The Right to Speak Out

What do Adam, Eve and the Queen of Sheba have to do with libel reform? Ask David Balding and Mark Thomas, geneticists at University College London (UCL) who received legal threats after they criticized the claims of a firm that sells people details of their genetic ancestry. Or ask the student journalists who feared a libel lawsuit if they covered the row in their university newspaper. Or the senate committee of the same university that was forced to slap down its own rector for actions contrary to academic freedom.

It is a messy and perhaps uniquely British farce, and one that highlights the desperate need to change English libel laws. And it shows why long-promised reform, due to be discussed again in Parliament later this month, might not go far enough.

The story began last July, when Balding and Thomas heard Alistair Moffat, chief executive of genetic-analysis company BritainsDNA and rector of the University of St Andrews, tell BBC radio that his firm had discovered Eve’s grandson and nine Britons directly descended from the Queen of Sheba. He added that...