COOPER: Well, he [Brian Deer] -- he's actually signed a document guaranteeing that he has no financial interest in any of this, or no financial connections to anyone who has an interest in this. 



WAKEFIELD: Well, that's interesting you should say that, because he was supported in his investigation by the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, which is funded directly and exclusively by the pharmaceutical industry. So…

COOPER: According to him, he's received no funding from -- from any parties that have interests in this over the last three years.

Anderson Cooper, did I read that right?  “The last 3 years.” Since Deer published his first piece on Andy Wakefield 7 years ago, why didn’t you ask Deer about the last 7 years, rather than the last 3? Maybe you could also get Deer to sign something saying he hasn’t killed anyone in the last month. Ridiculous!

In fact, Deer was originally funded to investigate Andy by a front group for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industries, just as Andy Wakefield said. From a confidential source:

“Deer was provided with free assistance by Medico-Legal Investigations a company owned and controlled by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry - I have documentation on this.  MLI specialise in getting medical doctors prosecuted by the General Medical Council.  And that was done before he published in The Sunday Times in Feb 2004.”

3. His most recent hit piece was funded by the British Medical Association, who has many reasons to shut Wakefield up

Anderson Cooper, in cross-examining Andy Wakefield on CNN, said the following:

COOPER: But this is not just one man. This is -- this is published in "The British Medical Journal."

As we all know, Deer’s article appearing in the British Medical Journal has given this story far more gravity with the American media. But, how many reporters even know what the British Medical Journal is? It doesn’t take long to discover the following from the BMJ’s own website:

- BMJ Journals receive advertising revenue from “display advertising for pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical products”

- BMJ Group [publisher of the British Medical Journal] is a wholly owned subsidiary of the British Medical Association.

What is the British Medical Association? According to their website, they are:

“the independent trade union and professional association for doctors and medical students, with over 140,000 members worldwide.”

Let me try and put this in plain English (since CNN and Anderson Cooper clearly don’t understand it):

The British Medical Journal receives most of their funding from ads sold to pharmaceutical companies. Additionally, the journal is 100% owned by the BMA, a trade union that represents all of the United Kingdom’s doctors. The UK has socialized medicine, it is nothing like the US in this regard. All the doctors belong to the BMA and the BMA represents the doctors interests in every aspect of their practice, including salary negotiations with the British government.

The BMA is an exceptionally powerful trade union representing doctors. If vaccines cause autism, this will be very bad for the BMA’s members. So, the BMA hired Brian Deer to write a hit piece for their trade journal.

And, Anderson Cooper reported, “According to him [Brian Deer], he's received no funding from -- from any parties that have interests in this over the last three years.” But, the British Medical Journal, wholly owned by the British Medical Association, just paid Brian Deer to write his most recent hit piece, as Brian Deer said:

DEER: I was commissioned by the “British Medical Journal” to write the piece, yes. That’s what the journalists do.

Give me a break!

4. Deer is the person who filed the complaint against Andy Wakefield with the GMC in the first place – he wagged the dog!

Above, I mentioned that Deer was originally supported by a front group for the Association for the British Pharmaceutical Industries called Medico-Legal Investigations, a group that a source mentioned “specialise in getting medical doctors prosecuted by the General Medical Council.”

Again, from a  source:

“The timing of Deer‘s first letter of complaint to the GMC of 25th February 2004 shows Deer wasted no time after the publication of his Sunday 22rd February 2004 Sunday Times stories against Wakefield. Before a single word had been written by him Deer had consulted with and been given free advice and assistance by Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry company Medico-Legal Investigations Limited, whose speciality was getting doctors on charges before the GMC.”

For those needing some guidance, the General Medical Council is the UK’s licensing board for all doctors: they giveth the ability to practice medicine, and they can take it away, too.

Deer’s first two original complaints are available HERE and HERE and they are simply indisputable, as is the transcript from a court document, right HERE, which states, unequivocally:

“Well before the programme was broadcast Mr Deer had made a complaint to the GMC about the Claimant [Andy Wakefield].”

Let’s try to put this particular fact in some perspective. The General Medical Council is the body that took Andy’s license away. Their ruling caused the Lancet 1998 paper to be retracted, and led directly to the most recent media circus.

Yet, none of the parents from the original 1998 study had an issue with Andy Wakefield. No one at the Royal Free Hospital where he worked had an issue with Andy Wakefield. No one at The Lancet who published Wakefield had an issue with his work.

Brian Deer, a journalist hired by a pharmaceutical front group, a group that specialized in reporting doctors to the GMC, was the only person in all of Britain interested in filing a complaint about Wakefield’s study with the GMC, and he didn’t even do so until 6 years after Wakefield’s work had been published in The Lancet.

Brian Deer created this story, and now reports on this story, and the American media doesn’t understand remotely what’s actually taken place. Journalists, is it really that hard to smell a rat? Anderson Cooper couldn’t ask Brian Deer about this, because I’m sure he doesn’t understand who the GMC is, that Deer himself filed the complaint that led to the GMC hearing, or how this all works.

As I showed you above, the documentation is clear that Brian Deer filed the original complaint on Wakefield with the GMC, we have both his actual complaint and something stated in British court to prove it. When confronted with this information, what does Brian Deer actually say?

Here’s journalist Jane Bryant discussing her interview with Brian Deer outside the GMC hearing in 2008:

When asked if Deer was the complainant and if this was his case with the GMC, Deer simply exploded. Springing to his feet, placing his body inches from mine and invading my space, Deer proceeded to threaten, to rant and to jab his fingers close to my face.

Brian Deer: “No! I've not complained! I've got letters from the GMC saying I'm not the complainant! Ask me the question again! Ask me and I'll tell you!”

Here’s journalist Martin Walker:

“The GMC hearing could be part of a law school learning module on abuse of process, nowhere more so than in its origins. How could it be possible for a single pro vaccine journalist to have such command of the medical-legal process that he can initiate one of the biggest prosecutions in GMC history against three doctors whose research casts doubt on the safety of MMR? How could it be possible that an agency solely funded by the pharmaceutical industry could help this journalist bring the complaint before the GMC? Finally and perhaps most disconcertingly, how is it possible for the General Medical Council, an organisation granted serious legal powers under an act of parliament, to work in collusion with the government and the pharmaceutical industry dragging out a prosecution over a period of five years in order to protect the government’s vaccine programme?”

5. Deer appears to be the journalist stooge in this whole thing, and the real instigator of the Wakefield investigation may be far more powerful

From another source:

“Deer was also not working alone. Deer was working hand-in-hand with Dr. Evan Harris a British Member of Parliament, Glaxo-Wellcome Fellow and active Member of the British Medical Association and Harris even at that early stage attended with Deer at the offices of The Lancet, as Lancet Editor Dr Horton recorded later in his book, on these events ["MMR Science and Fiction: Exploring the Vaccine Crisis,"]. This was also confirmed by Harris indirectly in Parliament and later by the public attendance by him with Deer at the GMC hearings against Wakefield in London, England.”

If you’ve been tracking this whole mess, and if you’re anything like me, this is the “A-Ha” moment, when more of this makes sense.

To make everything just a bit uglier, here’s AoA’s own John Stone discussing Evan Harris:

“Evan Harris, the MP who made allegations in a debate about MMR in the House of Commons in March 2004, disclosed that his father, Frank, was a recently retired professor paediatrics, but not that the latter had sat on the Committee on Safety in Medicines in 1990-92 (an appointment listed in his entry in Who’s Who) in the period leading to the withdrawal of the Urabe strain MMR vaccines in September 1992.” 

Again, in plain English:

Evan Harris was a member of the British Parliament (sort of like a US Congressman) from 1997-2010 (he just lost the most recent election). He was also a Doctor who attended Oxford Medical School (sort of like Bill Frist was a doctor turned politician). His father was a doctor and a medical professor, and his father sat on a British medical safety board during a scandalous withdrawal that took place of a failed MMR vaccine. Evan Harris has said, during a speech in parliament:

"On the safety of MMR, the evidence and scientific consensus are overwhelming. There is a lot of good research that fails to find any significant safety problem with MMR..."

Now it all makes sense.

6. The CEO of the Lancet joined Glaxo’s board, soon before Deer’s first article in 2004 in the Sunday Times

From a JABS briefing note regarding the GMC hearing:

“A further deeply unsatisfactory feature is that Dr Horton has never disclosed that his boss, Sir Crispin Davis, chief executive of Reed Elsevier, was appointed a non-executive director of MMR defendants GlaxoSmithKline in summer 2003 only a few months before the Sunday Times article in February 2004 that accused Dr Wakefield.”

Plain English: Dr. Richard Horton was the editor of The Lancet, publisher of Wakefield’s study. Horton, in particular, seems to have developed amnesia about the Wakefield study, and effectively threw Andy under the bus. Contrary to how some media members portray them, medical journals are for-profit entities, and Reed Elsevier is a company that own The Lancet along with many other journals. In the Summer of 2003, the CEO of Reed Eselvier became a board member of GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, and a maker of the MMR.

I’d like to pint out that this connection between The Lancet and Glaxo is not hard to figure out. So what did Anderson Cooper ask Brian Deer? The following:

COOPER: ... as you know, James Murdoch, the owner of -- of your employer, "The London Times," joined the board of GlaxoSmithKline, which is a manufacturer of MMR. He joined that board in 2009.



DEER: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)



COOPER: Some people have brought that up as a -- as a conflict of interest.



DEER: No, it's absurd, absolutely absurd.



Note to Anderson Cooper: wrong dude, wrong year.

Oh, and there you go again, in interviewing Deer you referred to the London/Sunday times as “your employer”—implying Deer is an employee of the Sunday Times, when he’s not.

7. The Sunday Times editor who originally hired Deer also had a serious conflict

Does it ever end?

“Deer was hired to investigate Wakefield by Sunday Times editor Paul Nuki, who is son of Prof George Nuki, who was on the Commitee on Safety of Medicines when MMR and Pluserix were introduced.”

8. Deer had access to the medical records of the Lancet 12 children long before the GMC hearing, which is apparently illegal

British laws are equally strong about the confidentiality of medical information. The parents of the Lancet 12 have been clamoring for years to understand how Brian Deer had access to their children’s medical records, since they never gave their permission. Here’s a note in the last 48 hours from a Lancet 12 parent to me:

“I was not interviewed by Brian Deer. I have appeared in the media representing families of vaccine damaged families and talked about my [child] but never gave out any confidential medical information only what reactions he had after the MMR vaccine.  Brian Deer knows medical information that he would only have found in his medical notes and long before the start of the GMC so he cannot state that he got the information from the GMC.”

Here’s another comment:

“Brian Deer had the names of the Lancet Children and dates they entered the Royal Free hospital on his web‐site for all to see long before the GMC hearing. His view was that some of us parent were in the media. The problem with that is that I did not tell the media that my boy was part of the Lancet study until Brian Deer let it be known. I have e‐mailed him on numerous occasions asking him how he got hold of my child’s medical notes without my permission. He has never interviewed me or my family and has not replied to this question.

I believe Brian Deer got hold of confidential information on our children and want to know how this can happen. He told me in an e‐mail that he managed to prise confidential documents from the Royal Free Hospital. This question below has not been answered by Brian Deer: Could Brian Deer also please let the BMJ know the means by which UK legislation allows free lance (or any other) journalists, to view original research files, and compare them with Royal Free (or any other hospital or private practice) medical files of children with full identities available, all test results available, without parental consent; the studies' authors consent; privacy restraints or hospital ethics committee approval?”

Here’s a Lancet 12 parent’s recent complaint to the BMJ for his most recent article:

“I am making a formal complaint to the BMJ for allowing Brian Deer to publish this article about my child and others. How can the BMJ allow a journalist without any qualifications in bowel disease to make these assumptions? My [child] suffers every day with their bowels and are in great pain. The bowel disease they have has been getting worse throughout the years and other doctors who specialise in bowel disease have confirmed the disease. If it had not been for Dr. Wakefield, Professor Walker Smith and Professor Simon Murch I dread to think how my [child] would have coped. Professor John Walker-Smith was just last week awarded a Distinguished Service Award by The European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. He was nominated by Professor Alan Walker of Harvard Medical School and agreed unanimously by the Board. What qualifications does Brian Deer have? How many lives has Brian Deer saved? Brian Deer did not have the courtesy to interview me in the beginning and yet he boasts about knowing my boys medical information. What information does the BMJ have to back Brian Deer's complaints up with? I demand full disclosure.”

9. Deer actively assisted the US Department of Justice in their defense of vaccines in the recent omnibus proceedings

Here’s Brian Deer bragging about his assistance of the US Department of Justice in defending itself in the Autism Omnibus proceedings:

“That said, I’m also very proud that, like the GMC, the US government sought my help in mounting its case in Cedillo, copiously borrowing pages of evidence from my website and displaying some in court. I was surprised by this. I assumed that they would have sophisticated contacts with other governments and with industry, and could pretty much get what they wanted. However, on a number of occasions I would come home, find an email from the department of justice asking me for a document, and see that the next day it was being run in court. Bit of a seat of the pants job by the DoJ (brought about by the plaintiffs changing their case at the last minute). Indeed, I recall supplying a key document on the O’Leary lab business, which the DoJ didn’t seem to know about just weeks before the hearing. Hence the late surfacing of Bustin and Chadwick. It was me wot done that, and I’m glad. I don’t say these things to boast, only perhaps to wonder why — if there are all kinds of grand conspiracies behind the defence of vaccine safety — governments and regulators are so untogether that a mere journalist can get ahead of them in the game."

Is there a problem with Brian Deer assisting the US government? There is if he is sharing confidential medical files he’s not supposed to have.

(Note: we have FOIA emails showing Deer corresponding with the DOJ, more on that at a later date.)

10. The Lancet 12 parents are terrified of Brian Deer and deem him to be unhinged, dangerous, and able to cause harm to their families

I have personally spoken, in the last 24 hours, to Lancet 12 parents living in the UK. They have no idea how big this story is in the US, as it’s barely even news in the UK. It was unfathomable to me that they would fear this unmarried, childless man who I watched on CNN, and here are some of the explanations I received for where their fear comes from:

“One thing that happens are accusations of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. People feel that their children could be taken away at any time if they make demands on the system, and there are a range of pretexts. Parents can be told their adult children don't want to see them. Also we are a very centrally run country: it can be easy to make people's lives a misery through executive abuse, deprivation of services etc. Mostly, I suspect, people just knuckle under - don't think of questioning the system.”

And, here’s another comment:

“I think also you have to remember that we live in a society in which all of Deer's manifold illegalities happened with the covert support of the state.”

Wow, I guess I need to drop a God Bless America right now! Brian Deer, welcome to the red, white, and blue, where the people still have the final say, and feel free to speak their mind without fear of retribution.

Here’s journalist Jane Bryant discussing Deer:

“The only conclusion that can be reasonably reached from the debacle described is that journalist Brian Deer is considerably more than economical with the truth. He is a nasty, aggressive man, completely out of control and rapidly developing own-goal status for the pro vaccine lobby. A similar incident occurred with Deer outside the office of the General Medical on the 27 March 2007, at the start of the Defence presentation. Caught on film hectoring and lecturing the parents of the vaccine damaged autistic children, the parents are so frightened of Deer that they are scared to place this film in the public domain.”

And, here’s an email from Brian Deer to a member of parliament in the district where one of the Lancet 12 parents lives:

“My experience of [Lancet 12 parent] is that she is a spiteful, vexatious lady, who apparently continues to conspire on behalf of Dr Andrew Wakefield in false allegations that evidence exists to suggest that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Her motives appear to me to be both emotional comfort and substantial financial gain…In my view, [Lancet parent] needs to confront her own conscience with regard to her conduct of recent years of promoting baseless fears of MMR.”

- Brian Deer email, October 23, 2006

11. Deer’s most recent report in the BMJ, the one making all the news, is based on an impossibility that the press should be able to understand

From a post on AoA yesterday:

“Central to the latest claims of journalist Brian Deer published in the British Medical Journal 6th January is the allegation that Dr Wakefield ‘altered numerous facts about the patients’ medical histories in order to support his claim to have identified a new syndrome.’

What Deer and the BMJ fail to point out is that not only did Wakefield not produce the results, which were the work of a team of 12 other specialists at the Royal Free Hospital, London, England but that:-

It was not possible for Wakefield or anyone else to falsify the prior clinical records of the children because no one at the Royal Free Hospital London had them nor is it normal practice for them to have had them.  So there could be no fraud over ‘altering’ those histories.  It just was not possible.”

Plain English: In Britain, when you are referred from a local doctor to a major hospital, like the one where Andy worked, your previous doctor's records DO NOT travel with you.

When the GMC held a hearing, they were able to get the "local" records of all the kids. Because Royal Free hospital is a more sophisticated place, and because they had NONE of the previous records to work with, they made their own diagnoses.

Through the GMC hearing, Deer had access to the local records of the kids (which Wakefield and colleagues never had) - if Deer found differences, he reported those as "fraud." It's a confusing, but important, nuance, and any doctor in Britain could verify how these things work - Americans are used to bringing our medical records with us when we switch doctors. 

From an American attorney:

“Attacking the Royal Free team for dx differing from local GP's is like saying that the Mayo Clinic commits medical fraud every time they come up with a dx for a new and exotic disorder that differs from the local docs -- that's why people go to Mayo in the first place, last resort, and that's why the UK parents went to the Royal Free.”

And, finally, from an AoA post:

My first reaction to this latest story was: "Why in heck would Wakefield have to invent stories about children who exhibited autistic symptoms after MMR and had significant bowel disease? They're a dime a dozen!"

12. Despite Anderson Cooper’s assurances to the American people, Brian Deer has not interviewed the Lancet 12 parents

Here’s what Anderson Cooper said to Andy Wakefield:

COOPER: Brian Deer has talked to the patients -- has talked to the parents -- has talked to the parents of the patients who were in your original study. And he discovered that not one of the 12 cases you claim to have studied was free of -- quote -- "misrepresentation or alteration." 

In no single case could the medical records be fully reconciled with the descriptions, diagnoses or histories published in the journal. Some of the parents in your original study say what you claimed about their kids' medical histories was not true. 

Are those parents now lying?

So, on the first night Anderson Cooper discussed this case (last Wednesday), he implied Brian Deer had talked to ALL of the Lancet 12 parents (the same parents who are scared of Brian Deer and think he is unhinged). The second night Anderson discussed this case, he had Brian Deer on, and here is what he said:

COOPER: Did you speak to any of the parents from the 12 cases?



DEER [closing his eyes tightly]: I personally interviewed one, two, three families of the 12. Somebody else -- two others were interviewed on my behalf by other journalists. So, that's five of the 12.
Oh, no, actually, I interview -- and I have had conversations with another, so quite a substantial number...

That’s quite an answer, Brian Deer. Anderson Cooper said, 24 hours earlier, that you’d talked to all the parents. With eyes tightly shut, you have to count to figure it out?

Here’s what I know: of the parents I know of, NONE ever talked to Brian Deer about their children’s history, and none can imagine that any parents did.

I have also confirmed that the very first parent of the Lancet 12 that Brian Deer did in fact interview, he posed as “Brian Lawrence” and never revealed his true identity to the parent of Child #2. Anderson Cooper, do you routinely use a false identity to trick people into talking to you? I doubt it.

Here’s an email sent from one of the Lancet 12 parents to Brian Deer, confronting him on his misrepresentations:

From: Lancet 12 Parent

Sent: 16 April 2010

To: @briandeer.com


Subject: [my child]

Brian,

Why are you saying that [child name] does not have bowel disease? You are not a doctor and have no expertise in bowel disease. Dr. Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and Professor Walker-Smith do.

You never interviewed me and have no knowledge about [child] conditions.

Please stop as you are putting [child’s] health at risk.

[Lancet 12 Parent]

Here’s a Lancet 12 parent, in a private email about their child’s bowel disease (that Deer alleges the child doesn’t have):

“One thing we do know is that [child’s] body is still unable to tolerate any food what so ever, after the doctor wanted to see if the steroids had had any impact on this, we were told to try [child] with a small amount of plain boiled potato, within minutes he vomited it back up, not only was he violently sick he was up most of the night crying in pain and hitting out at me for making him so poorly. If only he could talk and tell us where the pain was, it's heart breaking knowing he's in pain but unable to tell us. It is now 1 year since [child] has eaten.”

13. Anderson Cooper called Brian Deer “an independent journalist who's won many awards” and he’s neither

Hopefully, this article has convinced you that Brian Deer is not an independent journalist.

As far as awards go, his fairly narcissistic and odd website (checkout the picture gallery!) cites exactly ONE award he has one, in 1999, at The British Press Awards HERE: Specialist Reporter of the Year -- Brian Deer, Sunday Times

Many awards? Independent? Give me another break!

Conclusion

What can I say? I’ve told you everything I know, draw your own conclusions, who is the real fraud here? Why isn’t this news in the UK?

I have personally shared this information with Anderson Cooper’s producer and CNN’s medical editor. I have personally introduced Lancet 12 parents to CNN and others as of Friday.

I hope they interview the Lancet 12 parents and let America see our side. This is one of the most ridiculous whitewashings I have ever seen. CNN and many others got caught with their pants down—will they clean up their own mess, or leave it to the parents to deal with?

Thank God for the Internet, AoA, and the ability to speak the truth.

J.B. Handley is co-founder of Generation Rescue