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4.08 AVERAGE
4.08 AVERAGE
dark
informative
medium-paced
Just wasn't into nonfic at the time
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Child abuse, Medical content, Medical trauma
challenging
dark
informative
The Doctor Who Fooled the World follows how and why Wakefield set up his fraudulent study attempting to connect the MMR vaccine and autism. The ways in which data was manipulated, or falsified in order to obtain the desired results. As well as how this led to an overall increase in vaccine denialism.
Overall I think this book is really good, especially if you don't know much about how the anti-vax movement started. Deer does a good job of making this book interesting to read, as well as informative.
Overall I think this book is really good, especially if you don't know much about how the anti-vax movement started. Deer does a good job of making this book interesting to read, as well as informative.
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
A love letter to investigative journalism in many ways, this book shows the roots of anti-vaccine anxiety and the greed and selfishness of one man. The web of lies it untangles slowly and methodically is as interesting as it is infuriating. What an excellent must read book!
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
dark
informative
medium-paced
An incredibly readable deep dive on one of the most hateful men in medical history. You can feel the sheer amount of research Deer has done into Wakefield and his work dripping off of every page, with hundreds of explanations and quotes about a topic that grifters like Wakefield like to obfuscate for personal profit. Clarity is key in the search for truth, and Deer has it in spades.
However, I have to say that even though I personally enjoyed the book very much, as an autistic reader the book was... uncomfortable, at times. As much as he (rightly) goes on about how parental testimony can't be taken entirely at face value (both because of potential malice and simple human error) he falls into the typical (or rather, neurotypical) trap of putting the parents' suffering front and center, with little to no testimony from any autistic people. I understand where he's coming from, but the voices coming primarily from victims of the grift rather than the actual medical victims (those abused both by medical staff trying to find harmful "cures" and the parents failing to care for their disabled children) makes it a rather rough read sometimes. At the very least, some more sensitivity readers could have been a great boon. He tackles the topic so well and from so many angles that it makes this specific lack rather jarring.
I do still thoroughly recommend it, I believe that it's essential for understanding the roots of the current climate of anti-vaccine hysteria in the age of COVID-19, but I would caution neurodivergent readers (autistic ones in particular) that maybe not as much sympathy is expressed for the direct victims as there could have been.
However, I have to say that even though I personally enjoyed the book very much, as an autistic reader the book was... uncomfortable, at times. As much as he (rightly) goes on about how parental testimony can't be taken entirely at face value (both because of potential malice and simple human error) he falls into the typical (or rather, neurotypical) trap of putting the parents' suffering front and center, with little to no testimony from any autistic people. I understand where he's coming from, but the voices coming primarily from victims of the grift rather than the actual medical victims (those abused both by medical staff trying to find harmful "cures" and the parents failing to care for their disabled children) makes it a rather rough read sometimes. At the very least, some more sensitivity readers could have been a great boon. He tackles the topic so well and from so many angles that it makes this specific lack rather jarring.
I do still thoroughly recommend it, I believe that it's essential for understanding the roots of the current climate of anti-vaccine hysteria in the age of COVID-19, but I would caution neurodivergent readers (autistic ones in particular) that maybe not as much sympathy is expressed for the direct victims as there could have been.
Medical non-fiction is a busman’s holiday for me, but I do enjoy this genre so much! (It’s okay, you can call me weird). Generally I read about discoveries leading to the greater good, but The Doctor Who Fooled the World is the opposite. It’s investigative journalism at its best and medical research at its worst.
This is the story of Andrew Wakefield, a doctor in England who wrote about a link between measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, inflammatory bowel symptoms and autism in children. Further studies found links between autism and the MMR vaccine, which led to a panic in the UK and later in America. Vaccination rates decreased in children. Parents of children with autism began to consider the timing of symptoms with vaccination and felt guilt at how they may have changed the course of their child’s life. It was a worrying time for many. But behind the press conferences and papers, there was a lot more going on. The seminal study wasn’t random in its selection of patients. Rather it was part of a lawsuit which Wakefield received money to research the link. Results were massaged to fit the hypothesis. There was scandal when it was discovered.
Brian Deer introduces the story by telling the reader what happened from Wakefield’s perspective – the lead up, the research and the subsequent panic – but also points out the faults along the way. Quite a lot of this section of the narrative is peppered with digs at the medical profession and medical research, some not so worthy in my opinion. (I don’t know anyone who measures their research in pages in a journal. Number of words of the article is immediately forgotten once the article is accepted in my experience.) This put me off a little but it seemed to tone down once Wakefield was exposed by Deer himself. This section explains the lengths Deer went to, including the incredible depths of his research, to show the flaws in the data that disproved the original claims about MMR. But Deer doesn’t end there, following Wakefield (now no longer a doctor in the UK) to America and his integration with the anti-vaccination movement. This was an eye-opener and something that I hadn’t really heard about.
The Doctor Who Fooled the World is a fantastically detailed look at why we need investigative journalism and the global effect of misinformation. Deer details his years working on this case honestly, resulting in a story so big you’ll marvel at how it was allowed to happen.
Thank you to Scribe for the copy of this book. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com
This is the story of Andrew Wakefield, a doctor in England who wrote about a link between measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, inflammatory bowel symptoms and autism in children. Further studies found links between autism and the MMR vaccine, which led to a panic in the UK and later in America. Vaccination rates decreased in children. Parents of children with autism began to consider the timing of symptoms with vaccination and felt guilt at how they may have changed the course of their child’s life. It was a worrying time for many. But behind the press conferences and papers, there was a lot more going on. The seminal study wasn’t random in its selection of patients. Rather it was part of a lawsuit which Wakefield received money to research the link. Results were massaged to fit the hypothesis. There was scandal when it was discovered.
Brian Deer introduces the story by telling the reader what happened from Wakefield’s perspective – the lead up, the research and the subsequent panic – but also points out the faults along the way. Quite a lot of this section of the narrative is peppered with digs at the medical profession and medical research, some not so worthy in my opinion. (I don’t know anyone who measures their research in pages in a journal. Number of words of the article is immediately forgotten once the article is accepted in my experience.) This put me off a little but it seemed to tone down once Wakefield was exposed by Deer himself. This section explains the lengths Deer went to, including the incredible depths of his research, to show the flaws in the data that disproved the original claims about MMR. But Deer doesn’t end there, following Wakefield (now no longer a doctor in the UK) to America and his integration with the anti-vaccination movement. This was an eye-opener and something that I hadn’t really heard about.
The Doctor Who Fooled the World is a fantastically detailed look at why we need investigative journalism and the global effect of misinformation. Deer details his years working on this case honestly, resulting in a story so big you’ll marvel at how it was allowed to happen.
Thank you to Scribe for the copy of this book. My review is honest.
http://samstillreading.wordpress.com