Painfully ill-informed, scare-mongering, rude and irresponsible - Jeni Barnett vs MMR
I just read this well written post, linked to by Stephen Fry about a radio broadcast hosted by Jeni Barnett, regarding her views on the MMR vaccine. I managed to find the recordings of the show on you tube, and listened to the whole lot. (Part 1,2,3,4, 5 - about 40 mins in total)
I found it to be a little one-sided, and when the presenter was speaking to someone who agreed with her, she gave them leave to talk freely, but the ones who were against here (seemingly informed, and from a medical background) were cut off mid-sentance and not allowed to voice their views.
I was particularly appalled at Jeni Barnett's closing conversation (Part 5) with a Nurse who administers the MMR vaccine, and seemed to know what she was talking about, who was cut off, and accused of frightening people (along with the department of health). This actually made me quite angry!
I happily notice that this has been brought up as an Early Day Motion in parliament against the dangers of ill-informed media scaremongering.
Some interesting information about this from the author of original post is here.
Comments
- Ben Goldacre's blog is a wonder to behold indeed, as is his weekly column in the Guardian on a Saturday: it's one of the reasons I buy the paper. Just don't get me started on the whole Jeni Barnett thing. She really is a witless plank. It's also interesting to read what the original source of the whole MMR issue is: it only sampled about a dozen subject and was shot through full of holes. But then morons in the media with littl or no grasp of scientific method see fit to critique science. Why is that? - Darren Stephens on Thu Feb 12 2009 01:10:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)