Small risk : mass panic.

In October 1995 BBC Radio 5 Live broadcast a leaked Government warning that some of the latest contraceptive pills were twice as likely as the older ones to cause blood clots. Because of the leak, the news was broadcast before GPs were notified. Hundreds of thousands of women reacted with panic and stopped taking their contraceptive pills. The programme examines the evidence which prompted the government to issue this warning and asks whether the Committee on the Safety of Medicines was pressurized by the build up of press stories about young women who had died while taking the pill - anecdotal stories which may have had little scientific basis. In the ensuing scare the fundamental message of the warning was lost - that the absolute risk relating to the newer pills was still very small. The programme teases out the medical evidence, the way it was interpreted and the way it was relayed to the public. Among those taking part are Prof. Richard Farmer (Chelsea and Westminster Hospital), Dr. Susan Wood (Committee on the Safety of Medicines) and Prof. Walter Spitzer, whose study of the risks of the contraceptive pill, although undramatic in its findings, prompted the Committee to issue its warning.