a ploy used to entice orphaned and “unwanted” children to Australia. Instead of a harsh life in a British children’s home, they would have endless oranges and sunshine. A lie was also used in many cases: children were told that their mothers had died, while mothers were encouraged to think that their children were being sent away to loving adoptive families. A lucky few were; most were used as cheap labour; some were cruelly abused in outback institutions run by the Catholic Church, whose reputation will no doubt get a further
beating from this film. Later in life, many of these children would suffer a crisis of identity, often leading to depression and even suicide. None of these facts are skated over, but neither are one’s emotions manipulated, whether in the bleakness of a British winter or the sun-baked bush of western Australia. The lead performances are of extraordinary subtlety, especially David Wenham’s as Len, a strapping former child migrant who has done well in business in Australia yet who desperately needs to meet his English mother—whatever her reasons may have been for letting him go as a boy. Len’s sparring but trusting relationship with the buttoned-up Margaret gives the film both grit and grace. Sunshine and Oranges does not have a message, despite its shocking source material, and is all the better for this. Directed with sensitivity by Jim Loach (son of the director Ken Loach), the film packs a punch; but it makes you think, as well as feel outraged. Social workers will be particularly appreciative. Honest politicians may find themselves reflecting on the fact that while compassionate personal initiative may be key to the Big Society, it was Nottingham Social Services that supported Margaret Humphreys’s initial research with 2 years’ paid leave.
Andrew Robinson [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 377 March 26, 2011
necessary to invent him. Ball puts it well: the biggest hazard faced by the (perhaps too well-funded) bioethics industry is grandiosity. Its employees are addicted to overstatement, to hysteria, and to an ingrained inability to separate fact from fiction. Francis Crick himself claimed that “We have discovered the secret of life!” when he ran into the Eagle pub in
Cambridge to announce the structure of DNA, and some of his intellectual descendants have not calmed down since then. Unnatural ends by reminding us that science has not, in fact, discovered the secret of life, and might find in the end that it is not worth looking for. 10 years on from the completion of Crick’s doubly helical agenda, the scientific journals have
been filled with rather rueful accounts of quite what that molecule has, and has not, told us about the workings of the cell or of evolution with scarcely a word about the sequence that codes for the soul. For the ethicists, though, it’s Brave New World all over (yet) again.
Steve Jones [email protected]
In brief Film Lost childhoods In November, 2009, Kevin Rudd who was at that time the Australian Prime Minister, said he was “deeply sorry” for the hardship and abuse endured by thousands of children as a result of the child migration programme from the UK that the Australian Government had supported during the postwar decades, until as late as 1970. A few months later, Gordon Brown followed suit on behalf of the British Government, calling child migration an “ugly stain” on the UK’s recent history. Last month, Prime Minister David Cameron reiterated those sentiments and announced a fund for reuniting former child migrants in Australia, Canada, and other past British colonies with their relatives. He singled out the dedicated work of Margaret Humphreys, who founded the Child Migrants Trust. Oranges and Sunshine, a raw and disturbing film about the child migrants sent to Australia, is therefore timely, although conceived some years before these political
Oranges and Sunshine Directed by Jim Loach, screenplay by Rona Muro. Icon Films, 2011. On general release in the UK from April 1, 2011. See http:// www.iconmovies.co.uk/ orangesandsunshine See Online for webvideo
Icon Films
For Child Migrants Trust see http://www.child migrantstrust.com
1066
announcements. It centres on Humphreys (persuasively played by Emily Watson), a mother of two and a social worker from Nottingham in the UK, whose job brought her into contact with a former child migrant in 1986. The plot is based on her struggle in the UK and in Australia to get recognition for the injustice done to well over 100 000 children, which she documented in her 1994 book Empty Cradles. The film’s title comes from a ploy used to entice orphaned and “unwanted” children to Australia. Instead of a harsh life in a British children’s home, they would have endless oranges and sunshine. A lie was also used in many cases: children were told that their mothers had died, while mothers were encouraged to think that their children were being sent away to loving adoptive families. A lucky few were; most were used as cheap labour; some were cruelly abused in outback institutions run by the Catholic Church, whose reputation will no doubt get a further
beating from this film. Later in life, many of these children would suffer a crisis of identity, often leading to depression and even suicide. None of these facts are skated over, but neither are one’s emotions manipulated, whether in the bleakness of a British winter or the sun-baked bush of western Australia. The lead performances are of extraordinary subtlety, especially David Wenham’s as Len, a strapping former child migrant who has done well in business in Australia yet who desperately needs to meet his English mother—whatever her reasons may have been for letting him go as a boy. Len’s sparring but trusting relationship with the buttoned-up Margaret gives the film both grit and grace. Sunshine and Oranges does not have a message, despite its shocking source material, and is all the better for this. Directed with sensitivity by Jim Loach (son of the director Ken Loach), the film packs a punch; but it makes you think, as well as feel outraged. Social workers will be particularly appreciative. Honest politicians may find themselves reflecting on the fact that while compassionate personal initiative may be key to the Big Society, it was Nottingham Social Services that supported Margaret Humphreys’s initial research with 2 years’ paid leave.
Andrew Robinson [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 377 March 26, 2011