IT IS unusual for one of the active participants in a story to review it
but William McBride鈥檚 story is more than a little unusual itself. Until late
1987, McBride was an Australian icon. His name was known to every Australian
family, as were his achievements. He had been Man of the Year, Australian
Father of the Year, a recipient of the prestigious prize of L鈥橧nstitut de la
Vie in Paris, a sought-after media commentator on issues from health to
parenting, an expert medical witness, society gynaecologist and the director
of his own private research foundation.
His reputation was boosted by one key event in 1961: a brief letter to The
Lancet which was the first published alert that thalidomide might be causing
birth defects in pregnant women. The rest is history, as they say. But as this
autobiography shows, for McBride that history framed the rest of his life and
would have continued to do so had it not been for a radio documentary I made
in December 1987. In this, I accused McBride of scientific fraud in an
experiment at Foundation 41, his research fiefdom in Sydney. Killing the
Messenger contains McBride鈥檚 attempt to document his life, concentrating on
these past few painful years from his point of view, untrammelled by
journalists asking awkward questions or wanting to check facts.
McBride had, I said, altered the results of an experiment that he had
conducted in 1982. To investigate the effects of hyoscine, an anti-cholinergic
drug that reduces the activity of the gut and prevents nausea, on fetal
development, McBride had administered the drug to a group of pregnant rabbits
in their drinking water. (McBride had argued that the class of anti-
cholinergic drugs could cause birth defects.) He believed that the drug would
affect the early nervous system. McBride then published a paper claiming that
hyoscine caused fetal abnormalities, naming two colleagues, Phil Vardy and
Gill French, as coauthors.
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Vardy and French complained that McBride had altered the results of the
experiment, as well as publishing the paper without their consent. McBride
said, for example, that a control group had been kept, which they denied, and
that all fetuses had been dissected. Vardy had seen whole fetuses preserved in
formalin. McBride had also inflated the number of rabbits in the experiment.
He later claimed that an American scientist 鈥� now dead 鈥� had run the same
trial on two animals for him. McBride appeared to find nothing odd about
adding the American results to his, and publishing as though only one larger
trial had taken place.
His paper was initially rejected for publication 鈥� a reviewer pointed out
that the amount of the drug that McBride said some rabbits had swallowed would
have killed them. McBride altered the results. He was, as the result of
previous criticism of the way he announced findings in an informal way,
鈥渄etermined, therefore, to get the paper published in a recognised journal鈥�.
To this end, he says, he 鈥渁ltered the volume of water ingested by the two
rabbits, which the earlier reviewer claimed would have been fatal, bringing
them into line with the volumes other animals had ingested. I did this because
I believed it was likely that the reviewer, being a toxicologist, was
correct.鈥� The paper was then published.
McBride has never ceased to deny fraud, despite two independent inquiries
having confirmed the allegations in the original programme. The last of these
inquiries was held by the Complaints Unit of the New South Wales Health
Department and is almost certainly the longest and most expensive professional
disciplinary hearing ever held 鈥渋n the world鈥�. It resulted in McBride being
struck off the medical register, a decision that has withstood a hearing at
the NSW Court of Appeals in July.
McBride is understandably bitter and obsessed with the course of events
since 1987. On reading the book, however, I couldn鈥檛 help being struck by a
phrase in the introduction by McBride鈥檚 schoolfriend, Phillip Knightley:
鈥渢ruth being the first victim鈥�. Knightley, who wrote the introduction to
Killing the Messenger was writing about war, not about science, and that鈥檚
perhaps where McBride鈥檚 misconceptions begin. McBride trained as a doctor but
never pursued a career in scientific research. His descriptions of experiments
in this book show that, despite having raised large sums of money for his
research, his understanding of rigorous methodology leaves much to be desired.
He now says that his fraudulent research into hyoscine was not fraud but
鈥渟loppy science鈥�. I have previously written about the affair in New 杏吧原创,
and McBride鈥檚 self-deprecatory claim has not withstood repeated scrutiny,
which has found a degree of deliberation that goes far beyond sloppiness.
But to construct his argument, McBride has had to resort to innuendo and,
to be kind, a severe case of fact-blurring. He falsely suggests that there was
a plot by multinational drugs companies to which I was a party, that the
Sydney medical profession colluded with the plot because they had been jealous
of his success and, most unpleasantly, that the whistle-blower, Vardy, was a
drugs company lapdog for years before I exposed McBride on national radio.
McBride is also perplexed about my front page story in the Sydney Morning
Herald on the day of the broadcast. He wrongly claims that the newspaper was
part of the plot and ran a public relations release on my behalf. I was at the
time covering medicine as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald, as well
as working for ABC radio.
What McBride tries to distract us from in this book is the core allegation
that McBride performed fraudulent research and tried to dismiss Foundation 41
scientists who had brought the allegations to the institution鈥檚 research
advisory committee.
I found parts of Killing the Messenger fascinating. I discovered things
about McBride鈥檚 past that I hadn鈥檛 known. But then, I have a personal interest
in the central character, who describes me as 鈥渁n opportunist lighting the
blue touchpaper on a media rocket鈥�. I鈥檓 not sure, though, that there are many
other potential readers who will be held by content that is hindered by poor
proofreading. Nonetheless, if it has made McBride 鈥� and particularly his
family 鈥� feel better, I am sure it has achieved its prime objective.