DEER
STALKING and MMR
Private
Eye (London) December 10 2004
Sir,
Bitterness
oozes from every line of Private Eye's
attack on me (Eye
1120), essentially for my having the temerity to
expose the facts that lurk behind a campaign by
Private Eye and certain other publications to
generate aggressive, cheap, copy by knocking the MMR
vaccine.
The
Eye attacks me for my Channel 4 Dispatches
documentary of November 18, which revealed some of
the embarrassments at the heart of an effort by a
small group of nameable individuals who have tried to
damage public confidence in MMR. This follows similar
attacks on me in Private Eye earlier this year after
my Sunday Times journalism led to the retraction of
published claims of a possible link between MMR and
autism.
In
neither case did Private Eye attempt to contact me -
perhaps for the purpose of asking for my evidence,
or, heaven forbid, getting my response to what it
proposed to publish.
If
Private Eye won’t engage with a journalist,
perhaps it might engage with the concerns of the
parents who featured in our programme: one couple
whose daughter died horrifically from measles; and
another who mistakenly blamed themselves for their
daughter’s autism, after being led to believe by
media such as yours that it may have been their own
decision over vaccination that was responsible for
her disorder.
There
can be few subjects laying a greater responsibility
on those who seek to intervene with apparent
authority. If Private Eye can’t engage with
evidence that, in my opinion, shames its reputation,
it’s time it joined its former allies in certain
newspapers, and if not apologise for its role in the
MMR scare, then at least move on.
BRIAN
DEER
Twenty
Twenty Television, London NW1.
