Home secretary accused of bullying drugs adviser over comments about ecstasy

Zosia Kmietowicz

British Medical Journal, 13 February 2009,

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b612

Champions of evidence based medicine have defended the UK government’s drugs adviser who was criticised this week by the home secretary for saying that the risk associated with taking the recreational drug ecstasy was no worse than riding a horse.

Ben Goldacre, a doctor and author of Bad Science, said that it was "completely ridiculous" that David Nutt was forced to apologise for his comments, which he made in an article in the Journal of Psychopharmacology and were widely reported in the British press at the weekend (2009;23:3-5, doi:10.1177/0269881108099672).

In the article, which was written before Professor Nutt took his post as chairman of the Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he argued that "equine addiction syndrome" results in 100 deaths a year compared with 30 for ecstasy use.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, criticised Professor Nutt and demanded an apology, saying that his comments went beyond the scientific advice that was expected of him. They trivialised the risk of drugs, showed insensitivity to the families of people who had died, and sent the wrong message to young people, she said.

"I’ve spoken to him. I’ve told him that I was surprised and profoundly disappointed," she told MPs.

Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP, said Ms Smith’s censure of a scientific adviser was "unacceptable and outrageous."

"While scientists can be called upon by those who disagree with their findings or views to justify and debate them, it is not on for a scientist to be called upon by the home secretary to publicly apologise for publishing his or her work in a peer reviewed academic journal, especially when the individual is supposed to be independent of the government," he said.

"The idea of independent scientific advice is corrupted or rendered meaningless when advisers are publicly attacked by the politicians they are meant to be advising simply because they don’t like the advice.

"In his article, Professor Nutt makes the point that it is impossible to have a proper rational discussion of the relative harm of taking drugs, as compared with legal activities, because of the hysterical way in which politicians and the media treat the issue. With her bullying tactics, the home secretary has proved him right."

Dr Goldacre said, "It is an extraordinary thing to do. It goes to show how little regard there is for evidence in policy. In medicine we have seen huge leaps forward in promoting evidence based practice, but for some reason that does not seem to generalise to other areas of human conduct, such as public policy, where it is equally appropriate. This may reflect a lack of basic scientific knowledge at senior levels in government."

He argued that Professor Nutt’s reasoning was "entirely transparent." "He has compared the risks of two recreational activities and found that the risks are comparable, being entirely clear about his methods."

It is important not to confuse this with other issues, he added.

"If [Ms Smith] wishes to say that she thinks drug use is distasteful or immoral then that is one thing; if she believes that ‘sending out a message’ will affect behaviour then that is a matter for research. But these are both separate to the issue of whether one activity is more risky than another," said Dr Goldacre.

If Ms Smith has any meaningful criticism of Professor’s Nutt’s methods then she should state it clearly, he added.

"People already think that it is odd to have a group of academics and scientists on the council who produce evidence based reports if they are going to be ignored, as we saw with the council’s review on cannabis classification. The oddness of that situation is taken to a different level if you actively criticise those people for producing evidence based discussion papers. People will quite rightly find that puzzling," said Dr Goldacre.
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