The Dr Fitzpatrick referred to in the following letter published in the current issue of the British magazine Private Eye is also a trustee of the controversial pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science.
As the letter makes clear he is part of the LM network - political extremists (now on the far right) who eulogise technologies like genetic engineering and reproductive cloning and are extremely hostile to their critics, who they brand as Nazis.
What is particularly disturbing is that this is also a network which engages in infiltration of media organisations and science-related lobby groups in order to promote its agenda.
It is represented, often in very senior positions, in a series of organisations which lobby on issues related to biotechnology, eg the Science Media Centre (director: Fiona Fox), Sense About Science (director: Tracey Brown; her assistant: Ellen Raphael), Genetic Interest Group (policy director: John Gillott), Progress Educational Trust (director: Juliet Tizzard), and the Scientific Alliance (advisor: Bill Durodié). Both Tracey Brown and Bill Durodié were also brought in in an advisory capacity in relation to the strands of the UK government's official GM Public Debate.
Find out more here: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=78
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Private Eye 1097
9 Jan - 22 Jan 2004
MM-argument
Sir,
Disillusioned former members of Frank Furedi's Revolutionary Communist Party may have been a mite surprised to see Dr Michael Fitzpatrick's claim that Andrew Wakefield [the scientist who is investigating a possible link between MMR vaccine, bowel disease and autism] is now part of a "fundamentalist cult" (MMR: Hear the Row, Eye 1096).
Back when Furry Frank's splinter of a splinter of a Trotskyite faction met in secret on dodgy caravan sites, posing as a visiting archaeological society, Dr Fitz was among the most fervent of Furry Frank's supporters.
Eyebrows may also have been raised by Dr Fitz's denunciation of those who raise questions about the MMR vaccine, as little short of child murderers. Bosnian Moslems and Rwandan Tutsis may want to measure such an intensity of humanitarian concern against Dr Fitz's long-term involvement in LM, the Furedi-ite rag that played into the hands of genocidal killers in Rwanda and war criminals in Bosnia and Belgrade, by denying the significance, and in some cases even the reality, of their crimes against humanity.
These days Fitzpatrick's health column in LM has made way for one in the Lancet. Onwards and upwards!
Sincerely,
Peter Brown