Families
duped by sad smearmaster
of MMR fabrication and hatred
Brian
Deer responds to the "contemptible" Martin
J Walker
Revised and updated 31 March 2010
So, Andrew Wakefield has been found guilty by a
statutory tribunal of the UK's General Medical
Council of some three dozen charges, including four counts of
dishonesty and 12 involving the abuse of
developmentally-challenged children. His 1998 paper
in the Lancet medical journal has been retracted. Another paper intended to be
published this year in the journal Neurotoxicology
has been withdrawn. And he has been ousted from his
$280,000-a-year job in Austin, Texas, by Jane
Johnson, director of the controversial Defeat Autism
Now! franchise, widely-criticised as a network of
quacks.
Now there's not much
left of him - either in the UK or the US - apart from
the rump of his pitiful network. Although almost
literally a handful of people, and some with no link
to MMR or autism at all, they've insinuated
themselves among affected British families and do
little but cause distress with false claims. Their
prime aim is to undermine me and my Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation, which nailed
the scare, helped to restore public confidence, and
heaved Wakefield into the dustbin of medicine.
A string of recent
outings for an array of particularly sickening
falsehoods are authored by a 62-year-old graphic
artist called Martin J Walker, who lives in Spain,
but in July 2007 surfaced in London at the mammoth
hearings of the GMC. He claims to be some kind of
"health activist", and, although generally
of no consequence, is a relentless peddler of smear
and denigration, with a track record of latching onto
the vulnerable. These he beguiles - like he's their
new best friend - and then tries to sell them
self-published books, or better-still, have them give
him money.
Bizarrely, according
to doctors, Walker's interest in the GMC began some
years ago when his former girlfriend ran off with the
council's (now-former) chief executive, Finlay Scott.
But his recent tirades have focused on me: deploying
a well-worn modus operandi.
Over the years this
approach has embraced him fantasising phone calls
that never occurred, to meetings with doctors that
never happened. But the heart of his activities is an
infantile obsession to try to link me with drug
companies. This is notwithstanding (or more likely because)
I'm well-known for investigating them, with even a British Press Award citation. In an ill-written
60-page online diatribe, published at a particularly
deranged cranksite, for example, he has claimed -
entirely falsely - that I've been supported by the
Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
(ABPI), and with the implication that I'm concealing
this misconduct. Among other things, for example, he
told anyone foolish enough to visit the cranksite:
"In
neither his Sunday Times article nor the
Dispatches programme nor on his web site does
Brian Deer make reference to a company called
MedicoLegal Investigations Ltd (MLI). MLI is a
private company, controlled and almost completely
funded by the ABPI that has an agreed
representation on its board. The company played a
leading part in Deer's investigation, and helped
prepare the case against Wakefield to go before
the GMC."
Later, in a further,
22-page, rant - primarily trying to smear Dr Surendra
Kumar, chair of the five-member GMC panel which heard
the case against Wakefield - Walker went further.
Here he accused me of a conspiracy with MLI to
mislead readers of The Sunday Times:
"As
anyone who has been following the GMC hearing
will know, the prosecution that is the GMC, fell
hook, line and Murdoch owned Sunday Times sinker
for Deer's story that had been concocted with the
help of Medico-Legal Investigations."
These false,
defamatory (and badly-written) allegations are
obviously serious for a professional journalist such
as myself, and have been extensively developed and
embellished by Walker with invention and snide
innuendo. As so often with such characters, it's an
established technique: Walker has honed his abuse on
others. In recent years, for example, he has run
smear campaigns against the reputations of two
doctors who also write on MMR - Michael Fitzpatrick
and Ben Goldacre - as if, more than anything, he's
motivated by envy for those who've succeeded where he
has failed.
Now he has lighted on
me, with a two-and-a-half year smear campaign, for
which there's not the slightest basis in truth.
In the case of MLI, for instance, other than to be
interviewed by me (which is, after all, what
journalists do), MLI played no role at all in my
investigation, let alone a "leading part",
as Walker invents. It wasn't involved in any way in
the preparation of my stories. And, to my certain
knowledge, MLI played no role whatsoever in preparing
the GMC's successful case against Wakefield.
But truth doesn't do
it for the smearmaster Walker. He has conspiracy on
his mind. This is his livelihood. A small businessman
in falsehoods, he needs to come up with the goods,
using a grubby witch-hunt style of implication:
"Brian
Deer disclosed in his main Sunday Times article
about Dr Wakefield after he had presumably spoken
to him, that the then Minister for Health, John
Reed [Walker means I had presumably
spoken with the then-secretary of state for
health, John Reid] had called for the case of Dr
Wakefield to be referred to the GMC... Reed's
shunting of Dr Wakefield's case into the GMC
represents the most serious conflict of interest
and manifest corruption."
By chance, I've never
met or spoken with Reid. But, for Walker, we're in
it together. He deploys a disgusting, gutter,
style of character assassination: what you'd do if
you were a malicious fool with no facts.
The truth is rather
different, and rather awkward for Walker, as he seeks
to sponge off families hit by autism. As would be the
duty of any responsible investigative journalist,
tackling a serious, complex issue such as MMR, my
inquiries involved interviews with hundreds of
sources, drawn from many relevant backgrounds and
viewpoints. The first of these interviews was with Jackie Fletcher of the litigation and
campaign group JABS. The second was with a litigant,
and close Wakefield collaborator, Rosemary Kessick of Peterborough,
Cambridgshire. And another of these hundreds of
interviews was with a doctor-lawyer called Jane
Barrett, who works with MLI.
Why MLI? Well, it's a
respectable business, with a track record of
evaluating conduct. Usually it's that of doctors
faking medical research while employed by drug firms
or health bodies. You'd think that Walker, if he
genuinely cared about the integrity of medicine,
would welcome the company's objectives and
achievements. MLI's sometime chairman, Dr Frank
Wells, for example, is co-editor of a highly regarded
book called "Fraud and Misconduct". It's published by the
BMJ.
In my interview with
Barrett, we discussed the role of ethics committees,
and the EU clinical trials directive. This is routine
research for journalists: a staple of professional
reporting. Walker wouldn't grasp this - since he
fabricates his material - but we do this kind of
stuff every day. Moreover, it wasn't hidden,
as Walker implies, but has been declared by me - for
example in legal papers served on Wakefield in 2005:
"3.87.
The Third Defendant additionally carried out
numerous interviews and studied various
publications concerned with the ethics of
research, including discussions with the editors
of The Lancet and the British Medical Journal,
Department of Health sources, the chair of the
RFH ethics committee, Dr Evan Harris, MP for
Oxford West and Abingdon, who maintains a special
interest in medical ethics, Dr Jane Barrett, a
doctor and lawyer with Medico-Legal
Investigations, RFH doctors, and others."
No doubt, MLI - who I
first stumbled on during a Sunday Times investigation
in 1997 - hoped that a namecheck in the paper might
be good for its business. But, as it turned out, no
interview material was used, or even relied upon in
anything published. However, in much the same way
that the Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, issued a press notice
following a meeting with me in 2004, MLI was
evidently so excited to be interviewed at all that it
trumpeted the fact on its website. Nowhere, in a
far-from-conspiratorial online reference, does it
claim to have investigated anything, or to have
collaborated with me. It didn't.
Would it have
mentioned me on its website if it had?
Stupidity aside,
underlying Walker's message is the insinuation that
I'm on the take. On this point, his smearing snidery
came to the fore early on. In 2007, he peddled this
filth:
"One
unanswered question remains writ large, 'Does
anyone other than the Sunday Times newspaper,
fund Brian Deer to carry out this work?'"
As so often in such
things, the truth is the mirror-image: it has been
Walker taking money from vested interests. "In
the beginning and at different occasions,
autism-related individuals in the US have supported
my work," he admitted in a secret May 2009
request for cheques which would help him complete a
false account of the GMC's proceedings and to
continue his abuse of me. "Recently, however, I
have had to depend on the parents of vaccine-damaged
children who support Dr Wakefield."
I find such conduct
sickening, but it doesn't surprise me. The MMR issue
has often been plunged to such depths. Upon the backs
of families, struggling with disability, have climbed
lawyers, their experts, pliable journalists and
moronic "writers", who, in the end,
contributed nothing, but walked away replete, having
fed upon the pickings of misinformation.
For me, there's a
relationship between truth and freedom. It's what
brought me into journalism in the first place. That's
one reason why my work on MMR has been supported
solely on a proper basis: with no income from any
source with any agenda. Apart from a cheque I received from Wakefield's
lawyers, on his behalf, and payments for two
contributions to the BMJ, my investigation has been
financed solely by Times Newspapers Ltd and Channel 4
Television. Nobody else - but me - has contributed
one cent.
Walker hints I'm on
the take because he is.
My dealings with the
GMC, meanwhile, have also been proper: the entirely
professional supply of journalistic findings to a
statutory regulator. My public duty - and at the
GMC's prior request. Although Wakefield has run his
own campaign, ridiculously alleging that
I'm the complainant in the case against him, Walker's
reference to Reid makes it cut-glass clear that they
know this isn't true. The GMC's investigation
followed public uproar over my first reports, in
February 2004, including a call for such an inquiry
by Wakefield himself. It was carried out by the
council's lawyers, Field Fisher Waterhouse and
specialist counsel, who never notified me of the
charges, or at any time discussed them with me.
The position was made
plain at Wakefield's GMC hearing, when Sally Smith
QC, in closing submissions for the prosecution, told
the panel how the proceedings came about. "And
that, you heard, was through an investigative
journalist, Mr Deer, who made allegations in 2004 to
Dr Horton, the editor of the Lancet, and in addition
he wrote a lengthy article in The Sunday Times,"
she said on 16 March 2009. "Subsequently, the
General Medical Council investigated what you also
know is the complex background to the case. And I
should remind you that the prosecution has been
brought solely on the instructions of the General
Medical Council. Mr Deer is not the
complainant."
Now, to continue this
unpleasant-to-write narrative, here's the
liar-for-hire's tone, when, in his bid to shake money
from families with autism, he wants his libels to
sound high-flown:
"Brian
remains isolated, a social pariah, who will
undoubtedly be cast aside like a used condom when
his benefit to the Department of Health and ABPI
comes to an end."
It's little surprise
that cranks and parasites, such as this man, have
attached themselves to the MMR issue. Nor is it
surprising that they should run dirty tricks
campaigns in bids to damage the reputations of honest
people. Walker's barn-door libels appear to be backed
with no assets, but, long before his latest
fundraising effort, he was stupid enough to have
circulated letters promoting what he calls a
"campaign against" me, for which he
solicited help and - you guessed it - money.
This must ring alarm bells for prejudice and malice:
meaning that those who unwisely publish or distribute
his deceits must be wary of the catastrophic risk.
With an eye on his
backers' pocket-books, Walker's more recent lies have
become desperate, squeezing smears from my slightest
movements. In January 2009, for instance, he made up
a moneyspinner about me joining a queue for GMC
coffee (yes, indeed, a queue for coffee).
In paragraphs published at another cranksite, he
concocted an incident, which GMC staff confirm to me
never happened. Although framed in terms that he must
imagine protect him from any consequences, he started
his narrative with a barefaced lie - claiming, with
regard to Professor Simon Murch, one of Wakefield's
co-defendants, that I:
"proceeded
to knock into the witness, and standing level
with him, turned to place [my] face directly in
front of the witness almost nose to nose"
Walker then continued
with typically grandiose commentary, founded upon his
own fabrication (my underlining):
"There can be little
doubt that if this account is correct,
Deer's act was tantamount to the intimidation of
a witness. What does this mean? In relation to
legal situations generally, the intimidation of
witnesses in any form has especially since the
1950s - through the criminal gang trials of the
sixties and then into the anti-terrorist trials
of the 1970s and 1980s - been considered one of
the most serious charges that could be brought
against someone acting inside or outside the
court."
Having opined on the
assumptions of his own base deceit, he satisfied his
paymasters - who must have heartily chuckled - by
fabricating further events. Again couched in terms
that impart the libel, but apparently allow Walker to
imagine that he protects himself by acknowledging
that he may be making it up (my underlinings again):
"In
relation to the GMC and it's hearing procedures,
we might look briefly at what appears
to have happened and then put it in context.
Following the incident, a complaint was made to
the GMC and it might be
that everyone watched the CCTV footage of the
incident. No reference was made to the incident
publicly. We might assume
that Mr Deer was spoken to by GMC staff and on
the Wednesday when he next attended. Professor
Murch was assigned a 'minder' as he left the
hearing for a break."
Asked whether any of
this was true, a GMC official confirmed that it
wasn't. No CCTV footage was looked at, nobody spoke
to me, and Murch was not assigned a minder. The whole
thing was a concoction by the smearmaster.
And yet, once again -
and almost unbelievably - here was another remarkable
inversion of the truth. Walker had personally
interfered with a GMC witness, after she concluded
giving evidence to the panel. In August 2007, one of
the parents of 12 children enrolled in Wakefield's
research appeared for the doctors' regulator and gave
critical insights into the conduct of the Royal Free
project. Explaining how she had been convinced by
another mother that her child with Asperger's was
vaccine damaged - four years after he was vaccinated
- she gave pivotal documents to the prosecution's
lawyers and oral testimony on what had transpired.
But the smearmaster not only approached her
immediately after she left the witness chair, but
later self-published two "books" explicitly
premised upon what he knew to be a lie: that parents
weren't allowed to take part.
Can there be many
greater moral crimes than this man's conduct:
deceiving the parents of disabled children for money?
What a way to hit old age. What a contemptible beast.
I feel lost in the depth of his depravity.
The real tragedy, as
ever, is the plight of the vulnerable: the true
victims of the MMR-autism fraud. It goes without
saying that Walker spews forth greedy falsehoods -
extending to faking "reports" of the GMC's
mammoth hearing - with a view to inflaming beliefs,
which he can turn into cash, that the doctors'
regulator is corrupt, capricious, and incompetent.
Then, his line goes, I'm hovering in the wings, with
the drug industry, the government, and whoever else.
Only a devious clown would believe this. Walker does.
And no doubt he'll believe it until it refills his
bank account: when those he dupes with such miserable
fantasies send him cheques, and/or buy his
self-published books.
"Cheques should
be made out to Martin J Walker," he says,
promising free copies of his "most recent
essays". It's an extraordinary scam: by which he
gets people he lies to - some rich with an agenda,
others vulnerable and preyed on - to pay him for the
privilege.
Breathtaking.
By December 2009,
that scam reached its climax in a confidential email
"newsletter". Kindly sent to me by an
outraged father, it demands a further £5,500 from
Wakefield's network to pay Walker's "expenses
plus minimal earnings". Presumably not realizing
that some recipients would be disgusted by this
approach, he again admitted receiving payments from
vested interests, including "individual and
generous vaccine damage campaigners in the United
States". Then he proposed a grandiose - and, by
his own averred creed, corrupt - ruse to
finance more lies from the GMC:
"This
time, in this Newsletter, I am asking not for
contributions to my expenses, but for three
people or so to get together and set up a fund
for financing of my coverage, that would be paid
into my account before the January and April -
June hearings."
So what's new? Not a
lot. It's a mirroring behaviour. Walker looks at
others, but sees only himself. For more than a
decade, countless parents of autistic children have
been misled, exploited and sponged-off by characters
like him, who've profited while spreading confusion
among the griefstruck. Until he was fired in the
aftermath of my investigation, Wakefield himself
earnt a reported $280,000 a year from his US autism
business, Thoughtful House, launched off the back of his
MMR campaign. And, according to Britain's Legal
Services Commission, he pocketed £435,643, plus expenses, from a
contract with just one British lawyer.
Any crusade relying
on Wakefield was always bound to fail. His followers
were doubly-victimised from the outset. And at a time
when sheer decency should offer them help to find
closure, Walker's marketing of hatred is a putrid
footnote to this saga, which seems to go on without
end.
POSTSCRIPT:
On 3 November 2008, counsel for the
defendants joined with the GMC in condemning the
attempt by Martin J Walker to smear the GMC hearing's
chairman, Dr Surendra Kumar. "Unfortunately this
is not a court of law and does not have the benefit
of contempt jurisdiction," said Nigel Seed QC,
the hearing's independent legal assessor.
"Otherwise I might be giving a lot firmer advice
to the panel." Complaints were also
voiced during the hearing, both by counsel and by the
legal assessor, concerning Walker's false accounts of
the proceedings.