As blogged by Anthony at Black Triangle the One Click Group – who say they are:
…a British-based international health advocacy pressure group and worldwide raw news hub…
described Brian Deer and his involvement with the MMR case thusly:
By all accounts a gay man and therefore unlikely ever to have to face the multiple vaccine risk agonised over by parents from around the world in relation to their children…
Nice. Sounds to me like they’re a bunch of homophobic stupidniks to me. As Anthony says:
Even if Deer is homosexual, it does not necessarily mean he has no stake in vaccine safety. Homosexuals are not some mysterious alien presence in our society, they have families which include small children. Homosexuals can even adopt children.
Unless you’re a Daily Mail reading OneClickTwit of course.
They are anti-vaxxers of course and really really don’t like Brain Deer much at all. This makes the JABS loonies recently in evidence in the monumental ‘Wakefield‘ post on this blog big, big fans of theirs naturally. Amusingly, these same JABS loonies have been complaining about the horror of Brian Deer _making_ the news and then _reporting_ on the news regarding Wakefield. Not that he has, but thats how they see it. The amusing thing is that one of the straplines of the OneClickGroup is:
We not only break the news, we also make it.
They also proudly boast of receiving ‘7,000 – 33,000 hits per day’…..woah…big time baby!
Just for fun, I ran LB/RB, JABS and OneClickGroup through the Compete analyser which analyses Unique Visitors (a much more reliable indicator of traffic than ‘hits’):
Sadly, you’ll notice only two lines there. OneClickGroup didn’t generate enough statistics to be measurable.
So, this member of the antivaxosphere, carried on from homophobic attacks on Brian to carrying an alleged ‘out of control’ attack from Brian on their owner/Director/whatever – one Jane Bryant. Here’s how its ‘reported’ on the OneClickGroup website:
Brian Deer Is Out Of Control
On Monday 7 April 2008, with the Defence presentation for Dr Andrew Wakefield at the General Medical Council MMR Vaccine Trial UK concluded, Brian Deer went berserk in the Press Room of the General Medical Council. This incredible aggressive behaviour is not that of a responsible and objective journalist with ethics covering a story in the public interest….I entered the GMC Press Room to discover Deer holding court over what he clearly perceived to be his case with the assembled media. Comfortably sprawled in lounging lizard position
Out of control…went berserk…incredible aggressive…holding court…lounging lizard…
and these descriptives are used before Bryant even _begins_ her description of Brian’s behaviour. Thank goodness for impartial media!
When she does get to that transcript (which has clearly been edited) it reveals _more_ editorialising and less fact.
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!”
Deer continued ranting: “So, you’ve this, um, dribbling idiot here,” gesturing towards investigative writer Martin J Walker who has exposed Deer’s vaccine activities in the aforementioned Complainant, “pumping out this information and you believe it and this is what this whole MMR thing has been about! Andrew Wakefield enjoys giving evidence! You get these CLOWNS who just MAKE THNGS UP as they go along!”
I wondered if any other members of the press ( the ones Brian Deer was holding court over) had reported on this behaviour from Brian. That of threats, invasion of body space and jabbing his fingers close to Bryant’s face. Funnily enough, the answer is ‘no’ – nobody from the other members of the press Brian was apparently ‘holding court’ over when Bryant arrived noticed this. I can find no record of this behaviour in any mainstream media. And there were plenty there. How odd.
Its also worth noting that Brian was right. He is _not_ the complainant and he _does_ have letters from the GMC to establish that fact.
Next in Bryant’s highly selective account was the issue of who was paying Brian. At the end of which despite not mentioning any intimidation she reports:
At this point, people in the foyer piled in to the doorway of the Press Room to witness a fully grown male journalist attempting to intimidate a press colleague and deploying classic bully boy techniques against a very small woman on her own.
What bully boy techniques exactly? Answering her questions? Or is this more of the finger jabbing and space invasion that only Bryant witnessed and reported on? Lets not forget that Bryant also directly accused Brian of threats (‘Deer proceeded to threaten’) – no sign of a threat so far…lets continue.
Jane Bryant: “Why are you being so abusive?”
Brian Deer: “Of who?”
Jane Bryant: “Of the parents, of the children…”
Brian Deer: “What parents have I been abusive to?”
Jane Bryant: “You have just been abusive to me.”
Brian Deer: “Are you a parent?”
Jane Bryant: “Yes, I am a parent, I’m also press. Why are you being so abusive? Get away from me, Brian! Stay away from me.”
With Brian Deer out of control, Editor Polly Tommey of The Autism File showed support.
Polly Tommey: “Stay away from her Brian, keep away. Look, you’re a journalist, give her some space.”
Is Bryant parent to an autistic child? I can’t find anywhere that says she is.
Anyway, notice how Tommey of the antivax magazine ‘The Autism File’ also chimes in. These two poor cowering ladies who are in terror of a man answering their questions. I’ll say it again. I can find nowhere else that reports on the eminently newsworthy story of two women being threatened by an out of control Brian Deer – other than OneClickGroup itself. In a room full of the media no one takes notes, no one turns on their dictaphones and no one turns on their cameras. The _only people_ who capture this threatening, out of control Brian Deer are a couple of anti-vaxxers. What an amazing coincidence.
At this point in the proceeding, Brain Deer calls for security. He has to call them again later that day.
Later on in her piece, Bryant accuses Brain Deer of damaging the equipment of Polly Tommey.
Interestingly, the only person’s equipment that got damaged that day was that of Polly Tommey, Editor of The Autism File. Having left her belongings in the Press Room whilst she went to conduct an interview in the foyer, two of the recordings destined for Autism One Radio were purposefully deleted by someone. I will leave One Click readers to surmise just who the perpetrator might be, who had the access and the motive.
She also says:
The GMC has now categorically on the record refused to deny Brian Deer’s complainant status. They will simply not comment on Deer. So much for Deer’s GMC back up
Which, as we know is simply incorrect. I look forward to Bryant’s correction on her massively popular website.
If you want to see the depths and lengths that St Andy’s fan Club will stoop to, look no further than this. The word of a homophobic woman who seems to mislead people about her status as parent to an autistic person (assuming I’m right about that) and who wants to paint a man as an out of control tyrant when I suspect he was just a bit pissed off.
Left Brain Right Brain 
They just don’t get it.
It’s Evidenced Based Ranting.
But just leave the hyperbole and hype to the professionals…
Reminds me of the Jeni Barnett stuff about her being an ‘old lady’.
Why do they assume that being female somehow disqualifies you from engaging in robust debate?
Paraphrasing; never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
The true account of what happened was that this short woman in heavy boots stamped into the press room while a group of journalists were talking about the case. I was saying that the central issue was one of “intent”: was the intent at the Royal Free to do research, with clinical elements, or was the intent to provide clinical care, with research elements? The prosecution says the former, and the defence says the latter. Leftbrainrightbrain, to my knowledge, is the first place this has ever been discussed re the Wakefield case.
There is a mass of ethical stuff on this, but you will find a summary here:
http://briandeer.com/wakefield/research-intent.htm
This is almost the whole of the case against Walker-Smith and Murch, in a nutshell. It’s an interesting question, of great importance in protecting patients (especially children, who cannot give consent), about which I could talk for hours, and about which parents of autistic children genuinely following the case would have found instructive to hear about. Not least because, as an extreme instance, a parent cannot give lawful consent for another person to assault their child. And if research was done without ethical approval, or valid clinical grounds, a charge of assault might theoretically follow (although this area of law is governed by very few precedents).
But nobody has been told about all this. All that has come out on the cranksites has been bile, ignorance and deceit.
Wakefield is in a particularly problematic position on this one, not least because he was contractually forbidden any involvement in clinical care (he has never had legal care of a patient in his life). There is also a mass of correspondence, and formal statements, up till five years ago, in which the three talk about their research programme. Murch said that he only realised that he wasn’t doing research after the GMC case began.
One fascinating question is whether you can retrospectively re-evaluate your historical intent. This is what, in my judgment, the defendants are attempting. They have sought to retrospectively justify what they did in purely clinical terms, after having previously explicitly said that what they were doing was research. For example, here is a statement that Murch now repudiates as wrong:
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-murch.htm
and this from the medical school, also now said to be wrong:
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-hodgson.htm
Will it work? For two of them, dunno. Probably not. A more complex question lies in a line in the charges concerning the project being contrary to children’s best clinical interests. That’s a tough one for the panel. This is part of why the thing has taken so long: going into each of the children’s cases in excruciating detail.
However, back to the event considered really important on the cranksites: as we journos were talking, the booted woman started shrieking: “Who’s paying you? Who’s paying you?”
In fact, I was being paid by Channel 4 television, who kindly coughed up my fees for the GMC. The Sunday Times, Channel 4 and Dr Wakefield (through his lawyers) are the only people who have paid me any money in connection with my MMR investigation. So I told her who was paying me, but she continued shrieking anyway. She was evidently distraught. Later, she started shrieking “I’ve got my story, I’ve got my story”, which, as you can understand, I thought was hilarious.
I suggested to this woman that we leave the press room as she was disturbing working journalists trying to cover the hearing. So I moved to the door and invited her to leave with me.
She then carried on with her abuse, and came right up to me as I was standing by the door.
I then asked a GMC press officer to call their security man, who turned up a while later.
Folk may think that, if this is the best the cranks can do, then they are pretty desperate. The other attempts to smear me concern the fact that I joined the queue for the coffee machine, but seeing that they had no herbal tea, went home. Oh, and there’s the claim that I’m working with “Big Pharma”, “New Labour”, “vaccine manufacturers”, “the CIA”, “Men from Mars” etc.
The idea that a reporter with 25 years experience of contentious national newspaper journalism might feel that, if proven, faking a link between MMR and autism might be a good story, in the public interest, is (for obvious reasons) not part of their worldview.
They also sometimes raise some stuff about things I’ve said outside the GMC, where, when they have been staging protests, I’ve always stopped and talked with anyone who approaches me. Not all of them are cranks, and I live in hope of an intelligent conversation. Almost all of it has been videotaped (and some audio broadcast on Radio 4). It catches me as I am: willing to listen and discuss. Not frightened of debate.
Indeed, in one such discussion (certainly videotaped), I talked with a Mr David Thrower, who for years has bombarded the world with huge reports on “autistic enterocolitis”, with thousands of references and footnotes, and god knows what else, allegedly showing how Wakefield is right. I mean, hundreds of pages of the stuff. He has convinced a lot of people that he is the expert. He has even had a letter in the Lancet.
I asked him: “What is enterocolitis?”
He didn’t know. On videotape. I asked him several times, and talked with him, just to be sure that he didn’t know the meaning of the word. There can be no doubt about this. He didn’t deny that he didn’t know, or say that he knew but wasn’t saying, or anything like that. He just didn’t know. And I told him what a disgrace I thought it was that evidently all he had done, for all these years, is parrot medical words. I told him to go home and look it up on Google.
Essentially, he fooled god knows how many people that he was giving them science. And he didn’t even know the meaning of the words in the title of his magnum opus, and at the heart of what Wakefield claimed. I thought it was shocking. But I wasn’t surprised.
Anyhow, fascinating stuff.
It totally confuses me why homosexuality would have anything to do with vaccine safety. They’re both political (and very emotionally charged) issues. That’s all the similarity I can see.
Is JABS the UK equivalent of the US’ Generation Rescue?
So she’s invented the lot seemingly. But there may be a reason. Do you recall Kev, Brian mentioning having to call security to the Press Room when some woman in boots appeared and started ranting. Maybe Bryant is the lady in boots and this is her form of damage control.
I does seem strange that even supporters of Murch, including someone called ‘A dribbling idiot’, by Deer should report that it was Bryant that “harried” Deer, and should fail to report any aggression from Deer.
When even the people who have reasons to back you up say the opposite of what you claim, then it’s a no brainer to think you’ve either made it up or misremembered.
Brian Deer stated “Wakefield is in a particularly problematic position on this one, not least because he was contractually forbidden any involvement in clinical care (he has never had legal care of a patient in his life).”
I am not familiar with how things work in the U.K. but this sounds like Dr. Wakefield is not licensed to practice medicine. What does the above statement really mean?
This is why these folk are on a hiding to nothing, dressing rank prejudice up behind there campaigns. They have lost and they have nothing left but the nastiness that gave them birth.
They are like the BNP.
In the meantime even autism speaks is moving towards the centre isolating them even more.
I am no friend to Brain Deer and his style of journalism, it is journalism and not subject to peer review so much as editorial review and populist appeal, but Mr Deer’s sexuality has nothing to do with my disagreement with his style and presentation which I can disagree with even when I agree with his conclusions.
It is just he is a representative of the media, and I do not trust the media because I can never be sure whose side they are on.
I can’t wait to see this tape and the Judge Eady letter.
Another Voice
Andrew Wakefield was employed as a research scientist at the Royal Free: any clinical decisions regarding patients were taken by John Walker-Smith, Simon Murch and others, but it is also not possible as a qualified doctor and surgeon that he has never had the care of a patient.
John Stone
Thank you for the input. I had not expected his being employed as a scientist at the hospital, but that would explain part of the non-treatment statement.
Another voice
You don’t thank John Stone for input. His input thus far as been highly inaccurate, not to say dishonest deliberately. Why are you placing any credence on what he’s said here? You have no way of knowing at all.
alyric
I think Another Voice has to contend with whether what Brian Deer has said here can possibly be true.
Of course, there are people who have practiced medicine with bogus qualification but this has not previously been claimed about Andrew Wakefield – indeed, if he wasn’t a registered medical doctor he couldn’t be before the GMC.
One has to question your recollection of events Brian, wasn’t your question “whats Autistic enterocolitis?” When furnished with a reasonable answer you resorted to the kind of tactics my RE teacher use to use on a child who had forgot his home work.
Wakefield has a medical degree, and is a licenced medical practitioner in the UK (though this may change after the GMC rules).
Wakefield passed the exams for membership of the College of Surgeons (MRCS) and later the College of Pathologists (MRCPath).
However… though Wakefield probably trained for some time – and we don’t know how long exactly, so it might only have been a year or two at best – in surgery programmes (“residency” as it would be termed in the US), he never completed residency training and thus never became, or was eligible to become, a consultant (“attending” in US parlance), either medical (physician), or as a surgeon, or even as a consultant pathologist. Anyway, the key point is that Wakefield chose fairly early on to go into research and give up caring for patients as a clinician.
Another US analogy for this would be that Wakefield was medically qualified (had a legitimate medical degree and basic registration as a medical practitioner), but was NOT formally “board-certified” as an attending in ANY specialty – again, a researcher who had originally trained as a doctor, rather than a practising physician.
Patients in UK hospitals are admitted “under” (under the care of) a named consultant (attending) and their team of junior doctors. It is the consultant that carries formal responsibility for the patient’s care.
Since Wakefield left surgical training to specialise in research, probably in his late 20s or at latest early 30s, he would have had care of patients only as a very junior doctor early in his career, and explicitly under the supervision and supervisory responsibility of more senior doctors. [Note that by the time of the Royal Free work in the mid 1990s, Wakefield was in his late 30s and his early patient-care experience would have been many years behind him.] So Wakefield would thus never have carried formal legal, and full clinical, responsibility for a patient – hence, I think, Brian Deer’s statement.
Finally, Wakefield was employed by the Royal Free as a “Reader in Histopathology and Medicine”, i.e. as an academic researcher and teacher. He would not have been part of a consultant’s team of doctors in the hospital, so would not have (officially) been a doctor treating patients.
Some doctors in research DO work as clinicians as well for part of the time. However, not all do, and some specialise 100% in research (no patient care) – like Wakefield. The precise details would be laid out in the contract the doctor has with their employer. If Wakefield had a contract explicitly excluding clinical work, then this again emphasises that he had chosen NOT to be a doctor who treated patients. In fact, he seems to have made this decision early in his career, when he left surgery to go full-time into research / “experimental pathology”. The pathology interest again chimes with someone who wanted to do research and not patient care, since pathologists do not have patients…
Hi Another Voice,
Yeah, Wakefield quit clinical medicine more than 20 years ago, when he was still a trainee, and so he has never had care of a patient in his life. Ironic really, since he’s always made a big deal about listening to his patients.
At least, he has not had a patient legally. I see The Times went after him the other day, fishing somewhat to see if he is practising without a license. I know nothing about that, but given what happened in the UK when his considerable charm wore off on some of the people around him, there may be a reckoning over those kind of things, since Americans are so extraordinarily litigious.
alyric,
Yes, I had a question; John Stone offered an answer that sounds plausible. I say thank you.
If you believe I have been misinformed and that Dr. Wakefield was not employed as a research scientist at the hospital then I would appreciate knowing what the arrangement happened to be.
Another voice
When you accepted Stone’s plausibility you also accepted this:
“but it is also not possible as a qualified doctor and surgeon that he has never had the care of a patient.”
In effect you were calling Brian Deer a liar.
Dear Mr Deer,Iam astounded at your persistant and
attempted destruction of Andrew Wakefields
reputation and character,together with his equally qualified associates.As a parent of
a vaccine damaged daughter whom we have spent 14 years bringing back to us,she is now within reason quite able,unlike many of my friends children who cannot even communicate and suffer after receiving an mmr vaccine.As you have no medical background whatsoever and from what I understand will not be having any children
in the foreseeable future I find you a person who lacks compassion to such an extent that your parents would or should be ashamed of you! I could of course be very rude but that would be playing your dangerous game,however a good friend of mine
is looking into your antics a certain mr cowell the ‘older one’and believe he has some clout!and he owes me big time.regards mike.
Dear Mr Deer,Iam astounded at your persistant and
attempted destruction of Andrew Wakefields
reputation and character,together with his equally qualified associates.As a parent of
a vaccine damaged daughter whom we have spent 14 years bringing back to us,she is now within reason quite able,unlike many of my friends children who cannot even communicate and suffer after receiving an mmr vaccine.As you have no medical background whatsoever and from what I understand will not be having any children
in the foreseeable future I find you a person who lacks compassion to such an extent that your parents would or should be ashamed of you! I could of course be very rude but that would be playing your dangerous game,however a good friend of mine
is looking into your antics a certain mr cowell the ‘older one’and believe he has some clout!and he owes me big time.regards mike.
Dear Mr Deer,Iam astounded at your persistant and
attempted destruction of Andrew Wakefields
reputation and character,together with his equally qualified associates.As a parent of
a vaccine damaged daughter whom we have spent 14 years bringing back to us,she is now within reason quite able,unlike many of my friends children who cannot even communicate and suffer after receiving an mmr vaccine.As you have no medical background whatsoever and from what I understand will not be having any children
in the foreseeable future I find you a person who lacks compassion to such an extent that your parents would or should be ashamed of you! I could of course be very rude but that would be playing your dangerous game,however a good friend of mine
is looking into your antics a certain mr cowell the ‘older one’and believe he has some clout!and he owes me big time.regards mike.
It’s possible that Wakefield has never been the responsible clinician for a patient, that is, he may have always worked under the direction of a senior.
Given that Wakefield took less than four years to go into surgery, and went into research only a few years after, it’s possible (although highly unlikely) that he has never been the primary physician.
This is different from having a legal obligation (which everyone – including HCA’s – have towards the client) which may be where John Stone’s confusion is coming from.
“since Americans are so extraordinarily litigious.” Good grief, now Deer is throwing in a bit of chauvinistic jingoism. Why am I not surprised?
I don’t believe my eyes,here we go again is this what this forum is about Mr Deer making more un-substantiated statements with no direction to evidence , Again I’m curious to all the rumours he raises, for instance but without direction to i.e. a Mr David Thrower and you would expect a link to You Tube where one would post such strong statements of a film (presumably with audio).Quite simply his writings ,are anomalies like the Judge Eady letters where Mr Deer cant back his pen up again, what a bore…what’s the site you try to discredit on here JABS, right I’m of to it..
Did michael lord-boult just say that homosexual men without children inherently lack compassion? It had to be that, or the part about the medical background.
@michael: Other than homophobia and outrage, do you have any arguments to offer as to why the allegations might be incorrect?
Brian Deer,
Thank you for your response to the remaining part of my question. The hole that Dr. Wakefield is digging keeps getting deeper and deeper. I had thought for the longest time that he had been a practicing physician and only doing research part time.
It will be interesting to see what the GMC decides in this matter. I have very little faith in the medical community taking a fellow member to task. But since ten of the people closest to his study have already removed their signatures; that speaks volumes about it’s veracity.
dedj
You say on the one hand that it is highly unlikely that Wakefield “has never been the primary physician” – which seems to be doubting Brian Deer – and then you allege that I am confused!
Alyric,
This is what I said,
“Thank you for the input. I had not expected his being employed as a scientist at the hospital, but that would explain part of the non-treatment statement.”
It did explain part of the statement, subsequently Brian Deer has explained the rest. I accepted nothing nor did I infer that anyone was a liar.
“You say on the one hand that it is highly unlikely that Wakefield “has never been the primary physician” – which seems to be doubting Brian Deer – and then you allege that I am confused!”
Yes.
Umm, I’m not sure why you thought it was neccissary to rephrase and repeat my post back to me, I’m fully aware that it’s possible to doubt Brian Deer, without declaring his view ‘impossible’.
The issue here is wheter or not Wakefield has ever had ‘legal care’ of a client – which in this context may be taken to mean the responsible clinician or primary physician.
You claimed it was next to immposible that Wakefield has never had care of a client. All members of the treatment team have a duty of care to the client, but this is not directly equitable to being the responsible clinican, as one can work under direction without having the care of the case.
I’m not sure why the distinction confuses you. I can only assume you mis-wrote your initial post.
dedj
This is very peculiar logic: you are saying that though something is “highly unlikely” it must be true by virtue of the fact that it has been stated by Brian Deer (without offering any evidence). Is this some strange new religion?
I don’t know what Mr Deer means by “a trainee”. Wakefield became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1985 (prior to branching off into research) and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in 2001. But there is nothing unusual about a researcher not having responsibility for clinical decision making.
Mr Fish
are suggesting Brian has made this up? If it was made up it would surely include being thanked by the parents, given a rousing 3 chears as he was carried overhead back into the GMC after the parents saw the errors of their ways.
you dribbing ex-cub scout
I cannot work out if John Stone is being obtuse, or whether he genuinely has no idea about what a “trainee” doctor is. Given his tendency to cast himself an expert on all things autism, vaccines and Wakefield, I find his apparent lack of knowledge on this point rather a puzzle. A trainee doctor, or “Junior” doctor, fairly obviously, is a doctor who is qualified (finished Univ and got his medical licence), but who is not FULLY-TRAINED in any medical or surgical specialty (has not completed “specialist training”).
I have already said some of this in the earlier comment
https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=1914#comment-57083
– but let me spell it out again.
After a doctor graduates from a UK medical school, they have to work for a short period (1-2 yrs) before they can get “full registration” as a medical practitioner (i.e. get on the GMC register so that they are licenced to practice as a doctor). In Wakefield’s day this was one year as what was called a “House Officer”, of which 6 months would be spent on a surgical service, and 6 months on a medical service. If you check Wakers’ GMC registration it says:
Primary qualification (i.e. degree): MBBS London 1981
Full registration: 1982
– so this is exactly in accordance with the above.
Following this, doctors are licenced, but NOT fully trained. To get from this point to consultant (fully trained) status used to take (in Wakefield’s day) anywhere from 6-12 years (roughly) in the UK. For the kind of surgical specialties Wakefield was apparently interested in (transplant surgery), I would predict nearer 10-12, with a couple of years of that to be spent doing research.
After being registered, Wakers would have become a “Senior House Officer” or SHO, almost certainly on a surgical rotation (service). In US parlance, this would be like being a “2nd yr surgical resident”. This would have been typically 2 yrs rotating round a variety of surgical specialties, being a kind of “workhorse dogsbody junior doctor in training”. Most UK doctors who want to end up as consultants also swot for their College Exams (see below) at this stage.
The College of Surgeons exam John Stone mentions for Wakefield emphatically does NOT mean he is, or was, a fully qualified surgeon. It is a higher ACADEMIC qualification, involving some practical skills assseed in short tests and case presentation, but NOT an “exit exam”. It is far more like a super-duper hard version (and it is hard) of the short of exams doctors take on leaving University. In the days that Saint Andy trained, this qualification was necessary simply to GET INTO a “higher training scheme” to become a consultant surgeon. It was also usually necessary to do a year or two in research before applying to get into the final training scheme.
[BTW, the College of Pathologists exams that Wakers also probably did (FRCPath) are not specific to doctors, and are also done by Hospital Biochemists and similar. They are hard too, but they have nothing to do with hands-on patient care at all].
Once the trainee, by now in their late 20s, was armed with 2-3 yrs as an SHO, a stint of research, and their MRCS (or MRCP for physicians), then they would apply for “higher surgical specialist training”, which would typical take about 5 more yrs. This is almost certainly the stage when Wakefield decided he would go into research full-time – so he would never have done this “higher specialist training”, which is what you need to be a consultant / attending.
It is also worth noting that Wakefield’s early interests were seemingly NOT in GI surgery, but rather in transplantation. We don’t actually know whether he did ANY time as a junior GI surgical doctor.
I would love to see Wakefield’s CV (resume) to check these surmises out, but given the dates I think it is reasonably clear that he did 2 or possibly 3 years as a junior doctor (SHO) in surgery, and/or possibly some academic research. Then he passed the Membership exam (MRCS) in 1985 and went to Canada on an junior academic RESEARCH Fellowship. And that was almost certainly it for him for patient care. If this is correct, and the dates fit pretty well, his last stint as a junior doc seeing patients would have been in the mid 80s, a full decade before the Royal Free farrago.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-david-kirby/vaccine-court-autism-deba_b_169673.html
ANOTHER AUTISM CASE WINS IN VACCINE COURT
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
shhh Isabella
kev is already writing a piece how she wasn’t autistic how her father has a COI, its not a ruling its a concession , its purely genetic , before investigating the background and branding the special masters involved ANTIVAX.
Brian please hit me with one of your insults (i went to a scondary school if that helps.)
Isabella Thomas said “ANOTHER AUTISM CASE WINS IN VACCINE COURT
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
Good grief, his past history with chemicals must have made him very slow. That is old news:
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/148/
…
Gee wow Isabella. Kirby and Kennedy went all the way back to 2007 to see the vaccine court pay out for a known table injury, ADEM. Now try relating this rarity to the 5000 Omnibus cases. Ain’t going to work. Now all these parents will be going for ADEM as the new ‘mito’ and parents like the Cedillos will be even more mislead since they should have stayed with their table injury case as should a parent with a provable case of ADEM. Bailey’s case was well ducumented and a physical injury. Kathleen Seidel has documented a number of cases where vaccine court has paid compensation to autistic children but only for physical injury not for autism. That doesn’t help the litigious parents at all. All they have is autism and speculative theories.
Chris
Thank you very much for the reference to Kathleen’s work:)
“This is very peculiar logic: you are saying that though something is “highly unlikely” it must be true by virtue of the fact that it has been stated by Brian Deer (without offering any evidence)”
I said no such thing, in fact I said it was possible to doubt Brian Deer.
The fact that you can take a clear statement and twist it round to mean the exact opposite, and have done a similar thing with a clear and concise statement from the NAS, as well as saying Deer blamed parents for autism (when he said no such thing and even explained – clearly – what he was actually saying), does make me question whether we can take any other claim or statement made by you as being truthful and honest.
Dedj
Anyone can go back to your earlier post and decide for themselves whether I have misrepresented you:
https://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=1914&cpage=1#comment-57091
Hospital Doctor’s Spouse
Your posts seem to have miraculously appeared long after their sequence and timing. Brian Deer seems to have conflated two issues: (1) that Wakefield was under contract not to treat patients at the Royal Free in his role as a researcher (2) he never graduated to the position of a consultant (though he has instead more than 100 listings on Pub Med), but what can anyone surmise from Brian Deer’s statement that Wakefield has never had “care of patient in his life” and “At least, he has not had a patient legally”. This is at best tortuous and ambiguous stuff. If Deer’s point was that Wakefield has never been a consultant perhaps that is what he should have said. As even you agree, Wakefield is licensed to practice medicine.
“Anyone can go back to your earlier post and decide for themselves whether I have misrepresented you:”
You’re amazingly incompetant at this.
I’ve expressely stated the opposite of what you claim I have, and the post you refer* to does not indicate that I believe in what Deer said ‘because Deer says it’s true’.
Anyone who goes back through our exchange will find out that , yes , you have misrepresented me.
You have even misrepresented, by quoting the incorrect post, which post preceeded you implying that I believe that : “it must be true by virtue of the fact that it has been stated by Brian Deer”. Nothing that I have written indicates that my statement “I’m fully aware that it’s possible to doubt Brian Deer” is equivilant to your claim.
I will not ask for an apology as I am not of the belief that you can recognise your error, as you did not over the NAS statement, even after it was pointed out to you by multiple sources.
*and it was lucky I checked. I foolishly believed that you’d naturally and honestly refer to the actual post in contention, rather than an earlier one. But no, you picked one that doesn’t even say remotely anything that you imply it does. Is this truly all that we can expect from you?
HDS’ post may have been cuaught by the spam filter, as have several of mine in the past. It seems long enough to be caught.
Dedj
“You have even misrepresented, by quoting the incorrect post, which post preceeded you implying that I believe that : “it must be true by virtue of the fact that it has been stated by Brian Deer”. Nothing that I have written indicates that my statement “I’m fully aware that it’s possible to doubt Brian Deer” is equivilant to your claim.”
I quoted the post on which I based my remark.
I accept that HDS’s posts may have got caught in a spam filter.
Can anyone tell me whether Wakefield is presently licensed to practice medicine?
John Stone said “Can anyone tell me whether Wakefield is presently licensed to practice medicine?”
Not in the USA, and apparently he never qualified as a clinician in the UK*. So I would say: no.
From: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6283/ …
“Yet in the case of Dr Wakefield, the stethoscope is curiously inappropriate. After training as a surgeon, he switched to research in (adult) gastroenterology and has never had clinical responsibility for any patients (the children in his Lancet series were under the clinical care of Drs Walker Smith and Simon Murch). He is not qualified as a physician or a paediatrician and is certainly not registered to use a stethoscope on patients, adults or children in the USA.”
By the way, Mr. Stone, this is just out of curiousity… I see your name on lots of these posts, yet I do not know what your are. What are your qualifications? What are your interests in the vaccine=autism game? (by the way I am a parent of disabled child who has been injured by an actual disease… I am a mechanical engineer)
To give a wellknown an example, Ben Goldacre would also be in the same category of a “junior doctor”.
Or Dr Miriam Stoppard.
John Stone, you are incredibly stupid.
About Ben Goldacre BA(Hons), BM, BCh, MA, MRCPsych…
Not exactly a ‘junior doctor’; in surgical specialties, the training times are longer. In medical specialties, such as the MRCOG (which my aunt did after graduating MB BS) the requirement requirement is for work and study of three years full-time equivalence. Generally, upon achieving the membership of one’s specialty college, one is a fully qualified practitioner and is able to work as a consultant – which is not a junior doctor rank. I’m not aware of exceptions here but there may be some; I am aware that – because of the practical intensiveness of surgical specialties – such training periods are greatly longer.
HCN, Wakefield is, sadly, qualified as a physician. Andrew J. Wakefield MB BS, FRCS, MRCPath has a qualification that allows him to register as a qualified practitioner of clinical medicine with the GMC in London: MB BS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery). He is not, however, a paediatrician. At the Royal Free Hospital, he was not employed in a clinical post, hence he would not be covered by insurance (and therefore not allowed by the hospital) to examine, diagnose and treat patients: he was employed as a research scientist.
Hope that helps to clarify.
David N Andrews M. Ed. (distinction)
Apart from the ill-manners I cannot see that that there is any major dispute here. You agree that Wakefield is qualified as a practitioner of clinical medicine. I agree that he was employed as a scientist at the Royal Free and not allowed for that reason to treat patients – it being important to keep research ethics and patient ethics separate. But I am sure no one has ever claimed – least of all Wakefield himself – that he was a paediatrician.
As regards Goldacre, he is also neither registered as a GP or a consultant so he also falls under the loose category of junior doctor, not that I mean that in any way disparagingly.
Incidentally, he is described on IoP website as a “Research Fellow” but he only has two papers listed on Pub Med, one of which dates back to 1997 long before he was there; this, originally published in the Lancet Nov 2007:
http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/the-lancet-benefits-and-risks-of-homoeopathy/
and 5 pieces of journalism for the BMJ. Not a great haul compared with Wakefield’s 110 listings.
It is likely that as research fellow Goldacre is also not allowed to treat patients. I suppose there is a question what Goldacre is paid to do. Anyhow, I offer this most of all as point of comparison.
John Stone is incorrect in his assertion that no one has ever referred to Andrew Wakefield as a paediatrician. Litigants in the MMR litigation were introduced to Dr Wakefield as a “paediatric gastroenterologist” in a letter distributed by the lead solicitors in 2000.
Although now acknowledged to be an error on the part of the solicitors, it does highlight how in 2000 at least, the solicitors representing the children were perfectly content to refer to Dr Wakefield as a paediatric gastroenterologist, and equally content to distribute that information to the litigants. It follows that even the solicitors who commissioned him didn’t seem to grasp what qualifications Dr Wakefield held, so there’s little hope for the rest of us.
Ben Goldacre is, as John Stone states, formally a junior doctor / doctor-in-training, and has never said any different. The difference from Wakefield is that Goldacre is training as both a clinician AND a researcher. He certainly does see patients, or was doing less than a year ago. The likelihood is that Goldacre is ON a higher training scheme for psychiatrists (technically this would make him a “Registrar in Psychiatry”, but an academic “sub-scheme” that requires you to spend time in research. What someone doing this would expect to end up as is a fully-qualified psychiatrist (completed full specialist training) but ALSO an academic researcher; the typical job at the end might be “Clinical Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry”.
Most people in such Clinical Senior Lecturer posts DO do clinical work, since having trained for so long to do it they want to keep their hand in. They might well also enjoy it.Some also feel it keeps them grounded in the real world. Provided they completed the specialist clinical training, they can be an “Honorary Consultant” and do consultant-level clinical work part time, typically 1 or 1.5 days / wk.
The converse point about Wakefield is that he specifically chose to leave clinical work completely, and NEVER did the specialist clinical training for ANY specialty. And certainly not in gastroenterology or paediatrics.