Subtitle: How One Doctor’s Medical Fraud Launched Today’s Deadly Anti-Vax Movement

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

The current controversy stirred up by opponents of the Covid-19 vaccine has brought the anti-vax movement to the forefront of political and medical discussion. What most people don’t know is that most of today’s anti-vaxxer movement can be attributed to the bogus results of the fraudulent medical research study in the late 1990s.


The Big Lie tells the story of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British doctor who became so convinced of a link between MMR vaccinations for children and the development of autism in those children that he committed multiple medical-ethics violations. Eichenwald presents a damning case again Wakefield, who eventually lost the ability to practice medicine in the U.K., and would up in the United States, where he and his anti-vax lies were embraced by Donald Trump and the American right wing. Wakefield also became involved in the Covid-19 crisis (I bet you can probably guess which side of that debate he took).

I gave The Big Lie five stars on Goodreads. It was a quick read, and while entertaining might not be an appropriate word to describe it, it was certainly not boring. Wakefield’s case is proof of how much farther and faster lies spread than truth does.

Thorough examination and analysis of Andrew Wakefield and his spurious and damaging claims that the MMR vaccine caused autism. Meticulously researched, and clearly and accessibly written, the book is an all too frightening reminder of just how many people chose to so gullible and how, as Covid has shown, often still choose to be. I found the book so alarming about how such a fraud could have been allowed to continue for so long, and that in fact Wakefield still has his followers. A chilling thought. Compelling and important reading, and certainly one that all medical practitioners and researchers should read.