Nigel Hawkes wrote an interesting article for today's Times newspaper.

Government funded research on agriculture was cut back in the early 1990s. The advent of the BSE crisis impacted research priorities but only to alter the distribution of the cake - not the overall size of the budget. Vetinary epidemiology was cut back.

Even worse the linkage between scientific advice and Ministerial utterances took a bad hit when Ministers kept on telling the public that BSE could not pass from animals to humans. And then eventually had to change their tune.

Meanwhile an extra virulent strain of Foot and Mouth evolved and slowly spread across the globe from India and somehow reached this country.

The counter-measures that were put in place to control it initially were not up to the job. Nigel Hawkes surmises that the vetinerary scientists in Government knew this and advised Ministers accordingly. He also judges that Ministers didnt believe the advice because the BSE episode had strained trust and credibility. We will have to wait and see if this is confirmed. But it could well be true.

There are two points that occur to me. The first concerns pataphysics. I think this term is an old one but it was selected by the French philosopher Baudrillard to describe a certain phenomenon that he thought would become more common in the 3rd Millenium. For B pataphysics desrcibes natural process which creep up on society and then burst into awareness. Pataphysics subverts spin - which is deployed initially against the phenomenon but proves useless. So the new strain of Foot and Mouth is a classic bit of pataphysics as was the transfer of BSE from animals to humans.

The second point to make is that the relatively well designed and succesful UK response to the advent of HIV and AIDS was a bit of good fortune. It wasn't something that we naturally deserved because we are so clever or insightful. It was something that happened to go right for us - although BSE and Foot and Mouth show very clearly that we are capable of getting this stuff wrong too. My view is that we were just lucky - I don't suppose readers need me out spell out the rest of the argument.