By John Stone
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/08/whats-behind-ben-goldacre-.html
After years of secrecy on the matter confirmation has finally come
to light that Guardian ‘Bad Science’ journalist Ben Goldacre is the
son of Oxford professor of public health Michael J Goldacre (HERE).
Prof Goldacre has been director since 1986 of the UK Department
Health funded Unit of Healthcare Epidemiology (HERE).
The family relationship is mentioned in a review of Goldacre
junior’s Bad Science book in the peer-review journal Medicine,
Conflict and Survival (25, p.255-7, 2009)by Dr Ian Fairlie,
but there has been a long term lack of candour about the matter.
While the reasons for the secrecy remain unknown it is possible that
if the relationship, which has never before been mentioned in the
mainstream media or scientific publications, had been common
knowledge it might have raised questions about the independence of
the younger Goldacre’s views. Goldacre senior was a co-author of a
study of the effects of GlaxoSmithKline’s notorious Urabe strain
version of MMR, Pluserix, after it was suddenly withdrawn from
public use in 1992 (HERE):
the Unit has produced several MMR related studies.
Ben Goldacre’s column which started in 2003 has featured his largely
epidemiological approach to health issues, most prominently MMR and
autism. Coming apparently from nowhere, journalistically speaking,
he was promoted to the role of an “opinion leader” from the outset.
His early article MMR: Never mind the facts won the accolade of the
GlaxoSmithKline sponsored Association of British Science Writers’
award for the best feature article of 2003.
The article, however, used flawed epidemiology for which he later
offered no defence (HERE),
as well as including an anonymous attack on Andrew Wakefield by one
of Wakefield’s colleagues. This was just the first of several
notable interventions Ben Goldacre in the MMR affair. A
stock-in-trade has been his generalised attacks on parents of MMR
damaged children. His Bad Science blogsite for a long time
offered this intimidatory advice to would-be contributors:
“..personal anecdotes about your MMR tragedy will be deleted for
your own safety”
(HERE)
A fundamental of Ben Goldacre’s journalistic method is the ad
hominem and he always talks across opponents: he can always depend
on the greater prominence of his published views and he never
answers the many awkward criticisms.
The Goldacre dynasty seem to be one of several with on-going
connections with the MMR affair:
- *Dr Evan Harris, the former MP, who accompanied Brian Deer to make accusations against Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, and led a debate under privilege in the House of Commons making further allegations of unethical practices (HERE) is the son of paediatrician Prof Frank Harris who sat on the Committee on Safety in Medicines and the adverse reactions to vaccine committee ARVI in the early 1990s when Pluserix MMR vaccine had to be withdrawn (HERE) , (HERE) , (HERE).
- *Paul Nuki, the Sunday Times features editor, who hired journalist Brian Deer to investigate Andrew Wakefield with the statement “I need something big” on “MMR” ( HERE) was the son of Prof George Nuki who was on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when MMR and Pluserix were introduced in the late 1980s.
- *The Davis brothers Sir Crispin and Sir Nigel. Sir Crispin was CEO of Reed Elsevier, publishers of the Lancet, when Lancet editor Richard Horton denounced Andrew Wakefield to the BBC but was also a non-executive director of MMR defendants GlaxoSmithKline, and Sir Nigel was the High Court judge who upheld the Legal Services Commission to withhold funding from the MMR case a week later without disclosing a family connection to the case (HERE). Sir Crispin gave evidence against Andrew Wakefield to a Commons committee as CEO of Reed Elsevier, cross-examined by Evan Harris, in which he neither disclosed his GSK directorship or his brother’s judicial involvement in the case (HERE).
- * In 2009 James Murdoch CEO of News International, publishers of the Sunday Times joined the board of GSK, with a responsibility to "review external issues that might have the potential for serious impact upon the group's business and reputation" (HERE). This was immediately followed by renewed “overkill” type attacks in Times newspapers on Andrew Wakefield by Brian Deer and others.
For several years Ben
Goldacre kept his distance from the Deer allegations against
Wakefield, preferring to use the epidemiological literature to
combat and deride concern about MMR and autism. In another ABSW
award winning article Don’t dumb me down sponsored by
Syngenta he wrote:
“people periodically come up to me and say, isn't it funny how
that Wakefield MMR paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And
I say: no. The paper always was and still remains a perfectly good
small case series report, but it was systematically misrepresented
as being more than that, by media that are incapable of interpreting
and reporting scientific data.”
(HERE)
Remarkably, Evan Harris - who originally made the allegations about
scientific fraud against Wakefield and colleagues under privilege in
a House of Commons debate in March 2004 – was on the panel of
judges that made the award (HERE).
By this stage, however, Goldacre had “dumbed” himself “down” and welcomed the verdict (HERE). In retrospect this looks like nothing so much as an elaborate ploy in which the medical and political establishment were giving themselves a policy in case the GMC failed to bring in a guilty verdict. If this had happened the polemical position evolved by Ben Goldacre over seven years, based on dodgy epidemiology, might have provided the main defence for MMR.
There have been a number of other key moments when Ben Goldacre has intervened in the MMR debate. In 2005 Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, alone in the journalistic profession, correctly spied the weakness in the newly published Cochrane review of MMR (HERE). While this had been successfully spun to give the impression MMR was safe, the real findings were that after sifting 5000 related studies and reviewing the 31 best the evidence base for MMR safety was “largely inadequate”, while individually several of the autism studies had come in for scathing criticism, and none of them was strong (HERE). Goldacre berated Phillips for knowing nothing about science, but the reality was that she was the only journalist who had taken the trouble to read the small print and dared to say the emperor had no clothes. There is no doubt in this attack that ad hominem prevailed over substantive discussion of the science (HERE). There is a dangerous message here from Goldacre of ‘leave it to the scientists’, but scientists are human, subject to institutional bullying and manipulation: many will not speak up against the powerful interests, or they speak, as did Cochrane, “with forked tongue”. Goldacre’s attack on Phillips sounded plausible, but the problem with the literature that Cochrane reviewed was not that the science was “imperfect” as Goldacre put it, it was that it was mostly no good whatsoever. And hiding behind a few weasel statements Cochrane had said just that.
In 2007 Goldacre led an attack via the Guardian on its sister newspaper the Observer contributing to the dismissal of its editor, Roger Alton. The Observer had published ahead of the GMC hearing against Drs Wakefield, Walker-Smith and Murch an account of a study which showed the autism rate amongst Cambridgeshire schoolchildren to be running at 1 in 58. One of the authors concerned about the seriousness of the situation and delays in publication had leaked an early version of the paper to the newspaper. The story was denied by lead author Simon Baron-Cohen, ridiculed by Goldacre, and the Rwanda massacre denying director of Science Media Centre, Fiona Fox, organised an institutional hanging party against the newspaper. Then, a few months later, when the furore had died down, the article had been removed, the Observer editor sacked, Baron-Cohen gave a presentation at the London IMFAR conference, which showed that story had been correct all along (HERE) .
It has been a lamentable feature of Ben Goldacre’s contribution to the public discussion of science in the UK that he has everywhere generated an atmosphere of intolerance in support of his views, and rather than raise the tone of the debate it has encouraged a new kind of scientific infantilism, in which you deride your opponents and defer to authority. The ruthlessness of this power was demonstrated when LBC radio journalist Jeni Barnett questioned the heavy-hand of the MMR lobby. She could not have been proved more right when the station was inundated by protests from Goldacre’s website, LBC removed the broadcast from its website, and Goldacre arranged for Liberal-Democrat Members of Parliament to organise a motion censuring Barnett: the second signatory inevitably being Evan Harris (HERE , HERE).
A recent development in Ben Goldacre’s career has been the projection of himself as an arbiter of research ethics. It remains hard to judge the sincerity of his position. While he has recently attacked GSK over the diabetes drug Avandia (HERE) this is only after many years of controversy surrounding the product and with the US Food and Drugs Administration about to take action. Only last year he led a hostile campaign against Express journalist, Lucy Johnston, for her reporting of GSK’s HPV vaccine Cervarix. (HERE). Yet the long term efficacy of the product is still to be demonstrated, and to attack concerns about safety is to prejudice the issue in relation to those who suffer adverse effects. Goldacre’s angry denunciation is an essence no better than a public relations agenda (on behalf of whom?), and can only prejudice the science. Johnston, on the other hand, was just trying to report.
There is not a little irony in the doctor-journalist who sells ‘MMR is Safe’ T-shirts, mugs and baby-bibs from his website (HERE ) calling for an end to scientific spin (HERE). Did Cochrane say that? No, Cochrane said “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing is largely inadequate” HERE, which is quite different. The calculation apparently would appear to be that we are by now all too stupid or too intimidated to call his bluff.
I agree with Ben Goldacre, we need an end to spin and he can start at home: we not only need to know what we are being told, we also need to know why. And we can do with an end to the totalitarian tactics.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
"This was a study that criticized Pluserix and demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and aseptic meningitis."
Jake said:
"And totally played down its potential public health impact":
This article was not a 'study'; it was a government sponsored attempt to ameliorate public and medical concern about the Urabe scandal. Some 'statistics' were produced to claim that 'wild' measles was 4x more likely to cause aseptic meningitis, but they then go on to say that the diagnosed cases of aseptic meningitis were a 'chance' finding in children investigated for seizures. They failed to state that seizures was another serious side effect caused by this vaccine. The implication was that aseptic meningitis was no 'big deal' in children anyway!!
How was the aseptic meningitis diagnosed?? In exactly the same way as meningitis is always diagnosed, by a lumbar puncture or spinal tap.
This article was written in 1993, 5 years before the Wakefield et al fateful Lancet article and 17 years before Dr Wakefield and his colleague Professor Walker Smith were struck off by the GMC for, amongst other things, 'subjecting' chldren to unnecessary lumbar punctures and spinal taps. Oh the irony!!
Posted by: Jenny Allan | August 06, 2010 at 03:31 AM
I believe the Wellcome Trust severed its ties with Glaxo Wellcome in the 1990s. Interesting that they should be in partnership over a project with Merck (who obviously badly need the money). They also sponsor Ben Goldacre:
"Competing interests: BG has written newspaper articles and part of a book criticising questionable activities in the drug industry, and has a Clinical Research Training Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust."
Ben Goldacre,'Is the conflict of interest unacceptable when drug companies conduct trials on their own drugs? Yes'
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/nov27_1/b4949
Of course, I agree with what Ben Goldacre says in the article (based on an Oxford Union debate) as far as it goes, although he does not really live up to the title but simply argues that drug industry trials should be more transparent and better regulated.
As to GSK, he certainly benefitted by £2000 from their largesse in 2004.
Posted by: John Stone | August 06, 2010 at 03:28 AM
"This was a study that criticized Pluserix and demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and aseptic meningitis."
And totally played down its potential public health impact:
"Comparison of national reports of virus-positive mumps meningitis cases before and after the introduction of this vaccine indicated that the risk from wild mumps was about 4-fold higher than from vaccine."
PMID: 8096942
Posted by: Jake Crosby | August 06, 2010 at 01:14 AM
http://www.ifpma.org/index.php?id=3873
Let's not forget the priceless interview of the late Dr Maurice Hilleman by Dr Edward Shorter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edikv0zbAlU
Posted by: patrons99 | August 05, 2010 at 09:05 PM
From left to right
Pallab Ghosh - BBC Science Correspondent and Chairman of ABSW
Dr Ben Goldacre
Dr Alistair Benbow - GSK
Posted by: John Stone | August 05, 2010 at 08:01 PM
Posted by: Kendra Pettengill | August 05, 2010 at 07:38 PM
But disclosure is not enough: we also have to avoid extreme and absurd conflicts, and while it is not at all bothersome that Prof Goldacre took part in reviewing the urabe policy,it is more worrying that the lead author of the study in which he took part was Prof Elizabeth Miller who was on the committee that passed the vaccine for use in the first place:
http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@ab/documents/digitalasset/dh_095310.pdf
Again, without making any personal remarks, it is just not possible for someone to investigate themselves. Also, it is a matter of record the Prof Miller's laboratory was heavily funded by the industry:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/114/3/584#1049
To defend the public interest you need the media to be as sceptical about the Department of Health ast they are about the Ministry of Defence, and as sceptical about pharmaceutical manufacturers as they are about arms manufacturers. Instead, they now only seem concerned about offending these people.
Apart from this, looking back here at the posts criticising me I think it is noteworthy that they have focused on the potential COI issue, rather than the other matters on which I have taken Ben Goldacre to task, as if they don't need answer.
Posted by: John Stone | August 05, 2010 at 06:24 PM
“CDC Involved in a Cover Up of Miscarriages due to H1N1 Vaccines”
http://www.politicolnews.com/h1n1-vaccine/
“Flu Vaccine Suspended in Australia”
http://www.politicolnews.com/flu-vaccine-stops-in-australia/
“New seasonal flu vaccine to contain H1N1 strain”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSWLB737620100218
“Parents recount flu jab nightmare”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/29/2885884.htm
“Vaccine warning - Pandemic warning”
http://www.ken-welch.com/Commentary/Pandemic1.html
Posted by: patrons99 | August 05, 2010 at 02:24 PM
"Its impossible not to see the entire medical/pharma industry as one giant family, engaged in deceit and corruption. The rotten stench of pharmamedicine."
Pharma-medicine is like a rotten fish, that stinks from head to tail.
Posted by: patrons99 | August 05, 2010 at 01:16 PM
Why should anyone listen to a non medical person speak authoritatively on a medical subject with which he has no training, none. He cannot even prescribe an aspirin yet he is an authority on vaccines? He proffers his daddy's opinion so his daddy can get paid - even if it kills all of our children.
You people(yeah you people) that support this whack job really need to seek proffesional help, could it be that this is your twisted cry for help?
Posted by: WILLIE | August 05, 2010 at 01:03 PM
Posted by: mary podlesak | August 05, 2010 at 11:50 AM
Wonderful reporting. Thank you for putting all those names up in one article. To follow along with this web of deceit is both sad and yet, not surprising. What a shame that so many thousands of children have fallen victim to vaccine injuries due in part to these corrupt men.
Posted by: A Friend | August 05, 2010 at 11:42 AM
Hans Raible, Stuttgart, Germany
Posted by: Hans RAIBLE | August 05, 2010 at 06:20 AM
Posted by: media scholar | August 05, 2010 at 06:07 AM
Also to the psychiatrist's chair must be brought the professors ... Professors Meadow, Southall, Salisbury, Colquhoun, Greenhalgh and paediatric Professor Terence Stephenson and honorary Professors Horton and Brian Deer.
Why do they do what they do? Why did they do what they've done? Why?
Posted by: Cybertiger | August 05, 2010 at 03:01 AM
Posted by: Jim Thompson | August 04, 2010 at 09:24 PM
Jake
Posted by: Jake Crosby | August 04, 2010 at 08:56 PM
Angus
Posted by: Angus Files | August 04, 2010 at 07:27 PM
Posted by: Debra | August 04, 2010 at 07:08 PM
you wrote that, "Goldacre senior was a co-author of a study of the effects of GlaxoSmithKline’s notorious Urabe strain version of MMR, Pluserix, after it was suddenly withdrawn from public use in 1992."
This was a study that criticized Pluserix and demonstrated a link between the Urabe mumps component and aseptic meningitis. It was a contribution to vaccine safety and not part of a cover up.