Brian Deer

Brian Deer
Brian Deer at a Westminster Skeptics meeting
Nationality	British
Education	University of Warwick
Occupation	Investigative journalist
Notable credit(s)	Investigative reporting on medical issues and the pharmaceutical industry
Website	http://briandeer.com

Brian Deer is a British investigative reporter, best known for inquiries into the drug industry, medicine and social issues for the Sunday Times of London.

After graduating in philosophy from the University of Warwick, he became editor and press officer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and was a member of The Leveller magazine collective. Subsequently he joined The Times, then The Sunday Times, first as a business news subeditor and then as a staff news reporter and feature writer. In the 1980s, under then Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil, Deer was the UK's first social affairs correspondent, and between 1990 and 1992 reported from the United States.

In 1986, one of Deer's early investigations exposed research by British scientist Professor Michael Briggs at Deakin University, Australia into the safety of the contraceptive pill. Deer's reports revealed that numerous of Briggs's studies were fabricated so as to give a positive profile for the products' cardiovascular safety. The research was largely financed by the German drug company Schering AG.

In 1994, his investigation of The Wellcome Trust led to the withdrawal in the UK of the blockbuster antibiotic, Septrin (also sold under the name Bactrim) and the sale by the Wellcome Trust of its drug company subsidiary.

In 2005, the withdrawal of the painkiller Vioxx was followed by an investigation by Deer into the people responsible for the drug's introduction.

In 2006, Deer's Dispatches documentary "The drug trial that went wrong", investigated the experimental monoclonal antibody TGN1412. It was nominated for a Royal Television Society journalism award.