The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Science, Deception, and the War on Vaccines

The true story of Andrew Wakefield - the man behind the false link between the MMR vaccine and autism - and the conspiracy that fueled a global epidemic, from the prize-winning journalist who broke the story.

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 pause-resisting 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 15 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.