Whacky Medicine, Independent Experts and Profit

[Huguenot]

Not one to let a point go... MMR

So it seems our independent MMR scientist (lacking peer-reviewed science but with popular support) had rubbished evidence-based-medicine for very good grounds. He...

* Established his own patented fee-paying medical alternative to MMR before his announcement undermining confidence in MMR

* Took majority funding from an anxious bereaved father looking for a legal payout

* had no paedeatric qualifications

* based his result on 12 children, of which only 8 gave permission for any sort of investigation

* had not been a clinical doctor for a number of years

* subjected children to invasive tests against their wishes

* took public money privately

Evidence if any was needed that you should always trust a maverick. Buy my book anyone? Self help group?

A radiotherapist costs six figures, give me just a hundred grand and I'll recommend a banana/garlic pasta alternative.

Or trust an engineer.

[Ladymuck]

Huguenot Wrote:

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> Evidence if any was needed that you should always

> trust a maverick. Buy my book anyone?

> Or trust an engineer.

*tutts four times*

Huguenot...come on, you can do better than this! :-S

[Huguenot]

You know I'm an IEEE qualified ingineer? ;-)

[Huguenot]

It means I swore an oath - do no illectrical.

[cate]

Wacky not whacky.

[Huguenot]

Yup, I was playing with that for a while :(

[RosieH]

I rather liked it, particularly the oath to "do no illectrical" (can you swear an oath to do no illogical though Huguenot?)

That MMR debacle got right on my tits - hurrah for the GMC

[Huguenot]

No sucking ellogical.

(Imagine it over a dictated telephone line from 8,000 miles)

[????]

I agree entirely he has caused terrible damage throgh poor science, distorted evidence and having an alternative agenda and a terryfying almost 'god given' belief in the righteousness of his cause.....not dissimilar to Tony Blair I was thinking Huguenot

[woofmarkthedog]

Again

Blair could have quelled it in seconds

C U NEX TUESDAY

W**F

[silverfox]

Hang on Huguenot, let me quote from the article you have referred us to:

"...The hearing has sat for 148 days over two and a half years and reportedly cost more than ?1m. Thirty-six witnesses gave evidence at the hearing...

The doctor, who was absent from today's GMC hearing, faces being struck off the medical register. The panel decided the allegations against him could amount to serious professional misconduct, an issue to be decided at a later date.

So, if I understand this correctly, he took on the might of the medical profession and after 148 days and a cost of more than ?1m the interim conclusion is

Quote: "...the allegations against him could amount to serious professional misconduct..."

[Huguenot]

I hear you silverfox, cooking and flaying seem to have lost their place on the retribution agenda. I know not why.

I'm not sure he actually "took on the might of the medical profession", I prefer "he made profits off the back of dead children, a tactic manifest in purveyors of snake oil".

[Ladymuck]

Huguenot Wrote:

I prefer "he made profits off

> the back of dead children, a tactic manifest in

> purveyors of snake oil".

Oh here we go again...what is it with you and snake oil anyway?

*shakes head and laughs despite herself*

[Huguenot]

Just for you LM - Snake Oil

[Ladymuck]

Huguenot Wrote:

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> Just for you LM - Snake Oil

*tongue in cheek coupled with an irresistible hint of sarcasm*

Huguenot, your generosity knows no bounds.

[TE44]

Section 35?This exempts information held by a government department if it relates to the formulation or development of government policy. Section 35 is a qualified exemption. We have considered carefully whether the public interest in disclosing the information overrides the public interest in maintaining the exemption and withholding the information. We recognise there is a general public interest in the disclosure of information as greater transparency makes Government more accountable and we also recognise there is a public interest in being able to assess the quality of information which is used in policy formulation.

However, against this good government depends on good decision making and there is a clear public interest in ensuring that decisions are made based on the best advice available and a full consideration of all the options. Not only is it important that Research Councils provide us with full and detailed information but it is also essential that policy officials are able to have a full and frank dialogue with them on budgetary issues. If details of these communications were made public we consider that the Councils might be less open with us and policy officials would not have the space to discuss such issues freely.

We have also taken into account that details of the overall strategic priorities for the research base and related funding decisions (including the rationale behind them) are set out in the "Science Budget" allocations booklet which is published after the outcome of each spending review. There follows a link to this at

http://www.dius.gov.uk/publications/URN07114.pdf

When the question has been put to the freedom of information act, "how many children have been awarded damages through the goverments vaccine damage", they refuse to answer under section 35 (above).

Why do they continue to with hold this information, it creates mistrust.

[Siduhe]

TE44, the answer you quote above appears to relate to an FOI request for communications between Research Councils (Research Councils UK?) and an arm of the government, relating to health policy and funding. If that is indeed a response to the question "how many children have been awarded damages through the government's vaccine damage scheme" - I would be complaining to the ICO that the reason given has no relation to the actual request. The ICO's website also doesn't carry any decisions relating to the actual vaccine damage scheme that I see (although there are lots of appeals against refusals of requests to provide more general info relating to vaccines and health policy).

There is however a very similar request made in 2008 here:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/mmr_vaccine_injury_compensation?unfold=1#incoming-1543

The response to this is that "There have been 5485 claims made since the Vaccine Damage Payments Scheme commenced and 927 have resulted in an award. There have been 1303 claims received since 01/01/2000, 24 of which have been successful." Does that help?

The original requestor also asked for a breakdown of sums received by successful claimants, but this could not be provided apparently because the VPU does not collate this info.

Hope this helps.

[TE44]

Thanks Siduhe, I was aware of these figures, wrong link I put above?? I believe it is extremely difficult for parents

who believe there children to be damaged by vaccines, to pursue there claim.

http://www.foiacentre.com/FOIA-news.html

If you click on foia wins mmr appeal, and then the archives, where warnings were given about the MMR in 1988,

the year my brother was born. My mother told me at that time there were two diffrent companies making the vaccines,

each with same strains except for the mumps, which had 10 times more international units of the strain,

after attending an appointment,

a health visitor made for her, to see a doctor because she was refusng to give us vaccines, he had no idea which one they used at the clinic.

[Huggers]

Am I right in thinking that in the States it is much easier to pursue and receive damages for vaccine damage as the US government accepts that there is always a tiny proprotion of damaged children built into a mass programme, but that this is worth the protection of the majority- and so treats its citizens as grown ups and pays up.

It's our government's (not party based but historic policy)vehemence that there are no links between the odd damage and a vaccine, and making parents fight so hard, that creates mistrust. They should put their hands up and say sometimes shit happens. .

[Huguenot]

I think everyone knows shit happens don't they. Except those interested in malicious litigation.

With MMR we had the equivalent of a fork in the road. The left fork runs over a cliff with a 90% permanent injury rate. The right fork has a few potholes. However, people like Wakefield tried to incentivise suing the 'right fork' decision makers because the travellers got sunburn, with the objective of getting funding for building a third road to nowhere that would leave him rich rich rich.

Vaccines are simply a lesser of two evils. Litigants need to explore their motives.

[TE44]

Hueguenot, I don't believe its as simple as thinking shit happens when it concerns your child,nor do I believe if you don't

think like that you are a malicious litagator, There are many parents fighting, not to be rich, but for the

damage vaccines have done to there children to be recognised. I think the fact the FOIA have had to fight the Dept of Health

for imformation they were withholding, leads to mistrust.

[bignumber5]

With MMR we had the equivalent of a fork in the road

Well, sort of. A fork with a big official road sign, let's call it "doctors in general", showing the endpoints of each route as we understand it, and one crackpot bumpkin chewing an ear of corn, let's call him "Wakefield", insisting that the sign was wrong, in between yelling the words Squeal Piggy and pointing enthusiastically to one limb of the fork. And each driver ("parent", perhaps?) had a choice to make. The assumption that the roadsign was wrong because one cannot, under such circumstances, trust sign makers, who must be in league with people that financially benefit from the use of the right indicator, shows not only how daft a number of drivers are for believing the loon over the sign, but how little they understand the process of sign writing, and the relationship between sign writers and indicator-makers, perhaps confusing this country with another.

I think I've pushed the fork analogy as far as it will go.

If, however (as Ben Goldacre suggests) one is simply so arrogant that one feels that one can evaluate the standards and rigour of medical research in a way which doctors cannot (a skill which is not easy, and which is taught to doctors in extreme depth), one cannot then blame doctors for ones choices.

In fairness to the individual parents, the purpetrators of this act of extreme arrogance were, in fact, the journalists involved, so caught up in their unwillingness to accept that perhaps their degree in English Lit did not equip them with the ability to critically appraise medical literature that they started a national health scare in the name of headlines rather than recognise their limitations. True reform of the system, in addition to the GMCs recent action, could include some sort of penalty for the science (i use the term loosely) correspondants for failing to adequately appraise the literature prior to starting a national panic based on it. The fact that this will not happen demonstrates clearly that the mainstream media do not, for all their swagger and bullshit, consider themselves to be expert, and certainly not responsible to the healthcare needs of the public. Such is the endpoint of power without responsibility.

But the responsibility of the parent is actually to make a simple choice: to take your medical advice from the tabloids, or your GP... is that a hard choice, really?

Noone is suggesting that medical opinion should not be challenged. Far from it: new research in an area of medicine sparks debate, evaluation of current practice methods, and even a complete overhaul in practice if the evidence is compelling enough. Such a process takes up the (supposedly) spare time of many, perhaps even most, clinicians. Side projects, additional courses, peer teaching, audit, journal clubs; these things are all going on when you are not in your GPs office. But the first step, the first step, in the process is to critically appraise the source of the discussion. It's not easy. That's why to get from layperson to independently practicing GP takes a decade and a half.

So if we can learn one thing from this whole process, if we can be big enough as a nation to treat this as a learning opportunity rather than just protesting how difficult all of our positions were and pointing the finger, perhaps it can be this: the men and women charged with being our source of information on such matters are not, in fact, all in it together for some diabolical, financially motivated reason. Occasionally an extreme point of view will come to light from within the profession; if it has any basis in reality, it will come to light safely, if it's a nonsense then it won't. Maybe, in insisting that our doctors are so well trained, we might admit that what they do is specialised, and that they may even be good at it; that we cannot do it ourselves over newspapers and lattes, and try to trust them to do what they are trained to do.

[RosieH]

What BN5 said. A lot.

['bout now]

x 1 billion

[????]

well said big...but the problem is there's a scary amount of people who seem to think their 'opinion' (which normally means that of someone with an agenda and a website) is better than the scientific process/peer group review etc ie proper science (with its flaws) and they will spout 'well that's your opinion, here's another' where they then abstract something from some dodgy website that also says the Holocaust is a fake etc. It's difficult to debate with flat earthers - as a similar thread in the family room on Homeopathic alternative 'treatement' to vaccination shows. The stats on the increase in Measles etc since this awful man published his 'laughable' findings are there for all to see. Some don't want to.

He should be imprisoned, not just struck off.