Investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes a conspiracy of fraud and betrayal behind attacks on a mainstay of medicine: vaccinations. 2021 IPPY Book Award Winner (Gold) in Health/Medicine/Nutrition, Recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for Nonfiction in the Culture Category. From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant "anti-vax" movement has surfaced to campaign against children's shots. But why? In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. Writing with the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid. At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called "father of the anti-vaccine movement": a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer's discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a "war." In an epic investigation spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.

A reporter uncovers the secrets behind the scientific scam of the century. The news breaks first as a tale of fear and pity. Doctors at a London hospital claim a link between autism and a vaccine given to millions of children: MMR. Young parents are terrified. Immunisation rates slump. And as a worldwide ‘anti-vax’ movement kicks off, old diseases return to sicken and kill. But a veteran reporter isn’t so sure, and sets out on an epic investigation. Battling establishment cover-ups, smear campaigns, and gagging lawsuits, he exposes rigged research and secret schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific deception of our time. Here’s the story of Andrew Wakefield: a man in search of greatness, who stakes his soul on big ideas that, if right, might transform lives. But when the facts don’t fit, he can’t face failure. He’ll do whatever it takes to succeed.

A riveting exercise in old-school journalism, The Doctor Who Fooled the World is a tale of one man's pursuit of greatness, thwarted when the facts don't fit.

"—from the foreword by Arthur L. Caplan, NYU School of Medicine

Callous Disregard is the account of how a doctor confronted first a disease and then the medical system that sought and still seeks to deny that disease, leaving millions of children to suffer and a world at risk. In 1995, Dr. Andrew Wakefield came to a fork in the road. As an academic gastroenterologist at the Royal Free School of Medicine and the University of London, he was confronted by a professional challenge and a moral choice. Previously healthy children were, according to their parents, regressing into autism and developing intestinal problems. Many parents blamed the MMR vaccine. Trusting his medical training, the parental narrative, and, above all, the instinct of mothers for their children?s well-being, he chose what would become a very difficult road. Dr. Wakefield provides the facts and an explanation of the problem that confronted him and his colleagues fifteen years ago. He does this in a detailed forensic analysis of the lies, obfuscation, cover-up, and dystopian science and medicine that panders to commercial interests at the expense of your children.

A “clear and insightful” takedown of the anti-vaccination movement, from its 19th-century antecedents to modern-day Facebook activists—with strategies for refuting false claims of friends and family (Financial Times) Vaccines are a documented success story, one of the most successful public health interventions in history. Yet there is a vocal anti-vaccination movement, featuring celebrity activists (including Kennedy scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Jenny McCarthy) and the propagation of anti-vax claims through books, documentaries, and social media. In Anti-Vaxxers, Jonathan Berman explores the phenomenon of the anti-vaccination movement, recounting its history from its nineteenth-century antecedents to today’s activism, examining its claims, and suggesting a strategy for countering them. After providing background information on vaccines and how they work, Berman describes resistance to Britain’s Vaccination Act of 1853, showing that the arguments anticipate those made by today’s anti-vaxxers. He discusses the development of new vaccines in the twentieth century, including those protecting against polio and MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), and the debunked paper that linked the MMR vaccine to autism; the CDC conspiracy theory promoted in the documentary Vaxxed; recommendations for an alternative vaccination schedule; Kennedy’s misinformed campaign against thimerosal; and the much-abused religious exemption to vaccination. Anti-vaxxers have changed their minds, but rarely because someone has given them a list of facts. Berman argues that anti-vaccination activism is tied closely to how people see themselves as parents and community members. Effective pro-vaccination efforts should emphasize these cultural aspects rather than battling social media posts.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a novel set in sixteenth-century Europe about an obscure cleric who is preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe—while being haunted by his malevolent brother and threatened by the conspiracies raging around him and his ideas. Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and controversy: wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks “the secret music of the universe” poses a most devastating threat.