‘Baloney’ – the Mail’s campaign against life saving MMR vaccine

Media Integrity

MMR safe? Baloney, according to Melanie Phillips.

MMR safe? Baloney, according to Melanie Phillips.

The consequences of this sort of scaremongering about MMR and autism are currently being felt in Wales. 900 people have been infected with measles in Swansea alone – measles is a disease that can cause brain damage and death in children – and there are fears that London could be the next city to suffer an outbreak.

The reemergence of measles as a threat to human health is due to parents not getting their children vaccinated in the past 15 years. And why haven’t parents been getting their children vaccinated? As the Times reports today: “one million children may not have received the full course of the MMR vaccine, in large part because of discredited fears it leads to autism“.

Now who would have spread such nonsense?

In her 2005 article (where the ‘baloney’ headline comes from), Melanie Phillips referred to “a frenzy of gloating by Wakefield’s discredited enemies” and “ripe denunciations of those like this newspaper who took his concerns seriously and demands that we apologise for creating a scare that left children unvaccinated and at risk of measles, mumps and rubella”.

I haven’t noticed much gloating. What is there to gloat about? Measles can kill. It’s not about political point scoring, it’s about what’s true and what isn’t, and the responsibility the press has not to mislead the public on such grave issues.

An apology would be appropriate, though – an apology for promoting discredited nonsense long after it has been discredited, putting the lives of children at risk.

Disclaimer: To give them some credit, the Mail has taken the measles outbreak seriously enough to look for someone to blame.

Mail blame the French

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19 Responses to “‘Baloney’ – the Mail’s campaign against life saving MMR vaccine”

  1. SadButMadLad

    I’m sure if we looked at all the newspaper’s reports about MMR/Autism in 2005 we would find just about all (except maybe the Morning Star) reporting that Wakefield was being witch hunted over his report and that there really was something in it. Melanie Phillips was just going with the flow. She is wrong now, as the flow is going the other way. She is entitled to have a difference of opinion, maybe even a different view of the same data massaged in different ways to produce different results.

    Having a different opinion is fine. Even taking the piss out of someone whose opinion is different to the consensus (cf Climate Change) is fine. But implying that she and the Mail are the sole causes for all the suffering in Wales (and death) due to the decisions by parents not to follow the authoritative advice by the government is stupid.

  2. SimonDv

    SadButMadLad – do you work for the Daily Mail? You may well find similar articles in other papers, but the Daily Mail ran the most high profile campaign against immunisation, with Melanie Philips spearheading the refusal to take any notice of scientific evidence.

  3. GarryB

    I don’t consider Phillips or the Mail anywhere near as blameless as some other posters here may suggest. Most people, (especially Mail readers, don’t have the sense to understand the difference between discredited research by an individual doctor and the ‘truth’ in which ever news rag they find easiest to digest.

    As such, papers have a duty to their readership and posting ill founded sensationalist nonsense to sell papers while risking public health is disgraceful.

    Lets be clear, Phillips is a ‘professional’ journalist and know how to research. She would know that the vast weight of evidence was against this claim. She is not, ‘having an opinion’. She is pedaling nonsense to sell papers and endangering children to do so.

  4. judyk113

    Let’s not forget that the Mail along with the BBC also gave a platform to Ken Livingstone, who actually advised parents in his then capacity as the Mayor of London not to take the risk of having the MMR jab on BBC Radio 5:

    Ken Livingstone last night advised parents to shun the MMR vaccine.

    The London Mayor said he would make sure his unborn child was given single jabs when the time came.

    He said he believed MMR, which has linked to increased rates of autism and bowel disease among children, did present a risk.

    In his role as Mayor, he was advising London parents not to take that risk but to pay for single jabs instead.

    Mr Livingstone told BBC Radio 5 Live that he believed injecting babies with three powerful viruses at once could overload their immune systems.

    ‘It seems to me that a child of 14 months is incredibly vulnerable,’ he said. ‘Why whack them all into a child at the same time?

    ‘There is no way I would inflict that risk on a child.

    ‘Until it can demonstrate beyond doubt that the MMR jab is safe, the Government should make single jabs available.

    ‘They say risk is minuscule, but that does not mean it’s safe.’

    He added that ‘Government scientists’ could no longer be trusted to tell the truth in the wake of the BSE scandal.

    ‘This whole debate is all about administrative convenience,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of a huge saving of time and money rather than having to chase people up to make sure they get them all separately.’

    The 57-year-old politician, whose partner, Emma Beal, is expecting a baby, said he was not talking as an individual but as a Mayor advising on health matters.

    Ken Livingstone is currently on the Labour NEC. Will you be calling for him to apologise for misusing his then Mayoral office as false authority to put parents off having their children given MMR vaccine?

  5. Matt Foster

    Private Eye has a massive part to play in this too, though?

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