Michael Fitzpatrick

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Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is a GP in Hackney, London. Fitzpatrick was a leading member of the now defunct Revolutionary Communist Party and is an associate of the libertarian anti-environmental LM network. He has a regular column in The Lancet.

Michael Fitzpatrick, like his brother John, was a leading member of the RCP. He frequently contributed to its monthly review Living Marxism under the alias Mike Freeman. Living Marxism later became LM, in which Fitzpatrick had a regular column. Fitzpatrick has since contributed regularly to Spiked and has spoken at events organised by both Spiked and the Institute of Ideas (IoI), such as its Genes & Society Festival, organised in association with Pfizer. Spiked and IoI both developed out of LM. Fitzpatrick has also contributed to the work of the Progress Educational Trust, another body with links to the LM network.

As of May 2010 he is a Trustee of the controversial lobby group Sense About Science. Sense About Science shares its telephone number with an organisation called Global Futures of which Fitzpatrick is also a Trustee and to which Sense about Science's director, Tracey Brown, and its assistant director, Ellen Raphael, also belong.

SAS contact page showing phone no., web archive version of Oct 29 2003

Global Futures contact page showing phone no., web archive version of 2002

Tracey Brown and Ellen Raphael both contributed to the magazine LM, which developed out of the monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), Living Marxism. Global Futures appears to be one of a series of front groups generated by the political network of individuals involved with LM and the RCP to forward their political agenda.

He was a member of the the joint Forum of the Social Issues Research Centre and the Royal Institution which drew up the Guidelines on Science and Health to try and 'improve' the reporting of controversial scientific issues like GM foods by the media. Other members of the Forum included Professor Sir John Krebs FRS, the chairman of the Food Standards Agency, Lord Dick Taverne QC, the Co-Directors of The Social Issues Research Centre, and the Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of The Royal Institution.

MMR

Fitzpatrick led the Medical Research Council team that concluded in 1998 that there was no risk from the MMR vaccine after Dr Andrew Wakefield claimed that patients had suffered adverse reactions from it.

Publications

As Mike Freeman

• Mike Freeman, Malvinas are Argentina’s Revolutionary Communist Party, Junius Publications, 1982.
• Mike Freeman, The Empire Strikes Back: Why We Need A New Anti-Imperialist Movement, Revolutionary Communist Party, Junius Publications, 1993.