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Was Dr. Wakefield the complainant in his own GMC case?

19 Feb

Pop quiz: of these two people, who was the first to request that the General Medical Council (GMC) investigate Dr. Andrew Wakefield

a) Brian Deer
b) Dr. Andrew Wakefield?

Ah–trick question! Brian Deer didn’t ask the GMC to investigate Dr. Wakefield. Mr. Deer offered and gave information to the GMC, but, it turns out, only after Dr. Wakefield called for an investigation.

Let me start by saying I hesitated to publish this post as it will be just make it seem like there is a real controversy here. There isn’t. But after noting that the addendum to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) complaint filed against Brian Deer included citations to LeftBrainRightBrain I decided to check into the “complainant” question.

Here’s the PCC complaint. Here’s the addendum.

There is a long “forensic analysis” argument to make the case that supposedly Brian Deer was the complainant. This struck me odd. Why do a “forensic” argument, unless you don’t have substantial proof.

In the matter of Dr Wakefield and the GMC, and based upon forensic analysis of all the available documentary evidence, one is entitled to believe that Mr. Deer was the original and only substantive complainant to the GMC, whether or not he was the ‘Complainant’ who instructed the legal prosecution of the case (which was the GMC through its lawyers Field Fisher Waterhouse).

OK, Brian Deer was the complainant, whether or not he was the ‘Complainant’. Everyone got that? Clear as mud?

It wasn’t to me, so I contacted the General Medical Council to ask a simple question:

I am sorry to bother you, but I was hoping you could help with a question. Is it public knowledge whether Mr. Brian Deer was a “complainant” for the Wakefield case? Was there any “complainant” or was this case brought forward by the GMC itself?

I received a very simple answer:

Dear Sir/Madam

The General Medical Council can act in response to complaints about doctors but we do not require someone to make a formal complaint to us before we can act. We can in fact initiate action against doctors of our own volition. This enables us to launch an investigation in response to publicly expressed concerns about the conduct of doctors, whether or not those concerns have been directly and formally referred to us.

The case against Dr Wakefield, Professor Walker-Smith and Professor Murch was brought by the GMC there was no complainant in this case.

I hope you find this information helpful and if you have any further queries relating to this case please do not hesitate to contact me.

When I asked if I could make this public, I was informed that this information is already public. Yes, I forgot the fact that Brian Deer had a letter from the GMC’s attorneys already. That is from May, 2005. I guess this whole, “he’s a complainant even if he isn’t a Complainant” thing has been going on for some time.

The “forensic analysis” seems to rest on the fact that Brian Deer has communicated with the GMC. There doesn’t seem to be any actual complaint filed, but, as we are told:

But what Deer does not reveal is that on February 25, 2004, three days after his article attacking Wakefield had been published in the Sunday Times, he had written to the GMC…

Yes, according to this timeline, Brian Deer published his article and then contacted the GMC 3 days later. It is characterized as a “spontaneous” communication in the complaint. As in, Brian Deer just out of the blue decided he needed to contact the GMC.

Dr. Wakefield left out an important part of the timeline. Namely, his own call for a GMC investigation. Here is a timeline:

February 22, 2004, Brian Deer’s article, Revealed: MMR research scandal is published.

February 23, 2004: Dr Wakefield states, “I’d welcome inquiry”

“Serious allegations have been made against me in relation to the provision of clinical care for children with autism and bowel disease, and the reporting of their disease. It has been proposed that my role in this matter should be investigated by the GMC. I not only welcome this, I insist on it and I will be making contact with the GMC personally.”

Two days later, on February 25, 2004: Brian Deer emails the GMC. This appears to be the first contact between Mr. Deer and the GMC. According to the excerpt in the PCC complaint filed by Dr. Wakefield:

email from Brian Deer to Tim Cox-Brown, Caseworker GMC, 12.16 pm 2.25.04. This is a sixpage letter concluding with the statement “As a matter of public duty, I write to offer this outline of my main findings, and to offer the GMC my fullest cooperation in getting to the bottom of these matters”.

Which, according to Dr. Wakefield, makes Brian Deer the “complainant” in the GMC hearing:

This reads as a spontaneous and intentional contact with the GMC for the purpose of requesting to put before them the substance of his complaint and in fact, doing so i.e. making a complaint.

Spontaneous? I guess if you leave out critical details like Dr. Wakefield’s own call for investigation. As I titled the post, couldn’t one say that Dr. Wakefield is the complainant? After all, it is Dr. Wakefield who appears to have called for the investigation.

Andrew Wakefield vs the PCC

18 Feb

On the 14th March 2009, David Kirby published a Huffington Post piece which stated:

Dr. Andrew Wakefield – the British physician who was accused in February by the Sunday Times of London of altering data in a 1998 paper on autistic children, bowel disease and the MMR vaccine – has filed a formal complaint against the freelance journalist who wrote the article.

….

Mr. Deer has failed miserably as a reporter and has done great harm to me and many others conducting autism research,” Wakefield said in the release.

The most sensational accusation against him printed in the Sunday Times held that Wakefield had altered and manipulated data on many of the 12 children who were written up in the paper.

David’s piece – as can be seen from the words of Wakefield above – show Wakefield as fairly salvering to get at Brian Deer and indeed, the Times stories were removed from their website. Wakefield reported this as the Times tacit admission the stories were wrong. This drew a stinging response from the Times who immediately republished some of the stories on its website indicating the truth which was that the stories were only removed at first as a courtesy to the PCC, not to Andrew J Wakefield.

As Mike notes in the above linked story, Wakefield is often the author of his own misfortune as he bumbles from one self created mess to another.

And now I’ve heard news that Wakefield no longer wants the PCC to hear the complaint he made until after he has appealed to the courts. In a private email corresponence with Brian Deer, he told me:

At my request, the PCC was last week asked if Wakefield will now pursue his complaint against The Sunday Times. His publicist James Moore, replied on his behalf. I can’t give you the email, as it is not for me to do that, but I can tell you that he has asked for the matter to be deferred until after any appeal to the courts by Wakefield.

Appeal? Why does Wakefield want to appeal? Wasn’t it he who stated:

I have no need of continued registration with the GMC…

If thats so, then why is he going to appeal? Could this be yet another delaying tactic by a man who has made something of a career out of delaying the game when it (as it always has) goes against him? After all, who can forget his now infamous bowing out of the libel case he pursued against Brian Deer? Particularly Justice Eady’s response to him when he tried to delay _that_ case;

It thus appears that the Claimant [Wakefield] wishes to use the existence of the libel proceedings for public relations purposes, and to deter other critics, while at the same time isolating himself from the downside of such litigation, in having to answer a substantial defence of justification.

And so here we are yet again – Wakefield wants to delay proceedings _he_ initiated because he got hammered by the GMC. Brian also said:

I’ve had these issues hanging over my head for six years. Moreover,Wakefield’s allegations (and those of Mr Moore) are published online as part of a campaign against me, while two Sunday Times reports carry tags referring to his complaint.

The courts have made clear, in defamation cases, that prompt action is a hallmark of a genuine complaint. Wakefield previously sought summary adjudication of his dozens of complaints, demanding that they be ruled on in advance of his GMC hearing and without our full reply being received. Now
he’s changed tack and plainly wishes to abandon his complaint without the penalty of saying so.

Quite.

Andrew Wakefield Resigns from Thoughtful House?

18 Feb

According to several anti-vax Yahoo news groups, Andrew Wakefield has resigned from Thoughtful House.

This is apparently the Thoughtful House statement:

The needs of the children we serve must always come first. All of us at Thoughtful House are grateful to Dr. Wakefield for the valuable work he has done here. We fully support his decision to leave Thoughtful House in order to make sure that the controversy surrounding the recent findings of the General Medical Council does not interfere with the important work that our dedicated team of clinicians and researchers is doing on behalf of children with autism and their families. All of us at Thoughtful House continue to fight every day for the recovery of children with developmental disorders. We will continue to do our very best to accomplish our mission by combining the most up-to-date treatments and important clinical research that will help to shape the understanding of these conditions that are affecting an ever-increasing number of children worldwide.

I’ve left a question mark ove this as there’s no official word of this on the Thoughtful House website and Andrew Wakefield is still listed amongst its staff.

Dismay at Aspie ‘hate’

15 Feb

I read Bev’s latest blog entry bemused and increasingly dismayed. I thought (hoped) maybe she was wrong and had grasped the wrong end of the stick but not only is that unlikely coming from Bev it was wrong. She was spot on. There really were, I realised to my dawning amazement, people with an Aspergers diagnosis who were upset at the possibility of the DSM (V) placing them inside an overall category of ‘autism’. And not for any particularly legitimate reason but mostly because they didn’t want to be associated with the people who I’ve heard them describe as ‘low functioning’.

The comments I read under the story featuring Michael John Carely of GRASP for example pointed towards an internal selfishness bordering on disgust for those who _already_ share their place on the spectrum.

A stunningly nasty comment on this blog illustrates the issue even more handily:

Medical science used to have morons, idiots and imbeciles to describe people with defective brains, but those words became pejoratives, and mentally retarded was substituted. Then mentally retarded became a pejorative, and that got switched to developmentally disabled. Many parents with children born with defective brains glommed onto “autistic” because it had more cachét than retarded or fetal alcohol syndrome or brain damaged, perverting the word autistic and turning it into a new synonym for retarded.

So I don’t want to be called “autistic”. I prefer the distinction Asperger’s brings me; that I am endowed with a different brain, not suffering from a defective brain.

The only positive thing you can say about this commenter is at least they are being totally honest. I’ve read an uncomfortable amount of comments from aspies over the last few days that skirt around the exact same feeling but just don’t come out and say it quite so blatantly.

I know for a fact that not all aspies feel like this but I think those that don’t need to follow Bev’s example and come out and say so. Loudly and clearly. I don’t believe that aspies who want to disassociate themselves from their autistic comrades deserve any part in a movement like neurodiversity. I hope, I believe, that the aspies I count amongst my friends and colleagues feel that way too.

Update
Ari pointed me towards some comforting support from ASAN on the issue:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18508-psychiatrys-draft-new-bible-goes-online.html?full=true
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/speced/

Update No.2
More blog reactions. If anyone knows of more please leave the address in the comments and I’ll add them to what I hope will be an ever growing list.

Clay – http://cometscorner-clay.blogspot.com/2010/02/true-neurodiversity-welcomes-dsm-v.html

Samantha – http://unclesamscabin.blogspot.com/2010/02/resisting-taint-of-autism.html

Andrew Wakefield – I have no need of continued registration

14 Feb

In a remarkable and somewhat odd statement put out by Andrew Wakefield, he states:

I have no need of continued registration with the GMC…

Which is somewhat contrary to his statement of 2004 that;

It has been proposed that my role in this matter should be investigated by the GMC. I not only welcome this, I insist on it…

Why would someone insist upon being heard by an organisation he holds so little respect for he longer wants to be a member?

During the rest of the statement, he provides thanks to the support of his economic fan base – the parents, imcluding no doubt the parents of the children whom counr amongst the 11 counts of sticking tubes and needles into developmentally-challenged children without ethical approval, and nine counts of doing so contrary to the children’s wellbeing.

In a private email Brian Deer stated his opinion – which I share – that:

There can’t by any doubt that with four charges of dishonesty, including research and financial misconduct, that he knows he will be erased from the medical register.

Just _one_ of these substantiated charges would be enough to get a GP struck off. With the amount Andrew Wakefield has against his name it would be a small miracle if this didn’t happen and he is pre-emptively striking back at the GMC, declaring he doesn’t care if they do strip him of his right to be referred to as ‘doctor’.

I’ll leave the last words to Brian Deer, the man who single handedly brought down Andrew Wakefield:

His latest statement illustrates a more sinister aspect of Andrew Wakefield’s conduct: the mismatch between what has occurred outside the hearing and what has gone on inside. Outside – appealing to his economic base – he claims he is a victim of sinister forces – the drug industry and government and so forth – when he’s not the slightest evidence of this, (and neither have I). He was taken down by an old fashioned journalistic investigation, executed in the public interest.

And yet, inside the hearing, his behaviour was quite different. He called no witnesses whatsoever. While the prosecution called a parent who provided devastating evidence, he didn’t risk putting any of the ringleaders outside the building into the witness chair, where they could be cross-examined over how vulnerable children came to be brought to a hospital with no department or reputation for evaluating developmental disorders, and where doctors seemed all-but-entirely uninterested in the children’s futures. Nor did he put any questions whatsoever to the government’s vaccine chief, despite Wakefield supporters turning up for a much-hyped showdown. Nothing was asked, because Wakefield has nothing.

What the Wakefield project was all about was getting into the small intestines and spines of children without anybody finding out the reason. *And this is where, rightly, that project has brought him.*

Ginger Taylor goes off the deep end

13 Feb

Like Wade Rankin, Ginger Taylor used to be someone that you could have a decent conversation with regarding vaccines and autism. Not any more. Increasingly, since she was caught out smearing the wrong man her blogging has become erratic and, well, odd.

Today reaches a new low point in Ginger’s blogging career. She has drawn a map listing the ‘forces’ ranged up against poor old Andy ‘Dr Dreamy’ Wakefield. ‘Look at the energy flow in this thing…’ she intones heavily as she describes how Rupert Murdoch and the US Arms industry are exerting pressure on Andy.

Ginger Taylor has become Richard Nixon – believing that everyone in the modern world is oout to get her, or in this case, her paranoia proxy Andrew Wakefield.

Google Buzz – follow Left Brain Right Brain

12 Feb

If you’re a Google Buzz user you can now follow LBRB on our own dedicated Buzz account. Search for lbrainrbrain@googlemail.com and start following at your leisure 🙂

This accompanies our Twitter and Facebook accounts which you can use to follow us too.

Autism Science Foundation offering places at IMFAR 2010

11 Feb

Funds will enable parents and other stakeholders to attend the leading autism research conference and share what they’ve learned with the broader autism community.

The Autism Science Foundation today announced that is offering a limited number of grants to parents of children with autism and other stakeholders to support attendance at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR), to be held in Philadelphia, May 20-22, 2010. Awards of up to $1000 can be used to cover registration, travel, accommodations, meals and other directly related expenses, including childcare.

After the conference, grant recipients will be expected to share what they’ve learned with families in their local communities and/or online.

IMFAR is an annual scientific meeting, convened each spring, to promote, exchange and disseminate the latest scientific findings in autism research and to stimulate research progress in understanding the nature, causes, and treatments for autism spectrum disorders. IMFAR is the annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR).

“We are thrilled to be able to give back directly to the autism community in a research-focused way,” said Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation. “The award recipients will bring critical new research information to their communities, increasing the speed with which the latest data are shared with the broader autism community.”

“These scholarships are a wonderful opportunity to bring more stakeholders to the IMFAR and improve dissemination of the latest research findings presented at the conference,” said Dr. David Amaral, president of INSAR and director of research at the University of California at Davis M.I.N.D. Institute.

To apply, send a letter to grantsATautismsciencefoundationDOTorg describing why you want to attend IMFAR and, most importantly, explaining how you would share what you learn there with the broader autism community. Letters should be sent as Microsoft Word attachments of no more than 2 pages, 12-point type, “Arial” font, with standard margins. In the subject line please write: IMFAR Grant. Letters must be received by March 15, 2010. Recipients will be announced in April.

Anthony Cox published in PJ Online

11 Feb

Our very own Anthony Cox was published today in PJ Online (gateway to the world of pharmacy and medicines) concerning the MMR saga. I’ll copy and paste a key paragraph then urge you to go read the whole piece which is an excellent summation of events thus far.

In US court testimony in 2007, Chadwick stated that he had tested all the samples from Wakefield’s ASD children and found no MVV present. Wakefield was made aware of this before the publication of the 1998 paper, but saw fit not to draw attention to this negative finding that undermined his hypothesis.

Jim Carrey Jenny McCarthy Definitely not anti-vaccine

6 Feb

In the recent statement released by Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy regarding Andrew Wakefield, the twosome made a number of references that clear up once and for all how they feel about vaccines. Because as we all know they’re not anti-vaccine.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers…

Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers…

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England’s General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers…

The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the
possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it’s no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.

No, definitely not anti-vaccine.

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