Doctors win substantial damages after being branded ‘statin deniers’ who endangered lives

A major UK newspaper has paid out ‘substantial damages’ to two doctors after it had claimed their questioning of statins would lead to many deaths.

Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Mail on Sunday—one of the world’s leading news websites—has issued an apology and paid all costs and damages to Drs Malcolm Kendrick and Zoe Harcombe.

In 2019, it had claimed the doctors, which they labelled as ‘Statin deniers’, would cause the deaths of many people who stopped taking the drugs after hearing their arguments.  The newspaper’s health editor, Barney Calman, said the consequences would be more severe than the MMR issue when vaccinations dropped after Andrew Wakefield questioned their safety.

The article also implied the two doctors were dishonest and were knowingly spreading falsehoods for commercial gain.

But the newspaper’s public interest defence against libel was dismissed last June by Justice Matthew Nicklin, who said the doctors were not dishonest, and believed their questioning of statins—and the whole fats theory of heart disease—was an honest opinion that they held without expectation of any gain.

On reviewing the science, Justice Nicklin agreed the fats theory of heart disease was not conclusive, and the doctors had every right to question it.

In the years following publication, Calman and his publishers had refused to apologise, remove or alter the offending articles, so Kendrick and Harcombe sued for libel, arguing the articles “caused serious harm” to their reputations.

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