Michael Fitzpatrick
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is a GP in Hackney, London. As of May 2010 he is a Trustee of the controversial lobby group Sense About Science.[1] 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.[2][3][4][5]
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.
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 also contributed regularly to Spiked [6] 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 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.
He has a regular column in The Lancet.
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 Michael Fitzpatrick
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.
Notes
- ↑ Board of trustees, SAS website, acc 10 May 2010
- ↑ George Monbiot, “Invasion of the entryists”, The Guardian, 9 December 2003
- ↑ “Interview with George Monbiot”, LobbyWatch, April 2007; “Profiles - Living Marxism", LobbyWatch, accessed April 2009
- ↑ Sense About Science website contact page, version placed in web archive 29 Oct 2003, acc in web archive 2 May 2010, screengrab here
- ↑ Global Futures contact page, version of 2002, accessed in web archive 2/5/2010, screengrab here
- ↑ "Articles by Michael Fitzpatrick", Spiked website, accessed 2 May 2010
