Lord Drayson seems convinced that the media has learned the relevent lessons over the MMR debacle. At a conference of science journalists on 1 July he told delegates that lessons had been learned since MMR and repeats the assertion during a debate with Ben Goldacre here. Is he right to be so confident?
First off, he is praising science journalists and as Ben points out both in this debate and elsewhere, most of the serious scaremongering was not written by specialist science and health journalists but by general reporters.
Second, less than a week after the conference , we have this story in the Daily Express which continues to stoke fears of the MMR vaccine.
The headline reads:
"Doctor's MMR Fears"
and the first sentence informs us that there are "Fresh fears for the safety of MMR vaccinations". And this is by the Express's Health reporter, Lucy Johnston.
We also have another way of testing Drayson's hypothesis. Over recent months the NHS has rolled out the HPV vaccine. The HP virus causes 70% of cervical cancers. Cervical cancer, despite screening, kills about one thousand women per year, its most famous victim this year was 'reality' star Jade Goody. This vaccine could thus save about 700 women per year. How have the press greeted this?
With scare-mongering. As I pointed out here, the Mail bigged up minor side effects and referred to the vaccine as the 'promiscuity jab'. The HP virus is sexually transmitted and social conservatives, such as the readers and writers of the Mail, believe that removing the fear of disease and death will encourage teenagers to have sex. There is not a shred of evidence to support this notion and since teenagers have been having illicit sex since time immemorial it is clear that the prospect of disease and death does not discourage them. Teenagers believe that they are immortal and that bad shit happens to other people. As anyone who has a teenager knows, they rarely think about consequences at all. In other words, if they are contemplating sex then the HPV vaccination status of the girl concerned will not enter ino their thinking.
And of course when Natalie Morton died a few hours after receiving the vaccination they went to town and published a scare-mongering rant which relied heavily on quotes from Jackie Fletcher of JABS. When the post-mortem revealed that Natalie had in fact died of a chest tumour the on-line version of this article was extensively rewritten but the Mail did not formally retract their previous statements or indeed acknowledge their rewriting of history. One is reminded of the scene in 1984 where Winston Smith rewrites archives to remove stories that the powers that be find inconvenient.
Furthermore, they still quote Richard Halvorsen here saying that her death calls into question the vaccination program even though her death is not vaccine related.
The Express is even worse: in one headline it refers to the "cancer jab horror", see here. Martin Robbins refers to this in a twitter exchange with Drayson:
mjrobbins:Is this what Lord Drayson meant by lessons learned? "PARENTS' REVOLT AFTER GIRL DIES IN CANCER JAB HORROR"
lorddrayson:Frankly? Yes. It says "most unlikely that the HPV vaccine is the cause of death"
In today's Sunday Express, Johnston goes one better and claims that the vaccination is as deadly as the cancer it is intended to prevent. Really? Deaths that will be prevented by the vaccinr:700 per year. Deaths caused by the vaccine so far:0. Johnston's story is a blatant untruth.
Drayson seems to think that a reference to the Government/NHS "insisting" that the vaccine is safe makes stories such as this ok. I find this attitude surprisingly naive for any adult, let alone one who has been a businessman and is now a Government Minister. Whenever the tabloids refer to this government "insistance" they never give the reasons for it. When this "insistance" is referred to after references to alleged side-effects of the vaccine, "insists" becomes a very emotionally-loaded term. What it means in this context is "keeps repeating despite our evidence". This is doubtless intentional because it suits these nespapers' real agenda which is to bash the Government.
Lest you think that I am exaggerating here, let me remind you of Martin Robbins' discovery that the Irish edition of the Daily Mail is attacking the Irish Government for not rolling out the HPV vaccine. Clearly they do not believe what they are writing. If they want to knock the Government, that is their choice in a free society. It should not be open to them to achieve this aim by telling lies that, if believed, will kill hundreds of people per year.
Lessons learned? Regrettably, I think not.
http://layscience.net/trackback/663
Frankly, Lord Drayson's definition of the word "frankly" appears to be 180º contrary to the "honest" and "open" meaning assumed by most English speaking users of that word. Either that or his grasp of what I presume to be his mother tongue is exceedingly poor - which would be one explanation for his frankly odd assessment of the quality of science reporting in the British press.
One could otherwise be forgiven, in the light of his rose tinted other-worldly view, that Lord Drayson might have some undisclosed relationship with the press - such is his insistence that what, to normally sighted people, is so obviously a cesspit is in fact a facsimile of Kew Gardens or the Chelsea Flower Show. Something doesn't smell quite right about Lord Drayson.
In twitter exchanges I've had with him, Lord Drayson still believes his #scidebate position, that science reporting is mostly great; he points to public awareness surveys reporting that most people believe they are well informed by the media as 'evidence' for this. This rather like asking the congenitally blind whether they're happy with their opticians.
He also points to increased science funding & ringfencing as 'evidence' that the govt is delivering on basic science, and doesn't seem to want to engage with acusations that UK academic science is becoming a pharma subsiduary.
Still, by the sound of tory's opinion on science, it could be better the devil you know...
"lorddrayson:Frankly? Yes. It says "most unlikely that the HPV vaccine is the cause of death""
I think I understand Drayson's position now. He's a superhuman being whose mind operates free of normal human emotions. Like Yoda.
For him, a banner headline reading PARENTS' REVOLT AFTER GIRL DIES IN CANCER JAB HORROR has no more emotional impact than a sentence tucked away at the bottom, in quotation marks, "most unlikely that the HPV vaccine is the cause of death". He reads all and he evaluates it all with Zen-like neutrality.
The Express (and everyone else) was basically running around in a mad panic and then eventually telling onlookers "Don't panic! Everything is fine!"
Big respect for engaging with us on Twitter though.
I've been impressed with Lord Drayson's willingness to engage with people on Twitter. I've disagreed with much of what he's said, mind.
E.g., during the conversation Lord Drayson had with Antibody Boy I butted in to argue that the Public Attitudes Survey tells us how people perceive the media rather than whether media reports are actually accurate. As Antibody Boy then pointed out on Twitter, the PAS is a "woolly metric", people may not be able to judge whether information in an article is reliable/accurate, and the response of many to the MMR scare is just one example of people being unable to make this judgement call.
ETA: I meant to say that I think Lord Drayson is trying to support science journalists specifically. I have a problem with science journalism partly because so much of it is written by people who aren't specialist reporters. While Lord Drayson may take the narrow view of science journalism being "what is written by science journalists", I would argue that some of the worst offences are committed by editors, sub-editors, and lifestyle journalists. Arguing that science journalism in this country is of good quality because specialist reporters are doing a decent job requires one to ignore an awful lot of terrible science journalism that is the responsibility of non-specialists.
Surveying lay-consumers of mainstream media about whether they feel informed about science is like asking fundamentalist Christians if they feel their church keeps them well informed on issues of biology.
Hello bloggers
I appreciate that you take issue with Dr Halvorsen. But can I point that he says what he says based on the 6 years study of the relevant medical research for his book The Truth about Vaccines, and over 25 years as a GP. In the interest of science, and fairness, you may want to read his full arguments first. He is one of the few people who has reservations about vaccines that pro-vaccine experts are happy to debate the issue with.
Kind regards, Karen Woods
Gibson Square Publishers
Karen, perhaps you meant this comment for the other post on Dr Halvorsen. Nevertheless, as its here, I'll answer it here.
Dr Halvorsen's "research" consists of looking up stuff so he could write a book, one which he is trying to market at every single opportunity.
Others' "research" (including mine) consists of laboratory, clinical, and epidemiological studies in the fields of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases. This research is published in peer-reviewed science journals and is not sold to the public for profit.
It is difficult to read one of his apologists use words such as "in the interests of science and fairness" and not feel a degree of nausea.
If there's one thing that really irks me about people who use the "Halvorsen's a GP, therefore he's an expert on vaccines" line it's that they forget about the fact that he has a business selling a (totally unnecessary) rival vaccination schedule to worried parents, so has a potential vested interest in making people unnecessarily worried.
His position represents a conflict of interests, not a position of authority.
I also refer you to this: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2151800
Michael: "If there's one thing that really irks me about people who use the "Halvorsen's a GP, therefore he's an expert on vaccines" line"
GPs aren't necessarily experts on vaccines anyway - immunologists are. Very few GPs will have the same level of understanding as an expert immunologist.
The big and rather obvious flaw with an appeal to Halvorsen's "expertise" is that the majority of people with equal or greater qualifications than him disagree with his views. By Karen's own logic, we should assume they're right.
Martin is the editor of layscience.net.
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Karen's been rather busy, that comment is appearing all over the blogosphere. If "The Truth About Vaccines" were based on the relevent medical research it would be pretty short:
@JQH
At the risk of feeding the anti-vaxx trolls, I'd say:
Chapter I
Accept that everything you do, eat, drink, etc carries a relative risk.
Although vaccines can have side effects, can exascerbate underlying medical conditions and can experience problems with contamination just as any drug or foodstuff, these problems are either so mild or so infrequent that, on balance, provided the chain of research and development has operated as planned, they are currently the best way to prevent the most deaths and loss of quality of life resulting from preventable diseases.
Chapter II
Get vaccinated, listen to your healthcare provider for what to expect. Find out more if confused, worried or interested.
The End
I get a bit worried that the anti-vaxxers & the media end up causing us, in refuting their bullshit, to be a tad over-confident & to assume all vaccines/all batches are perfectly safe. Milk is 'safe', but to err is human: contaminated bottles hit the shelves every day. People end up in serious trouble from previously undiagnosed milk allergies. So its a bit reckless to just laugh off concerns.
e.g. For all we knew, when that story broke, that batch of Cervarix may well have been contamined. Or the vaccine may well have had serious side effects that were missed in trials; people seemed suprised that it had "never been tested on this many people before" - how could it have?
All we can ever do is point to relative risk, but that's cold comfort for deaths or complications arising from genuine problems or errors.
I'll shut up now, before I get people wondering if I am an anti-vaxx mole.