Barr/Director of the Society of Homeopaths Threatens Libel Action Against Offit

[Guest guest]

GREAT news

" According to a BMJ

news

report,

Barr threatened libel action over a single sentence in the

book that claimed that, as a solicitor, he had personally paid

Wakefield money to “carry out a study for the purpose of the MMR

litigation”. "

Let's get it off the shelves in the US

Need more of this - there has been so much libel and slander

all we hear is 'their' shrill noise

Great going - I didn't know you were the Director of the Society

of Homeopaths,. How did that come about?

Sheri

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2011/03/director-of-the-society-of-homeopaths-threatens-libel-action-against-paul-offit.html

Director of the Society of Homeopaths Threatens Libel Action

Against OffitMarch 4, 2011

By Le

Canard Noir

In today’s issue of Spiked, you can read a

review of a new book by Offit entitled Deadly Choices: How

The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. However, if you live in

the UK, the review is all you can read, as publication of the book has

been stopped after the publishers were threatened with a libel

action.

The book is an account of the rise of the anti-vaccination movement. In

particular, the high profile and showbiz version of it that is emerging

strongly in the United States, with stars such as McCarthy, Jim

Carrey and Oprah Winfrey all fuelling the fire of fear.

In his Spiked article, Fitzpatrick describes how anyone

who dares stand up against the cabal of celebrity know-nothings is likely

to face “intimidation, threats of litigation and ad hominem

attacks”.

It is therefore not surprising that Offit himself is facing a legal

challenge to his book in the UK – the natural home of the misconceived

libel case.

According to a BMJ

news

report,

Barr threatened libel action over a single sentence in the

book that claimed that, as a solicitor, he had personally paid

Wakefield money to “carry out a study for the purpose of the MMR

litigation”.

Barr, who is

currently a Director of the Society of Homeopaths, an organisations

whose members

promote

their own alternatives to MMR, was the solicitor who was at the heart of

the MMR scare with Wakefield.

In the 90’s, Barr began acting for the JABS support group, set up to help

parents who believed their children had been harmed by vaccines,

and started to look for ways that the parents could gain compensation. He

was able to ensure that legal aid was available for them. The only

problem was that there was no evidence that MMR caused any of the

problems the parents were sure were caused by the vaccine.

To get around that problem, Barr came up with a pioneering approach. He

applied to legal aid to get funding to do some clinical studies into

associations between the vaccine and problems such as autism. He formed a

partnership with

a sympathetic doctor called Wakefield who was paid £150 per hour

for his time.

The story is now well known: Wakefield published paper and claimed a link

between MMR and autism.That paper has since been shown to be

fraudulent. The

BMJ described the whole affair as a ‘scam’. Wakefield failed to disclose

the vast financial interests involved. He failed to disclose that he had

patented his own measles vaccines that might be used if MMR could be

discredited. The data given the paper has also since been shown to be

inconsistent with hospital records – “no single case can the medical

records be fully reconciled with what was published”.

The chilling effects of English libel laws must make publishers very wary

of tackling issues where people are known to be routinely attacked by

vested interests, lobby groups and cranks.

As Deer

said, “the

Barr-Wakefield deal was the foundation of the vaccine crisis, both in

Britain and throughout the world.” Offit’s book describes how that

manufactured scare has had huge implications for public health and is

gaining momentum through celebrity fuelled publicity. Despite the link

between MMR and autism having since been conclusively disproven, the

anti-vaccine movement appears to be unstoppable.

And so, the publishers of Offit’s book have agreed to take the sentence

out. As in all libel cases, slight slip-ups in wording can have

catastrophic consequences. Documents obtained from the UK’s Legal

Services Commission under the Freedom of Information Act, by Deer,

show huge

amounts of money (£15,882,159) being paid out and a much more complex

process than simply Barr personally paying Wakefield.

Hopefully, we will still see this book in the UK. But not after enormous

expense for the publishers. I understand review copies had been sent out

and it was ready for launch. Books don’t make an awful lot of money. The

chilling effects of English libel laws must make publishers very wary of

tackling issues where people are known to be routinely attacked by vested

interests, lobby groups and cranks. Publishers can rarely afford to

defend even frivolous libel cases – and pulping books will destroy all

profits.

That is why the anti-vaxxers must be very happy about this. They do not

want you hearing any alternatives to their shrill message. And as Offit

states, that is a position that threatens us all.

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Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

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