Not every newspaper reporter purposely withholds the truth. Due to conflicts of interest, so often the battle is getting editorial clearance from upstairs. Shylock Coambes, a reporter for a mainstream daily is one such conscience-stricken individual. Geri Spice articles by day maybe, but he keeps his ear to the ground for items of actual interest. Via anonymous email, he posts us the stories that have been blocked - the real news. Known as ‘Shylock’s Conscience’, these postings help him sleep at night. Although a fictional character, we would like to think that Shylock is representative of the many morally frustrated journalists out there, just looking for a way to break rank, and tell us what’s really going on. Shylock’s headline today is…

‘WBA set to compound BSE nightmare.’

BSE is breaking out all around us apparently. It’s all looking a bit grim. But not everything is as it seem. My attention was drawn to the following newspaper article:

"BSE Deaths Up 300%..." warns the UK Daily Mirror, Saturday Dec 9th, 2000. An un-named expert working closely with the Department of Health said "It is exceptionally worrying.." Fellow expert, micro-biologist, Professor Richard Lacey said "It is almost impossible for scientists to predict how many people will die....like the first cases of HIV, the omens are bad. Unfortunately, I think we are on course for a very serious problem."

For most people, this BSE thing is a nightmare waiting to unfold. To a small but growing minority however, the BSE theory is being accorded scant respect. A little bit of digging on the net, and I soon tracked one of these groups down. " We’re not denying there’s a problem." said my source, who wished to be known only as T. "But this current crisis is not solely down to BSE. There’s a relative unknown in the equation, a subtle predator, a nasty little spore we’ve identified as WBA. Take a look at this." he said, handing me a pale yellow folder. "BSE is being blamed on a virus, right? But where is it? In the last 15 years or so, they still haven't identified one. With WBA though, we have a clearly visible entity, with its own structure, invading the host, rapidly multiplying, and going on to destroy healthy brain cells. We ignore WBA at our peril."

WBA syndrome, or 'We'll Believe Anything’' is fair and square to blame for the current level of BSE panic, says T. "The epicentre of this horrific outbreak of WBA," continued T, "can be traced back to central feeding stations in and around London’s EC1/Fleet Street/Docklands newsland area. Powered by rich men behind the scenes, these national media outlets have a history of regularly piping their toxic editorial effluent into the consumer chain. Oh yes, we’re reading that it’s a vicious virus behind the few deaths we've seen. But in reality, this theory is complete BS without the E. All the hype about BSE is merely the by-product of hugely powerful vested interests protecting their share-holdings in the pharmaceutical, organo-phosphate and agri-chemicals industry. This is what’s really doing the damage. It’s the stuff the farmers are ploughing into the ground, the fertilisers etc. These poisons have entered our food chain to such an extent now, that we’ll soon be witnessing a whole host of new toxic illnesses in the human and animal population. For the pharmaceutical shareholders' sakes though, it is imperative this news does not come out. Hence, the alternative explanation - a deadly virus."Nodding wisely, I adopted my ‘of course this is nothing new’ look. But if he could have read my mind though. I was racing. What chance have I got of getting this lot past the boys upstairs?

"Added to this of course," continued T, "we have the federalist angle. I ask you, what makes an island self-sufficient? It's food production isn't it? As Kissinger once stated "To control a population, you control their food-chain." We believe there’s a definite interdependency agenda being fostered here. Thousands of perfectly healthy cattle being slaughtered, none of them foaming at the mouth. Why the slaughter? Is it co-incidence that the workings-out of this current policy will help to create a nation devoid of farmers, eventually reliant on outside food imports?"

"Who is this guy?" I said to myself. His prophecies were un-nerving. And yet, the stuff he was saying….the rush of a real story at last. I let him continue. "This sort of vested interest reporting is happening all the time. It happened quite recently with the so-called UK flu epidemic. It's no co-incidence that "Killer Flu" was hitting the headlines just prior to pharmaceutical giant Glaxo-Wellcome's new inhaler Relenza was hitting the market. Favours for favours? You bet. Of course, the killer flu never materialised, unless you wish to redefine the meaning of the word ‘epidemic' as ‘an average number of mid-winter deaths in the elderly' - a hardly unsurprising risk group for contracting the flu. And now, as a result of that convenient national promotion, we have yet another useless, in fact killer treatment on the market. Relenza has been directly linked to 22 deaths in the US, and is now approved for use in the UK! The decision is no longer "Do we approve this drug?" it’s "Despite the dangers, how do we approve it?" At the end of the day, we have millions of pounds spent, a lot of unnecessary death..and for what? For an illness a healthy immune system is more than capable of fending off anyway. Previous to the flu thing of course, we had all the lies and scare-mongering about meningitis."

Meningitis? Meningitis? I was momentarily taken back to my own September 2000 "Meningitis Rampage" headline. I was proud of that one. I even got a congratulatory call from the DOH. But looking back on it, where did I get my statistics? Some BMA journal somewhere, I think. But can they be trusted? They’ve just appointed executive director of Glaxo-Wellcome Jeremy Strachan to the post of 'Secretary to the BMA'. My train of thought on this being a story in itself was interrupted as T continued. "And now with meningitis, we are only just learning about the cover-up over the multiple deaths and serious injuries resulting from that particular vaccine campaign. Another case of a lot of unnecessary death for profit. And it’s the same with AIDS and HIV. And now, another supposed killer on the rampage - the dreaded BSE. We've got the goods on the lot. Where do you want to start?"

All the years in this reporting game, and all the stories I'd covered, but I tell you, I left that group pretty shaken. And what was that he said…"No such thing as HIV" ? I needed to do some homework. Three hours on the net, and what I unearthed blew me away!

What about the test? Some 60 different conditions setting off a false positive? And what about the early headlines telling us that by the year 2000, we could expect 7,000,000 HIV infections in the UK. And what are we? Twenty six thousand? There’s no virus identified yet, and a dud for a blood test….So where does that leave those twenty six thousand? Are they all false positives? Is everybody a false positive just waiting to happen? Any figures relating to a nation's HIV status are meaningless, surely.

And now, don’t they want to test all expectant mums?

What really shook me though was the maths for the drug treatment. Those in the know avoid the drugs…just looking at the labels is enough. Those that don’t take the drugs, eat right and live right, are alive and well. Those that take the drugs... well they mostly get sick or die.

AAAARGH! The column inches I've written on 'hit hard and hit early’…..

"I didn't know, honest, I didn't know!"

Up in my Canary Wharf office, the 28th floor, I looked down on the city below. Don’t they know that at the stroke of a pen, we can raise up and we can ruin. We can set kings in place, and we can dethrone. And now the damage I could do with this massive angle on AIDS. And it was solid…it all fitted. This was a number 1. The consequences! The devastation! The damage to the corporate skyline! The towers that would fall.

And suddenly, I remembered our ex-science reporter Donovan. I remember him coming in one day, real excited. He said he'd discovered something about HIV, and talking along the lines of "..a money-spinning, pharmaceutical and media driven hoax." We all thought he'd lost it, what with Africa dying and everything. But Donovan maintained it was all a massive scam. Anyway, he took his HIV piece to the bosses, facts, figures and everything. They didn't like it. Looking back on it now, that sort of marked the beginning of the end for Donovan. Nothing he did from then on seemed to fit the profile.

Thinking back on that chain of events suddenly made me feel quite sick. Focused me on the day in, day out bilge I write. And yet, when it comes to the stories that matter? Yeah right. Where are they? It’s all about friends in high places...all those corporate biggies, palling up at those meetings, you know, the meetings I mean, the meetings without a name. No reporters, no feedback. We know they go on. But what are we supposed to do? I've got my repayments too, you know.

The wonders of the net though, eh? Anonymity. At home. My own publication. No ‘Spice’ revelations. Just the news that matters. Shylock's Conscience. Ohhh…….the liberation! Any more pale yellow folders out there? I live for pale yellow folders. Post me at shylock@onetel.net.uk

As for that BSE thing. Well, for me it's all quite simple really. I’ve got a nice joint of beef lined up for the weekend. And the HIV thing? Well, as it happens some of my mates arecoming round for lunch too, including Ritchie. He’s one of those so-called ‘HIV positives’. He can carve if he wants to. And if he cuts himself....SO WHAT if some of his God-given claretdrips into the gravy?

Pip pip,

Shylock.