Caroline Richmond obituary

Skilled medical journalist with a gift for demystifying evidence who was also an admired obituarist of doctors and scientists

In 1987 the medical journalist Caroline Richmond, who has died aged 82, was shocked at the barrage of protest in response to an article in the New Scientist saying food additives were mostly harmless. Curious to test what else people might believe was harmful, and a fan of wearing bright colours, she wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for the British Medical Journal, Fabric dyes: are they in the consumer's interest?"

It suggested wearing brightly coloured clothes might have a range of effects including increasing cancer risk and masking serious psychiatric disorders by making people too cheerful. The article was supposedly issued by the Dye Related Allergies Bureau (DRAB), a subsidiary of the Food Additives Research Team (FART), which Richmond assumed would alert readers to the joke.

Continue reading...