Lord Dick Taverne
[back] Experts

[Here is a company man if there ever was one.  Promoting Monsanto's GM poisons (1), defending the Vivisection crime (1), and vaccine companies by campaigning for legal aid to be withdrawn re MMR, while attacking non-Allopathic medicine such as Homeopathy.  If he gave a rat's ass about addiction he would be campaigning for the orthomolecular treatment (1, 2).]

President (2004): Research Defence Society
Founder: Sense about Science

Lord Dick Taverne by Lobbywatch

Conflicts of Integrity by Martin Walker

[2004] Taverne Letter to BMJ] PERSONAL VIEW The legal aid folly that damages us all

[2004] The costly fraud that is organic food

Quotes
"They had two things they had to stop.  Firstly, the court case which had been organised on behalf of around 1,000 children and had taken 10 years to come to court.  This case had to be stopped because the government had underwritten any damages accrued by GlaxoSmithKline if parents were awarded compensation for vaccine damage.

    They also had to curtail Wakefield’s career, stop him from researching in this area in Britain, prevent him from making statements to the press and media, and above all discredit him as an expert witness. There is no doubt about his stature before all this happened.  He was one of the leading medical researchers in Crohn’s disease.  He had been given awards for his work.

    Anyway, they stopped the legal claims by parents by withdrawing Legal Aid.  In claims law in England, you have to select test cases because you can’t go ahead with 1,000 cases - so 10 were chosen.  But in 2004, after ten years of preparation, with all children being on Legal Aid, it was suddenly withdrawn 6 months before it came to court!  This meant that all the cases came to a sudden end. 

    In fact some time afterward when this decision was appealed, it was found that the Judge in the case had a brother who was a non executive board director of Glaxo SmithKline, who were the Defendants in the case.  Also, the science lobby groups funded by the drug companies and Lord Dick Taverne, founder of Sense About Science and a lawyer, campaigned to get legal aid taken from the parents."----[Interview of Martin Walker Sept 2008] ANDREW WAKEFIELD IN THE DOCK 

In the House of Lords on January 23rd Lord Taverne asked Her Majesty’s Government, “whether they have any proposals to withdraw National Health Service funding for homeopathy?”  [2006] NEWS: The Lords debate homoeopathy

“The more I’ve looked at genetic modification, the more I’ve become an enthusiast for the technology,” says Lord Taverne, [2006] UK PEER ENCOURAGES SKEPTICS TO REVIEW BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH  2006 Monsanto Company.

Competing interests: DT is chairman of the monitoring board of AXA Sun Life, chairman of a consultancy concerned with good governance in South East Asia, president of the Research Defence Society, and chairman of the charity Alcohol and Drug Addiction Prevention and Treatment Ltd. [2004] Taverne Letter to BMJ] PERSONAL VIEW The legal aid folly that damages us all