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I agree that you're absolutely right to run this story: it is potentially of great interest. But I think we'll have to disagree about what counts as "careful caveats". The first line of your article reads "A drug developed to treat leukaemia may be a powerful new weapon against multiple sclerosis, researchers say."

Doesn't sound like careful caveats to me. The caveats, such as they are, are buried deeper in the article. You also fail to mention that the alemtuzumab arm of the study was stopped early because of the side effects. That's a pretty serious worry, isn't it?

Alemtuzumab may indeed turn out to be a fantastic drug for MS, but it may well not. The results of this study may have been unusually good and won't be confirmed in later studies, or more likely the worrying side effects of the drug will stop its development altogether. We'll just have to wait and see.

Still, on the whole, this story was better than most stories about clinical research than we read in the media (very pleased to see you know how to turn hazard ratios into percentage reductions), and you were absolutely right to run it. Just pay a bit more attention to the caveats next time.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

There are new potential medical advances being announced all the time and you are right to report them. It may lead nowhere in the long term, but I for one am always interested to hear about the exciting possiblities.

You can find out more at various specialised outposts on the web but unless you actively monitor this type of news you're unlikely to come across it. Well done ´óÏó´«Ã½ for bringing this and other such stories to our attention.

This is almost impossible to call:

I work as a scientist developing cancer vaccines. We've produced several potential treatments that work wonderfully in a test tube but when they get to Phase III trial (at a cost of millions) simply don't work well enough (or have such serious side effects) that they never enter the clinic. At least 90% of potential drugs ultimately don't pass these trials.

On one hand its important that we publicise what we're doing and that we are making progress (in the UK cancer mortality has dropped massively since the early 80s) but on the other hand announcing 'wonder drugs' that won't be available for 5 or 10 years if at all cruelly raise the hopes of patients. Many doctors (including my father) then get abused by patients waving their internet print-offs accusing the docs of withholding this magic cure they read about on-line.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ must report responsibly. As the MMR scare shows reporting incorrect, false or misunderstood medical research can actually end up in deaths.

On a slightly different subject the peer review system is quite flawed. The editor of the journal decides who to send the paper out to for review. I've had weak results published because its gone for review to an other groups who's own findings agree with mine. Equally I've had first rate work rejected because it contradicts previous work done by the reviewer.

The general public has a wonderful idea of scientists but the reality is that its highly political and with limited grant funding can be quite cut throat. If my group and a group in (say) London are both going for the same grant the leader of the London group will not help us by approving a paper that will improve our chances of getting 'his' grant.

Undoubtedly this clinical trial has improved are understanding related to treatment avenues for MS, however, this drug may very well be not the answer yet. The reason is not that it is only a phase -2 trial, but, even in this small trial not powered to look at possible adverse effects, there were serious and significant adverse effects associated with this drug, sever enough to discontinue this arm of the trial!!. This tells us two things, a. the drugs acting similarly to Alemtuzumab , may be the way forward for the treatment of MS. b. this drug, at its present form, cannot be prescribed to 'masses' of MS patients, hence, your article has caused more confusion among patients, and headache for the healthcare professional treating them, rather, than providing any 'news' that could be useful to most if not all of the patients with MS.

The human touch is everything that is wrong with BBc News. Stop trying to make it sioft and relevant! It should be fact based and have more interviews with ehavy hitters not with someone witha disease. That adds emotion to the story and health and science are no place for emotion in that sense.

If you carry on like this it will soon be as awful and unwatchable at ITV news.

"It's a tough call, and one we face almost every day in the health team where our e-mail bulges daily with potential stories. Each piece of research runs a gauntlet of checks..."

... unless of course it relates to a hot-button or otherwise politicised topic such as the supposed obesity epidemic. In which case, the musings of some Antipodean scientist about how fat people should be banned from flying, a one-sided report about the wonders of gastric bypass surgery, or some piece of minor research that when you delve deeper turns out to have used self-certification questionnaires from a sample of about twenty people are all considered fit for the front page.

More than any other outlet, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has aided the WHO and the Government in getting 'obesity' declared a fully fledged Threat to Society, something else to be feared and helped promote the notion that any means justify the ends of cutting measured rates of 'obesity'.In fact for anything approaching reasoned coverage of this issue the Magazine has come out on top; not least with last year about how the risks have been massively overstated.

Meanwhile the Health pages have continued to jump on every study, however minor or questionable in its methodology, that links obesity to cancer, miscarriage, depression, or whatever, without any attempt at critique. As I've said in the past, I hope Tam Fry is worth his slot in your speed-dial, because he can always apparently be relied upon to provide the '´óÏó´«Ã½ view' on any fat-related topic. It all makes me wonder the extent to which ´óÏó´«Ã½ Health reporters are actually part of the health 'establishment' and if objective coverage of any topic, particularly those of a controversial nature, is therefore even possible.

For the full story about the way the obesity epi-panic has been manufactured and sustained by the world media and health establishment, have a look at ; an amazingly in-depth blog focusing on the frequently dubious science behind this issue. Unlike the ´óÏó´«Ã½, the author always cites or links back to the source study.

#7.

The only threat to our society comes from those who believe that health matters can be sorted by decree. Just as the medical profession has had its field day with anti-smoking as the panacea for almost every ill in our society, so obesity comes next!

When will the medics get their heads around the ideas of symptom and cause? What we know about cancer is that in almost all cases there is a trigger - so is that true of almost any illness we know of apart from virulent infections?

Human beings and chemicals do not always play to the rules, and that has always been so. What may cure one individual may just as easily kill another. No doubt it is convenient to play with a line of best fit in seeking knowledge but, as in all other things, there are no written rules in nature and we would do well to understand that information is as dangerous as it is desirable. If a placebo can cure people then there is more to our chemical makeup than meets the eye.

#8 There's a lot of truth in what you say and it actually explains why most cancer drugs that work nicely in the test tube only work in a few patients and so aren't economically viable or safe to mass produce.

HOWEVER if you go to almost any cancer ward you'll find that virtually all the patients smoke, they drink too much and they are overweight. Even people who have smoked for 20 years can reduce their chances of getting cancer significantly by stopping now. Generally it is considered that it takes 3 'hits' to develop a cancer and not taking 1 or 2 of those 'hits' is a damn good idea.

We all die in the end so nothing the ´óÏó´«Ã½ or the docs can tell us to do or not do will allow us to live for ever, but there is no fun in coughing to death in your late 50's so the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has a duty as a public broadcaster to warn people of a few basic risk factors.

#9.

There is truth that smoking, drinking and eating will be found in many deaths our species experiences, but are they contributory or simply "also ran" factors? The simple truth is that no scientist or doctor knows. In Japan, where smoking is higher than in any major western culture and takes place only in enclosed areas the morbidity patterns for "smoking related" deaths is entirely different to that in the UK and the USA.

Our knowledge of "common sense" in health has been severely cauterized by over use of computer generated statistics where the term "self fulfilling outcome" becomes appropriate.

Back in the fifties the methodology used for fluoride justification was as oversimplified as any of the stuff relating to smoking for example. "Take an LCD and draw conclusions from it" has been prevalent in governmental research for over a hundred years and it has yet to prove that it is anything other than dangerous - very dangerous.

I prefer the outlook that states that life and death are runners in the same race with identical pedigrees, successes, failures, and usefulness. You may gamble and win but it is still a lottery as to whether you will live long enough to enjoy it.

There is no "healthy way" - there is only one way and it is called nature.

#10. I get this with my heavily smoking father in law who claims traffic pollution causes lung cancer not smoking. If this were true then 30% of lung cancer patients would be smokers (as smokers make up about 30% of the population). The reality is that about 95% of lung cancer patients are smokers.

The relationship between smoking and lung cancer was first described in nazi germany when a doctor noticed that all his lung cancer patients smoked nasty black cigarrettes popular in Hamburg at the time. That was long before 'computer stats'

As for your claim that there is no 'healthy way of life' WHAT???? Are you suggesting that eating a good diet and taking regular excercise makes no difference?

I'm guessing you're a smoker. I drink more than my GP would like and my drink of choice (islay single malt) also carries an increased correlation with throat cancer (from the aromatic hydrocarbons in the peat). The difference between us is that I know that my vice is potentially harmful and take my chances. I don't claim that its harmless. I don't aprove of this nanny state where the government attempts you to force you to live your life their way but I do belive in education so adults can make informed choices with the facts in front of them.

Can I congratulate you on your piece on todays Breakfast programme with Mohammed Keshtgar on keyhole surgery on the breast. I have travelled the length of my county in order to try and get a lumpectemy carried out by keyhole being a warfarin user I needed the least invasive method only to be told that I was being silly. Keyhole was Never proformed on the breast. Altough it will not help me I am having to have full surgery at least it helps knowing I am not just a silly women

Bully Baiter (#7) your thoughts about seeking a 'panacea' are spot on. It's not for nothing that they call the current medical received wisdom the 'weight-centred paradigm' of healthcare. And I remember a TV show where they compared two sets of lungs - a smoker's black ones and a non-smoker's 'healthy' pair. My thought being that both were dead. Life, after all, has a 100% mortality rate.

Peter Sym (#11) I agree with you regarding health information, but only up to a point. For instance, what if that information is unproven, or worse, blatantly false? Smoking is one thing, because the science is to all intents and purposes settled. However there are countless other conditions and behaviours where the 'information' is constantly being revised to the point that people stop taking any notice.

And then there are the issues of definition and labelling of which the ´óÏó´«Ã½ never seems to delve beneath the surface. The panic over binge drinking is based on a 'binge' being more than two drinks in a single sitting. A researcher into diabetes risked censure by proposing that the supposed 'epidemic' of the condition was related not to the hordes of fatties now waddling the streets but simple improvements in testing and public awareness and alterations to the fasting glucose threholds a couple of years ago.

Of course probably the best example of creating a problem by moving goalposts is the obesity issue itself - in 1998 the BMI thresholds for the overweight and obese categories, on which the whole moral panic rests, were revised downwards, and overnight an epidemic was born. Even the National Obesity Forum admit that if the UK used international measures of child obesity, our rate would be about half its current level. Definition, then, is absolutely everything.


As far as obesity is concerned, I will admit that I'm deeply concerned about recent Government proposals to put 'health warnings' in plus-sized clothing, campaign posters on buses, or plaster schools with posters about why being fat is bad and will make you drop dead - mainly because I don't believe for a minute that they're accurate, and the scaremongering has created a nation of people who are unnecessarily anxious about the few 'extra' pounds. Is pysical health more important than the psychological well-being of an individual - or for that matter an entire society?

But I have far more of an issue with politicians who, trying to be seen as 'tough' start talking about 'action' mass removals of fat children from their homes, additional taxes and national insurance contributions, forcing people to have gastric bypass surgery in the same way mental patients are currently committed 'for their own safety', or compelling them to partake in workplace weight loss programs.

My view is this; that even if there is an 'obesity problem' the degree of compulsion involved in many of the proposed measures to control it are fundamentally incompatible with a free, liberal Western democracy. My body is not state property, and we all need to wake up to the fact that many of this Government's control and surveillance fantasies are being sneaked through under the more palatable guise of public health.

And the ´óÏó´«Ã½ needs to understand that its borderline hysterical coverage of 'healthy lifestyle' issues is playing right into their hands.

#13 I entirely agree about the obesity 'epidemic'. I also repeatedly point out that BMI is a very crude form of measurement. Martin Johnson (the truly enormous rugby player) is morbidly obese acording to BMI. However it would be a very stupid person who argues that being overweight is a good thing. Its the same with recommended alcohol units- they're based on a fairly nominal 'safe' and most of us can have a drink or two more at the weekend without too much worry. I have a big problem with the medias coverage of 'binge' drinking too. What the media mean is drinking to drunkeness, yet an official 'binge' could be 3 or 4 pints over an afternoon.

The problem with your liberal society is that its very aware of its rights but seemingly oblivious of its responsibilities. Many of the stories about people being denied treatment because of their weight are outrageously spun by the media. Overweight people are being denied IVF not because they're overweight, but because their weight means that the chance of the therapy working is negligable. Ditto knee & hip replacements etc. With a limited NHS budget it is immoral to give expensive treatments to people who's lifestyle choices mean the therapies will not work when those who could benefit from new drugs are denied it on cost.

This is my whole point about the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s role to educate about health. Tell people the facts, tell them the implications and let them make informed choices.... but also make them aware that they have to live with these choices and that no-one will come and wave a magic wand and make it all better when their liver/heart/lungs pack in. I'd give the ´óÏó´«Ã½ about 6 out of 10 for its performance so far.

Peter, just a couple of points before I stop writing mini-essays and walk away from this thread:

I don't believe that being overweight is a good thing, but that's more because of society's increasingly poor treatment of people with a 'weight problem' (methinks it's society that has the problem!) than any possible health implications. There are studies that show that in terms of the BMI scale, those most likely to be healthy and with the best outcomes against major conditions fall within the 'overweight' category. In fact, like height, I suspect that weight is 70-80% genetically determined, and that whilst it can be affected during growth (or thereafter, if you consider the proportion of the population unwittingly ruining their metabolisms at any one time through crash / yo-yo dieting) the illusion of being able to 'control' our weight to any meaningful degree is just that - an illusion.

The problem being that as a result of the internal politics, competition for grants and the flaws with the peer review system that you rightly pointed out in post #4, any studies which contradict this received wisdom are either not carried out in the first place, or where they are, ignored by authorities and media alike because they don't fit with the message - that of a world under attack from the scourge of obesity, even though other studies show life expectancy continues to rise and rates of cancers and other serious conditions are falling.

Mind, I do rather take issue with being pigeonholed as a liberal; my politics have become much more complex than that. In fact, whilst Tories are generally happy to leave us all to our own devices, fat, smokers, drinkers or otherwise, those on the left of the political spectrum (the current Government included) are some of the worst for believing that heavy-handed state interventions can solve every social ill. I used to share that belief until I dug a little deeper into this subject and realised that when the State are misinformed or otherwise get it wrong, the consequences for our civil liberties can potentially be disastrous.

Which brings me onto another good point you raise - that is do we now have a social responsibility to strive toward good health, whatever the definition of that may be? Health has already become a moral imperative without any sort of debate on the matter. The ´óÏó´«Ã½, instead of toeing the line, should be leading such a debate. Their public service remit may include providing information, but it must also encompass a means of testing the validity of that information rather than the current 'journalism by press release' (particularly if said release originates from Whitehall or one of these single-issue pressure groups - ever consider that the National Obesity Forum might be a tad biasedtoward a particular view?).

Anyway, I've had my say on this topic; I guess I should be grateful at least for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ for providing me with a forum in which to do so, and maybe making those who read it think, which despite being part of their public service remit the ´óÏó´«Ã½ have so far failed to do where this is concerned.

#15. You raise a good point about yo-yo dieting.... I agree 100% that these are harmful, if not damn right dangerous. If you suddenly cut your calorie intake massively your body thinks there's a famine and does weird things. However you CAN control your weight easily. About ten years back I put on a couple of stone as a student and wasn't terribly happy with it... I bough Ken Hom's 'Hot Wok' book and basically lived off home cooked Chinese food- lots of veg, planty of carb, not too much meat, not much saturated fat. I didn't eat junk because I was full of vegetables and the weight fell off smoothly. Diets don't work. Modifiying your diet does. Thats the sort of education the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should be getting across. Jamie Oliver has the right idea... shame about his ego though.

However this idea that weight is largely genetic (or glandular) is nonsense and actually defies the laws of physics. When calories taken in = calories expended you stay the same weight. Without question we are heavier than in the 1940's. You see the same across the globe. China is also suffering from obesity problems because the rising standard of living means more meat & more fat in the diet and less manual work.

I think we're in agreement over nanny state intervention although whether tory neglect is any better than labour over management is something for another topic.

Its nice having a forum to discuss this. Hopefully the Beeb and the government maybe read it.