When Hubert Lacey invited me to open the meeting on the 12 th September I was naturally delighted. I felt privileged to welcome the participants who represented several nations. I also took the opportunity to highlight what has become the key feature of these meetings, namely the occurrence of debates. I anticipated that, as in the past, debates would generate powerful ideas and above all the discussion would be entertaining. I also anticipated that the format of the debates would be of high educational value.
It turned out that I was right about the entertainment provided from the close engagement of the participants. But I was mistaken in my prediction of achieving an educational success. My intention in presenting this mixed picture of the ECED debate is first to admit my limited powers of prediction and secondly to express honestly my disappointment as regards the limited educational success.
I can make one safe prediction, and that is that my conclusions will generate disagreements. I am grateful to Gerry Butcher who has offered to have this commentary published on the EDEC website with an invitation to other participants at the meeting to respond. At this stage I wish to stress that no criticism is intended as regards the quality of the presentations, or the discussion.
On the contrary, they were of an exceptionally high standard and led to a high level of engagement in the discussions. My criticism is mainly aimed at the format of the debates which on this occasion provided no resolution of polarised views and, even more disappointingly, failed to generate ideas from the available literature or suggestions for future research.
The protagonists were Runi Bรธrresen and Greta Noordenbos. The opposer was Eric van Furth. Unusually Eric opposed the motion on his own because the other opposer had met with travel difficulties. In particular a standard method of classifying types of prevention was not included. Consequently the proposers and the opposer quite shrewdly and this is entirely fair chose to select the type of prevention that suited their arguments. By primary prevention is meant preventing the appearance of the disease or illness.
