Another day, another Express cancer scare/miracle cure (delete as applicable)

For three of the last five days, the Express newspapers have had front page headlines containing the word 'cancer'. On Sunday, it was their ridiculous claim that the HPV vaccine was 'as deadly as cancer', which has prompted a complaint to the PCC.

Following that health scare was the 'miracle cure' story on Monday: 'Breast cancer secrets cracked'. The article began:

Thousands of women suffering from breast cancer could benefit from new treatments to tackle recurring tumours after a major breakthrough.

Good news. But then buried in the story, the voice of reason:

Dr Helen George, Cancer Research UK’s head of science information, said: “This research is important because it offers an explanation of why some breast cancers can spread and return. But it is a very new theory, so more work is needed before we will know if it can be used to improve breast cancer treatment.”

Yes. Cancer Research's press release called it a:

provocative new theory...[that] is already stimulating international discussion.

Raising the hopes of cancer sufferers with a theory, when there are no therapies or drugs yet produced to work along the lines of that theory, is highly irresponsible. But the Express doesn't do responsible these days.

Two days later, the Express was back in 'we're all gonna die!' mode with 'Killer bug in most chickens'. Turns out, this bug is in most chickens, long has been, but cooking chicken thoroughly kills said bug.

So hold the front page with that exclusive: don't undercook your chicken.

Today, the Express was back to cancer. 'Anti-age creams cancer danger' relies on one expert from the Cancer Prevention Coalition. The scare begins:

Anti-ageing creams regularly used by millions of Britons could increase the risk of cancer, a top expert warned yesterday.

The theory is that anti-ageing creams contain Alpha Hydroxy Acids (AHAs) which speed up exfoliation and thus leave people's skin more exposed to 'toxins and sun damage'.

The Express writes:

In America, however, the ingredient was considered dangerous enough to prompt the US Food and Drug Administration to warn consumers that AHAs “could destroy the upper layers of skin, causing severe burns, swelling and pain”.

But read this section of the FDA website on AHAs and a rather different picture emerges. Such as:

studies also indicated that this increase in sensitivity is reversible and does not last long after discontinuing use of the AHA cream. One week after the treatments were halted, researchers found no significant differences in UV sensitivity among the various skin sites.

At the end of the story, the Express writes:

A spokeswoman for the Cosmetics, Toiletries and Perfumeries Association, said cosmetic firms were not required to warn consumers if their products contained AHAs but only if they contained these ingredients at such high levels they could be dangerous. She added: “There is a legal requirement for these products to be safe.”

But the CTPA have issued a statement saying:

CTPA has been misquoted by some of the media; we did not say that AHAs could be used in cosmetics at such high levels that they could be dangerous. This is simply not the case. It is known that at high concentrations irritation and peeling can occur, this is why such levels are not used in cosmetic products.

Yes it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and news about the HPV vaccine mean such stories are going to seem of interest. But why not publish some reliable, informative stories on the subject rather than raising false hopes, or pushing bogus scares?

Sunday Express scrapes the bottom of the health scare barrel

The Sunday Express may have produced the worst and the most irresponsible headline yet on the HPV vaccine story.

The story, by Lucy Johnston, doesn't remotely back up the ludicrous claim made in the headline. There certainly isn't a direct quotation in the story matching the words in quote marks in that headline. Or, indeed, anything like it.

It relies partly on Dr Richard Halverson, who has been touting his conspiracy theories (and trying to sell his book) all week.

Halverson was one of the 'experts' who frequently spoke to the media over the MMR scare, while running a private clinic offering single jabs to worried parents (reportedly to the tune of £480). According to Dr Anthony Cox, writing a couple of years ago, there was no evidence he had written any peer-reviewed papers on vaccines or vaccine safety.

He is the one referred to in the sub-head about 'new doubts raised over death of teenager'. Having no knowledge of the case other than media reports, he appears to know better than the coroner as to what killed Natalie Morton.

The other expert is Dr Diane Harper who was involved in the trials of the vaccine. She said a month ago that:

the vaccine is proven effective.

Before adding:

for most women it is safe, but there are real risks associated with it.

The Sunday Express quotes her saying:

in a small number of cases there are serious side effects.

Which still doesn't support that headline. Of course, there can be side effects with any medicine or medical procedure. But they are exceptionally rare.

So it appears the headline stemmed from this claim:

the risks – “small but real” – could be worse than the risk of developing cancer itself.

But it still doesn't say the same thing, is largely paraphrased, so we don't know what was actually said, and includes the rather crucial word 'could', which usually means 'could be but isn't'.

The number of people who may look at that Sunday Express front page and see this vaccine being compared with cancer in terms of how lethal it is, and take that on board, is hugely worrying.

Let's hope that most of them don't regard the Express as a credible source of medical advice. They shouldn't.

They should read instead official or more reliable sources of information here, here and here.

Apples and oranges; soldiers and asylum seekers

A rotten Sunday Express 'investigation' decides to cash in on the controversy of payments to injured soldiers and write some more crap about benefits to asylum seekers.

David Jarvis' article compares the two in such a manipulative and misleading way that there is no other reason for it to exist than to increase animosity against asylum seekers.

Take the headline: Cash for asylum seekers but not Our Boys. It makes a statement that is clearly not true - does the Sunday Express really think soldiers get no cash? - but simply wants you to be angry.

But it also immediately introduces this false comparison about payments to soldiers, who are all regarded as heroes, and asylum seekers, who are all regarded as scrounging scum.

Here's what Jarvis claims: there were 2,500 asylum seekers from Afghanistan in 2006-07 and the cost in legal aid, accommodation and food allowances for these was £30 million. (It does not explain where that figure is from but whether it is right or not is not the point; it certainly seems a little off with the figures here from June 2009).

In comparison, there were 560 British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan were paid £5.3 million under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme.

Dividing the total costs by the number of people means each asylum seeker got £12,000 and each wounded soldier received £9,000. Any fool - or Express journo - can work that out.

Therefore, in the Sunday Express' view: Cash for asylum seekers but not Our Boys. The story even begins with the misleading:

The Government has handed out six times more cash to bogus Afghan asylum seekers than to our heroes wounded fighting the Taliban.

Six times more cash? That might just be because there were 2,500 of the former and only 560 of the latter.

More over, it is taking the soldier's compensation payments entirely in isolation. Take Corporal Anthony Duncan, who is mentioned in the story, who received £9,250 after being shot in the leg (and is now back fighting on the frontline in Afghanistan).

A Corporal in the British army receives an annual salary of £25,886.88. Jarvis doesn't mention that. And that's the equivalent of £497 per week, whereas asylum seekers will soon get £35 per week. Add in other costs soldiers receive - food, pension - and it proves the whole exercise of comparing these two things is entirely pointless.

And at the end of the story the Sunday Express admits as much:

The Ministry of Defence said the Armed Forced Compensation Scheme was in its infancy in 2006-07 and some soldiers were compensated out of the War Pension Scheme which did not show up in our figures.

So this 'investigation' hasn't even bothered to find out the total costs of payments to soldiers injured in Afghanistan.

And then, just so you may not see it on the website, the last sentence is curiously buried below a search bar. What could they be hiding with this odd bit of formatting?

It paid out over £33million in 2008-09.

Ah. Indeed according to the Ministry of Defence figures, the total amount paid in 2006/7 under the Scheme was £32.9million for 889 claims. If the Express says 560 of these were for Afghanistan that represents 63%. Yet £5.3million represents 16% of the total compensation paid. It's hardly surprising, but something doesn't seem quite right with the Sunday Express' figures.

But that's not really the most important issue. It's way they have decided to take on the cause of compensation to wounded soldiers, and turn it into another opportunity to outrage its readers about what asylum seekers are getting.

PCC shows weakness even when upholding complaint

The PCC has upheld a complaint about the Sunday Express' awful Dunblane story, marking yet another ruling against Richard Desmond's pitiful rags. Here's what the PCC said:

In this case, while the boys’ identities appeared to have been made public in 1996, it was also the case – as the article itself had recognised – that they had since been brought up away from the media spotlight. The article conceded that ‘no photographs of any of the children have been seen in more than a decade’. They were not public figures in any meaningful sense, and the newsworthy event that they had been involved in as young children had happened 13 years previously.

Since then they had done nothing to warrant media scrutiny, and the images appeared to have been taken out of context and presented in a way that was designed to humiliate or embarrass them. Even if the images were available freely online, the way they were used – when there was no particular reason for the boys to be in the news – represented a fundamental failure to respect their private lives. Publication represented a serious error of judgement on the part of the newspaper.

Although the editor had taken steps to resolve the complaint, and rightly published an apology, the breach of the Code was so serious that no apology could remedy it.

Which, by the standards of the PCC, is quite harsh.

But the natural question that follows from their phrase 'so serious that no apology could remedy it' is: so what is the penalty for the Sunday Express? They print an apology - although only after an outcry and a 10,000-signature strong petition - and four months later have been told off by the PCC.

Does the PCC really think that that remedies it?

Express Dunblane apology

Bloggerheads has the story on the Express' apology over their barrel-scraping front page on Dunblane.

Recommended reading

Anton at Enemies of Reason takes a look at racism in the Daily Mail. Special mention to the commentator who asked if the Newcastle-born Muslim protestor was 'here legally or illegally though?' How come posts like that get through the moderators, when comments I make - which disagree with the Mail line but are at least coherent, very rarely do?

The Sun - Tabloid Lies article on that paper's Satan's footprints spotted in Devon, the latest evidence of it bizarre obsession with ghosts, UFOs, killer sharks and other completely untrue nonsense.

Also, keep an eye on Bloggerheads for the latest on the Sunday Express/Dunblane story. Sterling work done over there by Tim Ireland.

Quick word about the Mail's 'expose' of Anjem 'Andy' Choudary (Swilling beer, smoking dope and leering at porn). If everything in the article as it seems (big if, but still...) it only goes to prove that Choudary is hardly someone to be taken seriously. Apart from spouting off on his own website (as if anyone but his small band of followers and tabloid journos looking for some inflammatory rhetoric read it) and the odd publicity stunt such as the Luton one, what has he actually done? But with Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Muhammed out the way, the papers need their Muslim hate figure and he's only too willing to fit the bill.

Recommended read - Enemies of reason

Great expose of the total rubbish that continues to spew forth from the Desmond papers - an article that oh-so-tastefully attacks the survivors of the shootings in Dunblane. The article has been removed from the Express' website but read the story here.