HMS Brian Deer holed beneath the waterline?
John Stone
On the ninth anniversary of the publication Brian Deer’s original allegations against Andrew Wakefield in the Sunday Times (22 February 2004) the journal Nature has been forced to remove derogatory and misleading comments from the web by Deer about whistleblowing scientist Dr David Lewis, which have stood since November 2011. Deer’s insinuations against Lewis were provoked by Lewis’s defence of the research integrity of Wakefield’s controversial paper ‘Ileal-lymphoid-nodular-hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive development disorder in children’ against the reformulated allegations of Brian Deer against Wakefield in BMJ in January 2011. While the British MedicalJournal refused to publish Lewis’s report except in a highly censored format, it commenced the unravelling of Deer’s account, first of all with the report of Eugenie Samuel Reich in Nature, and then in 2012 with the High Court exoneration of Wakefield's colleague Prof John Walker-Smith and the decision of University College London not to investigate the Wakefield affair further on the advice on the United Kingdom Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) .
The removal follows on a letter – shortly to be published on-line - from Dr Lewis’s attorney, F Edwin Hallman Jr, to British Medical Journal where a more elaborate version of Deer’s allegations appear. An earlier letter in a similar vein was written on behalf of Dr Lewis to by Stephen Kohn to La Crosse, University of Wisconsin, where Mr Deer was invited to give talks last October.
The question arises how much longer the British establishment can go on supporting Deer’s allegations? It is clear that they began to get cold feet before the General Medical Council hearing againstAndrew Wakefield and colleagues in 2005-6, taking their cue from an article Ben Goldacre in the Guardian newspaper, which was followed by editorials in the Independent, New Scientist, Spiked-online and BMJ calling for the prosecution to be called off , and that bad feeling has existed between Deer and Goldacre since . Now, what the present writer once dubbed “the Boseley problem” looms large:
“The almost unavoidable conclusion is that large sections of the British media have always known that the “Wakefield” prosecution was based on an imposture, and have been holding their silence in contempt of fair reporting and of the public at large, and that these people are much more concerned about their own backs than they are about our children”.
How many more Brian Deers are out there I wonder ?
Posted by: junipergold | September 22, 2015 at 09:36 PM
Brilliant thank you John - for piecing together all the little events which build up to give us the big picture! The work you put into this is awesome. I hope this ship sinks bigtime. It's really bothersome to think they can just ignore what is going on, in the belief that we can do nothing to stop them. They reckoned without John Stone.
Posted by: Seonaid | February 24, 2013 at 06:10 PM
Thanks John!
Elizabeth Gillespie
Posted by: AussieMum | February 24, 2013 at 05:29 PM
Benedetta thanks for your links also that many a time a
I have had a larf and mostly informative...
Time to get the plank out ..start walking them!
Angus
..
Posted by: Angus Files | February 24, 2013 at 04:39 PM
Thanks Angus to a link that gave me a good laugh.
Thanks Mark for the link - to Dr. Wakefield when he got a good laugh at Salisbury getting caught every time he opened his mouth or made a telephone call-- all the informaton going back to Dr. Wakefield.
There is so much out -- if the public would wise up; this would be over with in a day and not three or four decades - going into the 5th.
Posted by: Benedetta | February 24, 2013 at 03:44 PM
Mark
Of course, Salisbury seems so far to have passed over a knighthood, perhaps not welcoming the personal attention. So much about the great vaccine drive in the UK has been furtive.
John
Posted by: John Stone | February 24, 2013 at 07:52 AM
John
The rat always gets the gong, even when His Majesty's Ship is sinking. Of course, I meant to ratify Professor (Sir) David Salisbury, King of Vaccines at the Department of Illhealth.
Posted by: Mark Struthers | February 24, 2013 at 07:42 AM
Mark
Great footage - do you perchance mean Dr Salisbury?
John
PS The inference must surely be that the Department of Health were being sent the daily transcripts and that also begs what their involvement was.
Posted by: John Stone | February 24, 2013 at 06:54 AM
In this YouTube video, Andrew Wakefield talks of a bigger, meaner, nastier breed of rodent,
http://youtu.be/uhTYMoBTL6o
Plop, plop, plop, watch the little rats hit the deck as HMS Brian Deer goes down. But watch out for the bigger splash when King Rat jumps for the lifeboat.
Posted by: Mark Struthers | February 24, 2013 at 05:37 AM
Clearly the corporate media trough their trickery and spreading the big pharma propaganda are accomplice in vaccination genocide of children. The US medical-pharma industrial complex is so corrupted and so intertwined with the political system, that it gives no hopes that this crime against humanity will end soon. It may take a global mass revolution of parents to stop it.
Posted by: no vac | February 24, 2013 at 01:42 AM
Brian Deer travels the world giving lectures on vaccines, he has no medical training. He can be found here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2Rq1jM0mU
Vaccine safety in the United States is based on the charm & wisdom of Brian Deer.
Dr. Nancy thinks Brian Deer is a medical genus....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4mDLIug6f0
Posted by: cmo | February 23, 2013 at 09:03 PM
Benedetta
“What do rats do when the ship begins to sink?”
Pugwash!
Run for it..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XIIO-fyUEw
Angus
Posted by: ANGUS FILES | February 23, 2013 at 07:04 PM
Nice one John for always exposing the lies and corruption that we are having to deal with. Not a day goes by that I don't think of our children and how unjustly they and we as parents have been treated.
Posted by: Joan Campbell | February 23, 2013 at 06:13 PM
Deer has been exploited by people who needed him to break the rules for them and they are just beginning to pay the price. But he is not the one that is important.
That is what John Stone says
And that is what I think too.
What do rats do when the ship begins to sink?
Posted by: Benedetta | February 23, 2013 at 05:53 PM
Debra
Thank-you! Believed or just disseminated by interested parties?
John
Posted by: John Stone | February 23, 2013 at 05:22 PM
Great piece John , very annoying knowing that Mr Deers lies are believed , my goodness there are some very gullible people around
Posted by: Debra | February 23, 2013 at 05:06 PM
Bob , Carmel most articulately describes the general scenario here in the UK…
The press in the UK remind me of teenagers all running about making this fabulous story based on a cover up.. such as to ,why the sink was left to over flow...Out come the most fabulous ,precise and intricate lies.. From them all..all conferring each other’s stories umpteen times. But what teenagers don`t realise is that the adults who are concerned about the stories circulating do converse and talk to one another ..(now that’s a shock to them) and ..compare stories. That is when it falls apart as is the case with Deer, BMJ, Goldacre et-all.. eh! no offence to teenagers..
Teenagers can be excused but this lot are just culpable
Angus
Posted by: ANGUS FILES | February 23, 2013 at 04:31 PM
Jenny, r.e. RATS, as John mentions Goldacre had jumped but returned after going A.W.O.L ..Whether he was press ganged back on board is another charge? ..they must have plugged the holes ..or needed him to plug the holes for the time being..
One rat for sure who jumped
Angus
Posted by: ANGUS FILES | February 23, 2013 at 03:56 PM
After reading the article and comments (Chris, Carmel) reviewing the presentation by Sarah Barclay for the U.K.'s BBC program "Panorama" regarding a child who developed SSPE at 11 years of age .. AFTER having received MMR "booster" shots .. I surrender.
I honestly thought the US PBS series "FRONTLINE" program "Vaccine Wars" .. would prove to be the most biased propaganda effort by a public television network on the subject of vaccines that I would ever see.
I was wrong .. you guys in the U.K. (BBC) easily beat the US (PBS) .. for having the most unethical .. factually corrupt ... morally bankrupt .. "investigative reporting" on the subject .. hands down!
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | February 23, 2013 at 03:05 PM
They say that rats desert a sinking ship!!
Posted by: Jenny Allan | February 23, 2013 at 01:51 PM
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
Posted by: Ozymandias | February 23, 2013 at 01:41 PM
Thank you Carmel
It seems to me that the BBC is completely beyond belief: warped, corrupt but above all vain and arrogant. Every experience I have had with them in the last decade has been completely disillusioning. Above all the people who are known for their integrity have no integrity whatsoever.
We see these great empires: the Murdochs, the BBC, the Guardian (now hitched to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and there is nothing to choose. And I believe ultimately the truth will damn them all. Frankly, Deer has been exploited by people who needed him to break the rules for them and they are just beginning to pay the price. But he is not the one that is important.
John
Posted by: John Stone | February 23, 2013 at 01:38 PM
Barclay, brings a perspective to lying while all the rest of the journos are stuck in sensationalism.
Ahead of the times one would think..but Deer still is the Admiral Liar of the HMS Bad Ship Bad Science..and all who sail with her..
Well said all..
Angus
Posted by: Angus Files | February 23, 2013 at 01:06 PM
Martin Walker said:
"A full publicly held hearing before an independent judge, with the administrating independent lawyers having the power of subpoena, a little like a grand jury hearing in the States. On the finding of this tribunal criminal and civil charges should be framed against all parties found to be at fault."
I would like to add: "And with the decisions of the Special Masters Vaccine Court in the states being based somewhat on the events in the UK, previous decisions will be revisited and retried.
Posted by: AutismDadPa | February 23, 2013 at 11:56 AM
I want to add to the "slightly off topic"comment above although really it is totally "on topic" dealing as it does with the media and mis representations galore.
I am Andy Wakefield's wife Carmel and we co operated fully with Ms Sarah Barclay in her investigation into MMR for the UK's Panorama documentary back in 2001, assuming naively that this would be even handed. It was not. Please see below.
I was delighted to see that the 2002 Panorama investigation by Sarah Barclay had been “outed” as misrepresenting the facts behind Adam Morrish’s measles encephalitis (SSPE). Below is a transcript from the programme together with the background to the fact that Adam was a child who had not only had measles as a child (for which no medical evidence was provided) but also had an MMR booster in 1990 before developing SSPE in 1993. Ms Barclay while purporting to be an investigative journalist chose not to broadcast this crucial information. Instead the viewing public were left believing that poor Adam’s condition was related to his contact with a child whose parents had been irresponsible enough to allow her to catch measles rather than having her vaccinated. When challenged some years after the show was broadcast, in the manner of so many less than candid journalists, she simply answered a different question and no doubt hoped the issue would never raise its ugly head again. The show’s transcript and my annotations are provided below.
PANORAMA: MMR
Every Parent's Choice
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 3:02:02
........................................................................
ADAM MORRISH: (Playing) Do not switch it off. You see, I am the first man to conquer Mount Everest.
Cut.
SARAH BARCLAY: This is Adam Morrish as a healthy 9 year old. Adam's only serious childhood illness had been measles. His family had no idea of what might follow years later.
DAVID MORRISH: Over the period of really I guess February to April, May time in 1993 Adam neurologically disintegrated before our very eyes. By October of 1993 Adam had moved through not being able to balance, falling over a lot, being in a wheelchair, not being able to eat. By the middle of the summer he had spoken his last word. By the end of the summer he was blind. By October Adam was in a waking coma and that's pretty much as we see him today.
BARCLAY: Adam caught measles as a baby from an unvaccinated child. The virus lay dormant for almost ten years before triggering an extremely rare and fatal condition known as SSPE.
DAVID MORRISH
Adam did come into contact with the mild measles virus just on a bus while we were on holiday, sitting next to a small girl who had measles. We didn't know she had measles then, but we do now. And that's of course the thing which I often think back to and I think.. I mean I can't help.. you won't be surprised that we have thought on many occasions that if that child had been vaccinated, Adam may not be in the condition he's in today.
What the viewing public were not told, and what I only found out three years later was that in fact Adam Morrish, having apparently been exposed possible measles as a child was then definitely given two doses of MMR including a booster dose in 1990, but that his parents “intuition” was that the MMR “was not a relevant factor in his condition”. Mr Morrish did however confirm that he had not withheld the information from Sarah Barclay and the Panorama team. They had simply chosen not to make any reference to that crucial fact and to leave the public with the impression that this boy’s catastrophic condition “illustrated the dangers of natural measles.”
When challenged with the fact that this key omission was both unprofessional and unscientific, Sarah Barclay simply twisted the letter of challenge to say that it would have been wrong to “state that Adam had got SSPE from the vaccine”. This had not been asked of her of course. The point was quite simply that this boy’s condition could well have been precipitated by the fact that he was given MMR and it was therefore wrong to neglect to give this information to the public in a programme, which was allegedly about parents’ choice.
Andy and I watched the documentary with a deepening sense of unease. The ending was compelling. The father of poor David Morrish told us about the perils of choice:
DAVID MORRISH
I think it's very important that people take those decisions and think about it at two levels: one as a parent safeguarding their own child, and that's of course the one that we'll probably find the most easy. But if a number of us are choosing not to vaccinate our children, and taking measles for an example, then we will simply get more cases of complications from that disease, and in very rare and very unfortunate cases you'll have complications like SSPE.
He did not tell us about his son’s MMR.
Posted by: Carmel Wakefield | February 23, 2013 at 11:32 AM
Thank you Dr. David Lewis for your bravery in taking on Brian Deer, knowing full well that he will scrape the bottom of his swill bucket to try to damage you - as he has done to another scientist - Dr. Wakefield.
Thank you John Stone for so eloquently bringing truth to light in this scandal so vast, it truly boggles the mind. A vile lie about Dr. Lewis removed from Nature is one more step towards victory for children's health.
Posted by: First Do No Harm | February 23, 2013 at 10:48 AM
Contempt is the name of the vaccine industry game. Thank you, John Stone, for your continued reporting.
Posted by: Shawn Siegel | February 23, 2013 at 08:42 AM
Perhaps I could draw attention to the following:
On February 25, in the small town of Horsham in the United Kingdom, there will be a rare and potentially groundbreaking opportunity for the 9/11 truth movement. Three hours of detailed 9/11 evidence is to be presented and considered in a court of law where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) will be challenged over the inaccurate and biased manner in which it has portrayed the events and evidence of 9/11.
I don't hold out much hope for the success of this action but, it might just be a sign of the times. Perhaps the British media so long in hock to the corporate, the rich and the powerful, is eventually being recognized for what it is — a way of creating consensus based on propaganda and not fact. It's at times like this that I ask myself what would be a satisfactory outcome to the MMR fiasco. Unfortunately given the pain and distress suffered by countless children and so many parents in Britain and America, it is unlikely that any outcome could be termed satisfactory, however, given the limited options, short of 'people's justice', I would opt for the following.
A full publicly held hearing before an independent judge, with the administrating independent lawyers having the power of subpoena, a little like a grand jury hearing in the States. On the finding of this tribunal criminal and civil charges should be framed against all parties found to be at fault.
However, the fact remains that a 'just settlement' is perhaps not 'just' if it is found 20 years after the initial damage is done. From this we might learn that it is probably best to be organised, to fight back, radically and most importantly collectively at the time that 'we know' such crimes have been committed. This is not to suggest that any of the victims of this fiasco are at fault, it's just to remind ourselves that in such cases time is undoubtedly the enemy. Even if we get a satisfactory outcome, the public gaze has long drifted 'off- subject' and onto another depredation, like a drunken butterfly.
Best Wishes, Martin J Walker.
PS. I think that when we pay homage to films and especially actors and actresses we should not forget the writers of these works, for they are the people who have picked up the injustice and run with it and often of course they are the people whose jobs and reputations suffer. Tim Prager the writer of Hear the Silence and Gordon Newman the writer of the Judge John Deed series neither of whom have vaccine damaged children should be endlessly applauded for their contribution.
Posted by: Martin J Walker | February 23, 2013 at 08:29 AM
Chris
Amazing link. Everyone should read it but the bottom line is a BBC Panorama report by Sarah Barclay about a child who developed SSPE at 11 years but failed to tell people that he'd recently had the MMR booster, so in fact the case was the exact reverse of the one the programme was making.
As to Boseley and the Guardian they are now official partners with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and I intend to write about it soon.
John
Posted by: John Stone | February 23, 2013 at 07:43 AM
This is slightly "off topic" but I sense a tidal wave building and both cases are part of it because all media are so compromised on this issue. So here's the other Sarah and Panorama:
http://bmeandothersciences.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/the-curious-case-of-panoramas-blind-reportage-sspe-mmr-and-the-limitations-of-sarah/
I have crossed the Guardian several times on this issue and even taken them to the PCC but to little avail.
Posted by: Chris Hemmings | February 23, 2013 at 07:07 AM
Mark,
But interestingly Goldacre bailed out of his Guardian blog 5 days before the you-know-what hit the fan (4 November 2011):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/04/bad-science-eight-years
Coincidence, or what?
Now, of course, resident as Wellcome Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygeine, where recent research has discovered that mercury is not toxic (cyanide next).
http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/01/not-all-mercury-is-toxic-desperate-throw-in-new-scientist-to-prevent-un-ban.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Goldacre
John
Posted by: John Stone | February 23, 2013 at 05:41 AM
Of course, the little love birds, Ben & Brian, gurus of establishment evidence, are getting it together in Oxford next month ... for Evidence Live, day two, the conference 13.
http://www.evidencelive.org/timetable
And to round off a perfect day, Carl & Fiona, big budgies of the evidence world, will twitter their appreciation to Keynote 13.
http://www.evidencelive.org/keynotes
Wonderful! You really can't make stuff up like this!
Posted by: Mark Struthers | February 23, 2013 at 05:37 AM
Goldacre's declaration of undying love for Deer was made in January 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/9122814
"Now, my view has changed, in the light of Brian Deer’s excellent work: we now know that this was a flawed and misleading 12 subject case series report. So that’s two big problems with it triggering a gigantic and lengthy scare story: it was a weak form of evidence to start with, by design, but on top of that, it was itself dodgy."
and,
"I’ve been unswervingly supportive of Brian Deer’s work, linked to it, written about it, and promoted it at every opportunity, including now (there has been almost total media silence in the UK on his current revelations), and I’ll continue do so."
Posted by: Mark Struthers | February 23, 2013 at 03:30 AM
Excellent!
Posted by: Ottoschnaut | February 23, 2013 at 12:26 AM