It frustrates me that such fear can be spread by those who do not have to take responsibility. I took a show of hands yesterday of pupils in my class to find out who had had the MMR jab when they were younger (we were studying public health campaigns and how they affected the health and well-being of the population). less than half put up their hands.

I am a medicine student in Portugal and I follow your work on this website since I have read your book.
First, let me congratulate you for the acuracy and objectivity of your comments. Thanks!
Secondly, what I have to say is not that good. Unfortunatelly in Portugal the situation with the media is similar from the one in the UK. Information not scientific, subjective… things are writen with a missinterpretation of the facts because of a under-covered goal or jornalists do it on purpose on an unbelived and un-ethical attempt of a “hit”.

Now that I had suscribed this blog, if you think it may be interessting every time the issue is equivalent I will talk about what is written in Portugal about it.

For example on this case of the vaccine, our National Health System (SNS) gives it for free to teenagers. They have decided it after an intense pressure from the media (I am not saying if I agree or not with the decision, what bothers me was the fact that they were against and when the media stared saying the government should resign because they didn´t care about peoples lifes, suddenly they have given the vaccine!) and after that the media started questioning the im+portance of the vaccine giving contradictory information about the advantages or desadvantages of it.

Yours sincerelly,
Ana Isabel Gomes

@Veronica: I’m sorry, but the evidence on these kids have dysfunctional brains is far from conclusive. Even if their brains do deviate from the mean, I do not agree that this automatically equals a diseased state, unlike say vascular dementia.

Children with ADHD already have an “abnormal brain state” which is what the drugs (and methylphenidate is not speed) aim to correct.

Thank you mikewhit for some balance in this set of comments.

Regulated dosage is not exactly ‘feeding’ either – it’s down to achieving a functional level in the bloodstream during “working hours”.

Oh well, agree to differ on this one.

A disability that appears to be corrected in some measure with methylphenidate – except among some who say, “it’s the diet/parenting/fish oil/E-numbers” … do you think we didn’t try that first ?!

There are certain sweets that I won’t let my children near. This is not based on scientific evidence, but on experience of how they behave after they’ve eaten them – it’s extraordinary how quickly they develop behavioural issues.

In the words of Willy Mason, “I wanna speak louder than ritalin for all the children who think that they’ve got a disease”.

Maybe they’re scientologists as well.

http://www.fightforkids.org/recognitions.html

The journalist from the Express needlessly mentions them at the end of an article a few years ago: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/10244

I am sure a few minutes reading about the CCHR will be well spent…

As they are evidently susceptible to bad science, we could back this up with some statistics showing that their readers are more likely to die of cancer than readers of most other newspapers. Given the age profile of their readership, this is probably true – although the Mail and the Telegraph might be even more “dangerous”.

Give them a taste of their own bad medicine…

_Who_ is going to get sacked ???

“Last Sunday we incorrectly suggested that the cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix could be as deadly as cervical cancer and that the vaccine is ineffective.

We now accept that there is no evidence to suggest that this is the case and that Cervarix in fact provides protection against the viruses that cause 70% of cervical cancers.

We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for causing undue alarm to all those women and teenage girls considering vaccination against cervical cancer.”

Suspect they were in danger of being sued for defamation. Can’t find the story on their website though.

October 10, 2009 at 8:07 am

Sadly, they have probably factored an epic busting into their cost/benefit analysis…the reason that certain sections of the press continue to get away with this crap is that the risk is worth the reward.

They will also know that the PCC is a self-serving Industry committee, set up by the Industry of which they are obviously a part, for the Industry. It is the perfect example of all that is wrong with self-regulation. Self-regulation without a legal underpinning is a pernicious idea – which is why homeoquacks and charlatans in general are so in favour of it.

There might then follow a flurry of annoyed rebuttals from the parties which could be redirected at the Express and the journalist.

Might cause sufficient embarrassment to them that the journo gets a smack on the wrist …

Perhaps too fanciful. Have you talked to Mark Thomas about this??