The publisher of the Mail on Sunday has apologised and paid “very substantial” damages to a doctor and academic wrongly portrayed as “statin deniers”.
Zoë Harcombe PhD and Dr Malcolm Kendrick sued Associated Newspapers and the Mail on Sunday‘s head of health Barney Calman for libel over articles published in March 2019 under headlines including “Deadly propaganda of the statin deniers” and “There is a special place in hell for the doctors who claim statins don’t work”.
A third article “distorted” a statement on statins given to the paper by then-health secretary Matt Hancock and was headlined: “Statin deniers are putting patients at risk, says minister”.
Photos of Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick were featured in the articles and described as “statin deniers” who published “fake news” about the cholesterol-lowering drug.
Following a trial of preliminary issues, the public interest defence used by Associated Newspapers was dismissed by a High Court judge in June.
Mr Justice Nicklin also said his decision meant the defences of truth and honest opinion as they were being advanced “cannot be maintained”.
On honest opinion, this was because he found that Calman did not hold the opinions that the court found the articles to contain.
The judge described Calman as an “honest” witness who “clearly felt (and feels still) passionately about the issue of statins” but said he had been “dismissive” towards Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick.
Mr Justice Nicklin found that “in the context of the public interest defence, perhaps the most serious omission of Mr Calman was his treatment of the Claimants’ right-to-reply responses” and that failing to consider what they had said “rendered the right-to-reply process hollow and superficial”.
The judge also found that the use made of Hancock’s statement “gave readers a completely misleading impression” about what he had said, describing this as a “serious error”.
Rather than seeking to amend its use of the truth and honest opinion defences, Associated Newspapers instead offered to settle the case.
The publisher has agreed not to repeat the allegations, published an apology online and in the Mail on Sunday, and paid each claimant “very substantial” damages and their legal costs.
A statement read in open court on Thursday by a solicitor for the claimants said they felt “satisfied that they have secured proper vindication”.
The statement said: “At trial, the Court found that the articles defamed the claimants by conveying to readers the defamatory meaning that each of Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick had repeatedly made public statements about cholesterol and statins that they knew to be false; that there were strong grounds to suspect that each had made these knowingly false statements motivated by the hope that they would benefit from doing so either financially or from enhanced status; and the direct effect of the publication of these knowingly false statements by Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick was, first, to cause a very large number of people not to take prescribed statin medication; and second, thereby to expose them to a serious risk of a heart attack or stroke causing illness, disability or death; that in consequence, each of Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick was rightly to be condemned as a ‘pernicious liar’, for whom there was ‘a special place in hell’, whose lies, deadly propaganda, insidious fake news, scare stories, and crackpot conspiracy theories, had recklessly caused a very large number of people to stop taking statins, risking needless deaths and causing harm.”
It added that these allegations were “completely untrue” and that both claimants “have always been passionate believers in evidence-based science and open scientific debate, who defend the principle that impartiality and objectivity are called for in the evaluation of scientific evidence, including in relation to the use and prescription of statins”.
The statement published on Mail Online said the publisher accepts the allegations “are untrue and ought not to have been published.
“We are happy to set the record straight, and apologise to Dr Harcombe and Dr Kendrick for the distress caused. We will not repeat the allegations and have agreed to pay substantial damages and costs.”
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