Anti-vaxxers ambush TV’s Dr Hilary Jones
ANTI-VAX campaigners stormed a book signing by Dr Hilary Jones and shouted at him: ‘You have blood on your hands.’
The TV medic was speaking to an audience at a village hall event for his debut novel last week.
Dr Jones has been a vocal supporter of the vaccine rollout, including for children aged 12 and over, and has become a target for criticism, abuse and threats by anti-vaxxers.
The protesters, reportedly calling themselves the ‘Bucks Freedom Action Group’, burst into the event at Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Hertfordshire, on Monday evening.
A video clip recorded by the campaigners entering the hall shows them approaching the stage as Dr Jones is speaking to the audience.
He is heard telling the antivaxxers: ‘I will talk to you any time, over a cup of tea, politely, but not now.’
In reply, one of the protesters said: ‘You will not, you won’t talk to the public. Why do you want to vaccinate my children?
‘You’ve said the worst reaction we can expect from the vaccine was a bad rash. You don’t have any words for the grieving relatives.’
The doctor, known to Good Morning Britain viewers as Dr Hilary, told the campaigners to ‘go away’.
One member of the audience then intervened to tell an antivaxxer: ‘You are an arrogant person who has come into a private thing and is interrupting everyone here.’ The video finished with the campaigner responding: ‘Why are you not worried about the deaths this man is responsible for?’
The £10-a-ticket event had been organised for Dr Jones, 68, to discuss his first novel, titled Frontline, a love story set on the Western Front during the First World War.