In the shadows

When academic analysts monitor journalistic output and compare public appetites for different topics in the media, they tend to omit something rather important. While counting numbers of column inches in newspapers, they invariably overlook the authors. Yet one factor that can affect both the quality and impact of a report is whether it is written by a specialist (such as a science editor), a generalist, a news agency, a local reporter or some other type of outside contributor. An unusual example of the latter was the story which appeared in The Times on 5 February headed " Vitamin is ray of sunshine for MS patients ". It was co-authored by the newspaper's Glasgow correspondent (Melanie Reid) together with Oliver Gillie. Although not identified in any way, Gillie runs the private, non-profit-making Health Research Forum, which he founded in 2004. He has produced books such as Sunlight Robbery and articles arguing that a billion people in Europe obtain insufficient sunlight and thus vitamin D, increasing their risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), diabetes and other conditions. While failing to advise readers of this background, the whole-page piece began by stating that daily vitamin D injections could prevent MS. " The first causal link has been established between the 'sunshine vitamin' and a gene that increases the risk of MS, " it said, " raising the possibility that the debilitating auto-immune disease could be eradicated. " Reid and Gillie reported work by George Ebers at Oxford University suggesting that vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy and childhood may increase the risk of a child developing the disease. He had also established the possibility that genetic vulnerability to MS, apparently initiated by lack of vitamin D, may be passed through families. " These risks might plausibly be reduced by giving vitamin D supplements to pregnant women and young children. " The source of the story (also omitted from the article) was a paper published online on 6 February in PLoS Genetics, authored by Ebers and others in Oxford and at the University of British Columbia. The study showed that vitamin D specifically interacts with the MS susceptibility factor HLA-DRB1*1501 to influence its expression. The authors concluded that their results supported existing epidemiological evidence implicating sunlight and vitamin D in determining the risk of MS, and implied that dietary supplementation with the vitamin at critical periods might be the key to its prevention. Given the importance …