The story, which doesn’t even have a title, is played for one purpose - to put blame for a solitary death on to the patient’s mother, who no doubt had influenced her in her choice of treatment, and who is a well-known anti-vaccine campaigner. This must be relevant, as their are three or four vaccine digs in the story, even though nobody had an infectious disease.
But the main focus of the story is on ‘conspiracy theories’, which are mentioned about 15 times.
This is problematic, as this particular type of propaganda is what Marianne Spring does for a living.
‘Our sister died of cancer because of our mum’s conspiracy theories’
From the gross headline (what have conspiracy theories got to do with the deceased’s choice of cancer treatment? The article doesn’t explain this, in fact conspiracy theories are mentioned more than the cancer) you get the strong impression that the woman, who declined chemotherapy treatment, then died of her cancer. Must have been her stupid beliefs, then! goes the narrative, quoting the bereaved relatives, who disagreed with the treatment choice.
In fact the woman died of a heart attack - but you have to read your way through a lot of fraught family flak before you get to read this at the bottom of this emotionally-laden story, which, as such, could have been written by the Eastenders scriptwriters.
Whatever the evidence for or against the respective choices the dead woman faced, one cannot claim to be scientific while pinning a single death on to one treatment. No treatment guarantees success.
In science, you declare conflicts of interest and don’t exploit or peddle emotions.
I think this is the worst taste I have seen the BBC stoop to.