Families
duped by sad smearmaster
of MMR fabrication and hatred
Brian
Deer responds to a paid-for campaign of denigration
7 September 2008 | Updated
30 January 2010
With the collapse of
the anti-MMR vaccine crusade in the UK, leaving its
champion Andrew Wakefield found proven by the UK
General Medical Council [GMC] to have been
"dishonest", "unethical",
"irresponsible" and "callous",
there's not much left, apart from continuing public
fear, measles outbreaks, 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. Their aim is to undermine me
and my Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation, which nailed
the scare in the UK and helped to restore public
confidence. At one level it's understandable: they've
nothing else.
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 a "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. In an ill-written 60-page
online diatribe, published by one of numerous
cranksites which have sprung up, for example, he last
year 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 is
hearing 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."
Here's more, in
another 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 preparation 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 have been extensively developed and
embellished by Walker with invention and snide
innuendo. The truth, however, 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 invents. 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 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 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
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, 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
must be 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 - who sometimes operates under the alias
"Sam Weller" - 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 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, 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.
"I can confirm
that, in response to widespread public interest in
the MMR issue, we instructed our solicitors to
investigate further," a GMC official explained
in a May 2009 freedom of information response to NHS
investigator Dr Rita Pal, stating that, since 1993,
575 inquiries had been opened in reaction to press
reports. "This in turn led to action under our
fitness to practise procedures. It has always been
the case that the GMC has been able to act on
information that raises a fitness to practise issue.
This has not been restricted to the receipt of a
complaint from an individual."
The position was also
made plain on 16 March 2009 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.
"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.
Walker wasn't the
first to try to poison my name. It's him
who's been 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.
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
entirely 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 to anyone reading them, 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 - there was another
remarkable reversal of the truth. Walker had
personally interfered with a GMC hearing 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 the
doctors' regulator and gave critical insights into
the conduct of the Royal Free project. Explaining how
another mother had convinced her that her child with
Asperger's was vaccine damage - 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
he then self-published two books themed with the
scandalous lie that parents were not allowed to take
part in the proceedings.
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 scandal. 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. Wakefield himself now earns 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
Wakefield and his co-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," Nigel Seed QC, the hearing's
independent legal assessor, said. "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.