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OBSERVATIONS: Michael Fitzpatrick From hero to zero BMJ 2008; 336: 479 [Full text]

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Still sympathetic

F Steinberg   (7 March 2008)

Professional jabbers.

Hilary Butler   (8 March 2008)

Still sympathetic 7 March 2008
F Steinberg, pharmaceutical physician EN11 9BU Send response to journal: Re: Still sympathetic	The article from "Hero to Zero" reflects on the media's rampant desire for a story regardless of the consequences (1). In an attempt at even-handedness, however, Fitzpatrick states that Wakefield "gets the blame for things over which he has no direct responsibility," trying to exonerate Wakefield from the 2006 and 2007 outbreaks of measles among populations with low MMR uptake that predated the Lancet article. The concept of herd immunity in which there is resistance to spread of an infectious agent in a group or community, based on the resistance to infection of a high proportion of individual members of the group, however obviates exoneration of Wakefield. The communities on the periphery of the majority would not have been so affected had Wakefield's and the media's activities not diluted immunity among the majority. Reference 1. Pepys MB. Science and Serendipity. Clin Med 2007;7:562–78 Competing interests: I work for a company that manufactures vaccines
Professional jabbers. 8 March 2008
Hilary Butler, freelance journalist home 2121, New Zealand. Send response to journal: Re: Professional jabbers.	Dear Sir, Dr Steinberg from Merck Sharpe and Dohme, tries to argue that Wakefield and the media are responsible for the wider community having reservations about Merck's MMR vaccine, thereby putting at risk, peripheral communities, who he infers need to be protected by the masses, from their own stupidity and lack of awareness. Fitzpatrick's attempt to mitigate his previous full frontal attacks on Wakefield by making these strange assertions that peripheral communities are unaware of Wakefield or the media is not only an insult to the intelligence of the communities involved, but defies logic to anyone who knows these people. Irish travellers, and orthodox Jews are not computer illiterate or unaware. They are very well aware of what is going on in the world. Furthermore, they are well aware of the very low "risks" they are taking, and realise that healthy children without immune system problems, rarely have complications to, or die from measles, or mumps. For that reason, you won't hear the Irish or Jewish communities complain. Those with eyes to see, can see that the people who supposedly have these communities interests at heart are themselves profession point scorers; Fitzpatrick vaccinates kids, and repeatedly swipes at Wakefield whenever he can, inviting Steinberg to use by implication,as grist for the mill, the death of an immunocompromised child. The irony is that like the media they continually berate, both Fitzpatrick and Steinberg make their living from jabbing other people, both literally and metaphorically. Hilary Butler. Competing interests: None declared