Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=ILCYX2PWDU5CTQFIQMFCNAGAVCBQYJVC?xml=/news/2004/07/18/nbook18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixhome.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=16794

From: ...

Originally from – Christopher Booker's notebook
(Filed: 18/07/2004)

From: ...

Originally from FMD to WMD

The Prime Minister, it seems, is not the only Houdini who has a miraculous knack of emerging unscathed from any fiasco for which he was responsible. Tony Blair has appointed as "Chief Scientist" to the Ministry of Defence none other than Prof Roy Anderson of Imperial College, in succession to Prof Sir Keith O'Nions (a name which seems to have escaped from Private Eye).

It seems that Prof Anderson's chief qualification for his new post (at "Permanent Secretary grade", worth between £118,000 and £250,000 a year) was the help he gave Mr Blair in 2001 as his chief scientific adviser on the foot and mouth epidemic. The professor – who had left Oxford University under a cloud the previous year – had no experience of animal disease, being a specialist in the mathematical modelling of human diseases such as Aids. But this did not prevent him becoming chief architect of the "pre-emptive cull" policy, under which some nine million healthy animals were slaughtered (illegally – since the 1981 Animal Health Act gave the Government no powers to kill animals unless they had been directly exposed to infection).

Quite how the ability to simulate Aids epidemics on a computer, or to mastermind the slaughter of millions of healthy animals, will qualify Prof Anderson to advise the Ministry of Defence on weapons of mass destruction is not immediately clear.

Mr Blair, of course, was careful to ensure, after the foot and mouth crisis, that none of the three enquiries he set up would find anyone responsible for all those catastrophic blunders. Since the two men most to blame for the handling of the epidemic were the Prime Minister and his chief scientific adviser, Mr Blair obviously recognises in the professor a fellow survivor. I am sure he will be well worth his £250,000 a year.