Khashoggi and Pandemrix

October, 22, 2018 | 7 Comments

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  1. Also just published in BMJ Rapid Responses (my letter)

    Re: A tale of two vaccines and the “spectre of Andrew Wakefield”
    Re: A tale of two vaccines Fiona Godlee. 363:doi 10.1136/bmj.k4152

    https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rr-22

    The “spectre of Andrew Wakefield” certainly should not be allowed to deflect from this important issue [1,2].

    I wrote to this journal in February 2010 explaining why the GMC findings against Royal Free doctors were defective [3], and no one challenged me. The Wakefield Lancet paper had nothing to do with the Legal Aid Board commissioned protocol; investigations were carried out according to clinical need; the order of referral was a red-herring – all of which anticipated the views of the High Court judge, Sir John Mitting, when exonerating the senior clinician and senior author of the paper, Prof John Walker-Smith, two years later [4]. Mitting dismissed the central contention the of the GMC prosecution that the authors of the paper were executing the Legal Aid Board sponsored protocol (172/96):

    “Its conclusion that Professor Walker-Smith was guilty of serious professional misconduct in relation to the Lancet children was in part founded upon its conclusion that the investigations into them were carried out pursuant to Project 172-96. The only explanation given for that conclusion is that it was reached ‘in the light of all the available evidence’. On any view, that was an inadequate explanation of the finding. As it may also have been reached upon the basis of two fundamental errors – that Professor Walker-Smith’s intention was irrelevant and that it was not necessary to determine whether he had lied to the Ethics Committee, it is a determination which cannot stand ….” [para 20]

    The case that Walker-Smith was undertaking research was dismissed:

    “..their case was that he was in fact undertaking research, which required Ethics Committee approval, without realising that he was doing so. This is an untenable proposition, as the analysis of the letter of 11th November 1996 above demonstrates. In consequence, not only was the panel invited by the GMC not to determine Professor Walker-Smith’s intention, it was also invited not to determine his truthfulness in his dealings with the Ethics Committee.” [Par. 18]

    “It is in its findings on the clinical issues in the individual cases of the Lancet children that the most numerous and significant inadequacies and errors in the determination of the panel occur. In no individual case in which the panel made a finding adverse to Professor Walker-Smith did it address the expert evidence led for him, except to misstate it. The issues to which this evidence went were of fundamental importance to the case against him. Universal inadequacies and some errors in the panel’s determination accordingly go to the heart of the case. They are not curable. Unless the remainder of the panel’s findings justify its conclusion that Professor Walker-Smith was guilty of serious professional misconduct, its determination cannot stand.”

    Mitting rejects the idea that there was any misrepresentation over referrals:

    “This paper does not bear the meaning put upon it by the panel. The phrase “consecutively referred” means no more than that the children were referred successively, rather than as a single batch, to the Department of Paediatric Gastroenterology. The words did not imply routine referral.”[par. 157]

    Finally, Mitting states:

    “For the reasons given above, both on general issues and the Lancet paper and in relation to individual children, the panel’s overall conclusion that Professor Walker-Smith was guilty of serious professional misconduct was flawed, in two respects: inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion….The panel’s determination cannot stand. I therefore quash it. Miss Glynn, on the basis of sensible instructions, does not invite me to remit it to a fresh Fitness to Practice panel for redetermination. The end result is that the finding of serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure are both quashed.” [para.186-7]

    It remains concerning that the chairman (Surendra Kumar) of the fitness to practice panel in the case against the three Royal Free doctors sat on two MHRA committees and owned shares in GSK [5].

    All this time Cochrane has been far from clear about MMR, finding safety studies in successive reviews (2003, 2005, 2012) to be “largely inadequate” [6]. Nor do we seem to be able to rely on the MHRA and the EMA to guard the public’s safety – either with sufficient rigour or with sufficient distance from the industry.

    [1] Fiona Godlee, “A tale of two vaccines”, BMJ 2018; 363 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k4152 (Published 04 October 2018)

    [2] Philip Bryan, June Raine, Ian Hudson, ‘MHRA response to BMJ Editor’s Choice – ‘A tale of two vaccines’’, r 2018, 18, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rr-11

    [3] John Stone, “The unexplained puzzle of the GMC verdict (and responses to Peter Flegg) 10 February 2010, https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/unexplained-puzzle-gmc-ver

    [4] In the High Court between Prof Walker-Smith and and the General Medical Council, http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/5

    [5] John Stone, ‘Re: Financial conflicts -shock horror’, 22 October 2008, https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/re-financial-conflicts-sho

    [6] John Stone, ‘Response to David Oliver II (Risks of Vaccines)’, 28 August 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3596/rr-11

  2. My husband and I recently received in the post from our GP practice, letters reminding us to go to a certain location at a certain time to get our flu inoculations. At the bottom of the letters is a tear off strip, which we have to fill in with our reasons for not attending, if we decide to decline the kind offer of these vaccines. Like naughty children handing in their lines. I wrote mine easily, saying I react badly to most medicines, have therefore always avoided flu vaccines and intend to keep doing do. (If I get flu, being relatively well preserved for my advanced age, I will go to bed with a hot water bottle, honey and lemon, and sleep it away). My husband, however, in filling in his ‘naughty slip’ was more anxious not to rock the boat. What could he write? In the past when much younger he often used to fall asleep suddenly at embarrassing moments, as he said, he was unaware of it, it was like someone flipped a switch and he was gone, off into oblivion. He hasn’t been like that for years. But he sure doesn’t want a recurrence. Narcolepsy may be something he is prone to. In filling in his lines however, he doesn’t want to upset his doctor 😊 so he wrote words to the effect that he is not a frail elderly man, he doesn’t mix a lot in public, so is unlikely to catch flu, hasn’t had it for years, and would like his vaccine shot therefore to go to a more deserving recipient…. very diplomatic. Several friends and relations who have had their shots this year have instantly gone down with flu. It happened to them last year too. But Big Brother is obviously eyeing us up like errant youngsters, wanting to keep us on the straight and narrow.

    My comment here is trivial in comparison, when one realises the extremely serious implications of this post. It does seem that every opportunity for balanced open judgement has been closed off to us by Pharma. Every possible exit is barred. This is terrifying. Even the media has been nobbled. Profit and survival of Governments and their masters Pharma, come before all else.

    The fact that more and more human beings (and wild life) on this planet are becoming weaker due to pharmateceutical poisons damage, doesn’t seem to concern anyone. Or is this coming through like Darwin’s survival of the fittest? Is it all part of a plan? Those who can tolerate the meds with virtually no side effects can go on to pass their trendy genes down the line, creating the next generation of believers and happy drug takers, whereas those who can’t, fizzle out and die whilst lamely protesting about how they were got rid of. If they can be understood through their AKATHISIA. But what happens when there are too few of the toughies left? Too few to do the necessary jobs to keep things running? To few to keep Pharma in profit? The wheel may then have turned full circle. Unless we somehow find a way to wake the world up, before it’s too late. And just maybe we are starting to see the first seeds of this, with the APPG Report.

    Let’s do the All Souls Day vigil of candles like we did the last two years. No one can say it hasn’t been working. We need a really big push now, to break the side of the dam. And we need publicity for it ahead of time.

    • In response to your call Heather may I suggest that this year we all do exactly the same as we did the last two years – and send our pictures and messages to Rxisk facebook page as last year ( I hope that will be acceptable to the rxisk team?)
      It would have been good to set things in motion earlier as you say – but it seems that time constraints, due to health or other matters, have got the better of us this year. I feel that to repeat last year’s effort is far better than doing nothing at all.

      • That sounds good Mary. We will be doing something to commemorate all those who died having suffered terrible side effects from RoAccutane/ isotretinoin, and therefore from AKATHISIA, which includes all those who died because of ADRs from psychotropic prescribed medications.

        And we will be thinking very much at around 10 pm on All Souls Night of all those incredibly brave people who have suffered terrible mental and physical damage from these drugs, who struggle to regain their former selves, and, worst of all, who suffer the horror of not being believed when they try to convey what has been done to them by a medical profession that has failed them, who are bewitched by Big Pharma, and they, bewitched in turn by a lust for profit at all costs.

        We hold these brave people too in our thoughts and salute them for their enormous courage. May they all be restored eventually to good health and happiness, and regain their human right to do so, and may RxISK continue to crusade for answers and solutions to facilitate this. Our candles will be posted on the Facebook page of Olly’s Friendship Foundation additionally.

  3. Terrorism Inc.

    http://claredaly.ie/latest-pandemrix-revelations-we-need-answers-from-government-and-justice-for-narcolepsy-sufferers/

    http://us.gsk.com/en-us/media/press-releases/2011/glaxosmithkline-european-regulatory-update-on-pandemrix/

    https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/reports-of-narcolepsy-in-europe-following-vaccination-with-pandemrix/

    ‘I do believe Tom Jefferson makes an unwarranted assumption:
    “As Healy pointed out, openness and clarity are the enemies of vaccine hesitancy. Non response and obfuscation are gifts to those who are ideologically opposed to vaccines and their use.”

    Leaving David Healy aside

    https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3948/rapid-responses

    ‘it might be reasonable to ask whether the EMA, MHRA and GSK lack of response to Doshi’s initial enquiries and tackle the main responses to his article are manufacturing the very hesitancy they blame on him.

    David Healy

    GlaxoSmithKline put out two press releases in 2010 and 2011 and have since gone all Kashoggi …

  4. Next are ‘super-spreaders’ …

    The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation

    Heidi Larson | 16 Oct, 2018

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07034-4

    ’emotional contagion, digitally enabled, could erode trust in vaccines so much as to render them moot. The deluge of conflicting information, misinformation and manipulated information on social media should be recognized as a global public-health threat’

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