You decide: is
vaccine scare doctor
capable of telling the truth?
Brian
Deer responds to Andrew Wakefield's complaints
15 March 2009 | Postscript 8 April
2010
A wise aunt once
offered me an important piece of advice, that has
stood me in good stead through life. "Believe
nothing you hear," she said. "And hardly
anything you see."
It's a thought which
has cropped up many times in the past few years as
I've investigated the MMR crisis. There have
been rumblings about vaccines going back 200 years,
but the crisis of the last decade has been engineered
by one man: Dr Andrew "call me
Andy" Jeremy Wakefield. Thus, he has been at the
focus of my inquiries. Quite simply, it was him wot
dun it.
Since February 2004,
I've written a series of reports in The Sunday Times [for which I've worked since 1981], and made a one-hour Dispatches television programme, getting
to the heart of this man's activities. Although for
years he was lauded in sections of the British media
as an independent researcher, making apparent
discoveries about vaccine risks, or sometimes,
perhaps, as a lone maverick crusader, the truths I
dug up painted a different portrait. The results have been striking, and I'm
glad.
My revelations have included that: (a) two
years before his now notorious Lancet paper of
February 1998, proposing a 14-day link between MMR
and autism, he was hired by a firm of publicly-funded
lawyers to attack the three-in-one
shots; (b) long before its publication, and a press
conference where he advised parents to ask for single
vaccines, he had applied for a patent on his own single measles
vaccine; (c) he personally received huge sums of
money via the lawyers, reportedly £435,643, plus expenses; (d) he misled the ethics committee of the hospital where he
worked; (e) he bought blood from children at a birthday
party; (f) he failed to report that his own lab had
failed, crucially, to find molecular evidence of measles virus in gut samples; and (g) he
set up a string of businesses to sell products off the back of the scare.
All of these
revelations have been independently verified. You
don't need to take my word for them. Most
sensationally, after my first report, revealing that
Wakefield research was funded by lawyers, his fellow
authors of the 1998 paper formally retracted its conclusions.
One discovery has yet
to be verified by others: that Wakefield changed and misreported information in that paper.
This is the most shocking of them all. It may yet be
some time before the full gory details come out, but
I've no doubt that, in due course, that will happen.
Material in mass media is generally capable of being
checked [which is more than can be said for medical
journals], and I pledge my cooperation with any
responsible body which wants to examine the evidence.
In the meantime,
Wakefield has issued a 58-page statement of complaint, which he has
published on his Thoughtful House website. He has a long history of making complaints,
including against his colleagues to the UK's General
Medical Council (GMC). But in this one, he makes all
kinds of bizarre allegations, which anybody who's a
true anorak of time-consuming MMR trivia can surely
read at their leisure. Unfortunately, however, in
producing this document, he falls foul of my aunt's
wise advice. Although this document is untrue to an
extent which I find astounding, he has said things
about me that you can check for yourself.
You don't need to believe anyone else.
Form your own opinion
of this man's integrity, and ask: how much does he
really make up? This is a rare
opportunity for Wakefield followers. If you are a
fan, I'm doing you a favour. Most of what he does -
his purported science for instance - lurks behind
veils of impenetrable chaff, which only alert
specialists can see through. And if that doesn't
blind you, he may throw sand in your eyes. But this
time you can recover your sight.
The first of his
claims - call it his page 1 claim -
is that an investigation of his conduct by the GMC
was launched at my behest. Here are the words from
his lengthy statement. You can check these. There can
be no doubt:
"It was,
in fact, Mr Deer, who in February, 2004,
initiated the investigation by the GMC in the
first place - three days after he published his
first article in the Sunday Times alleging
wrongdoing by myself and two colleagues at the
Royal Free Hospital in London."
He makes a lot of
this claim, as do those he beguiles, in an effort to
undermine my investigation. He seeks to suggest that
I should not be allowed to continue to publish in
this area, citing some vague "conflict of
interest" argument. Of course, it's
understandable that he wouldn't want me to continue.
Although journalists supplying their findings to
statutory regulators is a conventional occurrence,
and could never prevent them from continuing their
inquiries, having developed my expertise to be able
to penetrate his activities, he would wish I moved on
to pastures new [as do I]. For years he had preferred
columnists, celebrity chefs and music critics, who,
in ignorance, just write what he says.
To be honest I'm sick
of the man, as I said in a recent profile, and am heartily sick to
death of the subject. However, the public interest
would hardly be served if journalists with expertise
simply abandoned an investigation in response to
misinformation and harassment.
But here's your
chance for a reality check. Wakefield knows that his
allegation isn't true. I did not
initiate the GMC's investigation. The historical
facts on this are quite clear. Following a statement by the editor of the Lancet,
the investigation was initiated, in February 2004, by
(a) the then-secretary of state for health, John Reid MP, who called for a GMC
investigation; (b) by Wakefield himself - yes, Wakefield himself [see also the same BBC report], who said in a statement
that he would "insist" on an investigation;
and (c) by the GMC itself, whose staff then approached me, on the day after my first report appeared. They asked for my
materials, which I was more than glad to give them.
I'm not the complainant, as Wakefield knows.
On 16 March 2009, the
position was restated 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."
Showing indefatigable
diligence, health service campaigner Dr Rita Pal made
a freedom of information request on this matter to
the GMC, which told her on 1 May 2009 that since 1993
the regulator had opened 575 enquiries on the basis
of press cuttings, with 389 of these investigated
under conduct procedures.
"You have also
asked about the Andrew Wakefield complaint," an
official wrote to Dr Pal. "I can confirm that,
in response to widespread public interest in the MMR
issue, we instructed our solicitors to investigate
further. 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."
Incidentally, off
point, Wakefield's lackeys also know the truth of
this. Here, for example is an extract from an
"open letter" of complaint to the GMC by
one John Stone, the anti-vaxxers' burbling
"little professor", republished on an
anti-vaccine website. Referring to Wakefield and two
others against which the GMC, not me, laid charges:
"It
will be recalled that the investigation of
these three excellent doctors was precipitated in
February 2004 by allegations against Dr Wakefield
by Richard Horton, the editor of the
Lancet."
I might add that I
was only one in a veritable queue which formed of
people offering information to the GMC. But rather
than detain you with more of all that stuff, let's
turn to Wakefield's page 2 claim.
This is that he abandoned a defamation lawsuit
against me because of pressure of GMC work.
Here's what he says -
to suggest that his lawsuit had merit - and, again,
you can check his words:
"I was
forced to abandon my action for libel, after an
interim ruling in the High Court ordered that it
had to run concurrently with the GMC case, which
my lawyers advised was physically impossible. We
naturally decided the priority was to concentrate
our efforts on the GMC hearing."
Once more, now's your
chance to assess his veracity, on a matter which
requires no special knowledge. This is not like the
Lancet paper, buried behind walls of medical
confidentiality, legal privilege and plain
misconduct. You can see for yourself whether he's
telling the truth, by joining me in following the
links.
The High Court did
order Wakefield to proceed with his action, after the
judge handed down scathing comments. Wakefield was
accused of using legal moves "as a weapon in his
attempts to close down discussion and debate over an
important public issue". In his judgment, Mr Justice Eady, said,
moreover, that he was satisfied "that the
claimant wished to extract whatever advantage he
could from the existence of the proceedings while not
wishing to progress them or to give the defendants an
opportunity of meeting the claims." In other
words, the judge thought it was a device.
But - back to
Wakefield - this was in November 2005.
And yet the lawsuit went on for another 13 months. It
was not abandoned until January 2007 - only two days
after I revealed in The Sunday Times enormous sums of money he pocketed from his contract
with the lawyer. Meanwhile, the best part of a
million pounds in legal bills were run up, and two
more court hearings [1] [2] took place. Be your own judge whether
what he said could be true about the reason why he
threw in the towel. Did his lawyers take more than a
year to him give advice? I think not. And neither
does he.
And now check out
this fact: even more devastating to his claim that
the GMC case was his motive for quitting. A parallel
lawsuit against The Sunday Times had been stayed by agreement, and was held in
suspense for Wakefield to reactivate it and carry on
suing after the "final outcome" of his GMC
case. There was nothing "physically
impossible" for him, because nothing needed to
be done. And yet, this too was abandoned.
Of course, it's
important for Wakefield to maintain his fictions: not
least at his business, Thoughtful House. This is a major moneyspinner
for him - earning him some $280,000 a year - and , if
his experience in the UK is anything to go by, even
now there will be people - not many, but enough - who
have come to doubt whether his persona can be
trusted. So he spins the yarn that his lawsuit fell
apart, not because it lacked merit, but because he's
busy.
In fact, I think the
reason for him sending me a cheque after he abandoned the
litigation was that, at the time he quit, his lawyers
and insurers, the Medical Protection Society, had
done a risk assessment on their client. By this
stage, like me, they had read the children's medical
records for the 1998 Lancet paper. And although I
could do nothing with that information - nor did I -
they could. They pulled the plug.
So there, just from page
one and page two of his
complaint.
The other 56? You
bet.
Postscript:
After prompting by Brian Deer, and inquiries by the
PCC, in February 2010 Wakefield abandoned his
complaint, which was false and disingenuous in all
material respects.