Writing in The Times, David Aaronovitch decries: The preposterous prejudice of the anti-MMR lobby.
Last week there was a bust-up in blogland. I’ll explain later why it matters, but for now I’ll just give you the bones of it. On one side was the author of the Bad Science blog, Ben Goldacre, who is an invaluable persecutor of the anti-scientific and wilfully inexpert.
On the other side was the warm, friendly broadcaster, Jeni Barnett, whose most substantial incarnation currently takes place on afternoons on LBC, a London local radio station, where she hosts a phone-in…
Last week, justifying herself on her blog, Barnett invoked the spirit of the insurgent ignoramus…
Aaronovitch then rather thrillingly deconstructs her argument about cigarette smoking. Max Planck would have had something to say about her argument.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. [quoted in Mossis Kline: Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge]
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning. [The Philosophy of Physics (1936)]
Aaronovitch concludes with a semi-serious thought:
I’m passionately for Goldacre, and why I find myself wondering whether we can file a class action against LBC for permitting a presenter to inflict her preposterous prejudices on her listeners, to the detriment of someone else’s kids.
Jeni Barnett may be irresponsible and unapologetic but she is acting within her rights, and apparently within OFCOM guidelines, which are firm on subjects such as sex, drugs and the occult but not public health.
And, although we are not entitled to our own facts, we are to our own opinions. However, when it comes to spreading misinformation about public health, it feels morally different.
It’s just as well for Jeni Barnett and other self-styled health pundits such as Patrick Holford (they have equivalent qualifications to call themselves nutritionists) that they don’t work for German television where they take a rather more rigorous line about responsibility and ethical behaviour. Come to think of it, neither of them allows interactions where they don’t control the channels…
I am firmly behind a class action lawsuit against stupidity. Broadcasters need to realise that they cant just yak about anything with no due regards for public health and responsibility.
Admin edit: There’s the rub. We’re all entitled to our stupidities and off-moments but it does feel as if there ought to be greater responsibility attached to the freedom to undermine public confidence in the vaccination programme etc. – not that Jeni Barnett or her ilk see it in this manner.
Earlier today I made the following complaint to LBC…
Brand and Ross leave a tasteless message on a clebrities’ voicemail, and are publicly disciplined with a full apology by the most senior member of staff at the corporation.
Jeni Barnett spouts complete, uninformed ignorance, without any basis in fact (and yes, I am a qualified biological scientist and do know of what I speak).
Ignorance which can endanger lives – not just some ill-considered prank.
She admits publicly that she was uninformed on the topic (as was revealed by two healthcare professionals on-air), and she is allowed to continue broadcasting without any public acknowledgement of her failure as a professional broadcaster (in terms of lack of research), or of her failure in her responsibilities 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, which state that Broadcasting Act licensees 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;
pose a threat to national security or territorial integrity; or
threaten the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
My complaint is that Jeni Barnett’s broadcast might prove “injurious to the health” of some listeners and certainly poses a “threat to public safety”.
On these grounds I intend to raise a complaint with OFCOM and look into the potential for legal action against LBC and your parent company.
Please acknowledge that this complain has been LOGGED (not simply received).
A copy has been kept for my records and forwarded to solictors retained.
As yet, I’ve had no response, I’m not really certain I’m expecting one.
I complained to LBC about Jeni Barnett’s relentless propagandizing of the MMR hoax and received a reply from Jonathan Richards who is Programme Director LBC News. His very brief response (which ignored all the issues I raised) included the observation, “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).” I replied to him expressing my incredulity that he could characterize Barnett’s lies and distortions as simply “naïve”, or that he could excuse them on the ground of the logical fallacy that they were “long held”. I also included the observation that in a democracy, citizens should respect each other’s beliefs; and citizens have a right to express their beliefs. But in a democracy, a broadcaster such as LBC has an obligation not to broadcast lies and excuse them as “naïve views”.
My email was promptly returned and marked undeliverable.
Admin edit: We’ve mini-blogged it but just to say that Dr Ginger Campbell recently interviewed Dr Paul Offit on vaccine safety and his book, Autism’s False Prophets, and she has had a startling number of nastygrams.
Plus, famously, Offit has received death threats. He is one of several people who needs campus security, such is the level of threat against him.
I’m not convinced that a campaign to silence Jeni’s opinions is a wise thing. I think we should think long and hard before placing restrictions on what people can and cannot say on the airwaves. The problems with Jeni are not so much the fact that she is wrong, but the fact that she cannot recognise this when presented with evidence and reasoned opinion. I think Jeni should be professionally sanctioned, not for being wrong, but for failing to admit it. This suggests an alarming lack of responsibility in a professional.
Jenni Barnett has a right to speak drivel and to present the sort of persona that retains a loyal cadre of listeners. But…
i) programme producers must and should strong consider the interest of public health when planning a programme. There must be involvement from an appropriate health professional;
ii) programme producers must stop being obsessed with providing people such as celeb nutritionists who are getting advertorial for their supplements and bizarre programmes. Yes, listening to, “Eat your greens, get some structured exercise built into your day” might seem boring whilst important. They could use some imagination – perhaps they could talk through the case of a family who has different food preferences and needs and discuss how to cater for all of these while minimising work and costs – except, that sounds more like the remit of a Registered Dietitian;
iii) given the obsession with health and food, scrub shows with IONistas and only provide your listeners with properly-credentialled nutritionists or Registered Dietitians;
iv) producers and listeners should be able to expect recognisable professional standards from “own show” people such as Jeni Barnett – I couldn’t imagine one of the panel of R4 Gardeners’ Question Time advising us to stick our tender seedlings out in March, without cover or other protection, and expect a good result – but if s/he did, I’d expect a follow-up correction and apology.
And, yes, the most lamentable aspect of this is that she refuses to accept or acknowledge her errors.
That’s the David Aaronovitch who’s an unabashed supporter of zionist Israel and it’s ethnic cleansing of the semitic palestinian people from their own land??
Amazing how supposedly irrational people could……Sorry that’s a ridiculous claim. MMR my word you’ll be claiming vaccines have actually had any effect on the incidences of infectious diseases. Not withstanding the [redacted] aspect of destroying an infants immune system pumping them full of unproven vaccinations. Bliar never did come clean over whether he had his own kids abused did he. Wise man. Instead of you listening to this dreadful old zionist bully why don’t you all grow a set of [redacted] and inject yourself every year with the equivalent vaccination levels you support pumping into beautiful innocent babies.
By the way I had Measles when I was a kid and I lurvvvved it!!! ;-)
Admin edit: removed the parts that violate our comment policy and left the remainder up as it is your own words.
Fail to see what your opening comment has to do with this post.
A study in The Lancet confirms the Measles Initiative has succeeded in increasing the number of children who are immunised against measles. A BBC news report featured UNICEF Executive Director, Ann Veneman, said:
Vaccination is saving lives. In 2005, as an outcome of the Measles Initiative, 530,000 people were saved from measles: each day of that year, 1450 children are alive because they were immunised against measles.
Recent reports from Yemen are encouraging.
Sadly, in Europe, we are, again, reading about the recrudescence of measles in countries where it looked like it had been eradicated, increasing numbers of outbreaks and deaths from measles.
Cherie Blair did (belatedly) comment that Leo received the MMR vaccines.
Drop the net, you’ve got a live one.
Vaccination is abusing children but letting them endure preventable diseases that may well have unpleasant side-effects is OK?
This is someone critiquing the intellectual or moral choices of other people but OK about children being ill unnecessarily – neat.
Measles deaths had declined 99.4% before vaccination was introduced in the United Kingdom. I believe that is what is referred to as a home run. I have no way of verifying data from a country like the Yemen and neither have you and for your ridiculous little big pharma run blog to quote some despotic country in the middle of nowhere to back up your claims that the MMR saves lives is totally disingenuous.
Unpleasant side effects??? Vaccine makers and the NHS do not accept any negative response as causative 24 hrs after many vaccinations. Destroying a baby’s immune system with your degenerate cocktail of drugs I do not call health giving. I call it health destroying. But listen it’s fine do it to your own kids and do it to the kids of parents who want to see their child turn from a bubbly lively child into a hyperactive zombified child who’s I.Q has been halved…that’s fine. But don’t you DARE, don’t you DARE tell a parent it’s the law! Don’t you dare do it because there’s a little thing called karma and it is going to be rearing it’s very ugly head sometime in the very near future in a location very near to where you’re sitting.
What I don’t get is this. You may get paid your little wage to blog. I can see to some that may appear a nice thing. But seriously come on don’t you have any humanity, don’t you have any independent train of thought. Don’t you think for a moment your own kids and grandchildren are going to suffer in the long run. I appeal to your basic humanity.
Admin edit: I see that you are light on reliable, quality references for your assertions which is par for the course. The sentiments expressed about Yemen are dismaying and one might only suspect that you are dismissing both it and the Measles Initiative because both of them demonstrate that you are mistaken.
I gather you are cut and pasting this from your many usual similar comments on various blogs as there is no mention of mandatory vaccination enforced by law here. Vaccination is not compulsory in the UK although it may well be in various parts of the US.
It is distressing that discussions of karma from commenters like you tends to be usually underpinned by vague tones of menace rather than what most might recognise as spirituality.
You haven’t read our blog. We are not paid for blogging.
Where would be the humanity in allowing the children to die from measles when it is preventable. Read the lives saved by the Measles Initiative.
As for future generations, I’m grateful that smallpox is no longer the scourge that it was. Future generations will thank us for eliminating those diseases that can be eliminated.
You might benefit from reading the quotations from Planck and reflecting upon them.
Sigh. While there are many aspects of Yemen’s politics which I would disagree with, and its elections have been far from perfect, Yemen’s elected government is certainly not despotic. These things are not hard to check…
Admin Admin healthy children do not die from measles. Measles kills kids who are suffering from malnutrition. I can only assume either the Yemeni data is falsified or the vaccination is for a small area that has had it’s hygiene drastially improved as in all cases of infectious diseases it is the basic living conditions that are paramount. There is a degree of immunisation achieved from vaccination but the cost to the child’s health isw horrifically prohibitive. Long term studies of the effects of vaccinations. Pfffff you must be joking. Vaccination has been the greatest experiment conducted on the human population. If a child is not faced with an infectious attack at a young age his body is INCAPABLE of launching a defence in later life.
P.S I do not cut and paste. The graphs tell the whole story. Scarlet fever is not vaccinated against yet it’s demise in this once fine country of ours matches in its entirety the demise of infectious diseases that have been vaccinated against. It’s a no brainer. It cannot be contested because it’s indisputable verifiable fact. The vaccine companies that pay for so many of these anti-alternative therapies rabid ranting blogs make trillions every year pumping this stuff into children worldwide. The side effects are unknown. Evidence that links them to autism, childhood leukemia and other conditions is destroyed.
The public are slowly waking up. The middle and upper classes are going first. Doctors are one of the least vaccinated people I know. I speak to pharmacists who disapprove of them. The scientific community knows how horrific these vaccines are but to stop would mean a multi trillion dollar industry being inundated with multiple lawsuits that would destroy it.
The mainstream media are bought out but still people are waking up. Once there’s a groundswell, once the 100th monkey principle has been enacted the government will push for compulsory vaccination. It’s coming and it is going to lead to war.
Admin edit: healthy children do die of measles, see previous information and this 12-year old girl in Switzerland who was previously healthy.
If you consider a recent outbreak of measles in Germany (pdf) there are some sobering statistics that are rather distressing. Measles has a high rate of complications: in this outbreak, it also had a mortality rate of 1 in 307.
The researchers interviewed patients/parents of cases in Duisberg district: 614 cases. The reported complications from these 614 cases were as follows:
Otitis media (middle ear infection) 19%
Pneumonia 7%
Encephalitis 0.6%, (3 patients, 2 of whom died)
Hospitalised 15%, median duration 6 days (range 2-97 days)
Looking at infants:
Otitis media 22%
Pneumonia 17%
The 2 children who developed encephalitis and died were aged 2 months and 2 years. The baby was too young for vaccination and would have relied upon herd immunity for protection.
There were no reported problems with the health of those children.
As for the rest of your comments, it’s the same mixture as before.
Measles related complications?? It’s bullcrap. It’s the local health authorities in the area scrambling to drudge up some evidence that can back up their policy. Who knows what conditions these children were living in. I would wager they were children from a high risk group. In very extreme circumstances a vaccine may prevent a more serious complication from a possible infection.
The trouble is the hospitals have such an dreadful record of treating measles, mumps, rubella etc. When a child has a fever, it’s an inflamatory response. That is healthy. If you stop that fever is it any wonder encephalitis ensues. The fever cannot escape the skin so it finds an internal route and the result in the cases of weak children is often death. Deaths from infectious diseases is a result of poor health care.
Giving the jab to every child under the ludicrous herd theory policy is effectively child abuse.
When I think how easy it is to treat a child with measles homeopathically. It’s scandalous. It’s beyond scandalous. It’s manslaughter through neglect.
You laughably give me a french language site of one previously healthy 12 year old girl who it is alleged died from measles. I can provide you 100′s of children who died or were severely disabled as a result of vaccination.
Get off your high horse and study the evidence. If you have an open mind there can only be one conclusion. I appeal to your basic common decency to do so.
P.S Apparently small does of peanuts cure peanut allergies. Hmm I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before. Reminds me of the Royal Navy waiting 150 years before they gave limes to prevent scurvy when they’d been told about the preventative all those years ago. Have you any idea how many allergy sufferers I have personally cured over the years through homeopathy. It would be no exageration to say I could have built several practices out of it.
Admin edit: as you are so quick to comment on various countries, it was inconceivable that you should not be able to read French or know to run it through Babelfish, apologies for over-estimating your competence. As a side issue, you practise homeopathy but don’t read French when that must be one of the largest markets in Europe, bar Germany, and one of the richest sources of texts? Hm.
Read the paper, then you won’t have to guess about the conditions of the children in Duisberg, but here is a substantial clue – you are wrong.
Your remark about Germany is funny in the light of a comment that came in after yours but didn’t see yours as yours tend to end up in the spam folder for some reason that speaks to the unsuspected intelligence of such filters.
Historically, children died from encephalitis that was secondary to measles – there was no effective medication to prevent their fever and it (typically) killed them. If you are interested in the history of what happened before vaccination, then go through Why we immunize.
I urge you to do some reading around on the topic before putting such a medical policy into practice with a young child – it is, sadly, that child’s life you would be gambling with in a misguided attempt to ‘do the right thing’.
My goodness on the homeopathy point and colour me unsurprised – with reasoning skills like yours and your grasp of the clinical literature it was sticking out a mile that you would have tendencies that way. Nonetheless, it is disappointing that you don’t understand your own treatment modality enough to understand the nonsense of your peanut claim to the point where you don’t seem to have realised that what you are discussing is isopathy rather than homeopathy plus there is all the difference in the world between that and the amount of the substances used in Addenbrookes carefully controlled desensitization intervention.
And, you don’t understand the Lind story – go to our blogroll and follow the link to the James Lind library.
You really do get some of the finest, most obdurate trolls. You point out that they are wrong and then they snap back with implausible explanations that are made even more so by their previous dismissals of countries as being ruled by despotism etc. (not always known for being all about improving the people’s sanitation).
And, as you point out, no references – sheer affrontery, unpleasantness and assertion as if that should be sufficient for anyone.
Next thing you know, Germany won’t have an advanced enough medical system and somehow not really count – ditto the little girl in Geneva.
Because really, you must know that having the facts and science on your side can never be sufficient to overcome this level of profound self-belief backed up with an implied ability to direct the workings of karma.
I know you will never tell but inquiring minds want to know if the commenter’s details include the name Yahweh anywhere or other Old Testament absolutists?
You anticipated the response in a way that is almost uncanny (the previous comment ended up in the filter until released so you won’t have seen it when you posted).
I’ve just come across this comment elsewhere that seems relevant.
I never did say that Isopathy was homeopathy though did I? It is often used by homeopaths though, myself included. The arrogance of the medical establishment is incredible. Us homeopaths have been curing allergies since Hahnemann’s day. I really don’t care what amount of peanut is being used by the quacks in allopathic medicine because it has been proven through years of clinical practice that homeopathy achieves these results in half the time and with zero side effects.
Regarding your comment about the treatment of infectious diseases in Germany I doubt very much it differs too much from this country. A fever is a sign of the body fighting for health. It is a positive healing response and should not be curtailed. It is the disease dying off and escaping through inflamation. I repeat if you stop a fever you are endangering the child or adult. The human body ALWAYS will inctinctively react in the least damaging fashion. I would like a response to this. Try doing it without cutting and pasting. Why stop an inflamatory response and do any of you think said inflamatory response is actually a sign of the body throwing off infection? This is basic stuff that allopathic medicine in it’s eternal ignorance and arrogance refuses to contemplate. The quacks of allopathy think their heroic measures to counteract the human body’s own response is acting in the best interest of that person. It’s degenerate. Naturally I despair at the desperate fallacies you promulgate on this blog but then again you are bought and paid for aren’t you.
I could go into the 25 mcg of mercury in a single DPT shot, even more in America not to mention the Aluminium and formaldehyde. That’s way over what is deemed toxic to a child. All about susceptibility of course but the more vaccines the more dangerous. Before you say it I understand mercury has been removed from some vaccines. Why weren’t they safe with it in and if so how many millions of Britons were injected with vaccines that had mercury in.
By the way the first entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica says vaccine’s don’t work. I can only assume the medical establishment back then weren’t in the pay of the pharmaceutical giants who came to prominence because of a Rockerfeller who had a homeopathic physician.
Oh and wasn’t the mumps component of MMR found in the brain tissue of people with encephalitis causing mumps encephalitis. Was removed in Canada wasn’t it.
So many facts and so many more to provide. I would like a specific answer to the fever question. If you asked a medical professional this question at the turn of the last century they would have had a very similar response to a homeopath of today of course.
chin chin ;-)
Admin edit: I see no reason to continue to provide answers to your questions because you show no evidence of accepting or even reflecting upon the resources to which you are pointed. I doubt your sincerity as the simplest search would turn up some outstanding texts and articles on the history of fever – possibly you have consulted them but either didn’t understand them or realised that you were in error so have developed protective selective amnesia.
You make up foolish assertions and don’t even attempt to provide any references although, to be honest, I would only accept ones of acceptable quality and you are not familiar with those. Like most homeopaths you do obsess with history rather than present day.
Given your lack of knowledge of your own professed trade and inability to understand the isopathy-homeopathy issue that you were directed towards, I have the sneaking suspicion that you are asking people to do your homework. You are abusing our courtesy in providing ample information but discounting it for no reason that makes sense other than to you and I doubt that you are sincere in that.
I must refer you to my previous comment about your faux interest and engagement. As you affect to be ignorant of the normal standards of discourse we must be blunt – make an on-point comment or contribution about this post or desist posting on this thread. We have tolerated your digressions long after they were related to the topic of this post. If you have a comment that is on-topic for the blog, it may be expressed in the off-topic section.
See the comment policy.
Ll y prdc blg fndd by th phrmctcl ndstry thn hv th tmrty t ttmpt t crtl my frdm f spch. Y hv n ndrstndng bt th hlng mchnsm f th bdy bcs ll y wsh t d s spprss t wth txc drgs. rfr t th pr 12 yr ld by th md dmttd dd thrgh n cn pll. hv hlpd nmrs sffrrs wth th cmplnt. Wht hv y chvd?
Prvdng rfrncs tht y wll nvr rd s pntlss bcs y hv n gnd. vryn cn s t. Yr gnd s t dstry ny cmpttn t yr txc lgcy. cn nly sspct y’r n fvr f plc stt, flrdstn f th wtr spply nd gntclly mdfd crps strght frm Stn’s vry wn Mnsnt.
ls rfr t th yng by jst sw n chnnl 5 crd f n ncrbl bld dsrdr by NTRTNL SPPLMNTS. knw yr bld mst b t ltrl blng pnt hrng sch dlghtfl stry.
Wht n nlghtnng dy fr th pblc t hr tw sds f th stry. Th ftl cncctn f phrmctcl drg cmprd t th lf gvng prprty f ntrtn.
Hp ths hlps ;-)
Admin: future off-topic posts will be disemvowelled or deleted
I’d like to claim that my jaw dropped but it hasn’t. I’ve been told that this is probably the right graphic to express the sentiment of most readers in scrolling through the output of your latest troll.
It’s too bad that none of these people actually want to learn. I used to think that homeopaths were misguided but had assumed that they were reasonably knowledgeable – listening to the Jeni Barnett warblings and those of Tracey from Olympia, looking at your latest Ferrous Cranus, I am long since disabused of that.
He’s been misguided/offensive/dismissive about all the countries in the Measles Initiative, Yemen and now Germany. He is not taking the opportunity to learn anything – you know what they say about idiots and the internet. The most educational part of all this is that it must surely deter anyone who was even vaguely wondering about consulting a homeopath – being offensive, block-headed and unable to stay on point seem to be common to them.
I wonder if Mike Reed would consider designing a special Homeopath Flame Warrior as they do seem to be a special breed of the impervious cum ignorant and proud of it.
You can lead a homeopath to water…
Actually, a homeopath is afraid of what the water might contain so they shy away from it, like they do anything that requires thought.
Ask a question, receive a full answer with details. Find some reason that makes sense only to you as to why you won’t accept that answer. Go off down ratholes, ask more questions, get more answers and ignore those.
Great advert for your calling there. Are you sure that this is a homeopath and not an agent provocateur posting as one as a warning of what they are like?
Don’t know about the agent provacateur but the thought-processes you see on display above are typical of those in homeopaths that are encountered in discussion threads or similar gatherings where they display what passes for them as scientific exchange or reasoned opinion.
Off-topic to both post and blog so moved to Off-Topic but we publicising it as representative of you and your thinking.
Read the advice again – on-topic for a post or on-topic to the blog will be published subject to being free of abuse etc.