Journalist for a Change

I do love it when journalists make a change. Here we are warming up to our little campaign, and the first spring flowers are starting to show in the papers. Nothing to do with us, of course, but today’s article in the ‘independent’ by Jeremy Laurance, is so aptly titled: “The terrible harm that alternative medicine can do”. Couldn’t have put it better me old self! That’s Eloquence. Mind you, having it tucked between articles on ‘The 10 best office chairs’ and ‘the 10 best sex toys’ doesn’t do it any favours.

Never mind that he has cobbled together a whole lot of ‘cut and paste’ from stuff that’s so old it has a thin fungal layer growing over it. And obviously he can’t much tell the difference between his elbow, herbalism, nutrition and homoeopathy. Who cares! It’s the headlines that do the damage, and that’s what we get paid for.

Anyways, I got to thinking about it, and maybe that level of article is just a bit too simplistic. I mean even Joe Public, or come to think of it even an Independent reader, would find that article a bit naive. Especially when any one with two pence of brain can see the damage that pharmaceuticals do every day – I mean that’s what I call REAL damage.Laurance talks about some Ugandan doctor’s therapy using vitamins for cancer. Well the only negative proof he has is that the Government refused to give him a license (surprise!). So I liked the way he converted that into ‘The Terrible Damage of Alternative Medicine’- must remember to use that trick. Good thing most of the readers don’t look at articles like this one, cause then they would really see damage, Rambo style, ha-ha! (Oh go on, have a look, just don’t pass it on, ok):

Click to access cancer-treatments-nexus.pdf

But the real genius stroke is mixing homoeopathy in with beetroot therapy! Now that’s journalism – bring it on.

Like I said, it is good to see a journalist making a change. Just compare his previous article re drug company sponsorship – see below. I mean he mentions SAS but he obviously forgot to look at our sponsor page. Way to go, Laurance!

Why NICE gets blasted – and drugs companies get a free pass

By Jeremy Laurance

Drug companies have always bought influence by sponsoring patient groups (see today’s page one story in the Independent). How much influence do they wield? If your charity depends for half its income on the industry then it is harder to argue, as Timothy Statham, chief executive of the National Kidney Federation, does in a comment posted below my story, that “the receiving charity would never allow such sponsorship to influence the way it represents its patients’ interests.”  To most people that would represent a conflict of interest at the very least, which ought to be declared.

Larger charities, such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Alzheimer’s Society, now make the sources of their funding clear. But the smaller charities, who often make the most noise, are less transparent. Is transparency enough? It is a good first step, but the question still remains whether groups that accept funding from the drug industry are prepared to challenge it. The evidence suggests not (and this is as true of the large charities as of the small ones). How else can one explain the one sided nature of the debate about the cost of cancer and other drugs, which has seen opprobrium heaped on NICE while the drug industry and the prices it charges have escaped criticism?