Andrew Wakefield is not the only guilty one

The news today that Dr Andrew Wakefield (the doctor who suggested there was a link between the MMR triple-jab and autism) has been struck off the medical register having been found guilty of serious professional misconduct will be welcomed by many people who value a proper evidence base for medical decisions. His research was hopelessly flawed in a number of ways and the consequences that have flowed from it in terms of unneccessary (sometimes very severe) measles cases and loss of herd immunity in some areas are still reverberating now.

However Dr Wakefield is not the only one who is culpable for causing this problem. As least as guilty if not more so are those in the media who perpetuated the scare stories long after it became clear that Wakefield's evidence was flawed. All those journalists who published stories containing anecdotal "evidence" that suggested Wakefield was right and those columnists who used their national voice to imply that there was some sort of cover up by the medical establishment going on, some of whom still persist with this even today should also take their share of the blame.

I hope that all of them will now feel moved to publish apologies for the misleading and damaging things that they have written over the years. They are the first to insist people from other walks of life apologise and/or resign when they get something wrong. The same standards should apply to them.

I won't hold my breath though.

If Jeni Barnett's MMR show is within Ofcom rules then the rules are broken

I have just read through Ofcom's ruling of the disgraceful Jeni Barnett LBC radio phone in show on MMR from January this year. The ruling is here (you need to scroll down to about 80% of the way down to read it).

I blogged about this show earlier this year with respect to Ben Goldacre's coverage of it and also gave my views. Basically a totally ill informed woman allowed her prejudices about a (non-existant) link between the MMR triple vaccine and autism to overtake her professional judgement. She was hectoring and rude to the callers who disagreed with her. I am convinced that this show and other ignorant media coverage like it are responsible for the drop in immunisation coverage for measles below the herd immunity required level and hence outbreaks on a scale not seen for years. Utterly, utterly irresponsible.

Yet Ofcom feel that LBC and Ms Barnett are not in breach of their rules.

The rules need to be changed. The problem that I can see with the ruling is that it all seems to pivot around the need for "balance". But this is not a political debate. It is about whether dangerous scientific illiteracy should be given equal weighting with properly researched views backed up with scientific evidence as this show did. Balance doesn't come into it.

Barnett and her ilk will always claim that "more research is needed" but the MMR/autism hypothesis has been tested to destruction. There is no link. The original "study" that much of this hysteria is based on was flawed in a number of fundamental ways.

People like Barnett (and Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens etc.) need to shut up about this now and accept the evidence but I fear that the fact that Ofcom has effectively exonerated Barnett will only give succour to their anti-scientific nonsense.

The Daily Mail is immoral

The Daily Mail is immoral.

There can be no other explanation for the fact that they are campaigning against the HPV vaccine in the UK and for it in Ireland as exposed by The Lay Scientist.

It is clear that they are doing whatever they think will sell the most newspapers in each country. In quite a lot of stories e.g. relating to politics where you expect newspapers to have an agenda and to pander to its readers prejudices, this would be fair enough. However in a case like this where they are dealing with a subject which affects people's health there is no excuse. If the weight of scientific evidence is for the HPV vaccine then they should report this in as straight a way as possible. If the weight of scientific evidence is against it then again they should report this instead. What they should not do is cherry pick arguments and data from one side or the other to suit an agenda tailored to increase sales of their newspaper.

The Daily Mail has a shameful record on MMR as covered in depth by the heroic Ben Goldacre and many others over the last few years. They should not be allowed to get away with blatantly playing games with the health of its readers, some of whom will trust what they read in its pages and may act upon this.

Bad Science and Ben Goldacre vs LBC

I have been following Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog for a couple of years now. It is an excellent read. He really gets into the detail of medical and pharmaceutical issues with an endearingly self-confessed nerdiness. I also read his Bad Science book before Christmas and I can highly recommend it.

One of the issues of recent years that he has campaigned most strongly on is the MMR hoax which erroneously linked the triple jabs for measles, mumps and rubella with bowel disorders and autism. Just to clarify, there is no credible evidence of any link at all. However that has not stopped much of the media from very strongly giving the impression that there might be a link and that scientists are unsure. They are not unsure, there is no evidence. Ben's valiant efforts to expose the misreporting of this issue have been very much appreciated by those of us who believe in the scientific method and using a solid evidence base to make decisions. Although I have no children (yet) I would not hesitate to give them the triple jab.

Anyway, he seems to have got himself into a spot of bother with LBC about this issue. He posted an entry a few days ago which strongly criticised Jeni Barnett, an LBC radio presenter who had run a phone-in show on MMR. Rather than be impartial, she had taken a strong anti-MMR stance and was highly critical of those who disagreed with her. I am not going to go over it all again as it is covered in the links in this post but one of things Ben did was to post a 45 minute excerpt from the offending LBC show on his blog as he felt that it was only by doing this that he could avoid accusations of taking things out of context. I have listened to the excerpt and Barnett's inability to grasp basic scientific concepts is utterly shocking. She is also hectoring and rude to the callers who disagree with her.

LBC then contacted Ben and threatened him with legal action if he did not take the clip down. He has now done so, even though he felt that the use of the clip was fair. However I think LBC have grossly underestimated the power of the internet. There is a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect which says that any attempt to censor or remove a piece of information from the internet is doomed to backfire. Indeed that has proved that case as the excerpt has now been put onto wikileaks and is hosted in all sorts of other places following the threat. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that many more people will now have listened to the clips online due to LBCs actions than would have been the case if they had kept their legal department at bay.

Jeni Barnett did post a half-hearted apology on her blog which did not in my opinion go far enough but to give her her due she has allowed comments on there and appears not to have attempted to censor them. Many of the comments are extremely critical of her and her approach and go to the heart of why what she did was so irresponsible.

This whole episode to me demonstrates why it is dangerous to allow ill-informed people to have lots of airtime to espouse their views largely unopposed. I am of course for freedom of speech but there is a real risk that when people like Barnett get on their soapbox about issues they know nothing about, that people will act upon their advice and they will then in this case be risking their own and other children's health. It can surely be no coincidence that the measles rate has shot up in the last few years as the vaccination rates have commensurately dropped due to this bogus scare of the last few years. At the very least, Barnett should have had someone like Goldacre on the show to stand up for the opposing view.

It has also been heartening to see the level of support in the poltical blogosphere for Ben. Here are a few examples of those who have posted in support of him:

Sunny on Liberal Conspiracy
Guido
Harry's Place
Unity on Ministry of Truth

EDIT 1: Following a comment from Lonely Wanderer below it appears that Jeni has now decided to get rid of all the comments on the thread I referred to, so I withdraw the credit I gave her for that. She can't even run a blog properly and has no idea of the etiquette. You don't just delete all comments to a post en masse.

EDIT 2: The Quackometer has archived the deleted blog post and comments here. Also, Ben has done a follow up post here and it is great to see just how many people (some very influential) have now got involved with this campaign.