The TV film continued Deer’s award-winning Sunday Times investigation which exposed Andrew Wakefield as a research cheat, and in 2010 saw Wakefield permanently banned from medicine. When the investigation hit America in 2011, a Harris Poll found that in the United States alone nearly 145 million people knew Deer’s key finding. Click here for a summary.

Paper retracted: After his lab rebutted his theory, Wakefield sent samples to a physician in Tokyo, with whom he published a paper claiming to have found vaccine-strain measles virus. But Chadwick found contamination, as would be alleged in John O’Leary’s work.

Wakefield’s patents: One of the programme’s revelations was that, nine months before Wakefield made a notorious 1998 call for a return to single vaccines instead of the triple MMR, he had filed the first of a string of claims for products which could only succeed if MMR was damaged. These included his own single measles vaccine, diagnostic tests and treatments.

Hugh Fudenberg: This grandfather (left) of the scare sold bone marrow autism “cures” which he said he rolled out in a sheet, three cells deep, on his kitchen table in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Recipe for madness: Wakefield claimed his own single vaccine and treatments, based on Fudenberg’s ideas. The technology involved so-called “transfer factors”, a fringe conjecture that special substances can be harvested from blood cells. Wakefield advised injecting mice with measles, extracting cells, injecting the result into pregnant goats, milking them and turning the product into capsules.

Critic’s choice: Reviews of the 2004 TV programme were led by Nancy Banks-Smith of The Guardian, who dubbed Deer “Detective of the week… like a bull pup with a taste for trousers.” The BMJ said: “One of the most exciting examples of investigative television journalism you will ever see.” The Observer said we “made mincemeat” of Wakefield’s claims.

O’Leary repudiates: For years, Wakefield’s major ally was said to be John O’Leary of the Coombe Women’s Hospital, Dublin, who, at huge cost to the British taxpayer, said he found measles virus infection in samples supplied by Wakefield, with whom he started a company. But as clouds gathered over O’Leary’s work, he denounced his old partner.

Get Deer’s book: The Doctor Who Fooled the World

MMR doctor’s “no comment”: Wakefield responded through solicitors, launching a bitter attack on Deer. In a letter to Channel 4 Television, Wakefield’s lawyers claimed that Deer’s reports were “in most cases demonstrably false”. They were all proven true.

Transfer factor: A price on misery. With scientific answers sparse, countless quacks have moved into autism, marketing unproven or worthless products to desperate parents. So-called “transfer factors” have been among the most enduring. When Deer quizzed a vendor at an October 2004 Autistic Society of America meeting, attended by Wakefield, he was ejected.

Gagging writ: Following the programme, Wakefield brought baseless lawsuits against Deer, The Sunday Times and Channel 4. These were slammed in the high court, London, by senior judge Mr Justice Eady, who said he thought Wakefield was using litigation “for public relations purposes” while trying to avoid “having to answer a substantial defence of justification”. Eady refused all Wakefield’s pleas.

Lawsuit withdrawn: Two years, and more than a million pounds in legal bills later, Wakefield dropped his sham claim, after secret payments were revealed, and paid Deer compensation.

Sense: The UK charity for deaf-blind children affected by maternal rubella issued a statement of support for the Dispatches programme. Visitors’ feedback also overwhelmingly supported it. Comments, however, were laced with a hard-core of opposition. Items here include new scientific info, and feature a discourteous countess with her knickers in a twist.

A dose of controversy: In August 2009, almost five years after Deer’s film, NBC News anchor Matt Lauer presented a Dateline investigation of the Wakefield (clip at link). It would be the start of a great unravelling for Wakefield in America, where he had moved after becoming unemployable in Britain.

Wakefield would also feature in online clips, revealing more of his extraordinary conduct. In what become known as the callous disregard incident, over which he would be found guilty of professional misconduct, he quips about buying blood from children, who he says vomit and faint, while in another he threatens a vaccine safety whistleblower who had confided in him.