Zero case for lying

The lead story in The Times this morning is really quite extraordinary. To remind you of it:

Women who are pregnant or trying for a baby should stop drinking alcohol altogether, the Government’s leading doctors give warning today.

The new advice radically revises existing guidelines, which say that women can drink up to two units once or twice a week. Fiona Adshead, the deputy chief medical officer, said that the change was meant to send “a strong signal” to the thousands of women who drank more than the recommended limit that they were putting their babies at risk. But she admitted that it was not in response to any new medical evidence.

This is merely the latest instalment of an extremely dangerous development. The public health profession has long seen itself as having a political role in making us behave as it wishes, rather than simply providing us with information.

Now it has moved on to using deceit as a tactic to advance its various causes.

I am a strong supporter of the MMR vaccination. How, now, do I respond to readers who say that the medical profession is quite willing to lie to them when it wants to get its way?