Friday, March 13, 2009

MMR Vaccine - Sweet Revenge?

Regular readers will recall my recent postings on the case of Dr Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog's reviews of Jenni Barnett's recent LBC FM radio programme promoting widely-discredited research about a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, that has resulted in a massive decrease in the uptake of the MMR vaccine, that has resulted in a massive increase in measles cases amongst UK children (and, personal interest declared, directly threatens the life of my daughter). When he posted the programme, he was threatened by LBC lawyers with litigation for copyright abuse and was forced to withdraw the programme from his blog.

Norman Lamb, Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for North Norfork, tabled parliamentary Early Day Motion 754 motion objecting to sensationalist media coverage of this discredited research. It has now been signed by119 MPs and ranks as no. 34 of the 1161 EDMs put forward in the current parliamentary session. (As an aside it is interesting to note how many MPs from each party represented in parliament have signed this EDM).

Jeni Barnett's irresponsible journalism has now been widely published on the web both in audio and transcript form. LBC - are you going to sue us all?

Dr Ben Goldacre and MP Norman Lamb (who had never before met) responded to Jeni Barnett and LBC when they were interviewed by a major UK TV channel this week (youtube video here - and I don't imagine ITV will sue!).

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