| the mmr & autism scare: part 2 |   | brian deer |




Brian Deer: the Wakefield factor

  Materials from a documentary investigation by Brian Deer for the UK's Channel 4 Television exposing the bizarre true story of British gut surgeon Andrew Wakefield and his strange crusade against a children's vaccine


Click here for MMR part 1: Brian Deer's Sunday Times news investigation



   
Click here for a summary: In February 1998, the Lancet medical journal triggered a global alarm with research proposing a link between the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine and autism. The researchers' leader, Andrew Wakefield called for the vaccine to be "suspended". Six years later, Brian Deer investigated for The Sunday Times of London and Channel 4 television
   
Wakefield's patent claims: Nine months before Andrew Wakefield and London's Royal Free hospital medical school unleashed a global scare over the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, they filed, on June 5 1997, the first of a string of patent applications for theoretically vastly profitable products which could only succeed if MMR's reputation was damaged. These included a purported safer measles vaccine - a potential competitor to MMR - and treatments for bowel disease and autism. All were based on claims that measles virus in MMR was at fault
A cure for autism? According to Wakefield, measles virus in MMR shots attacked the gut, which in turn led to brain damage. This theory led the Royal Free to make the astounding claim that an anti-measles treatment would reverse the problem, allowing autistic children to be treated, or even cured, by their products. The same technology was intended to produce an allegedly safer measles vaccine, presumably for parents shunning MMR
No good cause: Wakefield's call for single shots dropped "out of the blue"
Brian Deer: The Dispatches and Sunday Times investigator on the trail of the doctor whose allegations of a link between MMR and autism created a global scare. (Photograph: Hugo Godwin)
Prof Hugh Fudenberg: This grandfather of the MMR scare sold autism cures from his Spartanburg kitchen, and inspired Andrew Wakefield with his "transfer factors". (Photograph: Brian Deer)
Recipe for madness?: Wakefield's claims for a safer measles vaccine, and treatments for bowel disease and autism, were not only bold, but were bizarre. The technology involved is of so-called "transfer factors", a now largely abandoned fringe conjecture based on a curious theory that special substances can be harvested from white blood cells. The Royal Free's recipe advised injecting mice with measles, extracting and processing white cells, injecting the result into pregnant goats, milking them after kid-birth and turning the product into capsules for kids. Mmmm, delicious
A price on misery: With medicine and science offering little comfort, a knot of quacks have moved into the field of autism, marketing unproven or worthless products to desperate parents. So-called "transfer factors" have been among the most enduring. When Brian Deer quizzed a vendor at an October 2004 Autistic Society of America meeting, partly funded by quacks, society officials called security guards and had him ejected
Guilt tripped: How Wakefield's scare caused mothers to blame themselves
   

Lancet kids all litigants: Wakefield's research on autistic children was begun for a legal contract. Of 12 reported in a Lancet paper in 1998, 11 sued drug companies (one was American), with this never disclosed before Deer's inquiries
Royal Free facilitates attack on MMR: To influence public opinion, the Royal Free NHS trust distributed a 20 minute video release for broadcasters, featuring Wakefield and a family attacking MMR, plus graphic material, in a pro-Wakefield package
   
In the Royal Free lab: Even as the MMR scare was launched in February 1998, Wakefield knew that his own lab had rebutted his core theory: that measles virus caused inflammatory bowel disease and autism. The work was carried out by Nick Chadwick (right), who used sophisticated PCR technology to look for measles virus in patients - including children whose cases were used by Wakefield to start the alarm over vaccine safety. Until Deer's investigation, these remarkable results were unknown to the public - but now raise troubling questions
Methods agreed: Prior to his work looking for (and failing to detect any) measles virus in autistic children whose cases were used to start the MMR scare, Nick Chadwick had published a series of scientific papers with Wakefield, department chief Prof Roy Pounder, and (right) Greenwich university's Prof Ian Bruce. These set out the agreed RT-PCR molecular methodology for detecting measles virus in gut and blood samples. At this link are two of the key publications
Carol the crank: Sick emailer Carol Stott is censured by professional body
Dr Nick Chadwick: His research in Wakefield's own Royal Free medical school laboratory rebutted the foundations of the MMR scare, even as Wakefield cranked it up. (Photograph: Brian Deer)
Prof Ian Bruce: As a senior molecular biologist at Greenwich university, he supervised Chadwick's research and joined him in expressing his concerns to Brian Deer. (Photograph: Brian Deer)
Paper retracted: Unhappy that his own laboratory had rebutted his MMR-autism theory, Wakefield told Chadwick to send his samples from autistic kids to physician Dr Hisashi Kawashima in Tokyo, with whom Wakefield published a paper claiming to have found vaccine-strain measles virus. But after Chadwick gave a statement, reporting contamination in Kawashima's lab [as would be alleged later in John O'Leary's], Wakefield formally withdrew reliance on the much-quoted paper - leaving more anti-MMR "science" in ruins
MMR doctor's "no comment": In response to letters from Twenty Twenty Television, asking to discuss specific issues, Andrew Wakefield responded through solicitors, ignoring every matter raised. Instead, he launched an attack on Brian Deer's integrity. In a letter to Channel 4 Television, Dr Wakefield's lawyers claimed that Deer's reports on him were "in most cases demonstrably false, highly opinionated and clearly defamatory of Mr Wakefield."
Cash in hand: Mr Wakefield buys blood at a children's birthday party
   
Thoughtful House: Since the Royal Free medical school let him go in October 2001, Andrew Wakefield has re-emerged as "research director" of the self-styled International Child Development Resource Center, in Melbourne, Florida, which sells expensive products for autism, including enzymes and purported "genetic tests" for children. He also launched Thoughtful House in Texas
   
Visitors' feedback: Mail to this website has overwhelmingly supported the MMR documentary, laced with a hard-core of opposition to the television investigation. Includes some new scientific info, and features a discourteous countess with her knickers in a twist

Critic's choice: Reviews were led by Nancy Banks-Smith of The Guardian, who dubbed Brian Deer "Detective of the week... like a bull pup with a taste for trousers." Too bloody right!
BMJ review: "One of the most exciting examples of investigative television journalism you will ever see," said Dr Abi Berger in the British Medical Journal's review. The Observer also praised

GMC inquiry: After Brian Deer's reports, the UK General Medical Council, the doctors' regulatory body, announced a public inquiry into the affair. The Sunday Times, December 12 2004
Sense: The UK charity for deaf-blind children affected by maternal rubella, issued a statement of support for Brian Deer's documentary, stressing the appalling risks of shunning MMR
Lawsuit withdrawn: Following the programme, Wakefield launched a meritless libel action, funded by the Medical Protection Society, which he presumably hoped would help his case at the General Medical Council. Two years later, he dropped his claim
   

MMR: What they didn't tell you - Brian Deer's Channel 4 Television Dispatches investigation
MMR: What they didn't tell you sprang from a Channel 4 suggestion that Brian Deer should attempt a television programme, after his news investigation into the MMR controversy for The Sunday Times attracted widespread interest. His reports of February 2004 were followed by the retraction of claims, made in the Lancet six years previously, linking the MMR vaccine with autism. Production started on 12 July 2004, and continued until first transmission, on November 18 2004. MMR: What they didn't tell you, an investigation by Brian Deer. Producer/director, Tim Carter; associate producer, Hugo Godwin; executive producer, Claudia Milne.

Much of the programme was filmed by David Barker, with Greg Bailey, sound. Brian Deer's meeting with Dr Andrew Wakefield in Indianapolis was filmed by Iki Ahmed

Contact Brian Deer