Thank you for your e-mail.

You will be pleased to know that I have signed EDM 754.

The re-emergence of measles and the loss of life and long term health
which will afflict children as a result of the decline in the
vaccination rate is grave cause for concern. This followed Dr Andrew
Wakefiled’s now discredited research paper suggesting a link between MMR
vaccine and autism.

Irresponsible and ill informed comments in the media is causing
unfounded anxieties for parents and will have the effect of discouraging
some parents from choosing to take up the MMR vaccine. It is very
important therefore, that reporting surrounding the issue of MMR is less
sensationalist and more evidence based.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me with your concerns and
please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further
questions.

Yay!

http://www.jenibarnett.com/2009/02/neigh_neigh_thrice_neigh.php

A good letter Ben – we can’t let ‘em get away with this nonsense even if she is a frail 60 yr old lady.

It is LBC that take my breath away. AS I see it, they are the ones with apologising to do, which makes the resounding on-the-record silence from them all the more pathetic. I have written a bit about this (in the “Update” bit) here.

I also tried to listen to the youtube clips but after the first 10minutes of her rabbiting on about nothing I had to switch off.

Kudos to the people who transcribed it!

Dear Mr Allen,

By now, you should have read that there is no link between the MMR and autism – indeed, a group of Americans have recently lost a lawsuit claiming a link. All the available evidence (including meta studies) shows no evidence, and indeed disproves any causal link. On the other hand, there is a clear link between a decline in uptake of the MMR and incidents of measles (in particular) and deaths from measles. The MMR, is for the vast, vast majority of children (not to mention society at large) a very good thing.

On 9 January, Jeni Barnett did a show on LBC doubting the wisdom of using the MMR combined vaccine. She even implied that she was advocating letting children get measles, and only dealing with those who will die from it (and you know how, exactly?). Let me quote the woman herself:

Quote from: Jeni Barnett
…back in the day, children got measles, children got mumps. I’m not suggesting – I am not suggesting – that we got backwards where some children, where we have one in fifteen children die of it. And that one person in fifteen is the one we have to be looking at and wondering why and dealing with it. But if, as a human being, you decide you do not want to give your child a vaccination, you should, in a democracy, have that right to say no.

The way she said ‘I’m not suggesting’ is much the same tone as when I say ‘I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t believe in God, but….’. The thing about the MMR is it DOES deal with the ‘one in fifteen’ who suffer fatal or serious problems due to measles – it prevents everyone from getting it. After all, it’s impossible to determine which children will suffer such complications.

Dr Ben Goldacre, on his wonderful, wonderful blog http://www.badscience.net, objected. He did so in a slightly amusing, yet reasoned, educated way, and posted a link of the 30 or 40 minutes of Ms Barnett’s programme that discussed the MMR. The transcript is worth reading in full. LBC, and, by extension, Global Radio, rather than admitting that Ms Barnett was misguided at best, and wrong and dangerous at worst (remember, MMR take up rates in London had dropped below 70%), have defended Ms Barnett to the point of threatening Dr Goldacre for including elements of the broadcast so that his readers could hear what was said and form their own opinion as to the absurdity of it. He has also posted many of the statistics disproving a link, and conversely, proving a link between the ‘controversy’ and reduced vaccine uptake rates, and the link between that and an increase in reports of measles and mumps.

There are many, many, many scientific, official and robust studies disproving a link between MMR and autism. The official, House of Commons report is here: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/briefings/snsg-02581.pdf. There are many, many, many more published studies regarding the links – here’s another. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2287222

Ms Barnett had posted a slight apology on her blog, but this was later pulled when people commented on the blog. It would behove Global Radio to have Ms Barnett retract her uninformed rambling on air, on the same time slot as she originally broadcast her misguided (at best) rant against a proven vaccine, and, frankly, a boon to public health.

I await with interest your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Dear Jonathan,

You write “we are never going to agree on this issue” and I agree. But that’s hardly surprising because you steadfastly refuse to debate any of the issues I raised but instead try to shift the terms of our debate by employing a fallacy. You say “Jeni took a particular angle…”during her programme.” That’s a Straw Man argument. I didn’t complain about a particular angle that Jeni took on the issue of MMR and autism. Do have done so would have been to admit that she had made reasonable inferences or deductions from the evidence and then debated them. I made it quite clear that I was complaining about her repetitious use of the lies and canards that are the stock in trade of the MMR hoaxers.

You then go onto to say: “I’ve already told you I was unhappy with certain aspects of her handling of the debate.” Well, no you didn’t. You actually wrote:

“Jeni was spoken to straight after the broadcast. You’ll be aware we’ve debated the subject many times since, what did you think of those broadcasts? By the way you’ll also be interested to know that Jeni is now receiving abusive emails from people for merely having long held views (however naïve those views might be).”

So you manage to misremember what you wrote to me and to employ another Straw Man by implying that I was complaining about the way in which she handled the programme. My concerns were solely with what she said. To quote Jeni again: “It’s a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry”; “Science always changes so you can believe what you like”; “It’s a debate and a controversy”; “Measles was never that bad anyway”; “Immune systems are damaged by being understimulated”; “Immune systems are damaged by being overstimulated.” And so on.

And for your final fallacy you now tell me that three out of the five calls that Jeni took were from listeners who were “pro-MMR”. This is a Red Herring presented in order to divert attention from the original issue: Why did LBC permit Jeni Barnett to lie in support of the MMR hoax?

You conclude by telling me that: “I don’t believe at any point Jeni broke broadcasting rules.” That will, of course be for OFCOM to decide. But in the light of Jeni’s subsequent admission that she was uninformed on the topic of MMR and autism (as was revealed by two healthcare professionals on-air), and the fact that she is allowed to continue broadcasting without any public acknowledgement of her failure as a professional broadcaster (in terms of lack of research and knowledge), you should perhaps note the duties of Broadcasting Act licensees. Under paragraph 2(1) of Part II of Schedule 2 to the Broadcasting Act 1990, paragraphs 9 and 10 of Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act 1998, and paragraph 15 of Schedule 14 to the Communications Act 2003. These require inter alia that broadcasters should not: 
practise or advocate illegal behaviour;
practise or advocate behaviour which is injurious to the health or morals of participants or others;
practise or advocate behaviour which infringes the rights and freedoms of participants or others;
pose a threat to public safety.


Her first caller didn’t have her 5? children vaccinated because she felt that was the right thing to do after attending a “short course” on said subject that was being run by a homeopath….They strike again!

Another comment was that “yes 1 in 15 kids used to die” and that “not everybody is that 1 in 15″

ummm maybe 14 in 15 are not that 1 in 15? This still means that 1 in 15 died.

Overall i found her to be a fairly incoherent speaker with sentances frequently making no sense and leaping from one thing to another pretty much at random. I would wonder how she got employed as a radio broadcaster in the first place.

It’s encouraging to read, however (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/autism.vaccines/index.html; http://www.fiercevaccines.com/story/special-court-hand-down-autism-decisions/2009-02-12?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-FBRV&dest=FBRV) that the courts backed the science against the alleged victims, despite their sympathy for the latter.

The way that sympathy for a person damaged by a disease such as autism can be used to attack something as beneficial as vaccination, which was not the real cause; and the way that people defending vaccination can be portrayed as lacking sympathy for the “victims”, is very interesting.

Fair enough – agree to disagree. I only really commented on your first post since you highlighted them as ’shoddy pieces of journalism’. My point was that in the grand scheme of things these two weren’t actually that bad, and not entirely unsympathetic to the feelings of most people commenting here.

Notice that I didn’t try to defend the Melanie Phillips article!

I like it not that MMR has been controversial for a number of years, as the scientific evidence does not justify this.

I do agree that they contain some valid points, these are diminished by the points which I have highlighted. Therefore, I think we will have to agree to disagree over these two articles.

Says it all about Obama’s America; corrupt and misguided.

Three special muppets controlled by big pharma facists make an obviously bad decision. Not really going to convince the 1 in 10 parents and growing.

The fight has only just begun.

Firstly, I just don’t believe that there have been abusive comments or emails. Not even from lone nutters.
She’s playing the classic victim cards that bullshitting blowhards always try when their lies and ignorance have been exposed.
If there were, then why delete all the previous polite comments? Why not simply close the comment thread with a note explaining that there’s so many that they can’t monitor them adequately. That would be a perfectly reasonable and fair thing to do. Deleting the comments makes it look to someone who’s just heard the broadcast like nobody’s replied and so encourages people to inadvertently repeat the many excellent points already made.

Actually, deleting all the comments makes it impossible for someone who’s just heard the clip or broadcast to see that in reality there weren’t any abusive posts. The question is, was that the intention? Imo it compounds one wrong with yet another and makes Ben’s observation of lack of insight seem to be a gross understatement.

Reading Liz Hunt’s article – she is very clear that low MMR uptake has caused the current rise in measles. She notes that there have been two deaths reported, and several cases of serious complications. She is reasonably sympathetic to Wakefield, but does at least note the allegations against him. I think she is wrong to state that ‘doubt and fear’ will always hang over MMR. But she does also describe as ’shameful’ Cherie Blair’s refusal to admit to her son receiving the jab. I found the point about the dismissal of the MMR issue as ‘middle class mania’ enlightening, and queried whether this was a valid point – Holfordwatch tells me not so, that there is evidence low MMR uptake is concentrated in the ‘middle classes’. I think the dismissal is still interesting though – and hasn’t been productive.

As for Gill Hornby, I thought overall emphasis of the article – that important research into autism and gut conditions had been derailed by the saga – was valid. Should you wish to focus your criticism on one two letter word, that’s your choice. The majority of the comment is really nothing to do with MMR.

Compared to historical comments from the height of the scare these two articles were hardly that bad.

Finally, there is one issue I’ve not really seen addressed (forgive me if it has been). First off, I will happily agree that there has been a lot of bad practice in media handling of the issue of Wakefield’s ‘findings’ and the subsequent ’scandal’. However, the fact is that his results were published in the Lancet. They were peer reviewed. They were announced at a press conference (is that standard practice?). To place blame entirely on the ‘media’ (and I’m unsure about the tendency for characterisation of the ‘media’ as a sentient single-minded being!) is a bit narrow. Fair enough when the words of homeopaths, or ’scientists’ who never publish, is the basis for scare stories – but weren’t they following what we (and Ben) argue for? That is, reporting on the results of peer-reviewed research in a reputable journal?

@Holford watch – thanks for the links, and a little surprised (pleasantly so) at the use of an ethnographic study. I think the findings were quite telling. In terms of the theory that the media alone informs parents over MMR – to paraphrase Ben – perhaps it’s a little more complicated than that?