“Who Can Say?” -- Journalist Who Alleged Wakefield Committed Fraud Backs Off Key Claim
By Dan Olmsted
Brian Deer, the British journalist who claimed researcher Andrew Wakefield committed fraud by linking the MMR vaccine to autism, now admits one of his key allegations against Wakefield may be flat-out wrong. Yet he insists it's no big deal -- that it does nothing to undercut his claim that Wakefield is "an elaborate fraud."
“Not one of the children were reported on truthfully. Wakefield lied again and again,” journalist Brian Deer said in his post on Saturday, referring to Wakefield 12-child case series published in the Lancet in 1998. But in the same post, Deer acknowledged that, contrary to his previous reporting, he is now unsure whether Wakefield falsely changed the timing of the MMR shot to put it before the autism symptoms began in a key case.
“Who can say?” Deer wrote Saturday.
The allegation that Wakefield reversed the timing of the shot -- clear evidence of fraud, if true -- was featured in detail as the shocking opening to Deer’s 2012 series in the British Medical Journal titled “How the Case Against the MMR Was Fixed.”
Child 11’s autism symptoms developed "two months earlier than reported in the Lancet, and a month before the boy had MMR," Deer reported, “too soon” to be the cause. That “must have been a disappointment” to Wakefield, who proceeded to switch the sequence to suit his bias, Deer wrote. The father angrily “spotted the anomaly” after Deer identified and interviewed him, but “needn’t have worried” that Wakefield would get away with it: “My investigation of the MMR issue exposed the frauds behind Wakefield’s research.”
But on Saturday, after I showed that Deer is the one who got the sequence wrong – that the shot indisputably did come first, followed by the development of regressive autism -- Deer wrote: “Who can say, years later?” In fact, I can say: The father, whom I also identified and interviewed, wrote Wakefield as early as 1997, and contemporaneous medical records establish, that the child got the MMR at 15 months, became sick for several months, developed autism symptoms by 18 months, and was given a formal autism diagnosis at age 3. The father has always said he believes the shot caused all those consequences -- none of which Deer managed to reflect in his own investigation despite interviewing and e-mailing with Father 11 over an extended period of time.
The fact that a core element of his claim of research fraud is now a matter of uncertainty to Deer, the only man who made it, is a remarkable development under any circumstance, but considering the impact the claim has had on the autism debate in subsequent years, it is extraordinary. The claim has been used by officials around the world to say concerns about autism and vaccines have been "debunked" because they originated from a fraudulent research report. A typical example: Senator Dianne Feinstein of California wrote a constituent last week: “I understand that many parents are also concerned that vaccines may cause autism. This claim was published in 1998, in an article in the Lancet, a British medical journal. The researcher who authored the article was later found to have deliberately falsified data to produce a fraudulent link ..."
Equally striking is how little its accuracy seems to matter to Deer, convinced as he is that Wakefield's status as a charlatan is beyond dispute, even if such a central "fact" no longer supports it.
Deer, a veteran newspaper correspondent who, as he frequently points out, has won numerous prestigious journalism awards including the British equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for his Wakefield investigation, on Saturday offered no convincing reason for how he could have gotten something so central to his fraud claim against Wakefield so wrong. Instead he portrayed the father’s account as a “competing” explanation to the one Deer had independently settled on, based on a couple of unrelated court documents that led him to falsely infer that the autism symptoms preceded the shot in Child 11. Standard journalistic practice would be to check that assumption against the other, far more dispositive evidence that refuted it, and with the child’s father, who subsequently told me: "Mr. Deer’s article makes me appear irrational for continuing to believe that the MMR caused difficulties which predated its administration."
Instead, on Saturday Deer sneered at the messenger – me – as he staged a full-scale retreat from the facts, using Father 11's acknowledged but irrelevant antipathy toward Wakefield as cover. He called me “an undistinguished former journalist” who now runs a website “largely funded by anti-vaccine profiteers,” claiming that I had been “dumped some years ago from his post as a copy editor for a news agency owned by the Rev Sun Myung Moon - himself convicted of fraud … Olmsted has since sought a livelihood from his website, misleading vulnerable parents of children with autism. … He sought to profit with his website by lying to parents whom he disgustingly purports to champion” and followed “British research cheat” Wakefield “into the toilet.”
Whatever. On Saturday Deer also tried to elevate a secondary issue – how long after the shot the autism symptoms occurred in Child 11 – into a replacement for his now-discredited claim that the entire sequence was reversed, an incomparably more serious and black-and-white issue.
Ultimately, Deer suggested, the truth is unknowable.
“The father says one thing, the medical records another,” as Deer put it on Saturday. In fact, the father says one thing, and the medical records back him. (That does not mean the vaccine caused the autism, of course, but it does mean the father believed it did, and that Wakefield got the sequence right.) Only Deer’s idiosyncratic and journalistically unjustified misuse of a couple of stray medical records, unchecked by the reality described by everyone else, says another.
And if that’s not enough, well, Wakefield’s license to practice medicine was revoked and the Lancet paper was retracted (largely based on the “facts” Deer alleged).
At some point, though, Deer’s claims – or anyone else's – must hinge on the facts of individual cases if they are to add up to widely accepted evidence of “Wakefield’s grotesque misconduct.” Just saying so doesn’t make it so; referring to “lie after lie” doesn't constitute "an elaborate fraud" unless each "lie" can be shown to be exactly that. (Deer’s piece on my own reporting was titled, “Dan Olmsted lies for research doctor.” One is tempted to rewrite the headline as "Lying Undistinguished Former Journalist Lies for Lying Research Fraud Wakefield.")
The timing of shots and symptoms in just 12 children more than a decade ago may seem trivial, but the issue is anything but arcane. Millions of cases of autism have occurred since 1998, when Wakefield sounded what he believed was an “early warning” of a possible link between vaccination and autism that required further research and led to his suggestion that until that was complete, the M, M, and R in the MMR should be given separately. Thousands of parents have subsequently described such an outcome, but because Wakefield has supposedly been “discredited” and his work “debunked” -- by Brian Deer -- that and other evidence have been dismissed.
I first wrote about Deer’s investigation in 2012. Let me again spell out what I learned from Father 11 and how it differed from Deer’s account.
--
I met Father 11, who like Deer I identified from my own independent reporting, at a Peet’s Coffee shop in an affluent, picture-perfect Southern California enclave, and we sat outside in the mid-60s sunshine he jokingly called “a little frosty.” A wealthy businessman who lives in a gated community nearby, he wore a light jacket emblazoned with “Cal,” for the University of California at Berkeley where he got an engineering degree. He carried a thin file folder and a spiral notebook.
In this laid-back setting, it was hard to grasp the role he and his family have played in one of the major medical controversies of our time, one that unfolded in a foggy city 6,000 miles to the east.
This father is Deer’s best witness among the parents of the 12 children described in the Lancet paper – in fact, his only one, the lone parent who is hostile to Wakefield, not just a little frosty, but coldly angry. His anonymous comments to Deer in the BMJ seemed to fully support the January 5, 2011, cover story: “Secrets of the MMR Scare: How the Case Against the MMR Was Fixed.”
“My investigation of the MMR issue exposed the frauds behind Wakefield’s research,” wrote the ludicrously self-aggrandizing correspondent.
Child 11, in fact, was Deer’s opening into fraud. He was among those “whose parents apparently blamed MMR,” but Deer commented acidly that “Child 11’s case must have been a disappointment. Records show his behavioural symptoms began too soon.” [Italics in original] Deer quoted from a Royal Free Hospital discharge summary: “His developmental milestones were normal until 13 months of age. In the period 13-18 months he developed slow speech patterns and repetitive hand movements. Over this period his parents remarked on his slow gradual deterioration.”
Deer summarized: “That put the symptom two months earlier than reported in the Lancet, and a month before the boy had MMR. And this was not the only anomaly to catch the father’s eye. …” (Note that it is Deer, not the discharge paper, saying the symptoms came “a month before the boy had MMR.”)
Well yes, if you’ve got a parent saying that a child developed autism before he got the MMR shot, and you’ve got a research paper saying the opposite and suggesting a link between the shot and the disorder, and pulling the same stunt with several other children, you’ve got your fraud right there.
The BMJ report was the coup de grace for serious consideration of a link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield was “convicted of fraud,” wrote Time magazine in an article titled “The Dangers of the Antivaccine Movement.” An editorial in The New York Times, titled Autism Fraud,noted Britain’s General Medical Council had already stripped Wakefield of his medical license, and the Lancet retracted the paper: “Now the British Medical Journal has taken the extraordinary step of publishing a lengthy report by Brian Deer, the British investigative journalist who first brought the paper’s flaws to light — and has put its own reputation on the line by endorsing his findings.”
Indeed it did.
“Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare,” Editor in Chief Fiona Godlee wrote. She said “there is no doubt it was Wakefield” who was responsible for the “elaborate fraud,” despite having 12 co-authors.
Hold the door, please. I was about to learn that Deer’s explosive claim about Child 11 – Exhibit A in this alleged hoax -- was false. And that was just the first step of my journey into a world where things were not at all as they seemed.
--
The father opened the file folder – guarding the papers against a fickle coastal breeze -- and showed me a letter he had written on January 1, 1997, to “Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Royal Free Hospital, London, England.”
"My son [name deleted] at age 15 months, was immunized with the Merck MMR vaccine and became ill for the next several months,” the letter began.
“As his pediatric records indicate he came down with a viral infection, and shortly thereafter viral pneumonia. His condition slowly deteriorated over time, and was diagnosed as being autistic on his birthday at age 3. The onset of his autistic behavior began around 18 months. … He was diagnosed as moderate to severe, with no speech, no eye contact, and cognitive function at 6 months overall.”
Multiple specialists in the United States confirmed the autism diagnosis, the letter added, as well as their suspicions of the MMR vaccine as the cause. Further workups in California also revealed “indeterminant inflammatory bowel disease” -- the dual syndrome Wakefield was then investigating at the Royal Free. That was why the father wanted the hospital’s pediatric gastroenterologists to evaluate his child.
So – first came the shot, then the symptoms. The father’s account, and medical records created before he got anywhere near Wakefield, could not be clearer. But didn’t he tell Brian Deer exactly the opposite, as recounted in the opening of the BMJ cover story? And didn’t a hospital record confirm that?
No. And no.
Though you’d never know it, the father was actually disputing how long after the shot specific symptoms occurred. In fact, the father did directly blame the MMR for causing his son’s illnesses and autistic regression – a fact that appears to have escaped Deer’s notice, or at least acknowledgement.
Yes, the father was angry at Wakefield. Yes, he disagreed with other points, some of them unrelated to the content of the Lancet article. But no – he did not say that the symptoms came before the shot. That was not an “anomaly” in the Lancet paper that caught his eye, as Deer wrote.
And the discharge document itself? It was simply wrong, one of thousands of pieces of paper generated by many medical personnel in a complicated medical case stretching over many years; perhaps the “13-18 months” was a typo for “15-18,” since that is what the father had reported all along. Regardless, the father says he never told Deer that the symptoms came first, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Deer apparently did not bother to check that one piece of paper against the large volume of other evidence, or to confirm it with the father, or to make sure that his own claim that symptoms began “a month before the boy had MMR” coincided with any actual chronology.
As far as I can tell, no one on the planet -- no doctor, no parent, no document – has ever said Child 11 was anything but healthy and developing normally before the MMR. No one, that is, but Brian Deer in the BMJ. And here we see Deer at work: Because Wakefield was by definition a fraud – because Deer said so – any discrepancies between data in the Lancet paper and any other source was proof against Wakefield. One document says 13-18 months for the period of regression? That was evidence enough that Wakefield “used bogus data … to manufacture a link” between the MMR and autism.
---
To my surprise as we sat outside in Southern California, the father told me he hadn’t read the BMJ article, and he declined my offer to quote from it or have him read it during our visit. He would rather lay out the sequence in his own words, he told me.
That turned out to be a useful approach.
His son had been completely healthy and developing normally, he said, until the MMR shot at 15 months triggered a downhill progression.
“I very much believe it,” he said about the relationship of the shot to the symptoms: The measles component of the vaccine triggered an immune deficiency that produced the cascade of devastating physical and mental problems. This, in fact, was Wakefield’s provisional hypothesis.
How did Brian Deer miss all this? How did he misrepresent the core of the alleged fraud and claim the symptoms came before the shot? How did he rely on the father to rage against Wakefield but completely omit the fact he believed his child’s autism did not just come after the vaccine but was caused by it?
Who can say?
--
Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
As noted in my comment below, Brian Deer discovered a very similar error in Child 2's discharge summary. In the text of his article, he says that Child 2 got MMR at 15 months; in a footnote, he says that the discharge summary is in error in stating it was 13 months. Same kind of error: should have been "15," came out "13." (Neither error benefited the Lancet paper hypothesis.)
Yet when Dan pointed out that a typo of this particular type had been made in Child 11's discharge summary, Deer reacted this way:
"‘Dan Olmsted wrote that perhaps the '13-18 months' was a typo for '15-18.'
Did he really say that? I don’t generally look at his blog, so I must have missed that. You really have to wonder about the calibre of these people – not their views – but just the amount of RAM they came installed with....That line from the former journalist for the Rev Sun Myung Moon (who I think was convicted of fraud, if I recall right), is just priceless. 'Perhaps the ’13-18 months’ was a typo for '15-18.'
Indeed. And perhaps 'Dan Olmsted' is a typo for 'wanker.'
I love these people."
Excuse me, I have to go take a bath now.
Posted by: Carol | November 09, 2017 at 12:38 PM
I remember that Brian Deer affected theatrical incredulity at the idea that there was a mistake in Child 11's discharge summary, that "13" had been substituted for "15."
But Deer himself identified a very similar error in Child 2's discharge summary so that reaction was, shall we say, disingenuous. To wit:
"David Casson. Discharge summary. 16 September 1996. Day 24. 'Mum notes a normal developmental progress. Mum does recount that at 13 months of age he had his MMR immunisation and two weeks following this had started with head banging behaviour and screaming throughout the night....' The summary, like the Lancet paper, gives a wrong age (13 months) for child 2’s vaccination, taken from the mother by Mark Berelowitz...."
Deer's article indicates that Child 2 was about 15 months old when he got MMR so it's exactly the same kind of error: should have been "15," but came out "13." Neither mistake benefited the Lancet hypothesis.
(One of Child 2's doctors, by the way, said that Child 2 started tantruming two weeks after MMR so Mother 2's information about head-banging was corroborated. That was ignored by Deer, natch.)
Posted by: Carol | November 03, 2017 at 12:13 PM
I can confirm, Brian Deer's dodgy measles bar graph, in his submitted entry for his press award 2011, was based on NOTIFIED NOT CONFIRMED measles cases in England and Wales, 1999-2010.
http://www.pressawards.org.uk/userfiles/files/entries-01285-01292.pdf
Since only LABORATORY CONFIRMED cases of measles are ACTUAL cases, this graph is totally misleading. Also, the notified measles cases included all age groups, including persons too old to have received measles vaccinations. What Deer MUST have also found out from these tables, during his 'investigative journalism', was the number of post MMR vaccination child deaths stated below. These 2 children could not be vaccinated due to being immune compromised, due to co-morbidities, nothing to do with Dr Wakefield. Also, since immune compromised persons are vulnerable to the attenuated viruses in vaccines, they could have caught the measles from a recently MMR vaccinated child.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-deaths-by-age-group-from-1980-to-2013-ons-data/measles-notifications-and-deaths-in-england-and-wales-1940-to-2013
EXTRACT:-
"Prior to 2006, the last death from acute measles was in 1992. In 2006, there was 1 measles death in a 13-year-old male who had an underlying lung condition and was taking immunosuppressive drugs. Another death in 2008 was also due to acute measles in an unvaccinated child with a congenital immunodeficiency, whose condition did not require treatment with immunoglobulin."
Deer also didn't bother to inform his Times Readers there had been FOUR officially admitted child deaths caused by the MMR vaccine, during the same timescale. Those bereaved parents will have fervently wished they had been discouraged by Dr Wakefield, from allowing their precious children to receive MMR vaccine.
Those press and media persons responsible for Deer's press awards, should hang their heads in shame, for the continuing harm they have done to our children by promoting the MMR vaccine. There were and are safer alternatives.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 10, 2015 at 08:18 PM
Surely the father would want to correct the facts and have the 13 changed to a 15 .
Is there no way anyone on here can write to those who have been spoon fed Deer's lies and the correct details given.
I know for sure I wouldn't want it on my name, or my sons name (who is low functioning autistic), anything that supports what has happened all those years ago and the same vaccines are still being used to maim and kill more and more innocent children each day.
The annihilation of kids via vaccines has to stop somewhere.
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | March 10, 2015 at 04:54 PM
Excellent investigation and reporting, Dan. Thank you.
Posted by: Lujene Clark | March 10, 2015 at 04:27 PM
Hi Carol
Well, that surely is the point of "first behavioural symptom". Parents who note something is not right after the vaccine and witness a downhill progression thenceforward.
Posted by: John Stone | March 10, 2015 at 11:45 AM
Dr. Casson's Child 11 discharge summary reads: "In the period 13-18 months he developed slow speech patterns and repetitive hand movements. Over this period his parents remarked on his slow gradual deterioration."
If Father 11 thinks that "13" should be "15," but otherwise accepts that statement as an accurate description of his son's medical history, then it kinda sorta sounds like Mr. and Mrs. 11 did recognize some autism precursors developing right after MMR.
Posted by: Carol | March 10, 2015 at 11:07 AM
A lie is a lie.
Even one that is state supported.
It is no longer possible for people who claim that vaccines have no connection to the autism epidemic to get out of the web of lies.
It's one thing to lie and cheat people out of their hard earned money as we saw in the 2008 financial melt down. But it's another when children have been killed, left disabled for life, families ruined and the reputations of those who stood up to the insanity destroyed.
This will not end well for these people.
Posted by: Louis Conte | March 10, 2015 at 10:58 AM
"She discusses the increase in autism incidences corresponding with the introduction of human DNA to MMR vaccine, and suggests the two could be linked."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/vaccines-and-autism-a-new-scientific-review/
Posted by: Ottoschnaut | March 10, 2015 at 08:41 AM
Chris Preston
Table says "first behavioural symptom": this presumably is parents recognising the beginning of a change followed in succeeding months by loss of skills, attention etc. We understand that parent 11 links the beginning his son's decline with receipt of MMR and that by three months later a distinct pattern of autism was being manifested.
But besides nit-picking you are distracting from the fact that Brian Deer latched on to an error in a discharge note and made of meal of it. Now, under pressure he says he doesn't know, but as we see in Martin Hewitt's review of the Deer paper he keeps on making the same errors (parts 2 & 3 this evening and tomorrow) and he has never had to defend these errors in the place of publication.
Posted by: John Stone | March 10, 2015 at 07:49 AM
http://www.pressawards.org.uk/userfiles/files/entries-01285-01292.pdf
Just click this link to find Brian Deer's January 2010 'winning entry' for his 'Pulitzer prize', complete with an advertisment for a now defunct stationary supply business. This rubbish, published in Murdoch's Times, was rehashed from Deer's 6 years earlier Times article, with the addition of a very dodgy bar graph purporting to 'reveal' a vast increase in measles cases following the 1998 Wakefield et al Lancet article.
Where exactly were these measles cases? We are not told, but are left to make the assumption they were in the UK? (They could have been anywhere!!) We are also not told, (as in the recent Welsh measles outbreaks), whether these cases were CONFIRMED, or simply notified cases, most of which turn out NOT to be measles at all, but rashes due to other causes. Many of these measles cases will be adults too old for measles vaccinations. We are not told about that either!! This is incredibly bad journalism, and Deer's rehash of an old Times article, much of which has been discredited, and revealed to be false, did not deserve ANY award at all. Two of Murdoch's employees were on the Judging panel, one of whom was investigated over the Murdoch phone tapping scandal which 'broke' later. It should also be remembered, James Murdoch was then on the 'board' of MMR manufacturers GSK, with a remit to improve their public 'image'
Of course the opposite happened and James and his Dad retreated back to the US.
Deer's 'Pulitzer prize was just one of around 25 press awards on the night. The others were better deserved.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 10, 2015 at 07:16 AM
So Andrew Wakefield in his retracted Lancet paper states that Child 11 showed symptoms of behavioural changes associated with autism at 1 week after MMR, yet Dan Olmsted says it was 3 months after.
Who to believe?
Posted by: Chris Preston | March 10, 2015 at 06:41 AM
One cannot rationalise this 'Award Winning'reporter's actions. The Pullitzer Prize???!!! Sheeesh.
He is a man truly obsessed and focused on his prey like a terrier. His website is now sounding desperate.
Posted by: patricia | March 10, 2015 at 06:28 AM
David the hilarity concerning Deer is that when questioned about a fact in his child like fibs as Dan has done today.
Like a little boy he usually lists The Times, The Murdoch's Lawyers, et-al as credible reference's to cover up his fibs that he has spoon fed to them?
Again like a little boy he thinks by mentioning Mum and Dad its the cream on the fib and nobody would ever question these great authoritarians these great pillars of society and he has gotten away with it.
Sooo the question is Brian boy,as Dan has asked "miss all this? How did he misrepresent the core of the alleged fraud and claim the symptoms came before the shot? How did he rely on the father to rage against Wakefield but completely omit the fact he believed his child’s autism did not just come after the vaccine but was caused by it?"
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | March 09, 2015 at 05:38 PM
Beyond all the sinister lies by Deer, and his backing by $Hundred Billion a Year Medical Industry there is simply, basic common sense.
Injecting via vaccines into babies and children the hundreds of toxic excipients/allergens defines medical insanity, aka dogma.
Such medical dogma, as in mercury-cures, have been amply documented by Dan and Mark in their book Age of Autism.
Many here on Age of Autism cite many hundreds of Studies/Papers clearly showing the carnage via vaccinations, thank you.
But, it all comes back to plain common sense.
Posted by: david m burd | March 09, 2015 at 04:12 PM
Thank you, Mr. Olmsted, for some real investigative work into the Lancet 12 and for efforts to clarify Deer's insinuations. I personally am not sure that anything he wrote rose to the level of a real claim--though the official reality, and so much official confidence, for now is that he did--and I'm admittedly too reluctant to reread his writings to make sure of my vague impressions...but it seems possible that eventually we'll be having to prove that Deer did claim fraud or at least try to imply fraud and that the medical establishment did run with it, etc., etc...I hope the mainstream public will soon just write the whole lot off as unfit to practice or recommend anything healthy until they put forth some real apologies and admissions, real reform efforts, recommendations of whom to NOT vaccinate, reaffirmation of the right to vaccinate and the right to refuse, real efforts to reverse injury...
Posted by: Jeannette Bishop | March 09, 2015 at 03:54 PM
A fundamental problem is also what people choose to believe. People want to trust their favorite newspaper or television channel. Who can deny trust to the clean-scrubbed Anderson Cooper or a favorite comedian, talk show host or even Jimmy Kimmel? People look for certainty, and they hang onto that as long as they can. Unfortunately that works against the truth in our times where the entertainment value of the news is more important than the actual truth in broadcasting. Now we don't need the National Inquirer any longer to satisfy that need. Even "respectable" paper do not check their sources and facts any longer. Since it is not illegal to lie, anything goes.
Posted by: Birgit Calhoun | March 09, 2015 at 03:34 PM
How can one argue with an "Award Winning Journalist" such as Brian Deer ??? Here, he holds up the one award he has won...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX2Rq1jM0mU
Dr. Nancy believes Brian Deer is a medical genius.
Posted by: go Rand | March 09, 2015 at 01:34 PM
The Wakefield affair was a disaster for fair play in an arena that is simply awash with dollars - as the US politician said you take their dollars and you take their call! Who's in the US Roundtable? But the Lancet thing could start by going back to basics - where in the 1998 report did Wakefield say vaccines caused autism? Unless I am wrong Wakefield said no more than that 'more research was needed' to look into what appeared to be an association between vaccines received and observable factors. Wakefield was pulled up by a kangaroo court and I hold British doctors culpable for permitting this.
Tony Bateson, Oxford, UK.
Posted by: tony bateson | March 09, 2015 at 01:26 PM
The baggage that Deer has around him now (all his own doing) he just doesn't have any support from anyone. He raises points on various sites and NO ONE clambers to his defence to support his points...Just a little boy lost..who got caught out by parents, as happens when small boys tell fibs...
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | March 09, 2015 at 12:22 PM
I've noted a few examples of Deer's "errors" and distortions below. These examples are illustrative rather than exhaustive. At the end is a link to Dr. Wakefield's affidavit.
Child 1: Deer says that 10 weeks before MMR Child 1 could not “hear properly,” sign of a developmental disorder.
Fact: Medical records show Child 1 had a simple ear infection after which his hearing was normal.
Child 2: Deer says that Child 2’s head banging occurred months after MMR rather than two weeks.
Fact: One of 2’s doctor says that he started temper tantrums about two weeks after MMR.
Child 3: Deer says that Child 3 did not have non-specific colitis.
Fact: An image of Child 3’s biopsy was included in Lancet paper. It showed dense infiltration of inflammatory cells.
Child 4: Deer says that Child 4 had developmental delays before MMR.
Fact: Medical records show Child 4 regressed after single measles vaccine and became worse after MMR
Child 5: Deer says that Wakefield concealed concerns with Child 5’s development before MMR.
Fact: Medical records noting such concerns were not in the possession of the Lancet authors.
Child 6: Deer says that Child 6 had “fits” [febrile seizures] before MMR.
Fact: Medical records indicate normal development until MMR, after which near cot-death with behavior change.
Child 7: Deer says that Child 7, brother of Child 6, had “fits” [febrile seizures] before MMR.
Fact: Medical records show normal development until MMR, after which became quiet and language-deficient.
Child 8: Deer says that Child 8 was not developmentally normal before MMR.
Fact: After surgical repair of heart problem, developed rapidly. After MMR, grand mal seizure with rapid deterioration.
Child 9: Deer says that Child 9’s parents blamed MMR for regression occurring 2 months later, which Wakefield concealed.
Fact: Clinic note of Walker-Smith says “MMR…no obvious reaction.” Parents only made association later.
Child 10: Deer says Child 10 did not have non-specific colitis.
Fact: Dr. Anthony: mild chronic inflammation in colon. Dr. Casson: decreased goblet cells; epithelial focal abnormalities.
Child 11: Deer says Child 11 showed slow speech patterns and repetitive hand movements before MMR.
Fact: Father’s letter to Royal Free says MMR followed by months of sickness, then autistic behavior at 18 months.
Child 12: Deer says that Child 12 did not have autism.
Fact: Psychiatrist Dr. Ing says Child 12 had autistic spectrum disorder.
http://issuu.com/wakefieldjusticefund/docs/1_3_12__plt_original_petition#
Posted by: Carol | March 09, 2015 at 12:02 PM
In response to replies to my earlier comment: I'm sure that anything nasty anyone says about Brain Deer is perfectly true. However I do think there are many villains in this situation. I find it very hard to believe that even lowly 'doctors' and nurses don't know about the consequences of vaccination, especially given the overtly hostile treatment I've had from them all, even before I knew I had autism or that it was caused by vaccines.
Posted by: Grace Green | March 09, 2015 at 11:49 AM
If anyone wants to know what won Brian Deer his 2011 "Specialist-Journalist-of-the-Year" press award, then click these links. The award was just one of many at an annual press ceremony. The award was for his original Sunday Times article, published more than 5 years earlier. Two of the 'judges' were from Murdoch's News Corporation. Pulitzer prize IT WASN'T!! We don't have an equivalent award in the UK.
http://www.pressawards.org.uk/userfiles/files/entries-01285-01292.pdf
http://www.pressawards.org.uk/page-view.php?pagename=Specialist-Journalist-of-the-Year
WINNER
Brian Deer
The Sunday Times
Callous unethical and dishonest
Revealed: MMR research scandal
Hidden records show MMR truth
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 09, 2015 at 10:20 AM
Dr. Casson made at least two errors in other children's discharge summaries related to dates: one for Child 2 and one for Child 5.
Since Child 11's case wasn't part of the GMC hearing, Dr. Casson wouldn't have been asked about it.
Posted by: Carol | March 09, 2015 at 10:06 AM
Age of Autism published an extremely detailed three part review by Martin Hewitt of Deer's BMJ claims, which had previously been refused publication by BMJ:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/04/time-to-revisit-deers-claims-that-wakefield-fabricated-his-findings.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/05/time-to-revisit-deers-claims-that-wakefield-fabricated-his-findings-part-2.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/07/time-to-revisit-deer-3.html
Posted by: John Stone | March 09, 2015 at 09:18 AM
You can equate Deer's fraud with the fraud of GWBJR. He told the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he could use at ay moment and the US must go into Iraq and get them before he unloads them on the US. The US must also get Saddam Hussein and try him for having WMD's. After the US invaded a sovereign nation and proceeded to do rob the country ot its oil, bush jr, no longer was no longer interested in looking for Hussein saying on video, I don't know where he is and I'm not looking. No WMD's found? Oh well, say bush jr. Hussein is a bad man and he's no longer in power. Bush sold the world a load of BS and Deer sold the world a load of BS. A bait and switch. bush & deer-two of the worlds most egregious Flim-Flam men.
Posted by: Danchi | March 09, 2015 at 09:09 AM
I think its about time that Deer should become the Patsy he has been set up to be(oh yes Brian)..and at the same time let the Goverments world wide come out, with the heartless mantras ,we didn't know, we took it on good advice.... and get it listed by WIKI no less, as just another scandal..
MEDICAL SCANDALS
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=MEDICAL+SCANDALS&title=Special%3ASearch&go=Go
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | March 09, 2015 at 08:58 AM
Michael
No, the fundamental issue is how Deer used these records. The records themselves were not available to the Royal Free team when the when the patients were seen - that would have been unusual to say the least. Referrals are made with GP letters. Any discrepancies between the notes and reporting in the paper could not be the basis of a fraud claim but nevertheless any major discordances seem to originate with Deer's interpretation.
Posted by: John Stone | March 09, 2015 at 08:32 AM
Grace, maybe you are right, but it may be that they don't even realize what they are doing. The power of "mind control" is far greater than what it could be in your wildest imaginations.
The reason there are so many cults is because the techniques are very effective, regardless of the victim's IQ. And the victim almost always becomes a new tool for hunting. And they think they are right, "How could I be wrong?"
Posted by: Michael | March 09, 2015 at 08:26 AM
Grace Green states:-
"If I understand this correctly, patient histories of the twelve children were taken by the lead clinician, Prof. Walker Smith, directly from the parents. It was later found that there were discrepancies between those histories and the GP records."
An important observation Grace. I think Brian Deer could easily find 'discrepancies' between just about everyone's UK Hospital and GP medical histories, which are compiled and stored completely separately. Hospital medical histories, diagnoses, discharge summaries and letters, are all typed up by secretarial support staff. It's inevitable some typos and even major mistakes occur within some medical records.
Just for the 'record'. Professor Walker-Smith took and recorded the medical histories of the 11 UK Lancet children. The medical history of Child 11, from the US, will have been compiled entirely from information submitted by his father. The clinical results from investigations carried out at the Royal Free, and the discharge summary, (which appears to contain a typo seized on by Deer) will have been compiled by the clinicians.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 09, 2015 at 08:03 AM
Hi Grace,
I take your point but I don't think it was a case of GPs lying in this instance - much more to do with Deer's bias and incompetence. BMJ failed to peer review Deer's articles. Why, you might ask, was the journal of the British medical profession doing hiding behind the work of this rank amateur? They were and are still desperate. He was delivering something they could not deliver for themselves and it was a delusion.
Posted by: John Stone | March 09, 2015 at 07:47 AM
Rock turned over. Scorpion skitters. Let the stomping begin.
Posted by: Dan Burns | March 09, 2015 at 07:47 AM
If I understand this correctly, patient histories of the twelve children were taken by the lead clinician, Prof. Walker Smith, directly from the parents. It was later found that there were discrepancies between those histories and the GP records. I myself have discovered that many documents have been removed from my GP records, such as a diagnosis of aluminium poisoning and an allergic reaction to a local anaesthetic, which required treatment. I have also found that I have been repeatedly misquoted by doctors in my records, sometimes to the extent of meaning the opposite of what I said. I think we have to consider that GPs and other health professionals might have lied in order to cover up the truth about vaccine injuries. My own vaccine injury happened more than 60 years ago, so they have known, and been covering up, for at least that long.
Posted by: Grace Green | March 09, 2015 at 07:33 AM
It should be added that that BMJ have restricted and blocked criticism of Deer's methodology and "fact checking" from journal itself so he has never had to address most of them in the place where it matters, leaving him free to write vitriol about his critics on blogs across the web.
After David Lewis's initial intervention BMJ and Deer were forced into an embarrassing climb-down in Nature over histopathology results. Curiously BMJ did post this letter from me 6 June 2012 (exactly 4 months after it had been submitted):
"Re: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed
"Fiona Godlee fails to cite relevant letters to the BMJ from Andrew Wakefield's co-authors, Susan E Davies [1] and Amar P Dhillon [2], the latter notably in response to recent allegations made by herself, by Brian Deer, and Profs Geboes [3] and Bjarnason [4]. Geboes and Bjarnason have also never responded to Dhillon's letter, which took respectful issue with their claims.
"Further confusion relates to remarks made Godlee, Deer and Bjarnason in a Nature report, following David Lewis's accusations in November [5].
"'But he [Bjarnason] says that the forms don't clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records. "The data are subjective. It's different to say it's deliberate falsification," he says...Deer notes that he never accused Wakefield of fraud over his interpretation of pathology records...Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, says that the journal's conclusion of fraud was not based on the pathology but on a number of discrepancies between the children's records and the claims in the Lancet paper...'
"But above all it is impossible to see how Wakefield could be singly guilty of fraud when his co-authors apparently stand by the published findings.
[1] http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/caution-assessing-histopath...
[2] http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/17/re-pathology-reports-solve-...
[3] Geboes K. Commentary. I see no convincing evidence of "enterocolitis," "colitis," or a "unique disease process." BMJ 2011;343:d6985.
[4] Bjarnason I. Commentary. We came to an overwhelming and uniform opinion that these reports do not show colitis. BMJ 2011;343:d6979.
[5] Eugenie Samuel Reich, Fresh dispute about MMR 'fraud', http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111109/full/479157a.html
"
And of course in this instance we do know as well. There was a source for Deer's mistake and it was another mistake. How many errors have to be demonstrated before Deer's article is retracted? To hold out when there are so many demonstrable errors itself turns the issue into one of wilfull fraud.
Posted by: John Stone | March 09, 2015 at 07:25 AM
I almost hate to give Deer's scurrilous website a 'hit', since this is one of Deer's few sources of income, but if Andrew Wakefield was informed by Child 11's father "that child 11's "first behavioural symptom" of autism occurred "1 week" after MMR.", I can confirm this is not at all unusual, and has been reported many times by parents.
My own previously sociable and fun-loving grandson, stopped engaging with his family almost immediately, following his MMR jab at a year old. Suddenly, he lost all interest in books, building bricks and beakers, and avoided eye contact.
Deer seems to be concentrating all his 'fraudulent allegations' on the 1 week reported timescale, following MMR vaccine, but in fact it's completely irrelevant whether child 11 regressed into autism, after one week or during a longer timescale. The BLUNT TRUTH, confirmed by Child 11's father is his son regressed AFTER the MMR vaccine NOT BEFORE IT.
Posted by: Jenny Allan | March 09, 2015 at 07:19 AM
No doubt at this moment in time the pariah Brian Deer will be wishing AOA was shut down.
Some would like to think Deer's work is a masterpiece(Deer owns Wakefield) Contrary Deers Journalistic fibs, remind me of a 4 year old child telling a convincing ,elaborate story to an enquiring adult when asked "what happened",and without to much prying the kids tale is convincing ,right?right? sure..
As always happens with kids and fibs,the kid telling the fib, to the adult forgets one fairly major thing. And this is that we as caring, sharing, parents strangely talk to one another and compare, yes compare, what has been said and what has actually happened in the time line of events leading up to the in this case the missing ice-cream.When we compare stories at this point just like Deer's tale, the big fib,falls laughably apart.
Great work Dan
MMR RIP
Posted by: Angus Files | March 09, 2015 at 07:02 AM
Indeed, I also noticed Deer backtracking Dan. 'Who can say'? But, Brian you did! You started the claim and then everyone kept screaming fraud, and to this day they are still repeating it. You can say, Brian. You did!
Good on you also Dan for not countering with personal attacks (as he did), and, indeed, mentioning his prestigious journalistic award.
Posted by: Greg | March 09, 2015 at 06:58 AM
Whoa. Great post.
Congratulations, Mr. Olmsted.
Posted by: Michael | March 09, 2015 at 06:38 AM
The only reason Deer's scurrilous .. lies .. attacking Dr. Wakefield continue unchallenged in the "court of public opinion" .. is because far too many "careers and reputations" .. prominent names and institutions .. within both .. the media and public health .. are so heavily invested in Deer's "ponzi scheme" of lies.
We all know Bernie Madoff was held responsible for HIS financial "ponzi scheme" .. but .. rest assured there were many, many financial institutions, personal reputations and careers .. that were never charged for THEIR participation that allowed Bernie's scheme to last as long as it did .. such as .. ignoring all the "red flags" THEY knew were serious indications that "something was wrong" with their "golden calf" .. which was earning THEM enormous financial gains.
In any such case .. those who remain silent while the fraud either benefits them politically or makes them money .. usually claim "no knowledge" that anything was amiss. We see it day after day .. "Veterans dying while awaiting treatment" .. "IRS deliberate mis-treatment of certain unfavorable groups" .. "Secretary of State using private email accounts in violation of well established regulations and laws" .. on and on .. the answer is ALWAYS the same .. "I (we) didn't know".
Unfortunately for Deer .. HIS lies were so critical to the destruction of Dr. Wakefield they were spread throughout the world .. making him somewhat of a "tar baby" .. meaning anyone who vested their career and reputation in cheering this charlatan on .. will find it extremely hard to extricate their own reputations and careers when it all finally explodes in the "court of public opinion".
If you think Brian Williams has it tough after his experience with embellishing the truth .. you ain't seen nothing until the same happens to Deer.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | March 09, 2015 at 06:31 AM