LBC Vs Bad Science

The BBC is reporting new figures that show measles cases in England and Wales rose by 36% in 2008. This is unsurprising given the level of misunderstand and distrust the British public have in the MMR vaccine. In case you are either too young or not from the UK you might not be aware of the media brouhaha over the past decade surrounding the combined injection for immunisation against measles, mumps and rubella.

In 1998 Dr Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet; reporting a study of twelve children who had displayed symptoms of autism soon after the administration of MMR vaccine. Despite having no validated evidence to support this claim, it sparked a major public health scare in the UK, parents were choosing not to protect their children against the three diseases and confidence in MMR vaccine fell to just 41 per cent.

There was, and still is no evidence to support the theory that the MMR vaccine puts children at risk, the original paper was proved to be fundamentally flawed, and the paper’s author Dr Andrew Wakefield was charged with serious professional misconduct. The overwhelming evidence is that MMR is safe, and it is regarded as safe in the 90 other countries in which it is used. You can read more on the MMR hoax at Dr Ben Goldacre's site, and I highly recommend his book Bad Science which covers not only MMR but also the blatant fraud that is homeopathy, and other investigations into the state of medial and science reporting in the media.

However, despite all of this claims that MMR is a risk to public health continue to be trotted out by anti-vaccination nuts like for example Jeni Barnett, (a presenter on LBC), who only last month on the 7th January claimed that MMR was dangerous, claiming that “It’s a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry.” She went on to say that she had chosen not to give the vaccine to her own child and spent a further 22 minutes scaremongering her audience into doing the same. This is clearly hugely irresponsible; the broadcast posed a serious risk to public health by conceivably putting the lives of ten million listeners’ children at risk of a life threatening disease. Throughout the broadcast, it was made clear that Jeni Barnett had complete ignorance of the disease, the vaccine and indeed basic human biology.

Dr Goldacre posted a clip from the radio program on his website, however LBC’s lawyers forced him to take it down stating that the clip was “a clear infringement of their copyright”, and that he was required to inform them when he had done so, and that they “reserve their rights”.

I'm posting this clip with full protection under UK law, by the terms of “fair dealing” detailed in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The full recording is available at wikileaks.org.

Inoculation against such diseases is very important, eradication must be utter and complete. It takes only a few people to go without inoculation to allow a disease to survive and revive, and to spread back. To make claims like the ones in the clip above was an irresponsible piece of broadcasting, and put the public at risk. People like Jeni Barnett pose a serious danger to public health by irresponsible journalism misappropriating the public’s trust in the media and eroding the understanding of science and medial health.