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The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield’s war on vaccines

Award-winning investigative journalist Brian Deer reveals the shocking truth behind the rise of Andrew Wakefield, so-called ‘father of the anti-vaccine movement’, blamed for epidemics of fear, guilt, and disease that today circle the globe.

As a doctor at a London medical school, in February 1998 Andrew Wakefield published explosive research in the Lancet medical journal which terrified a generation of young parents. Claiming that the MMR vaccine given to millions of children caused autism, he triggered a crisis, with sickness and deaths, as immunisation rates plummeted.

Brian Deer’s landmark fifteen-year inquiry for The Sunday Times, Channel 4, and the British Medical Journal exposed the truth behind the now-ex-doctor’s campaign: seeing him struck from the medical register, his research retracted, and his claims dubbed ‘an elaborate fraud’. But today Wakefield is back: leading an international anti-vaccine crusade — from Seattle to Sydney, São Paulo to Shanghai — against one of medicine’s greatest triumphs.

The Doctor Who Fooled the World is a riveting detective story that penetrates layers of legal secrecy, medical confidentiality, business schemes, and smear campaigns to expose the scientific deception of our time.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 416
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781911617808
  • Genres
  • science, biography, medical
  • Release date
  • 2020