On the
Guardian Comment is Free (CiF) internet pages on Saturday January 5,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/05/1
there was an exchange about my recent short book, Cultural
Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Dr Ben Goldacre, Quackbusting and
Corporate Science.
As I pointed out in the pre-publication publicity this was the fourth
book I have written which follows the growth of the corporate science
lobby and the intervention of vested interests in medical and science
policy. This Lobby has grown more influential and become more
effective since New Labour came to power in 1997.
I have
no intention of joining in this hand-grenade bun fight on the
internet pages of The Guardian.
I am a part of the serious opposition to the corporate science lobby
and have no intention of getting involved in vituperate exchanges on
their turf. As in the paper itself, on the CiF site, the editors and
owners of the Guardian sit back surveying the wreckage that Goldacre
is causing without the feeling the need for any critical
intervention.
I have
chosen to make my remarks about the exchanges on (CiF) and the whole
position of the Guardian newspaper, in the Zeus newsletter and the
One Click site. I would be pleased if people were to circulate
this brief defence of my book on as many sites as possible.
I am under no
illusion about the problems inherent in tackling the subjects that I
have chosen to investigate and write about. The people and
organisations I have looked at are immensely powerful and care
nothing about using any tactics to foreclose the opposition. When I
wrote and then published Dirty Medicine, Duncan Campbell at
that time a member of the Campaign Against Health Fraud (now called
HealthWatch) managed, with the judicious use of solicitors letters
that I had already answered and nullified, to frighten retailers into
not stocking the book, some journals into not publishing reviews and
finally the books printers into not printing a second edition. The
‘straight’ world published no reviews of the book, and it
was effectively left uncommented upon in all the ‘straight’
media. Years after its publication Jerome Burne managed to get a
story in the Guardian magazine that looked in an unbiased
manner at the content of the book.
I did find
out not long after the book was published that lobbying organisations
and orthodox medical Institutions and groups, especially those that
contained lobby members, had decided on a policy of not mentioning
the book in any manner. As it happened the then Chair of HealthWatch,
Thurston Brewen, did give notice of another strategy which was then
being resolved. Speaking after a radio programme with one of the
other participants who asked about the book, he said venomously that
it was a ‘Nazi book’. At the time, I couldn’t
really understand this but later when Duncan Campbell told an
interviewer that I was funded by pharmaceutical companies, I began to
catch on.
The lobby
will first do anything to avoid any critical mention of my work, if
they fail in this they will try and dismiss it with outrageous lies
while refusing to address the content. In 2003, I wrote SKEWED, a
book predominately about those people and organisations who have
suggested that people with ME, CFS or Gulf War Syndrome had ‘false
illness beliefs’ and were actually mentally ill. I called a
press conference launch for this book at a London Hotel and though
some fifty activists and interested parties attended only one
journalist from the Ecologist turned up and he later refused to write
a review. It occurred to me after this that the psychiatric members
of the industrial science lobby have immense power.
My book Brave
New World of Zero Risk,
likewise received no reviews in the ‘straight media’.
Which brings me to the publication last Tuesday of my latest book
Cultural
Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, quackbusting and corporate
science.
This book evidently presented new problems for the corporate science
lobby, because as in all good political confrontations, the tidal
wave of disgust at Goldacre and the Guardian
had grown over the last couple of years with the Guardian pursuing a
kind of Animal
Farm
policy of complete support for Goldacre that allowed no critical
dissent on its pages.
It was no
surprise to me that after only two days of the book being on the
Slingshot site, there had been almost 3,000 (after 5 days 5,000)
downloads and on other sites the number of downloads had been even
greater. Nor was it any surpise that I immediately received a number
of emails from individuals who were grateful that I had published
their point of view that had previously been all but censored. But I
still wondered what the Guardian would do about the book,
because after all a major part of it criticised the newspaper for
allowing Goldacre to write propaganda for industrial interests
without a murmur about journalistic standards.
On Saturday
January 5, I found out what the Guardian would do. Under the
guise of some kind of democratic intervention in the newspaper, they
now have Comment is Free (CiF), a slogan that is meant to suggest
that the Guardian has thrown open its pages to anyone who would wish
to make critical comment. In effect it is quite the opposite, for the
internet site actually estranges serious critics from the content of
the newspaper itself. Nothing in CiF has any effect upon editors or
provokes any real public response on behalf of the newspaper.
On January 5,
CIF was almost entirely preoccupied with an exchange about Cultural
Dwarfs. In this exchange, of course the Guardian escaped without
a scratch, which after all is one of the purposes of CiF. What stands
out most however, is that those who were determined to wreck my
reputation and destroy any understanding of the book, did what they
do best, misrepresented the book and tried outrageously to draw
attention away from its content.
There were
two types of response on the CiF, those who supported my work and
more specifically for the arguments that I put forward in the book,
submitted measured rational pieces. Those who for whatever
undisclosed reason were ultra critical of the books publication, who
would not counternance any of its content, refused to offer any
discussion of this content. While one might well have expected this,
it was the poisonous way in which they tried to deflect attention
that proved that they were people with some maligned purpose, who,
and one has got to be honest about this, suffer varying degrees of
mental incapacity.
There follows
some of the comments of this later group. This comment below appears
to be confusingly the mildest of the destructive strategists.
On the Guardian Comment is Free (CiF) internet pages on Saturday
January 5,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/05/1 there was an
exchange about my recent short book, Cultural Dwarfs and Junk
Journalism: Dr Ben Goldacre, Quackbusting and Corporate Science. As I
pointed out in the pre-publication publicity this was the fourth book
I have written which follows the growth of the corporate science lobby
and the intervention of vested interests in medical and science
policy. This Lobby has grown more influential and become more
effective since New Labour came to power in 1997.
I have no intention of joining in this hand-grenade bun fight on the
internet pages of The Guardian. I am a part of the serious opposition
to the corporate science lobby and have no intention of getting
involved in vituperate exchanges on their turf. As in the paper
itself, on the CiF site, the editors and owners of the Guardian sit
back surveying the wreckage that Goldacre is causing without the
feeling the need for any critical intervention.
I have chosen to make my remarks about the exchanges on (CiF) and the
whole position of the Guardian newspaper, in the Zeus newsletter and
the One Click site. I would be pleased if people were to circulate
this brief defence of my book on as many sites as possible.
I am under no illusion about the problems inherent in tackling the
subjects that I have chosen to investigate and write about. The people
and organisations I have looked at are immensely powerful and care
nothing about using any tactics to foreclose the opposition. When I
wrote and then published Dirty Medicine, Duncan Campbell at that time
a member of the Campaign Against Health Fraud (now called HealthWatch)
managed, with the judicious use of solicitors letters that I had
already answered and nullified, to frighten retailers into not
stocking the book, some journals into not publishing reviews and
finally the books printers into not printing a second edition. The
'straight' world published no reviews of the book, and it was
effectively left uncommented upon in all the 'straight' media. Years
after its publication Jerome Burne managed to get a story in the
Guardian magazine that looked in an unbiased manner at the content of
the book.
I did find out not long after the book was published that lobbying
organisations and orthodox medical Institutions and groups, especially
those that contained lobby members, had decided on a policy of not
mentioning the book in any manner. As it happened the then Chair of
HealthWatch, Thurston Brewen, did give notice of another strategy
which was then being resolved. Speaking after a radio programme with
one of the other participants who asked about the book, he said
venomously that it was a 'Nazi book'. At the time, I couldn't really
understand this but later when Duncan Campbell told an interviewer
that I was funded by pharmaceutical companies, I began to catch on.
The lobby will first do anything to avoid any critical mention of my
work, if they fail in this they will try and dismiss it with
outrageous lies while refusing to address the content. In 2003, I
wrote SKEWED, a book predominately about those people and
organisations who have suggested that people with ME, CFS or Gulf War
Syndrome had 'false illness beliefs' and were actually mentally ill. I
called a press conference launch for this book at a London Hotel and
though some fifty activists and interested parties attended only one
journalist from the Ecologist turned up and he later refused to write
a review. It occurred to me after this that the psychiatric members of
the industrial science lobby have immense power.
My book Brave New World of Zero Risk, likewise received no reviews in
the 'straight media'. Which brings me to the publication last Tuesday
of my latest book Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre,
quackbusting and corporate science. This book evidently presented new
problems for the corporate science lobby, because as in all good
political confrontations, the tidal wave of disgust at Goldacre and
the Guardian had grown over the last couple of years with the Guardian
pursuing a kind of Animal Farm policy of complete support for Goldacre
that allowed no critical dissent on its pages.
It was no surprise to me that after only two days of the book being on
the Slingshot site, there had been almost 3,000 (after 5 days 5,000)
downloads and on other sites the number of downloads had been even
greater. Nor was it any surpise that I immediately received a number
of emails from individuals who were grateful that I had published
their point of view that had previously been all but censored. But I
still wondered what the Guardian would do about the book, because
after all a major part of it criticised the newspaper for allowing
Goldacre to write propaganda for industrial interests without a murmur
about journalistic standards.
On Saturday January 5, I found out what the Guardian would do. Under
the guise of some kind of democratic intervention in the newspaper,
they now have Comment is Free (CiF), a slogan that is meant to suggest
that the Guardian has thrown open its pages to anyone who would wish
to make critical comment. In effect it is quite the opposite, for the
internet site actually estranges serious critics from the content of
the newspaper itself. Nothing in CiF has any effect upon editors or
provokes any real public response on behalf of the newspaper.
On January 5, CIF was almost entirely preoccupied with an exchange
about Cultural Dwarfs. In this exchange, of course the Guardian
escaped without a scratch, which after all is one of the purposes of
CiF. What stands out most however, is that those who were determined
to wreck my reputation and destroy any understanding of the book, did
what they do best, misrepresented the book and tried outrageously to
draw attention away from its content.
There were two types of response on the CiF, those who supported my
work and more specifically for the arguments that I put forward in the
book, submitted measured rational pieces. Those who for whatever
undisclosed reason were ultra critical of the books publication, who
would not counternance any of its content, refused to offer any
discussion of this content. While one might well have expected this,
it was the poisonous way in which they tried to deflect attention that
proved that they were people with some maligned purpose, who, and one
has got to be honest about this, suffer varying degrees of mental
incapacity.
There follows some of the comments of this later group. This comment
below appears to be confusingly the mildest of the destructive
strategists.
"Thanks for the posting the link to the "Slingshot publications"
book, Clifford G Miller - but I'm confused:
The book you recommend to us refers to what it describes as: "the
unproven science of HIV and AIDS-related illnesses", and describes the
much-ridiculed AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg as "one of the world's
leading virologists"... The book also seems to contain an endorsement
of the conspiracy theorist Matthias Rath, who has campaigned against
the public provision of anti-HIV drugs in South Africa and whose
website speaks for itself. Do you really think that a book like that
deserves to be taken seriously?"
I have noticed recently that critics of my work, have frequently
turned to an argument, which when boiled down, amounts to this: Walker
is an HIV & AIDS denialist, therefore we should believe nothing he
writes. I find this approach very interesting mainly because it is
founded on absolute untruth and can only be built using specious false
arguments.
While I was writing my book Dirty Medicine and afterwards I worked
with campaigning gay organizations that questioned the licensing,
prescription and use of the drug AZT which was manufactured at that
time by the Wellcome Foundation. AZT was, as many people have pointed
out, a classically 'bad' drug. With others I campaigned against the
marketing techniques used by the Wellcome Foundation that persuaded
gay aids groups, often with generous grant funding to back and promote
AZT.
As for the argument that HIV doesn't cause Aids related illnesses, I
never have aligned myself with any argument that denies a link between
the HIV virus and later AIDS related illnesses. I could however follow
enough of the science to understand that the matter is exceptionally
complex and there are no simple explanations as to how HIV came to be
in the public health pool, how it is passed between people, who is
affected by it and who is not and finally whether or not co-factors
exist that give rise to some people dying very quickly while other
continue to be 'long-term survivors' for decades after testing
positive. As a sceptic I obviously feel the need to ask and find
answers for such important questions.
In relation to South Africa and AIDS, I am utterly opposed to the
pharmaceutical companies using the poor of Africa as fodder for
pharmaceutical experiments of any kind, or to them off-loading useless
or unregulated out of date drugs, in African countries. And as any
sane person would, I tend toward the argument that it is prevention:
sanitary public conditions, good water and nutrition and a relief from
poverty that have to be the first building blocks in conquering
disease in Africa or anywhere else in the world.
But why should I feel the need to explain my point of view on such
matters? Perhaps it is sufficient, just to comment on this
contributors last line (Do you really think that a book like that
deserves to be taken seriously?) Presumably he actually means 'Do you
really think a book like that deserves to be read?' Perhaps it
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