Welcome to my world
Welcome to this, my personal website: a small selection from my investigations and reporting of recent years, information about my books, The Doctor Who Fooled the World and Blind Trial, plus pages of evidence and resources for some of my longer inquiries.
Many of the stories here are in some way connected with medicine. The prime example is an award-winning series about a children’s vaccine, over which there was a decades-long alarm triggered by one man: British former doctor Andrew Wakefield. I was glad to expose him as a research cheat and pernicious liar, preying on vulnerable families.
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Another is a series over an antibiotic known by many names, such as Septrin and Bactrim, which, although largely banned in the UK after my investigation, continues to cause a worldwide epidemic of deaths and suffering. For years, I’ve received emails from patients injured by the drug, or from relatives of those who’ve died.
Some of my work for television is noted here, including my hour-long Dispatches programmes, MMR – What they didn’t tell you, and The Drug Trial That Went Wrong. So is material from my participation in a Dateline NBC special, reported by NBC anchor Matt Lauer and produced by Ami Schmitz. My favourite audio is here too: an hour-long 2011 “Econtalk” interview with Russ Roberts. I think it shows something of who I am.
Other types of writing include samples of my features: particularly for The Sunday Times Magazine at the peak of its success. Here, for example, is the story of Matthew Bell, who battled the food bug e-coli o157. And, written for the Mail on Sunday magazine, the tragedy of footballer Justin Fashanu.
The most ancient stories here are from my tenure covering social affairs for The Sunday Times, and where in the 1980s I pioneered that now-popular journalism beat. Looking back, my own favourites are simple, short reports, such as a feature about the closure of an institution for the homeless, The Spike, and a page 1 news story about the then-notorious “Clause 28”, which upset a bunch of bigots.
I’m also quite proud of a seriously counterintuitive report on deaths and negligence in British private hospitals, an investigation of fraud and corruption at the London borough of Lambeth, and “Situation critical”, which propelled the 1986 Disabled Persons Act through the UK parliament. These weren’t my “biggest” or most talked-about stories, but they captured what I care about, and what brought me into journalism.
Get Deer’s book: The Doctor Who Fooled the World
Most of the stuff here is from The Sunday Times, for which I’ve edited or written practically all my career. Switching from The Times three decades ago, I started as a sub-editor in the paper’s business section under the legendary newspaper executive Anthony Bambridge. And it was him who would later give me my break: arriving behind my chair one day with his deputy, Tony Rennell, ordering me to the newsroom and making me a reporter. What I am.
This is an eclectic selection from a life in journalism. It’s not a blog, and, apart from contributions to The Guardian, such as Death by Denial, and business discussions, such as over Baltimore tipsters Porter Stansberry Research, contains little comment.
I first took to this way of life as a form of social and political action. I believe that in truth lies freedom. From the feedback I get, I know it makes sense to some people who stop by. I hope it makes sense to you.
Brian Deer
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READ HOW DEER’S WAKEFIELD
INVESTIGATION WAS CHECKED
MORE TOPICS:
Bactrim-Septra: a secret epidemic
Research cheat Andrew Wakefield