Brian Deer Tries to Cover His Tracks
By Jake Crosby
In trying to cover up the fact that he altered the original version of an article he authored for The Sunday Times, Brian Deer put the following claim beneath his article about Septrin, “The Pill That Killed,” hours after my article, Fresh Fraud: Brian Deer’s Vanishing Writing, went online:
[The length of this report varies slightly between Sunday Times print editions]
Yet the altered version on Brian Deer’s website is nowhere to be found in the Factiva intelligence engine, owned by Dow Jones, a subsidiary of NewsCorp, which also owns The Sunday Times – just the original article which quoted Margaret Best and said Wellcome’s “whooping cough vaccine damaged her son.” Even if Brian Deer’s bracketed claim was true, there is no explanation for him posting a scaled-down version of the article. Furthermore, why would he forbid me from going onto his website in the midst of my investigation if he had nothing to hide?
It’s bad enough that Brian Deer literally rewrote history, altering the 1994 article “The Pill That Killed” on his own website to remove any reference to vaccine injury. Yet we now discover that he also rewrote history in his 1998 defense of the whooping cough vaccine manufacturer, Wellcome, in “The Vanishing Victims.” In this article, he suddenly denied Margaret Best’s son was vaccine injured:
A drug company paid out more than £2.75m, plus costs, when an Irish court declared that Kenneth Best…was damaged by whooping cough vaccine. Brian Deer re-examined the evidence, including that of Kenneth's mother Margaret...and asks: what if the law got it wrong?
Deer then proceeds to chart what he considers the start of the controversial saga of the DTP vaccine, also known as the whooping cough vaccine:
On Friday, October 26, 1973, Dr John Wilson, paediatric neurologist, stepped to the front of the London lecture theatre of the Royal Society of Medicine…The topic of his contribution was brain damage caused by whooping cough, or pertussis, vaccination…To be honest, at the time I never paid attention to this saga's first 23 years.
Though he did acknowledge to have “casually commented” about a rare link between brain damage and the whooping cough vaccine in a 1988 Sunday Times article titled When Need Outweighs Blame, Brian Deer was anything but honest. He completely omitted that some 20 years after Dr. Wilson’s lecture, he wrote of Margaret Best that Wellcome’s “whooping cough vaccine damaged her son.” Deer even interviewed her for the “The Pill That Killed,” and yet pretends to have never met her four years later when writing The Vanishing Victims:
But then I got a phone call, from a woman in Ireland…
The caller was Margaret Best, a short, energetic, then 47-year-old Irish housewife, who had successfully sued a drug firm over her brain-damaged son, Kenneth Best.
You’d never know Brian Deer interviewed her before 1996 from reading The Vanishing Victims.
And possibly on the adage that my enemy's enemy is my friend, in November 1996 she invited me over to stay at her house near the city of Cork.
Of course, if Brian Deer had let on to his readers that Best knew him, trusted him and invited him to her house because he had been sympathetic to her plight years before, he’d expose himself as the betrayer he knew he was about to become.
Continuing to cover his tracks, Deer referenced the BBC documentary about her, writing about it as if he has only just heard of it for the first time. Yet as cited earlier, he wrote in 1994 of a woman who lost a daughter to Septrin, “In January, she studied a BBC documentary about Margaret Best.” Of course, the Septrin death is not mentioned anywhere in The Vanishing Victims; likening the DTP vaccine to a drug that Deer acknowledges to this day is dangerous would not further his present agenda.
As with his later defenses of MMR, the core arguments of The Vanishing Victims rely on dishonesty. In fact, it was widely known that Brian Deer assumed a false name when interviewing Rosemary Kessick - mother of an MMR-injured child reported in Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s Lancet paper - because Deer did not want her reading The Vanishing Victims and seeing he was the author.
It’s hardly surprising Deer did not use his real last name considering the fact that he would not have wanted Kessick to catch his past deceptions involving vaccine injury on his website and in his articles. To give a false name to cover-up a perceived bias is unethical enough, but to give a false name to also cover-up previous ethical violations and deception from one’s own interviewee is journalistically reprehensible.
Only time will tell how long this web of lies will continue to sustain itself, but a major explanation for continued mainstream acceptance of them are all the so-called “independent” sources that “vindicated” Deer’s writing: The Press Awards, The Lancet, The GMC Hearing, and The BMJ. Each has endorsed some of, if not all of Brian Deer’s smears.
But these sources don’t vindicate Brian Deer; they incriminate themselves by endorsing him.
Jake Crosby has Asperger Syndrome and is a contributing editor to Age of Autism. He is a 2011 graduate of Brandeis University with a BA in both History and Health: Science, Society and Policy. He currently attends The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services where he is studying for an MPH in epidemiology.
i think that that dr john wilson was wrong
Posted by: declan | October 05, 2011 at 04:42 AM
Did Margaret Best really spontanously invite Deer - or had he expressed an interest in coming to see her? There is so little you can take on trust.
Posted by: John Stone | September 10, 2011 at 04:16 PM
Mark and Jeff,
You'll see...
Posted by: Jake Crosby | September 08, 2011 at 10:30 PM
Yes, please, Jake, bring it on! May I echo Jeff's request?
Posted by: Mark Struthers | September 08, 2011 at 04:00 AM
Jake - great post as usual.
Based on the comments, it looks like you made quite a stir with Fiona Godlee. Any chance we can get a post with the details?
Posted by: Jeff C | September 07, 2011 at 04:43 PM
Based on patient privacy law-how did deer accessed the
the patient's confidential information? This touble maker
should be charged as he misrepresented himself to parents.
He built a trusted relationship with a mother and he turns around 360 degrees and ask "what if the law got it wrong"?
Future and history will punish him one day.As I already know
that immunity arises from the digestive immune system(maternal antibody transfer to newborn through breast-feeding).What if you got it wrong mr.deer??? Once the research comes out and and Dr.Wakefield's name is cleared
we the parents are going to go after you mr.deer.(I will be the first one to offer $1,000.00 to get lawyers.)Think about it what you have done.You can not stop science and
redirect research.Our children and our future children will SUFFER
because of the delay and confusion you have caused to others.The parents should get together and hire a lawyer
and start a lawsuit for all the harm,all the lies,all the
pain you have caused and stealing their children medical
documents.Dig yourself a hole mr.deer.
Posted by: oneVoice | September 06, 2011 at 09:08 PM
From "the Vanishing Victims" by Brian Deer:
"Studied today, the cases reveal how wide of the mark [John] Wilson was [in his paper on thirty-six children with adverse reactions to pertussis vaccination]. One child had a bang on the head. Another recovered fully. Two had genetic conditions: tuberous sclerosis and gangliosidosis. At least three were suspected of suffering from infections, including isolated Coxsackie virus. And most of the remainder were patients who were diagnosed as epileptic - a generic term embracing a host of different symptoms, causes and possible outcomes. One child's father, sister, uncle and grandfather all had histories of fits.
Surprisingly, some of the children on whom Wilson reported suffered their first neurological symptoms before their DTP jabs. But the most striking feature of the series that he presented concerned the identical twins. Both were diagnosed with an inherited condition called Seitelberger's disease. And although their cases helped to trigger one of the century's great health panics, neither child ever had a whooping cough jab."
When I read the above, I assumed that all of this stuff was omitted from the paper "Neurological complications of pertussis inoculation." Imagine my surprise when just about all of it turned out to be in there. (Well, I don't know about the "bang on the head." I think Wilson characterizes that as a "possible birth injury.") Three aren't just "suspected" of having infections; Wilson says they had infections and mentions Coxsackie to boot. Tuberous sclerosis? It's there as "extensive necrotizing lesion" of the spinal cord. Gangliosidosis? I think the girl with "congenitally dislocated hips" fits the bill. (But six years later she "appeared normal in every way," according to Wilson.) "Histories of fits"? Yeah, that's in there too. Wilson doesn't claim that none of the children had pre-existing conditions. Quite the opposite. One of his main points is that children with certain medical conditions shouldn't get pertussis vaccinations.
That leaves the "Seitelberger's" twins. According to Wilson, they were discovered to suffer from "progressive cerebral degeneration." But did they ever get pertussis vaccinations? According to Deer, no. According to Wilson, one of them died six months after her second DPT inoculation. Perhaps the jury's out on the issue of their vaccination. If Deer told us how he knows they weren't vaccinated, I missed it.
Here's Wilson's paper: http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC1648839
Posted by: Carol | September 06, 2011 at 03:46 PM
One of the most telling things in Godlee's apparently muddleheaded performance today was her remark that criticisms of Deer's research which had been made on the web had been answered by him. The point, of course, is that criticisms were made on the web because BMJ had blocked them being made in its own columns, and had not required Deer to answer them in the journal - indeed, has avoided it. This plainly sets the exercise apart from normal academic exchange and openness. Of course, it is not the same if Deer utters whimsically on LB/RB or Respectful Insolence where BMJ are no longer responsible for it.
Godlee affects naievety about legal issues, but she's editor-in-chief of BMJ, for heaven's sake, and has been for nearly seven years!
Posted by: John Stone | September 06, 2011 at 03:11 PM
John and Jake- I was hoping someone would ask her why on earth is BMJ relying on a Murdoch journalist who was assigned to "get something" on the MMR shot for BMJ editorial content. Also, how exactly is it again that Deer winds up with confidential medical records? She says it is a shame we can't bring criminal charges against Wakefield, but Deer gets a pass?
I think Jake was very effective in making his points that Deer is the more probable and demonstrable fraudster here.
I was also struck by how supine and adoring was her captive audience. God help us if these people are the future of medicine. Herbert Needleman all over again, in the same venue, but these kids are too tunnel vision and wet behind the ears to dare question authority, it is a shame they have not a clue about the not too distant past.
Posted by: Ottoschnaut | September 06, 2011 at 01:05 PM
Great work, Jake.
Godlee really does not seem to know the material - you really showed her up.
But her claim not to know that MMR was manufactured by Merck and GSK, is jaw dropping. She is editor of the BMJ so if she publishes an article relating to a product she really ought to know who the manufacturers were.
She really seems to have made the most extraodinary editorial judgements on the most superficial knowledge.
John
Posted by: John Stone | September 06, 2011 at 12:38 PM
Jake- you rock!!! Just watched you tongue tie Fiona- it was almost worth listening to the lecture to hear you rip her with the truth!
Posted by: Ottoschnaut | September 06, 2011 at 12:02 PM
"....Brian Deer had let on to his readers that Best knew him, trusted him and invited him to her house because he had been sympathetic to her plight years before, he’d expose himself as the betrayer he knew he was about to become."
Brian Deer NEVER would be capable of being sympathetic. It is an act in which to render his "victims" vulnerable in trusting him. He was chosen for this job as he has shown the ability to not care. True narcissists do not care and are capable of inflicting great harm. Who else would do a job like this? Those who chose him are now seeing that his personality defects and emotional instability are huge negatives. Brian Deer was a bad choice for them as his drama queen ways will be their downfall.
Posted by: Deer's Festering Diagnoses | September 06, 2011 at 10:58 AM
Same thing happens over and over - someone reports on or uncovers a problem with vaccines. They get on the payroll of pharma who lures them in with the "now now, let's not cause a panic amongst the public b/c you know vaccines save lives, and here, now take this money, take it so that you can help us make vaccines safer...and either shush or get on board with our PR message.
AJ Tingle comes to mind. He studied the connection between rubella vax and onset of arthritis in the 80s and 90s. Apparently there were many well done studies showing a link u can see it all on pubmed and then all related research ceased. Last I looked years ago he had on his website info about his research agenda to "make vaccines safer". That's why no more studies showing bad things about vax side effects were published.
It must be lucrative work to find a problem with vaccines, publish it or report on it and then to attempt to erase it from history.
Posted by: Wakefield's Integrity is Rare | September 06, 2011 at 10:46 AM
"Despite worries about the vaccine, there was no agreed description in medical literature of exactly what harm it could do. "Brain damage" is a catch-all term, and there was nothing to distinguish injuries following vaccination from many of the 2000 causes of brain damage - including genetics, infections, birth problems, and traumas - that often reveal themselves at exactly the age at which DTP is given. In Britain, about 200 babies and infants develop such disorders every week, and by chance 6% will start within seven days of a jab. And because its pertussis component can trigger a fierce immune response, this particular vaccine can cause screaming, fevers and other upsets, making parents recall it if something serious should go wrong later on."
The above is from "The Vanishing Victims." Sound familiar?
And though by now thousands upon thousands of victims have vanished, the original vanishing victims are the thirty-six in Dr. John Wilson's paper, "Neurological complications of pertussis inoculation', M Kulenkampff, JS Schwartzman and J Wilson, Archives of Disease in Childhood, January 1974": http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC1648839
About the children in Wilson's article, Deer says this:
"Studied today, the cases reveal how wide of the mark Wilson was. One child had a bang on the head. Another recovered fully. Two had genetic conditions: tuberous sclerosis and gangliosidosis. At least three were suspected of suffering from infections, including isolated Coxsackie virus. And most of the remainder were patients who were diagnosed as epileptic - a generic term embracing a host of different symptoms, causes and possible outcomes. One child's father, sister, uncle and grandfather all had histories of fits.
Surprisingly, some of the children on whom Wilson reported suffered their first neurological symptoms before their DTP jabs. But the most striking feature of the series that he presented concerned the identical twins. Both were diagnosed with an inherited condition called Seitelberger's disease. And although their cases helped to trigger one of the century's great health panics, neither child ever had a whooping cough jab."
Got a research paper due, Jake? What's the truth about "the vanishing victims"?
Posted by: Carol | September 06, 2011 at 08:48 AM
Thanks for another great article Jake.
Not only are you exposing this snake for what he really is, you are demonstrating the difference between a true intellectual, and a narcissistic hack.
Keep on him Jake because for the first time in my memory, Brian is starting to show signs of panic
Posted by: Barry | September 06, 2011 at 07:14 AM
You`ve read the book now the movie by Brian Deer..
I think Deer in his surreal existence, is behaving like some sort of movie director and editing the flashbacks .Flashback is where an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached.Deer Brian puts a complete new dimension on this ..your wasted Brian
His spin on his original lies is flabbergasting to say the least and unlike wiki(below) he is trying to change the backstory /backlies to suit the current position..
From Wiki
“ Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory. A character origin flashback shows key events early in a character's development. In the opposite direction, a flashforward (or prolepsis) reveals events that will occur in the future. The technique is used to create suspense in a story, or develop a character. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to before the narrative started.”
MAN UP BRIAN WE ARE ADULTS WE TALK TO ONE ANOTHER AND EXCHANGE STORIES AND EXPOSE LIES THAT ARE WORTHY OF A 3 YEAR OLD..
Thanks Jake
Angus
Posted by: AngusFiles | September 06, 2011 at 06:15 AM