Tony Hatfield's Retired Ramblings

Why the Observer MUST Get the MMR Story Right.

Yesterday's two articles in the Observer concerning Andrew Wakefield and the MMR vaccine were rightly panned by many bloggers. In the lead- as usual- is Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science". It seems from his blog that Dr Fiona Scott is now... Read more →

What the Observer's MMR Piece Didn't Tell You!

Next week Dr Andrew Wakefield and two of his colleagues from the Royal Free Hospital face the General Medical Council. Wakefield has been accused of acting " dishonestly" when he presented a piece of work to the Lancet which suggested... Read more →

Well Done the NHS!

A few days after my last post, my 84 year-old mother fell down at home. She appeared confused, but in no pain. The " out of hours" GP was called. He arrived within an hour and took another couple of... Read more →

Tony Bland Revisited?

I heard the interview on the Today Programme this morning with the husband of woman in a persistent vegetative state (pvs). The interview can be heard again here or you can download an mp3 version from here. The problem faced... Read more →

McTeeth's Revenge.

When I was a kid, I was told never the take the mick out of other people's misfortune. I should have known when I wrote this about that McKeith woman I would suffer! Sure enough, within two or three days... Read more →

The Mozart Effect ® and Other ®Tosh

Here, my old chum Dr Crippen writes in praise of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. “His favourite opera, however, surely the yardstick, the most perfect opera ever written, is Figaro. Figaro will be the one he will keep on the Desert... Read more →

All I want for Christmas is a Placebo

You've got to take your hat off the G.P "Thersites" here. Not only has he to help stock up on the 6000 calories a day, I understand, is the average Brit's consumption over the holidays but like the rest of... Read more →

Flipper

Thanks to A Plague of Opinion here for pointing me to this. Apparently, old flipper can do wonders for you. OK, it must be a pleasant sensation swimming in warm waters and playing with these intelligent mammals. But the BBC... Read more →

Melanie- you're just plain wrong.

The death agony of the anti-MMR campaign: A wonderful piece by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick here kills off Melanie Phillips' pretentions to scientific writing and a cheerleader for the wretched Dr Wakefield. Read more →

Melanie and the MMR vaccine.

On Wednesday this week Ben “Bad Science” Goldacre- there’s a link to his blog from this site- brutally pulled apart “Mad” Melanie Phillips’ piece in Monday’s Mail on one of her pet subjects - the MMR vaccine and Dr Wakefield's... Read more →