Experience of dealing with the media on congenital anomaly research

In this paper I report two separate studies of congenital anomalies, one of which was generated by a media alarm, and the second that needed to disseminate research findings to the public through the mass media. There are many similarities between the two pieces of work and the process of disseminating results. Both show the importance of working with the media to share our work in an informed way to present a true evaluation of risks to the public. The first study, generated by media concern, was based on a cluster of four English babies born without a left hand. Although this original cluster on which the first part of this paper is based was several years ago, there are several important messages resulting from this work which are still as relevant today. The second study reports the findings of a collaborative study, known as EUROHAZCON, based in different locations in Europe, which tested whether living close to a landfill site was a risk factor for congenital anomalies. The media can have a huge impact both on what we do within our Congenital Anomaly Registers and in how we do it. It is useful to reflect on these studies and evaluate how the media influenced our work at the time. In particular, dealing with the media can be very time consuming whilst we are still trying to focus on the epidemiology.