© 2002 Archives of Disease in Childhood
COMMENTARY
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
When we decided to publish Clarkson and Choonara’s paper we realised that the media might misinterpret their findings, whether unwittingly or mischievously. Consequently children and their families might reasonably be alarmed or unreasonably misled. They might even stop taking their prescribed medicine if it was one mentioned as associated with an adverse reaction. We had seen, and deplored, damage done to the public health by poorly informed publicity over alleged risks of MMR vaccine after the Lancet published a contentious paper.1
We worked closely with the authors to make sure the language used was unambiguous and the conclusions borne out by the data. Nevertheless we and they realise that some doctors find it difficult enough to distinguish between a statistical association and cause-and-effect—so surely news journalists are even less likely to spot the difference.
Clarkson and Choonara provide numerous caveats. They are careful to point out that they did
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