Wakefield's response to Deer's last round of trumped up allegations...
It was, in fact, Mr Deer, who in February, 2004, initiated the investigation by the GMC in the first place -three days after he published his first article in the Sunday Times alleging wrongdoing by myself and two colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London3. This, and subsequent articles by Mr Deer which alleged deceit, unethical experimentation on children, undisclosed conflict of interest, fraud, and profiteering, was also factually inaccurate and highly defamatory. I was forced to abandon my action for libel, after an interim ruling in the High Court ordered that it had to run concurrently with the GMC case, which my lawyers advised was physically impossible. We naturally decided the priority was to concentrate our efforts on the GMC hearing.
Mr. Deer’s latest article was based upon ‘evidence’ that he claims was presented at the GMC hearing -which started in 2007, is due to conclude sometime in 2009 -without disclosing the fact that it was he who brought the original complaint. He therefore has an undeclared interest in its conclusions. Failure to have disclosed this conflict to readers of the Sunday Times is misleading.
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The documents relevant to the evidence presented in the Lancet paper are clearly identified in that paper. These included the Royal Free Hospital records and, where available, the prospective developmental records from parents, Health Visitors and General Practitioners (GPs). The team therefore relied on the totality of the information available to them, as stated in the paper. This is entirely normal practice. Since then further records have been collated for the GMC enquiry, which were not available to the hospital team at the time of writing the paper.
The records that were before the GMC included a complete set of the children’s local hospital records, a full set of the GP records to include all GPs who had been involved the child’s care, as well a the Royal Free Hospital records and any other records relating to the child e.g. school medical records.
Reliance on differences between these data sources, i.e. those relied on by the Lancet authors and those relied upon by Mr. Deer in his allegations, is disingenuous and misleading since the majority of the latter records were not available to the Royal Free doctors at the material time.
Accordingly, the authors of the Lancet paper cannot and should not be held responsible for any alleged ‘differences’ between the records available to them and the full set of records as set out above. But that is not to say that Mr. Deer’s interpretation of any differences is accurate. Rather, he has “cherry picked” differences with a view to undermining the credibility of the Royal Free doctors and the Lancet paper. This will be illustrated by reference to specific instances. Some discrepancies are inevitable because of the evolving nature of developmental disorders that, for any particular child, may involve a number of different diagnoses during the course of their disease progression or remission.
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Here Mr. Deer misleadingly conflates “problems” with “medical concerns”. With respect to “problems”, the Lancet paper was quite specific in referring to the timing of onset of “behavioural problems” in relation to MMR exposure. Nowhere in the paper was any reference made to the onset of “medical concerns.” The latter is an entirely non-specific expression that might relate to anything that caused a child to present to a doctor and the use of this term to reflect what had been said in the Lancet is entirely misleading.
For clarity, the paper stated that the reporting of the onset of the ‘behavioural problems’, coming on within a mean of 6.5 days after vaccination, was based upon the parental history as given to the clinical team at the Royal Free, lead by Professor Walker-Smith – and not to me.
As will be shown below, the implication by the Sunday Times that these children were exhibiting signs of autism before vaccination is shown to be false when one looks at the details of the specific children cited by Mr Deer.
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Once again, this is completely false: the other authors generated and ‘prepared’ all the data that was reported in The Lancet. I merely put their completed data in tables and narrative form for the purpose of submission for publication. All authors were provided with drafts of the paper for the purpose of checking their data and making amendments as necessary, prior to submission. This example alone shows either egregious incompetence or malice on the part of a journalist whose work is presumed by the public readership to be in pursuit of fairness and objectivity.
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These results were obtained by the clinicians in a manner that is transparent and described in the Lancet paper. In contrast, as illustrated below, Mr. Deer is highly selective in cherry-picking results to make his case, makes basic errors of understanding, and relies upon documents that were not available to doctors at the Royal Free at the time the paper was complied and written (see below).
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“The boy’s medical records reveal a subtly different story, one familiar to mothers and fathers of autistic children. At the age of 9½ months, 10 weeks before his jab, his mother had become worried that he did not hear properly: the classic first symptom presented by sufferers of autism.” “Child One was among the eight reported with the apparent sudden onset of the condition.”
A review of the additional GP records (not available to the Royal Free Team at the time of writing the Lancet paper. These records were first seen by me and my co-defendants in the lead-up to the 2007 GMC hearing) shows that, with respect to his claim about Child 1’s hearing, Mr. Deer fails to mention the crucial fact that in the entry that documents his mother’s concerns about Child 1’s hearing, his mother’s additional concern was about a discharge from Child 1’s left ear, indicative of an ear infection at some stage.21 This concern is not suggestive of an incipient developmental disorder but of a possible recent ear infection which would have been more than enough for his mother to express possible concerns about Child 1’s hearing. This is an example of Mr. Deer’s highly selective reporting of results that were not available to the authors of the Lancet paper at the material time. Time after time throughout the course of his reporting and narrative, Mr Deer appears to selectively rely on data to support his premise that I have perpetrated a fraud. Fair journalism does not pivot on a premise nor its proof. Even if that were the case, Mr Deer would have been unable to prove his preconceived notions had he looked at the evidence.
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Mr. Deer’s reportage regarding me raises fundamental questions, not just about basic journalism and objectivity, but also regarding the craft of reporting in the digital age. Mr Deer is breaking new and questionable ground. In the traditional print versions, where his stories have their widest circulation, he operates under the imprimatur of fairness through the reputation of the Sunday Times. However, on his web site and in attendant responses to various questions about his work, Mr. Deer betrays an unconventional bias against the subject about whom he is writing.
The evidence shows that Mr. Deer’s comportment as a purported journalist is far from objective or fair. He crosses a boundary that few reporters ever consider approaching. He not only surrenders documentation and alleged evidence to regulatory authorities, the evidence shows that he approaches them and asks them to consider the material generated by his work. Mr. Deer, instead, sought to prompt investigations under his own name and offered his information, flawed as it is, to the regulatory body. He has been complicit in every act of that body subsequent to the moment he provided it with his information. How can a journalist write objectively or fairly about a matter in which he is intimately involved and which his own requests have prompted? Mr. Deer asked the GMC to consider his material, Mr. Deer has presented before the GMC86 about his own findings, and then Mr. Deer claims to be objective in his reportage in the Sunday Times.
Further, off the pages of the newspaper that commissions his reports, Mr. Deer uses terms of derision at the same time he is claiming to write unbiased work in the Sunday Times. On his web site and in other writings Mr. Deer often refers to me and others doing autism research using pejoratives and other language that is fundamentally dismissive and he consistently ridicules the work of serious educated physicians and researchers, even though he has no expertise in their fields. Indeed, this is at the heart of the problem with much of his journalism; he writes about medicine and epidemiology and histopathology and autism as though he has the educational portfolio to speak with authority. Were he to quote other experts in his journalism, who were critical voices with expertise, Mr. Deer’s own background as a philosophy major would be of lesser consequence. However, in much of his work, he acts and writes with conclusive authority about protocols for sample collection, symptoms of diseases, time periods for regression, the impact of live viruses, and even the nature and symptoms of various diseases. While any topic can be adequately researched by any journalist, Mr. Deer writes with an expressed expertise on diseases and symptoms as though he were the final source. His story narratives are nearly devoid of quotations from experts and rely almost entirely on his own unqualified interpretations, which are uniformly flawed.
In both his communications with the investigating body of the General Medical Committee and during five years of writing blog posts, Mr. Deer betrays a profound bias that ought to prompt any reasonable editor to remove him from an assignment reporting on my case. Examples of this bias are far too numerous to list in their totality in this document but there are several to make the point that Mr Deer is completely devoid of objectivity or even a pro forma attempt at fairness.
Mr. Deer’s communications and involvement with the GMC and various transcripts of hearings show he makes even no pretense of objectivity regarding the subject matter of my situation. His “journalism” flows from a premise, which he has clearly set out to prove, regardless of contradictory information. Nonetheless, he presses on regardless with both his stories and his uninformed testimony. In the above referenced letter, Mr. Deer, acting more as an interpreter and analyst than a reporter, begins to tell the GMC what he “believes.” He writes, “Wakefield sexed-up data prior to publication. He made numerous further alterations. I believe that these alterations followed consultation and correspondence between Wakefield and Barr in August 1997 during which the latter invited the former to strengthen the appearance of an unequivocal link between the vaccine and autism…….” These allegations, without any substantiation, are doubly damning as testimony and then as uncorroborated charges published in the Sunday Times. What any reporter “believes” is irrelevant. A journalist’s task is to present information for readers or an audience to process and reach their own conclusions based upon reliable facts. Regardless, Mr. Deer’s beliefs and unfounded assertions in his testimony and communications with the GMC add further data to the incontrovertible body of evidence that there has been nothing impartial, objective, or fair about Mr. Deer’s reporting on me.
Mr. Deer, however, refuses to relent in his onslaught against me. His predilection for jumping to conclusions using unfounded interpretations keeps revealing itself in his communications. In a 7th March 2007 letter to Kate Emmerson of FFW Mr. Deer asserts without any foundation in fact, “Wakefield and a number of the litigant-parents (who by my analysis are effectively co conspirators in fabricating the worldwide alarm) are presently preparing a public relations case and media onslaught against the GMC alleging that the case against me is somehow politically motivated” Accusing people you are reporting about of being “co-conspirators” and of being responsible for “worldwide alarm” can hardly be considered journalism and, even if labeled analysis when published, moves dangerously in the direction of libel and malice of forethought. Mr. Deer’s analysis, regardless, ought to be of no consequence to either the GMC nor, most especially, his editors at the Sunday Times. He is without medical training to offer authoritative analysis.
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The basic tenets of journalism are objectivity and fairness. Both the standards and practices of journalism and its traditions require a concerted effort to provide both sides of a story. Mr. Deer’s statements to a professional regulatory body (GMC) and on his website postings are ample evidence he has not been able to sustain even the slightest pretense of fairness. He is a campaigning reporter who is ignoring any information that is contradictory of his premise, namely that I am determined to pull off an impossible scientific and medical scam. Indeed, the notion that any researcher can cook such data in any fashion that can be slipped past the medical community for his personal benefit is patent nonsense. Such an idea is absurd on its face and unravels before the evidence (as has happened at the GMC hearing), which is consistently ignored by Mr. Deer. Scientific rigor requires repeatability for verification of any research and Mr. Deer’s implications of fraud against me are claims that a trained physician and researcher of good standing had suddenly decided he was going to fake data for his own enrichment.
The larger and more disturbing issue behind the work of Mr. Deer is his voluntary involvement with governmental institutions and their reliance on his faulty investigative skills. The GMC case investigating me began with Mr. Deer, a “journalist,” offering up to the agency information he had gathered and interpreted to serve as the basis for a complaint. The traditional and sound practice of reporting, publishing, and broadcasting is that the information publicly reported and resting in the public domain is all that the media ever surrender to governmental bodies. Generally, what is on the pages of a paper or in a broadcast leads the government to launch its own investigation. Historically, if a critical piece of evidence is needed by any governmental body, a subpoena is often issued to the media that prompted the investigation. Established law and basic societal rights protect journalists and their employers from any demands that source materials or interview subjects be turned over without a legal fight. Indeed, many journalists have chosen jail rather than give up this information. A regulatory body ought to be able to find such data on its own if, in fact, such a feat can be accomplished by a solitary journalist. Instead of resisting calls for information that might have been prompted by his reporting, Mr. Deer preempts the GMC by willingly offering his source materials and thus violating a code of ethical behavior that is at the very foundation of the craft of journalism. He seemingly wants the government to rely on his work, either as a form of validation or an act of vanity. He will, of course, claim public interest. None of this mitigates his obligation to disclose his conflict.
Mr. Deer’s apparent transgressions, however, do not stop at acting as an investigator and a source for an agency whose work he will later write about in the Sunday Times. In fact, he continued to urge the GMC to prosecute me more aggressively over the course of the proceedings. This fact alone ought to lead to his dismissal by the newspaper for a conflict of interest since Deer’s statements before the investigating body are all critical of me, though without basis in fact. Nonetheless, even after being compromised as an informant and a provider of material to facilitate the GMC investigation, Deer makes the high-profile pages of the Sunday Times where his work is passed off as unbiased and balanced. Further, he uses his insider’s perspective and documents obtained during the course of the GMC inquiry to buttress his attack on me. Even though Mr. Deer’s interpretation of much of his source material is completely without foundation, he utilizes it in an exclusive fashion because he alone has access and other reporters do not because Deer has privileges of proximity afforded a principal in the matter before the GMC. Additionally, he has used materials in his reporting that were acquired through the discovery process in a defamation case against him brought by me. Even though the suit was dropped for logistical reasons, Mr. Deer employs information that, if not a violation of a court order placing him in potential contempt, is, at a minimum, ethically questionable.
