Dr. Jayne Donegan, UK, and Junk Science

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Dr. Jayne Donegan and Junk Science:

The mother's so-called "expert witness", Dr. Jayne Donegan, relied upon four principles: (1) Over the years diseases have become milder. (2) Immunity declines because of the effects of immunisation. (3) Even when there are no contrary indicators, immunisation is likely to do more harm than good. (4) Immunisation programmes have not been effective in securing a decline in the incidence of disease. Such a decline is due to other factors.

Amazingly, Dr. Donegan later accepted that none of these principles were supported by scientific evidence!

In the High Court judgement [Adobe PDF: 172 Kb], Justice Sumner said:

Paragraph 45: "Mr Cohen submits that [Dr. Donegan] has not understood nor complied with her duty to the court. I am satisfied that his submission is well founded. Had I heard her evidence alone, I might have been mislead and could well have reached a decision not supported by the research upon which she largely relied."

Paragraph 50: "... all the authors [Dr. Donegan] quoted, save for 2, did not agree with her views;"

Paragraph 51: "... [Dr. Donegan] was against immunisation for whooping cough. Not one of the authors she cited was against it, a fact to which she had not drawn attention."

Paragraph 52: "I was referred to 2 authors who were against immunisation. This was in a paper written over 30 years ago in respect of a vaccination no longer in use."

Paragraph 53: "... at various places [Dr. Conway] points to Dr Donegan being confused in her thinking, lacking logic, minimising the duration of a disease, making statements lacking valid facts, ignoring the facts, ignoring the conclusion of papers, making implications without any scientific validation, giving a superficial impression of a paper, not presenting the counter argument, quoting selectively from papers, and of providing in one instance no data and no facts to support her claim."

Paragraph 54: "Professor Kroll in his response adds 3 particular points where he consider Dr Donegan has been somewhat selective in her quotations from medical papers. He considered she conveyed a misleading impression in one case, and made unsubstantiated claims in another. All their criticisms are well founded."

The mother appealed without success, as Lord Justice Sedley referred to the mother's evidence as "junk science."