Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is a general practitioner. He has written on a wide range of medical and political subjects, including epidemics, addictions and health scares for both medical publications and the mainstream media. He is the author of The Tyranny of Heath (2002). Michael’s book MMR and Autism: what parents need to know (2004) put forward a comprehensive appraisal of vaccine-autism theories. This was followed in 2009 by Defeating Autism: a damaging delusion (2008), a critique of influential but scientifically unsubstantiated ‘unorthodox biomedical’ interventions in autism.