Joan Shenton

Early life

Shenton was born in Antofagasta, Chile to an English father and Anglo-Chilean mother. She lived in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala and Venezuela. When she was 11 she came to England to St Catherine's School, Bramley, Surrey.

In 1961 she matriculated as a state scholar at St Anne's College, Oxford, reading Spanish and French. She ultimately gained an MA (Hons) in Modern Languages.

Early career

In 1964 she joined the BBC World Service, broadcasting in Spanish for the Latin American Service. She reported on London stories for presenter Juan Peirano on Actualidades and Ritmo de Londres.

She then reported in Spanish for the Central Office of Information (COI) on a weekly television programme called This Week in Britain (TWIBS) which was given to British Embassies in Latin America and provided free to the respective countries’ television stations.

She went on to become a reporter/presenter for Anglia Television and then BBC's Nationwide, where she worked for Michael Townson, editor of London region.

In 1972 she became seriously ill with drug-induced lupus after excessive medication in Spain. This led to her lifelong interest in injury from prescribed drugs. Together with Lilian Wilding and through the Thames Television Help! programme, Shenton later founded the Steroid Aid Group in 1979 and became honorary president.

After her recovery, she joined Thames Television in 1973 as co-presenter with Tony Bastable on the consumer programme Money-Go-Round, produced by Mary McAnally. During this period, she also presented Thames Television’s social affairs programme Help!

Shenton resumed her radio career in 1973, joining Capital Radio under the editorship of Michael Bukht (also known as the chef Michael Barry), and Shenton broadcast on Capital from the station's very first day on air. She co-presented a daily three-hour live programme Swap Shop with Tommy Vance. She then went on to present Capital’s weekly hospital radio programme called Person to Person.

Independent producer

In 1978 together with Ronnie Noble, Shenton founded her independent production company Meditel Productions and made its first series of programmes about joint replacement surgery together with surgeon Michael Freeman.

She produced and presented for the BBC's Tonight the first live broadcast of a total hip replacement operation relayed from the then London Hospital, Whitechapel to a conference of surgeons in Bern, Switzerland. The programme was relayed by the European Broadcasting Union. In 1980, Meditel made Microsurgeons of Shanghai about Chen Zhong Wei’s work on limb and finger replantation (TV Eye, Thames TV).

When Channel 4 began under Jeremy Isaacs, Shenton and business partner Alison Hawkes turned Meditel Productions into a limited company and secured one of Channel 4’s first factual programmes commissions. They made Kill or Cure?, two series of programmes on injury from prescribed drugs, together with pharmacologist Dr Andrew Herxheimer. These programmes were used by University College London Medical School to train students of pharmacology.

Other programmes in this period include Who Cares? (Channel 4), a four-part series on comparative healthcare around the world. One of the programmes, Keeping the Beat, which challenged currently held views on fat and cholesterol won the Medical Journalists Association and Pearl Assurance Special Merit Award (1986).

Central Television’s Viewpoint series commissioned an international look at approaches to mental illness, Forgotten Millions (1987), which Shenton co-produced with David Cohen. It won the Red Ribbon Award: American Film and Video Association (1989).

A one-hour documentary, Impotence – One in Ten Men, for Channel 4 won the British Medical Association Educational Merit Award (1990).

In the late 1980s, together with Meditel’s producer Jad Adams, Meditel made two network six-part series about food, Food – Fad or Fact?, co-produced with Tom Goodison of Television South West. Food - Fad or Fact? “Salt” won the New Jersey Television and Movie Awards (1988). “The Cholesterol Campaign” won at the Houston International Film Festival: Bronze Award, Educational Documentaries (1989).

Entering into the AIDS debate

In the late 1980s, Meditel took up the cause of HIV/AIDS denialism, giving voice to the scientists who deny the scientific evidence connecting HIV and AIDS. A programme for Channel 4's Dispatches series (AIDS: The Unheard Voices), produced by Jad Adams, was the first of four Meditel commissions on the subject. It won the Royal Television Society Journalism Award (1988) and Meditel was the first independent production company ever to win this award. There followed The AIDS Catch (Dispatches, 1990), then AZT – Cause for Concern (Dispatches, 1991) which was awarded the British Medical Association Educational Merit Award (1992). AIDS and Africa (Dispatches, 1993) travelled across Africa and challenged the reported figures for AIDS at the time.

During this period, Meditel made a series of reports on the AIDS debate which were shown on Sky News: Amsterdam Alternative AIDS Conference (1992) featuring AIDS denialist, molecular biologist Peter Duesberg; AZT Babies (1992); AIDS Dissidents in Europe (1993). In late 1993 a one-hour documentary called Diary of an AIDS Dissident was transmitted on Sky News.

In 2000, Shenton and Huw Christie, editor of Continuum magazine, made Search for Solutions: The Great AIDS Debate for M-Net’s Carte Blanche programme in South Africa. It included a specially granted interview with President Thabo Mbeki.

In 2010, Shenton was part of the Alternative AIDS Conference in Vienna and was amongst a number of dissidents interviewed by Russia Today.

The following year, the independent film Positively False: Birth of a Heresy, co-produced with Andi Reiss, was released by Meditel and Yellow Productions. The film brought together highlights from over 60 hours of footage from the Meditel archive, denying the link between HIV and AIDS. It was nominated for Best Documentary at the Lucerne (2011) and Marbella (2012) International Film Festivals.

In 2014, Shenton and Reiss made a 30-minute documentary, Positive Hell, which followed the lives of five individuals in Northern Spain who survived a diagnosis of HIV while shunning medication for decades. Positive Hell was also nominated for Best Documentary at Marbella International Film Festival (2014) and was selected for the online festivals LACineFest (2015), Digital Griffix, Montreal (2015) and the Indie Festival, Switzerland (2015).

Shenton is currently a board member of Rethinking AIDS.

Book publication

In 1998, I.B. Tauris published Shenton’s book Positively False: Exposing the Myths around HIV and AIDS which documented the making of her documentaries on AIDS and on her experience as a campaigning journalist in the field of AIDS. At publication, some invitations for interviews on book programmes were suddenly cancelled and the book received little publicity. It soon went out of print. However, in 2015 it was re-published independently as the 16th Anniversary Edition.

Immunity Resource Foundation

Shenton is founder and administrator of the Immunity Resource Foundation (IRF), a UK charity registered in 2004 (registration number: 1105986). IRF became a non-incorporated charity in 2014. The charity was set up together with Huw Christie, then editor of Continuum magazine.

Other activities

Shenton lived for several years in the Dominican Republic where she founded a charity with lawyer and charity administrator Dra Susana Vargas in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. The charity, Fundacion Daniel Martinez, promotes sports education and cultural programmes teaching folkloric music and dance. The charity has constructed extra schoolroom wings in five rural schools, a polyclinic and a rehabilitation centre in Puerto Plata hospital.

In 1999, Shenton produced the acclaimed Home Running documentary in the Dominican Republic for BBC Under the Sun, directed by Kim Flitcroft, about young Dominican baseball players who make it into the US Major League Academies.

Shenton sings with Latin American folk band Altamar which has performed on Capital Radio, at the Royal Albert Hall and in many theatres and wine bars. She is also a snooker player, having been a member of the ‘B’ team at the Portobello Green Snooker Club and participated in the Hammersmith and District Snooker League matches.

Awards and honours