Controversy hits van Velzen cystic fibrosis paper

Authors and a patients organisation have leapt to the defence of a 1995 Lancet paper of which the disgraced Alder Hey pathologist Dick van Velzen was a key author.

Letters in the Lancet earlier this month called on the journal to withdraw the paper, suggesting that van Velzen could have biased the research (Lancet 2001;358:1546). But two of his coauthors, Rosalind Smyth and Deborah Ashby, and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust have backed the paper's findings. Professor van Velzen was severely criticised in the Redfern report for obtaining and storing children's organs without the parents' consent (BMJ 2001;322:255).

The paper (Lancet 1995; 346:1247-51) reported a case- control study on fibrosing colonopathy in cystic …