Before 2020, Andrew Wakefield was universally heralded as the scourge of anti-vaccine science. Under the second term of the Trump Administration, he is now taking a victory lap as Trump officials baselessly attack the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine. While vaguely familiar with the Wakefield saga, I figured it was finally time to sit down and review journalist Brian Deer’s book detailing his heroic multi-year crusade to expose the anti-vaccine fraud; one who abused children and faked study results for his own personal gain.
As an aside, as someone who has spent years archiving truly terribly constructed anti-vaccine screeds, it’s truly a pleasure to read prose from someone who actually knows how to construct a coherent paragraph and guide the reader through a compelling narrative. Deer’s writing goes down refreshingly smooth, even when talking about such an incredibly grim subject matter, including gruesome details of how Wakefield violated young children. Brian’s book leaves you aspiring to be a better writer.
Today, we review The Doctor Who Fooled the World in the context of the current public health crisis unfolding in America.
I. Drafting the Blueprint
“Not just a doctor without patients, but a teacher without students; not a scientist, but a zealot and opportunist” -Brian Deer, describing Andrew Wakefield
Now just wait a minute…that quote is also a pretty accurate description of certain laptop-class academics who chose to become cheerleaders for repeatedly infecting unvaccinated children with a new SARS virus, like Stanford economist turned National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
What The Doctor Who Fooled the World makes clear is that Andrew Wakefield’s grift became the blueprint that numerous quacks would follow to the letter when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. What Brian Deer uncovered, and was later confirmed by leading medical journals, was that Wakefield had produced a completely unethical and fraudulent study designed solely to attack the MMR vaccine. Wakefield would be disgraced and stripped of his medical license before fleeing to America, where he retired from medicine & science to become an anti-vaccine media darling.
Wakefield had internalized the first rule of Public Relations: Never admit fault.
With the facts and the overwhelming medical consensus against him, Wakefield instead started marketing himself with a fictional narrative that centered him as the victim of a vast conspiracy. Selling himself as a heroic crusader for children’s health against an evil empire, Wakefield’s outlandish ego was tailor-made for conspiracy theorist social media. Many of his gullible followers even launched into nasty personal attacks against the investigative journalist who exposed him.
II. Plague Trek: The Next Generation
“[Wakefield] was having a great time. He’d found no cure for Crohn’s, or remedy or autism, no vaccine, no nothing in medicine. But now he was a man delivering fear, guilt, and disease to everywhere with an internet connection.” -Brian Deer, The Doctor Who Fooled the World
Wakefield’s blueprint was followed by multiple academics who saw the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity for shameless self-promotion, instead of making meaningful contributions to save lives. Producing a fraudulent study and running to the media with a sensationalist, fearmongering narrative is the start:
The media helped them build a loyal following & went on to make a lot of money for themselves by attacking hard-working doctors & scientists, just like their teacher.
Even though Wakefield had become infamous for this style of fraud, American universities & journalists turned a blind eye to this growing infestation of medical academia. In fact, UCSF and Stanford even rewarded this sort of blatant misconduct in the midst of a crisis. Now? These locusts infest the senior leadership of our federal public health agencies, serving under Wakefield’s dear friends. What comes next?
“Here was no small legacy for an ex-doctor without patients. On videos, [Wakefield] grinned and chuckled. The resurgence of disease wasn’t entirely down to him. But, just like you can’t make gunpowder without sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, he knew he was essential to the explosion.” -Brian Deer, The Doctor Who Fooled the World
Perhaps the constant juvenile insults and personal attacks that Bhattacharya and Prasad constantly spewed on social media were worth taking seriously as a warning of future, more severe unprofessional misconduct. Luckily, the steady stream of news covering our federal public agencies show everything is going just swell! According to Lizzy Lawrence for Stat News, just this week:
“What we’re seeing here is, ‘We believe this and we’re going to find the evidence to support that,’ That’s just inherently wrong in terms of how a scientific agency like the FDA operates.”
Oh, so the very same fraudulent misconduct that Brian Deer exposed Andrew Wakefield of committing. Huh. Whom among us could have possibly seen this coming?
What Makary is doing here is, word-for-word, Andrew Wakefield’s playbook for terrorizing the mothers of children. Empirical scientific evidence is not to be trusted over manipulative emotional appeals and random anecdotes. Viruses are natural & harmless, while vaccines are an unnatural affront to God.
Once relegated to the dark corners of the internet, Wakefield’s gimmicks are now setting policy in our federal public health agencies.
III. The Wakefield Brand
“Here lived Andrew Wakefield. A doctor without patients. He brought us fear, guilt, and disease.” -Brian Deer, The Doctor Who Fooled the World
In cattle rustlin’, there’s a tradition of heating up an iron rod and scarring livestock with a mark to indicate the rancher they belong to. This mark is lifelong and can never be shed, much like how Andrew Wakefield will never free himself from the horrific violations he committed against young children. No matter how many lies he gleefully spews on social media, the facts are indisputably, forever against him.
Wakefield’s rise to power, including being invited to Trump’s inauguration gala, would become a blueprint. The blueprint for the aspiring anti-vaccine celebrities who exploited COVID-19, building a money-making grift for themselves through social media. None of these greedy charlatans had the self-awareness to care that they were following in the footsteps of a nefarious, morally depraved abuser of young children. In fact, they openly celebrated millions of young, unvaccinated children being infected with a new SARS virus - hospitalizing, disabling, and killing so many.
Now many of these voices actively work for Wakefield’s dearest friends: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Donald Trump. Once respected academics, they’re now repeating all of Wakefield’s gimmicks: that anecdotes overrule empirical evidence, that the medical consensus is a conspiracy against kids, that vaccines are deadly & viruses harmless. They have all lined up & embraced the burning shame of being a Wakefielder.
We need a universal, zero-tolerance standard in science & medicine: Anyone who embraces Wakefielder antics, aligning themselves with someone who intimately violated young children and fabricated study results, is immediately terminated and blacklisted. Publicly hounded and written off as worthless Wakefielders. Never let them try and hide the brand they completely debased themselves to earn.
Brian Deer’s journalism and book are legendary, essential reading, and I highly recommend it if you want to understand the mindset of the quackery infesting our federal public health agencies today. Please do give it a read:
