Black Triangle

Time restricts the extent of my comments, but I have had to make the ultimate sacrifice of buying a Daily Mail for the first time in years in order to do this. Shiver.

The Guardian.

Reasonably sensible reporting (The same goes for The Observer over the weekend). To their credit when they mention the anti-MMR group JABS, they make the effort to balance this with Sense’s comments on Wakefield (Sense are the National deaf blind and rubella association). A graph is given showing the rise in Measles, Mumps and Rubella since 1997. There is a reasonable discussion about Wakefield’s emergence into the public sphere which avoids some of the heroic loner hyperbole seen in other papers. George Monbiot suggests we should pity Wakefield, yet he fails to tackle the increasingly important issue that money is not the only conflict of interest, even though he does make some valid points.

The Guardian, despite criticisms levelled at some of their scientific reporting (GM food appears to be their main blind spot) performs well on MMR. This article by Ben Goldacre from last year in The Guardian on MMR is still an excellent read.

The Independent

The red herring of whether Leo Blair has received MMR vaccine is raised. They seem to be attempting to be authoritive about the facts, but can’t help slipping into type. Three interviews with parents are printed, not all bad, but the worst being from an anti-vaccination loon who uses homeopathic medicines. She bemoans the fact that children are not suffering from measles and other childhood diseases, since it is deskilling parents. I kid you not. She says “Children make amazing recoveries after childhood diseases and I believe they become mentally and physically stronger. It is appalling how many vaccinations a baby is given today as such a young age” Children do make amazing recoveries, except of course for the ones who become deaf, blind or die. And I thought the Spartans had died out a thousand years ago…

The editorial descends into farce with accusations of an orchestrated campaign to get Wakefield. The Independent are unable to look sensibly at anything that backs up a government position, even if the government are correct. “Are we wrong to detect the distant whirr of the same spin spin machine that so recently set about destroying the reputations of David Kelly, Andrew Gilligan and others”?” After three paragraphs of ramblings about “Leo Blair”, the “de-fanged Today programme” and a clear misunderstanding about the issues involved they suggest that parents are justified in “demanding a thorough scientific debate”

Wake-up! The scientific debate has been ongoing for 7 years, it is about time that The Independent started to report it properly to parents, rather than worrying that ministers might be happy about Wakefield’s sticky situation. I remember when the Independent first came out, watching it descend since 2001 into the leading newspaper for conspiracy theorists and hard-core cynics has been sad.

The Daily Mail

Where to start? This paper should carry a public health warning. I’m glad I bought my copy, at least it means somebody else is denied the opportunity of reading the bilge within it.

All the reporting is highly emotive in nature. It’s conspicuous compassion gone mad! The anti-MMR Conservative MP Julie Kirkbride is given space, as are the two pressure groups The Autism Research Campaign for Health and JABS.

A whole two pages are devoted to heart-rending stories of parents struggling to reveal the truth against the establishment “A life sentence with no appeal” and who feel the British taxpayer should have increased the amount of money wasted on legal aid on the MMR case from 15 million pounds to 25 million pounds. The Daily Mail then proceeds to list 13 cases of legal aid that were allowed. I bet you won’t be surprised to read that this consisted of: Lithunian asylum seekers, a burglar, a Jamaican illegal immigrant, Kosovans, Afghanis and the unemployed. They fail to explain how the merits, or otherwise, of these cases impinge on the MMR debate.

The leader suggests the establishment is uniting to crush an individual, comparing Wakefield to Kelly, and stating that “Downing Street’s mendacity machine has routinely smeared anyone who dares to be off message”. They put the lack of confidence in MMR down to “New Labour’s arrogant behaviour” and call for a fully independent inquiry. Such an inquiry will support the fact that MMR is not linked to autism and would be a complete waste of public money. But if one is undertaken expect “Yet another whitewash” as the headline in the Mail. Stephen Glovers, obviously not one for understating a point, has a column on the governments “assassination squads” that are seeking to destroy individuals who disagree with Blair. This not a newspaper, but a campaign vehicle for pressure groups.

The Times

Not much on MMR today, but their coverage of health issues in the UK is about the best there is in print. When it comes to vaccine issues and health scares, they do not over-react and even attempt to put risks across well. On HRT last year they even attempted to explain the difference between relative and absolute risks. Over the past few days their reporting has been sensible, and they don’t appear to be using the MMR vaccine as a stick to beat the government just for the sake of it. This article entitled Elvis lives, MI5 murdered Diana, MMR is dangerous sums up what is wrong with some of the other papers and politicians in this country and why this country is beginning to slip backwards in its attempts to deal with the modern world:

The GM and MMR disputes are the first of many similar contests, which is why their resolution is especially important. On both questions an oddball alliance has emerged — the old Left, the old Right and the New Age have united against what they perceive as an “establishment” consisting of Whitehall, big business and the scientific community.

This alliance rages against those it believes are out to poison food, injure children, fry our brains with waves from mobile phones and their masts, slice up cuddly animals for the fun of it and, under the cover of “therapeutic” cloning, develop a master race of which the Nazis would have been envious.

Such suspicions, and the sense of a shared enemy, have made unlikely bedfellows of the Daily Mail and The Guardian, which jointly oppose GM crops.

This bizarre collection, apparently under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, has three features in common. The first is the reversion to a pre-Enlightenment view of humankind and history to a period before it was assumed that each succeeding generation was capable of doing, knowing and understanding more than the one before.

The second shared facet is an extraordinary passion, a paranoia even, for conspiracy. Not only are politicians, civil servants, business executives and scientists behaving recklessly but they are doing so deliberately. It is as if the “GM” in genetically modified crops stands for General Motors and the letters MMR represent Ministers, Money and Research. These opponents are the sort of people who believe not only that John F. Kennedy died as a result of an elaborate plot, that Elvis Presley is alive and well somewhere on the Moon and that Diana, Princess of Wales, was fiendishly murdered, but that the same organisation is responsible for all three events. And they are running the cover-up on flying saucers.

The third element is an attitude towards evidence that matches the credulity displayed by those who served on the O. J. Simpson jury. The fact that, on GM food, as the Royal Society put it, “the results of the farm-scale trials show that the weed management of the GM maize variety clearly has a less damaging effect on farmland wildlife than current conventional practice”, is deemed no more valuable than that some bloke in the pub reckons his ploughman’s lunch has started tasting peculiar lately.