Don't shoot the scientists

Any hyperbole about swine flu was created by the media, not by virologists.

Simon Jenkins is right to say that obsessive media coverage of swine flu, ever thirsty for hyperbole and impatient for new developments, can be misleading (Sophie's sniffle mocks the peddlers of swine flu panic, 6 May). And advice issued by government should rightly be debated.

But the suggestion that scientists "depend on regular pandemic scares for government grants" is paranoid (we might as well say Jenkins invents contrary opinions in order to be paid by the Guardian). In his dismay at the lack of a pandemic he reminds me of a man playing Russian roulette who, after two squeezes of the trigger, declares: "Ha! This isn't dangerous after all!" The possibility of a pandemic is real but cannot yet be predicted with assurance.

Jenkins declares that "no medical authority ... has confined its reporting to the facts". Yet the majority of scientists have been cautious and measured on the subject. At the Science Media Centre we have spoken to dozens of scientists on the subject and I haven't yet found one who is clamouring to make more media appearances; these people are hardly underworked at the moment. More

Respected Scientist - A-H1N1 Flu May Be Man-Made

Swine Flu for Dummies