Dr Jayne Donegan - GP and homeopath talk on vaccination in Galway, 25 March 2020

Dr Jayne Donegan (a GP and homeopath) has been in the news recently (in November 2019 and again in February 2020) after undercover reporting by Times journalists found that she was giving harmful advice about vaccination to parents at her public talks. She has advised parents not to vaccinate their children, and also how to falsify their child's vaccination records.

She is due to give another talk in Galway on 25th March and I've contacted the venue and Eventbrite ticketing to ask them to consider cancelling it.

November 2019
Antivax GP shows parents how to avoid jabs The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
Parents pay £15 for antivax talk on health ‘propaganda’ The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
The Times view on Jayne Donegan: Dangerous Talk The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
No British doctor should be advising parents on how to avoid the MMR vaccine

Because of her antivaccination pronouncements and reckless advice she is currently under investigation by the GMC (General Medical Council) which placed her GP-registration under interim conditions in early January 2020, reported in The Times (see below). She is not allowed to offer advice on vaccinations (condition 4: "She must not prescribe, administer, advise upon or have primary responsibility for childhood vaccinations").

January 2020
Antivax GP at risk of being struck off The Times - Wednesday 8 January 2020
(I couldn't find a copy available online but the relevant quote is "Last night the General Medical Council said it had begun an investigation into Dr Donegan, a freelance GP in London, and placed her under interim conditions to limit her practice. If the GMC finds against her, she could be struck off the medical register. The GMC would not comment while the investigation was under way.")

In February 2020 she gave another talk about vaccination to parents in Wexford and this too was attended by an undercover reporter who found that she was continuing to give confusing information.

February 2020
Anti-vaccine doctor Jayne Donegan says World Health Organisation uses ‘Nazi techniques’ The Times - Friday 21 February 2020
I don’t give advice at talks, claims anti-vax doctor The Times - Saturday 22 February 2020
Jayne Donegan told Irish parent to give her child ‘fresh air’

March 2020
Dr Donegan has another event due to take place in Galway on 25th March 2020. The ticket page (Eventbrite) had the address as the Loughrea Hotel & Spa and on 26 Feb I wrote to them with an outline of this blog post outlining the contentious nature of her talks and asking if it was definitely going ahead. I didn't hear back but spotted a day later that the Eventbrite page no longer named the hotel but instead said 'TBC' for the venue. Apparently the post code is the same though, and the text of the information highlights that material will be on sale for cash only and that "The closest ATM is in Supervalue a 5 minute walk from the hotel". So nnperhaps the venue is unchanged and it's just that the public nature of that information has been withdrawn.

I also wrote to Eventbrite (27 Feb) with the information in this post and asked them to consider removing the listing but have not heard back and the Eventbrite page is still up and listing ticket buying options.

Above: screenshot taken on 27 Feb showing a different event organiser and name of venue compared with the screenshot taken on 28 Feb (below).

The reasons I think the event shouldn't go ahead
It's concerning that anyone is promoting an anti-vaccination stance to parents, or suggesting that homeopathy (aka 'homeoprophylaxis') could be used as an alternative (leaving children unprotected), or giving advice on how to tweak a child's vaccination records so that it looks as if they've been vaccinated.

It's additionally concerning that a GP is offering this information and while her views are her own (even if I disagree with them) her promotion of them is surely incompatible with GMC registration. It's bad enough that homeopaths are coming out with this nonsense but being a GP may lend legitimacy.

Although I don't have a great deal of sympathy for her (as she persistently repeats the same actions that have got her noticed by newspapers and the GMC) I think the event organisers are also putting her (and her continued GMC registration) at risk by giving her another opportunity to say these things publicly, again.

It's fairly likely that the event will go ahead and despite the event organiser's precautions* I'd be amazed if at least one person attending wasn't there to report on it critically.


*requiring the names of everyone attending presumably to weed out known scientists, doctors, skeptic activists and journalists ;)

How my mum taught me to read when I was about three

Given that I was 'about three' at the time my memories of this are not particularly strong 45 years on, so take this with a pinch of salt. This is what my mum told me, sadly she died in 2010 so I can't double-check anything (nor with dad who died in 2016).

Despite my early reading skills I showed no other flashes of competence (I was 19 months before I bothered with walking, my mum said she thought I probably had worked out how to do it before that - but also that I'd worked out that if I didn't walk I'd get ferried around more!) and despite my primary school thinking I was Oxbridge material I turned out to be not very inspiring academically as time went on and any success is more due to luck than hard work. Anyway, revenons à nos moutons as my mother used to say...

My mum was a stay-at-home mum and I was an inquisitive kid. At some point I must have noticed her or my dad reading books or newspapers, or possibly reacting to signs when out and about. Reportedly I'd often ask her "what does that say / mean?" and she'd tell me, I presume my dad did too if I asked him but the learning-to-read thing always seemed to be a mum thing.

She bought a little blackboard easel and some chalks and did what I suppose would be something like phonics with clusters of letters. To start with it would be oo words like look, book, cook and ee words like bee and see. At some point this must have expanded to include the full range of letters and by the time I was three and a half I was able to read simple books.

I went to school at four and a half by which time I could read with ease. I do have a vague memory of something along the lines of either seeing my name on the class register and pointing to it or being given a card and my mum asked to write my name on it (but I wrote it) and this causing a bit of a small stir but that was short-lived.

Most of the first couple of days involved plasticine-craft so I'm not sure at exactly what point it became obvious that I definitely could read independently but my mum told me that she'd picked me up from school one day and the teacher had almost challenged her with "You didn't tell us she could read" to which my mum replied "Well, you didn't ask me." I don't think she or dad thought what I was doing was particularly notable.

It was seen as notable in school though. I remember we read books that had numbers and letters like 4a, 4b and 4c (no idea what they were, possibly Janet and John). I was reading in the 7s and 8s. I have much stronger memories of being taken off upstairs to the staff room and made to read long lists of words to the other teachers (I don't think I had any idea what any of the words would have meant). No idea if my parents had approved this absence from class though to be honest if it was a reading class I pretty much had that down anyway. As far as I'm aware the rest of the class soon caught up and by the time we were five I think everyone could read perfectly well.

I don't think I have or had hyperlexia nor do I think I'm on the autism spectrum and I don't have any other particular skills. Fairly poor at arithmetic (not bad at maths and abstraction though), utterly useless at reading a map or locating where I am in space*. These days I'm not even much of a reader - it's like my eyes are on a train track and they keep jumping off every time a thought occurs to me. I can read a paragraph of a book and it will usually remind me of something interesting or spark an idea which will then occupy me as I daydream about it. Consequently I am more of an article reader than book reader ;) Good with reading long words though.

*Hopeless sense of direction: stuff like if I'm walking along a familiar road and enter a shop then when I exit, instead of continuing in the intended direction, I discover I've unwittingly walked backwards without noticing // the sheer amount of effort involved in navigating an unfamiliar place (I have to keep turning backwards to see what it will look like on the return journey as otherwise it will look like a place I've never seen before). Redoing the same mistaken journey: if I've taken it once and see the route again I tend to remember that I've been down that path before, so I walk that route again before realising. Having no idea how the map I'm looking at matches where I'm standing. Regularly having to start walking without knowing whether it's the right direction just so that I can see the direction the small blue 'me' dot on CityMapper is travelling in, and continue or course-correct based on a second reading.

Keep an eye on small batteries in kids' toys this Christmas (and at all times)

Little flat batteries, often known as button batteries, can easily be swallowed by children and cause harm  If you think a child may have swallowed a battery take them immediately to A&E / the Emergency Room. 

"Most button batteries pass through the body and are eliminated in the stool (poo). However, sometimes batteries get “hung up”, and these are the ones that cause problems. ... When a battery is swallowed, it is impossible to know whether it will pass through or get “hung up”.  (Source)

Get the child checked out by a professional (they can do an X-ray to check if a battery's inside).

Flat batteries are not safe either and it's not to do with the batteries leaking, the danger is caused by a tiny electrical current (small enough that the battery won't operate the device, but big enough that it can cause problems inside a child's body).

"Severe tissue damage results from a build up of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda)
as a result of the electrical current discharged from the battery, and not, as
commonly supposed, from leakage from the battery. The sodium hydroxide
causes tissue burns, often in the oesophagus, which can then cause
fistulisation into major blood vessels, resulting in catastrophic haemorrhage.
Even apparently discharged (‘flat’) batteries can still have this effect, and
button batteries pushed into ears or nostrils can also cause serious injuries."

Here's a video illustrating a worst-case scenario, using batteries held between two pieces of ham to represent tissues inside the body. There have been cases of severe damage requiring several surgical procedures and some cases have resulted in the death of a child.

Keep your eyes on your batteries.

Other things to watch out for: toys with a battery compartment that's easy to open (encourage manufacturers to make lockable battery compartments that need to be opened with a screwdriver), plastic packs of batteries with perforated card backing - these are also quite easy to open.

Further reading
Button batteries can kill if swallowed - a post I wrote for the CHI+MED blog in 2016 (our project looked at ways of making medical devices safer)

Family Safety: Button Batteries (Suffolk Trading Standards, writing on Families Online in 2016)

The blog post above was prompted by this tweet -

Button batteries pose a great risk if swallowed. Keep them secure & out of kids’ reach! Tips here: https://t.co/AbuJfMnJx3 @Familiessuffolk

— Trading Standards (@SuffolkTS) December 20, 2017

Adult content blocking: am writing to the consultation - anything else I need to say?

The Open Rights Group has pointed out that I need to get a shift on if I want my views to be included in the consultation process on adult filtering and ISPs which ends tomorrow. So here's what I've put together - I remember a similar experience when O2 stopped my phone from seeing anything that might alarm it a year or so ago, and that was all very silly too.

Remember that any comments I or you send may be published...

Here's what I've got so far - what have I missed?

----------------------------------

A copy of this email is going to my MP. I am raising my concerns about the proposal for network filtering of adult content and default blocking.

I would like to submit the following evidence and I am happy for you to make it public either generally or through any Freedom of Information request (I would prefer my address is not made public however):

In March 2011 I tried to access the Economist's "Intelligent Life" magazine via my iPhone through the O2 3G network. I was a bit surprised to see a page popping up to tell me that the site was for over 18s [https://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/43050200830443520] and couldn't imagine what could have triggered such a warning - it's a pretty innocent news / editorial magazine.

Complaining about this on Twitter I learned that a new annoyance had been implemented that day which had forced all mobile companies to block large swathes of the internet (vastly over-reaching to include sites that are not at all 'adult') and forcing their customers to prove their age either by credit card (easily faked by a person under the age of 18 who can find the card details) or visiting a shop (admittedly less easy to fake).

A whole load of sexual health advice sites were also blocked - these can be crucially important to young people (and older people) and should never be treated as if they are harmful or in need of filtering. I think young people who are exploring sex or their sexuality need to be able to have access to such health information sites, and without their parents knowing. Finding out about stuff is not the same as rushing off to try to do stuff.

Similarly when using an O2 dongle SIMcard to connect my laptop to the internet while travelling I was amazed not to be able to access sites as benign as dabr.co.uk which is just a simplified version of Twitter. As I don't have a credit card I had to go to the shop and ask to have my SIMcard age-verified, but only once I'd returned of course.

If some measure is implemented in which a parent or guardian has to OK it before their ISP will deliver "pornography" (however we're defining it) to their computer then I'm absolutely 100% convinced that their kids will quickly learn how to overcome it and probably share that method online.

I'm particularly concerned that religious groups appear to be having much of a say in what is defined as adult content - many religions are not known for their progressive views on sex or relationships.

As far as I can see it filtering just blocks sites that it shouldn't and doesn't actually protect anyone - although perhaps it manages to make it look as if something is being done even when it isn't.