thanks for taking the time to comment.

As I said above, I nearly didn’t post this piece as there really is no story here.

What interests me is whether Dr. Wakefield ever did contact the GMC like he said he would. Neither answer works to his advantage. Either he contacted them, and the “who is the complainant” question is moot or he didn’t contact them and his quote was just empty air.

I read a comment attributed to you on Respectful Insolence that Dr. Wakefield has asked for the PCC complaint to be delayed?

If so, I would question whether that is real or just an attempt to set up the story, “I would have pursued this, but I had to concentrate on the GMC appeal”. If I recall correctly, that was basically the excuse given for a previous court action.

However, I was not the complainant. As I have said before, the complainant is a party to the proceedings. He or she is provided by the GMC with legal counsel. This isn’t the case with me. As the GMC has explained (again) the regulator was the complainant itself. I was an “informant”, like a health authority referring a matter to them. Wakefield and his publicist made the allegation that I was the complainant for two reasons: (a) to argue that I should not be allowed to continue to investigate him (as a gag); (b) to argue that, since the case was that of a mere journalist, it had no merit. Neither of these were true.

For me, the GMC proceedings were an investigative tool: an extension of my journalism. Ultimately, only the GMC could seize the children’s medical records, and such knowledge I had about their content couldn’t be used because I learnt these things during High Court libel litigation. However, if you were to compare the GMC’s charges with what I told them, you will see that they are essentially one and the same. There is no reason to speculate that the GMC had any prior interest in Wakefield, and I have never heard of any such thing. Many people approached the GMC after my stories broke, but the issues they raised were considred tangential (eg the Chadwick issue), and were not pursued. And my later suggestion to the GMC, that they pursue Wakefield more directly for research fraud, wasn’t pursued, since there were charges already included, concerning the selecting of children for the study, and the misreporting of their status and origins, which were allegations of dishonesty in the research (and which were found proven). The case was already the biggest ever in the GMC’s history, and it was simply not possible to add any more charges.

The outstanding question is why the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, and the Royal Free’s former dean, Humphrey Hodgson, met together in February 2004 and agreed to dismiss all but the “conflict of interest” in a purported “institutional inquiry” which lasted only a few hours, and involved the pair of them and the doctors themselves jointly preparing their response to the first part of my inquiry. This is a matter I have raised with Dr Horton, who claims that an institutional inquiry took place which “cleared Wakefield”. Depending on his response, I may raise this matter next week with the GMC, in which case it is quite likely that I will, indeed, be the complainant.

Can it be right that the only way doctors, caught red-handed in research misconduct, can be investigated is through a mammoth and
hugely expensive public inquiry of this kind?

In February 2004, Wakefield swanned around saying how he wanted a GMC investigation. That was classic Wakefield. Naturally, as soon as he started that one, I gave very careful thought, and a great deal of time, to ensure that he got what he said he wanted. As occurred later in the High Court, his bluff was called. Would I have bothered if he had admitted his misconduct and apologised? Looking back six years, I don’t know.

I hope this, for the last time, answers the question. I was not the complainant. I was an informant. Which it was, however, seems academic now, because, with a huge amount of (not badly paid work) by others, my case was proved.