ChildHealthSafety | 7 Mar 2012
[AM editor’s note: is has been reported on US talk radio that Dr Andrew Wakefield has won his law suit against the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer whose article was published by the BMJ that caused Wakefield to be struck off the UK medical register].
Here is the full judgement of the court today [Not good news for “investigative journalist” Brian Deer responsible for this witchhunt or the Editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr Fiona Godlee.]:
Also online here. And download word processor version here.
But first here is the Court’s conclusion – found at the end of the judgement below:
Conclusion
For the reasons given above, both on general issues and the Lancet paper and in relation to individual children, the panel’s overall conclusion that Professor Walker-Smith was guilty of serious professional misconduct was flawed, in two respects: inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion. Miss Glynn submits that the materials which I have been invited to consider would support many of the panel’s critical findings; and that I can safely infer that, without saying so, it preferred the evidence of the GMC’s experts, principally Professor Booth, to that given by Professor Walker-Smith and Dr. Murch and by Dr. Miller and Dr. Thomas. Even if it were permissible to perform such an exercise, which I doubt, it would not permit me to rescue the panel’s findings. As I have explained, the medical records provide an equivocal answer to most of the questions which the panel had to decide. The panel had no alternative but to decide whether Professor Walker-Smith had told the truth to it and to his colleagues, contemporaneously. The GMC’s approach to the fundamental issues in the case led it to believe that that was not necessary – an error from which many of the subsequent weaknesses in the panel’s determination flowed. It had to decide what Professor Walker-Smith thought he was doing: if he believed he was undertaking research in the guise of clinical investigation and treatment, he deserved the finding that he had been guilty of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure; if not, he did not, unless, perhaps, his actions fell outside the spectrum of that which would have been considered reasonable medical practice by an academic clinician. Its failure to address and decide that question is an error which goes to the root of its determination.
The panel’s determination cannot stand. I therefore quash it. Miss Glynn, on the basis of sensible instructions, does not invite me to remit it to a fresh Fitness to Practice panel for redetermination. The end result is that the finding of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure are both quashed.
Brian Deer and The GMC, Selective Hearing. BMJ Journalist
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id_AxZ3zHAc?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]
Brian Deer, a journalist writing for News Internationals Sunday Times, was the only person in the world to complain to a regulatory body about the work of doctors at the Royal Free Hospital in London who diagnosed children with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which their parents suggested had occurred following MMR vaccination.
In 2003, after 10 years work, legal aid was withdrawn from over 1,000 parents claiming damages in a suit in which Dr Andrew Wakefield was to appear as an expert witness. In 2004 Deer wrote an exposé of Wakefield that was full of concoctions, half truths and fantasies and which claimed that the children examined by the team at the Royal Free were not ill. Deer’s distorted pharma–imaginings became the basis of over 80 charges leveled against Dr Wakefield and three other doctors to be ‘tried’ by the General Medical Council (GMC). The hearing took place over three years between 2007 and 2010 and became one of the longest regulatory hearings ever held in Britain. Brian Deer, the centre of the whole plot, did not give evidence.
In bringing the fitness to practice case against Dr Andrew Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and Professor John Walker-Smith, the GMC listened to journalist Brian Deer and excluded the views of hundreds of parents of vaccine damaged children. Who is Brian Deer? Vigilante for truth or front man for Big Pharma? Selective Hearing covers Deer’s part in the heartbreaking betrayal of vaccine damaged children by the medical profession, the pharmaceutical corporations and the British government.
With the full power of the government and pharmaceutical industry behind him, few people were brave enough to tackle Deer. Alan Golding, however, is a Welshman, a very independent filmmaker and a man of considerable principle. Alan Golding gave himself completely over the three–year duration of the GMC hearing, to the cause of the parents of vaccine damaged children. Selective Hearing features clearly honest personal testimony from parents, an analysis of Deer’s faulted case and unique material of him holding forth for the pharmaceutical companies in a heated exchange with parents outside the GMC building. If you see this film you will want to do something about Brian Deer.
Martin J Walker investigative writer and author.
http://www.slingshotpublications.com
