| briandeer.com | MORE LIES NAILED


[updated 03.11.08]

Families duped by sad smearmaster
of MMR fabrication and hatred


Brian Deer responds to a sick campaign of denigration
7 September 2008




With the collapse of the anti-MMR vaccine crusade in the UK, leaving its champion Andrew Wakefield facing charges of serious professional misconduct before the General Medical Council, there's not much left, apart from continuing public fear and a rump of embittered individuals.

Some of the latter, in their pain, have now turned nasty: with me as a target for their hatreds. 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 are causing distress with false allegations. Among these is a claim that my Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation - which nailed the scare and helped to restore public confidence - was covertly supported by the drug industry.

A string of recent outings for this sickening falsehood are authored by a 61-year-old graphic artist called Martin Walker, who apparently lives in Spain, but last year surfaced at the mammoth hearings of the GMC in London. He claims to be a "health activist", and, although generally of little 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, if past form is a predictor for the future, attempts to sell them self-published books.

His recent attacks on me are pretty much to be expected from this man. He has a well-worn modus operandi. First, in an ill-written 60-page online diatribe, which affects the tone of discovered facts, he suggests - entirely falsely - that I've been supported by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry [ABPI], with the implication that I'm concealing this misconduct. Among other things, he says:

"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."

Second, in a further, 22-page, attack - primarily trying to smear Dr Surendra Kumar, chair of the five-member GMC panel which is hearing the case against Wakefield - Walker goes further. Here he accuses 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."

Here's more, in a third of his vile attacks, where the plain meaning of his words is that I'm not competent to carry out my work, and that I covertly connived with the drug industry in the preparartion of charges against Wakefield:

"As we know, despite the GMC's reluctance to state clearly with whom the complaint originated, it was first prepared and lodged by the medically-ignorant, down-at-heel pro-MMR hack Brian Deer, with the help of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry private inquiry company Medico-Legal Investigations."

These false, defamatory [and badly-written] allegations are obviously serious for a professional journalist such as myself, and are extensively developed and embellished by Walker with invention and snide innuendo. The truth is that, other than to be interviewed by me, MLI played no role at all in my investigation, let alone a "leading part", as Walker alleges. It wasn't involved in any way in the preparation of my stories. And, to my knowledge, MLI played no role whatsoever in preparing the GMC case against Wakefield.

But truth isn't enough for the smearmaster Walker. He has conspiracy on his mind. This drives him. He desperately needs to place me in a worldview of intrigue, 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. It's a disgusting, gutter, style of character assassination. It's what you'd do if you were a malicious fool with no facts.

The truth is rather different, and rather awkward for Walker, if he's seeking to soak 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 campaign group JABS. The second was with a mother, Rosemary Kessick. 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 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. 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 hoped for a Sunday Times name-check, as this 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.

The truth is, it didn't. Hard luck.

Underlying Walker's thesis is the veiled implication that, somehow, I must be on the take. On this point, his smearing snidery came to the fore early on. More than a year ago, 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?'"

Alas, my investigations have been supported solely by The Sunday Times, Channel 4 Television, and the generosity of Wakefield himself. My dealings with the GMC, meanwhile, have been confined to the proper: the entirely professional supply of journalistic findings to a statutory regulator. My public duty - and at the GMC's prior request. I'm not the complainant in the case - as Walker, in his reference to Reid, is clearly aware. And I'd no knowledge of the detailed charges until they were read to Wakefield in July 2007. The GMC's investigation followed a call for such an inquiry by Wakefield himself, and 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.

And, just to finish this off, here's Walker's tone, when, in his bid to stir families with autism to greater misery, he wants his abusive 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 opportunists, 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 he's stupid enough to have circulated letters promoting what he calls a "campaign against" me, for which he solicits help and money. This must ring alarm bells for prejudice and malice: meaning that those who unwisely publish his deceits must be wary of the catastrophic risk.

Walker isn't the first to try to poison my name. It's him who's conspiring with others. For examples, two individuals - a Mr John Stone, and a Mr Clifford Miller - have long festered over attempts to damage my reputation and livelihood. Last year, they sought help from national newspaper journalists: who checked the facts, realized the allegations were false, and have had little to do with the peddlers ever since. I've sent both of these men warnings about their behaviour. One of Walker's recent attacks acknowledges Stone.

To be fair to Walker, it isn't just me who's the target of his nasty activities. Take this slug of his garbage about people I've no links with - including a former MP and a judge called Davis - who, like me, are smeared without evidence of fact. They are plainly fitted-up, in terms credible only to a dribbling idiot, to make the alleged dark conspiracy feel complete:

"The science lobby groups funded by the drug companies and especially Lord Dick Taverne the founder of Sense About Science and previously a major PR handmaiden for the pharmaceutical industry had campaigned heavily to get legal aid taken from the parents. After John Stone publicised the conflict of interest, Brian Deer accused him of being 'cruel' to the scions of the Davis family."

Pure invention.

The real tragedy, of course, is the plight of the vulnerable: the true victims of the MMR scandal. It goes without saying that Walker spews forth falsehood - extending to what he represents as "reports" of the GMC's hearings - with a view to inflaming beliefs 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 clown would believe this. Walker does. And no doubt he'll believe it until it refills his bank account: when, as he hopes, those he dupes with such miserable fantasies purchase his self-published book.

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 and exploited, often by characters like him, who've hoped to profit while spreading confusion among the griefstruck. Wakefield himself pocketed more than £435,000 - just through one British lawyer - as my lengthy inquiries revealed. At a time when such parents need to find healing and closure, after the traumas that many have experienced, Walker's promotion of hatred and bitterness is a sad footnote to this saga, which seems to go on without end.

Go to MMR part I: The Lancet scandal Go to part II: The Wakefield factor

POSTSCRIPT: On 3 November 2008, counsel for Wakefield and his co-defendants joined with the GMC in condemning the attempt by Walker to smear the hearing's chairman, Dr Surendra Kumar. "Unfortunately this is not a court of law and does not have the benefit of contempt jurisdiction, otherwise I might be giving a lot further advice to the panel," Nigel Seed QC, the hearing's independent legal assessor, said.