Brian Deer: Solved - the riddle of MMR
In this award-winning investigation for The Sunday Times of London, Brian Deer exposed the truth behind claims linking the MMR vaccine with autism published by Wakefield and others in the Lancet medical journal. When the investigation concluded in 2011, a poll found that in the US alone nearly 145 million people knew Deer's key finding. Click here for a summary
Andrew Wakefield investigated:
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"The first cracks in the vaccine theories of autism appeared in early 2004. An investigation by British journalist Brian Deer in The Sunday Times of London revealed that the children Wakefield described in the Lancet study had not simply arrived on the doorstep... The investigation has since expanded, with new charges by journalist Deer that Wakefield or his coauthors misrepresented the children's medical records" |
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"The charge is explosive: a British doctor who led the first scientific study suggesting a link between autism and the MMR vaccine misrepresented data in a prestigious medical journal. The allegation appears in an investigation published Sunday in the Times of London and has raced around the world since... Deer is in the US this week to deliver a lecture on his work" |
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"Dr Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who jump-started the scare about a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, manipulated and changed data to make his case in the 1998 Lancet paper, according to an investigation by the Sunday Times of London... by studying confidential and public records, investigative reporter Brian Deer... found a different story" |
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"An English doctor who linked childhood vaccines to autism, 'changed and misreported results in his research,' reports the London Times... All of the researchers involved in the study deny misconduct, says the Times. 'Through his lawyers, Wakefield this weekend denied the issues raised by our investigation, but declined to comment further'" |
America rages over Andrew Wakefield reportJanuary 2011: Another bomb dropped on Wakefield with the release of the first part of Deer's BMJ series "Secrets of the MMR scare" (see below). CNN's Anderson Cooper broke the story (right), which stormed for days across North America and other countries
A Wakefield "crank magnet" effect intensified, attracting HIV denialists, "9-11 truth" oddballs and other characters to his cause. These included one David L Lewis, following the path of conman Martin J Walker and a menacing emailer, Carol Stott |
| Secrets of the MMR scare: Following the 2009 disclosures, over three weeks in January 2011, BMJ, the British Medical Journal, featured a special series by Deer setting out for the first time in full how Wakefield concocted the appearance of a link between the vaccine and autism |
Raw data unmasks "new bowel disease" claimsPathology changed: In November 2011, the BMJ ran a report by Deer with raw data finally proving that claims by Wakefield in the Lancet of "histological findings" of "non-specific colitis" were baseless
Parents involved with Wakefield, and with Arthur Krigsman, often believed these men had found a new bowel disease, requiring expensive procedures, obtainable from them. Read the report above, and here's info on constipation, ileal-lymphoid hyperplasia, encopresis, stools, calprotectin, "opioids" and bowel issues |
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"The British Medical Journal has declared that the research was not simply bad science, as has been known for years, but a deliberate fraud... Now the British Medical Journal has taken the extraordinary step of publishing a lengthy report by Brian Deer, the British investigative journalist who first brought the paper’s flaws to light — and has put its own reputation on the line by endorsing his findings" |
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"In 2004, Brian Deer of The Sunday Times published damning evidence about Dr Wakefield’s ties to the lawsuit, showing that the children in the study were recruited unethically, and exposing other flaws in the published study... In February, 2010, the original Lancet paper was retracted. But Dr. Wakefield continues to insist the findings are valid and that he is the victim of a vast conspiracy. Yet he has never been able to reproduce the findings. Now, thanks again to Brian Deer, we know why" |
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"The Lancet retracted the paper and the British General Medical Council struck him off for making a case that was less flawed than false. And now the British Medical Journal says Brian Deer, a journalist for The Sunday Times (published by News Corporation, parent company of The Australian) can show Wakefield perpetrated "an elaborate fraud" for financial gain" |
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"The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield's paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children's parents" |
Wakefield dismisses everything and anythingWakefield response: After a letter was sent to Andrew Wakefield, his lawyers denied the findings of Deer's investigation. Wakefield said he wasn't paid by lawyers for research, didn't plan his own vaccine, didn't rig the Lancet findings and never linked autism with MMR. Everything alleged was false, and was the product of a conspiracy
As his campaign collapsed, Wakefield lashed out at a vaccine safety whistleblower. Then, as Wakefield faced being struck off the UK medical register (see below), he made up a false conspiracy theory in which he pretended to have been involved in the withdrawal of MMR brands in 1992. He knew the truth, however: that a traditional public interest journalistic investigation had nailed him |
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