Shipwreck of the Singular, which Samizdat has just published, took more time to write than all my other books combined. The others tumbled out – often in just a few weeks.
Unpublishable
Pharmageddon took 3 weeks. But it then took 4 years to find a publisher. I took on an agent to help get a publisher. Faced with Shipwreck, the same agent said it would never be published. She didn’t know why. She didn’t want to waste her time finding out. This made it clear to me the publishing world was changing just like everything else was. It led to Samizdat, which is part and parcel of Shipwreck.
To be fair, the original Shipwreck was 30,000 words longer.
It also didn’t have the final ‘Crusoe, we say, was Rescued’ chapter.
As part of getting Pharmageddon published I also hooked up with an editor, Jonathan Cobb, who as his initials suggest did miraculous things to the text. Guided by him, the book I thought I had written in the first place emerged.
JC looked perfect for Shipwreck also. He was happy to get involved and I was thrilled to have him on board from early on. Again, he pointed to areas that needed work. In particular, the need for a final chapter, although he was less enthusiastic about the direction ‘Rescue’ took.
Despite miracles, my agent said Shipwreck would never be published.
Catholic or Protestant
An old joke in Northern Ireland goes:
Man confronted on street dragged into an alley and asked at gunpoint ‘Are ye Catholic or Protestant’ answers I’m Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Atheist (take your pick). He is then asked ‘Are ye Catholic Hindu or Protestant Hindu’.
Many people on the Left and the Right, religious and non-religious, will endorse many points made in Shipwreck but are upset when it doesn’t endorse their cherished beliefs as the answer to the problems we now have. They become less enthusiastic. Both can agree its better not let something like this see the light of day – it might divert us from our ancient quarrel.
Its the forgotten, the disenfranchised who might buy into ‘Rescue’. Those who control our health, economic and publishing systems won’t.
At the moment, we are only allowed to be pro-Drugs, pro-Vaccines and pro-Science or anti-Drugs, anti-Vaccines and anti-Science. There is no room for being pro-Drugs but wary of the institutional framework through which we get our drugs. We want to believe that working with the system but campaigning to increase access to drugs for the disadvantaged can only have a good outcome. We don’t want to hear that our good intentions may make things worse. We certainly don’t want to hear that most of what has gone wrong has come from good intentions.
I refuse to join any club that would have me
Marx, Karl or maybe Groucho, perhaps brings the problem home. Unless you are on the Left, and in the United States that would be the extreme Left, way Left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, bringing Karl into the picture is a recipe for total disengagement and maybe worse.
Telling people that Karl was the maker of many a Wall Street fortune for investors who paid heed to his message about the capitalizability of technique – there were more sales of his main book in US financial circles than anywhere else – isn’t enough to save either him or me with folk from the Right.
Even trying to show them we face a conspiracy good enough to please anyone in QAnon, or that in my efforts to bring out the violence some treatments cause, I can readily contemplate working with the NRA, or that Shipwreck sees regulation as part of the problem, is not a recipe for making anyone on the Right think I am one of them.
On the Left, Shipwreck produces confusion among publishers and agents who don’t have the nerve to try and re-imagine a recasting of their cherished beliefs to face the challenges that now confront us. Even though I’m right on in a willingness to embrace (perhaps not the right word) that most progressive of-the-people-and-for-the-people enterprises, the for-women industry, in an effort to spread word about the permanent sexual dysfunction many treatments can cause and how the efforts of another industry mean that the numbers of us making love and the number of times we do so is steadily falling.
Pleading that Albert Camus, an icon of the Left, said deciding whether to commit suicide is the central philosophical question, and that Shipwreck is about the unwillingness of philosophers or anyone else to face up to the fact that close to 300 different drugs can take this out of our hands and cause us to commit suicide – falls on deaf ears on the Left.
Cracking Ice
Asking people can they not hear the ice cracking is perhaps an uncomfortable question given climate change.
When Marx appeared on the scene in the Springtime of 1848, the ice coating Europe was cracking all around him. Many of his insights sparkled. But his followers trapped these insights in a deep freeze. Fifty years later the deep-freeze of psychoanalysis completely sealed over the unsettling idea that our nervous conditions and other health disorders might stem from our interactions with each other.
Whether the Left or the Right like it or not, the Ice is cracking again. We need signs of new life, new thinking, for a new world. For 5 years before Covid, Life Expectancy had been falling. More health services won’t fix this because health services are causing it. This is a more immediate and personal crisis than even climate change – but no-one is talking about it.
Seat at the Table
Since about 1980, something has gone badly wrong with both capitalism and medicine. From 1880 to 1980, socialists like Alexandria or Kamala had been prepared to execute communists like Rosa (Luxembourg) to get a seat at the table where decisions that were increasing wealth and health all round were being made.
Their continuing presence at the table is now part of the problem. They show no sign of discomfort with a system that centers the greatest concentration of Fake News on earth on the medications our doctors give us. They seem unable to understand why someone like me might not trust them when they ask us, almost force us, to believe in this Fake News and take whatever health services say we should take.
They blame the problems we are having on anyone except themselves and work to get social media to ban anyone asking questions. If cornered they throw up their hands and say what can we do?
Right Stuff Needed
What we need to do is to start Caring – about each other.
Health is the quintessential place where people are supposed to Care about others. It’s the place where people who think they naturally Care go to work – along with a bunch of others who Care a lot about money.
If we ask what it is that people who Care within health do, the likely answer is they wipe bottoms or have a cheery face for the vulnerable and disabled. Some claim that sticking to the Evidence of what works is the highest form of Care.
Wiping bottoms and being cheery is not Care, even though people who have smiles and grins in their genes can do a lot of good by just being natural. The genes for sticking to what is mandated are more of a problem.
The best example of what Care involves centers on how we respond when someone who has had a drug says something has gone wrong – especially when what they say appears to be at odds with the ‘Evidence’. When what they say is not in the information that comes with the drug, or in anything ‘reputable’ you can find.
The evidence you or they can now access has become increasingly Careless. It makes a virtue of being Careless. Being Careless is how we achieve objectivity – supposedly. And this systematic Carelessness makes it increasingly dangerous for the rest of us to Care.
Agreeing with someone who claims to be injured by a drug is not Caring if you are anti-drugs and believe everything that anyone says about what a drug has done to them.
It’s more likely to be Care if you work in health and in agreeing with the person who claims to have been harmed you set up a real risk you will lose your job, or, if you don’t work in health, you set up a scenario where health professionals dismiss you.
Care is scary and the way things are going anyone who starts Caring may need to take to the woods and resist rather than get on the train when told.
Care transforms.
Without transformation there can be no Rescue. This is what Shipwreck is about.
#####
Marshall Mcluhan wrote a book which became something of a cult decades ago ‘The medium is the message’ A slip in publication changed it into ‘the massage’ which he subsequently preferred. In one of the most violent times in the worlds history as far as I know, oppositional views are dealt with by torture, death and imprisonment But the more ‘polite’ methods used by ‘democracies’ in the West to massage us are not unrealised by citizens When Matt Hancock, June Raine , Chris Whitty the BBC and co. take to the podium with lies and falsehoods they are met with sarcasm and disbelief much of the time. People are not idiots , we know when we are being bought off with dollops of sugar coated ‘good news’ to pacify us ,hoping to bury critics . Many people who have never been involved in ‘campaigning’, are suspicious of medics when ‘all they do is dish out drugs’ yet the massage from the college of psychs and their networks are spreading the message that almost the whole population is and will be in need of ‘treatment’ Countering this is the amazing proliferation of self organised groups set up by people who never go near mental health services, women , elders,mothers and babies groups and mens ‘in the shed’ groups, mutual suppport groups of all kinds. They may be a way forward People know they are more resilient than made out to be by those with self interests at ‘heart’. But are sabotaged by the constant messages that we are not going to be able to cope without them and their prescriptions and their , increasingly, online ‘therapy’ .
There will still be a need for people with specialist knowledge of drugs and their uses for people in need of greater care but unless there is a generation of health workers which become awakened by reading and contact with people such as David and then challenge the way they are being trained and constrained by regulators , seems the revolution in health ‘caring’ is still a long time coming.
A timely launch of Shipwreck as “Personal and Professional Peril” leads to many a ‘Crusoe’
Persecution: SUI Cide In The OK Corral
Clinicians Report Medication Harms at “Personal and Professional Peril”
Clinicians were sued by the pharmaceutical industry, received verbal threats, and lost their jobs job after reporting adverse effects.
By Peter Simons
February 1, 2021
https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/02/clinicians-report-medication-harms-personal-professional-peril/
This mirrors Mad in America’s own report on whistleblower Jay Amsterdam, a prominent researcher in psychiatry who reported unethical conduct in GlaxoSmithKline’s study 352 and experienced serious consequences to his career.
The paroxetine 352 bipolar trial: A study in medical ghostwriting
Jay D. Amsterdama,∗ and Leemon B. McHenryb
Study 329.org
https://study329.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Paroxetine352-ghostwriting1.pdf
And then I kept reading and I’m thinking—I did this study! And I’m looking and looking, and I can’t find my name. And then I began to get suspicious.”
The lead author on the study was Charles Nemeroff, and while Nemeroff had yet to become publicly identified for his regular participation in ghostwriting exercises, Amsterdam knew that he was part of what many liked to call the “psychiatric mafia,”—
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/12/the-whistleblower-and-penn-a-final-accounting-of-study-352/
The joke within research circles is that if you “torture” the data long enough you can always find the result you want, and it was that process of data manipulation that Amsterdam and McHenry documented in their analysis of the study.
The researchers also cite the case of Nancy Olivieri, who reported medical risks during a clinical trial in 1996. She experienced 18 years of legal action by the pharmaceutical industry, officials at her college attempted to discredit her, and she lost her position at the Hospital for Sick Children. Her findings were corroborated and eventually confirmed by the FDA.
Persecution: SUI Cide In The OK Corral
https://davidhealy.org/persecution-sui-cide-in-the-ok-corral/
The Olivieri case
The most striking case of all cases of academic or clinical harassment was the Olivieri case in Toronto. Nancy Olivieri raised concerns about a drug she and others were researching in the hope it might be helpful for thalassemia. She found herself the victim of sustained and increasingly vituperative harassment. Analysing the DNA in saliva on an envelope she was able to track down one of her persecutors – Gideon Koren.
Drifting out to Sea – in The OK Corral …
My god I couldn’t agree with you more.
Caring is where life has a better chance of survival. Healthcare is supposed to be about saving and preserving life but it’s become more of a business now where companies have the most power that leads to more likely early death.
It’s about profits and making money first rather than putting the patient first who is only a commodity now not a human being.
It really all just disgusts me the more I see and learn.
I’m not anti drugs either but your right if you disagree with something or raise a concern you become labeled anti drug but that is their defence mechanism to buff you off.
Their afraid of losing sells not lives and that’s the bottom line of it.
I think there should be independent clinical trials and independent regulators that have no ties to companies or governments. It should be monitored by independant Drs and Scientists who have no ties either to any companies or political parties.
Maybe that would be one way to bring back proper safe care again.
Criticism in healthcare is essential to good healthcare.
Your and all of our deep disgust is very well described in this article – I think the culprits should be tried in something like the way war crimes are prosecuted They did know what they were doing when thousands were sent to their deaths in care homes. Including the medics who signed the discharge papers. The agony of those left to grieve won’t ever go away It’s not been possible to hide it in the way harms caused by medications but the same networks are involved.
Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant
BMJ 2021; 372 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n314 (Published 04 February 2021)
Kamran Abbasi, executive editor
kabbasi@bmj.com
After two million deaths, we must have redress for mishandling the pandemic
Murder is an emotive word. In law, it requires premeditation. Death must be deemed to be unlawful. How could “murder” apply to failures of a pandemic response? Perhaps it can’t, and never will, but it is worth considering. When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, is that not premeditated and reckless indifference to human life? If policy failures lead to recurrent and mistimed lockdowns, who is responsible for the resulting non-covid excess deaths? When politicians wilfully neglect scientific advice, international and historical experience, and their own alarming statistics and modelling because to act goes against their political strategy or ideology, is that lawful? Is inaction, action?1 How big an omission is not acting immediately after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020?
At the very least, covid-19 might be classified as “social murder,” as recently explained by two professors of criminology.2 The philosopher Friedrich Engels coined the phrase when describing the political and social power held by the ruling elite over the working classes in 19th century England. His argument was that the conditions created by privileged classes inevitably led to premature and “unnatural” death among the poorest classes.3 In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell echoed these themes in describing the life and living conditions of working class people in England’s industrial north.4 Today, “social murder” may describe the lack of political attention to social determinants and inequities that exacerbate the pandemic. Michael Marmot argues that as we emerge from covid-19 we must build back fairer.5
International accountability
A pandemic has implications both for the residents of a country and for the international community, so sovereign governments should arguably be held accountable to the international community for their actions and omissions on covid-19. Crimes against humanity, as adjudicated by the International Criminal Court, do not include public health.6 But David Scheffer, a former US ambassador for war crimes, suggests that we could broaden the application of public health malpractice “to account for the administration of public health during pandemics.”7 In that case, public health malpractice might become a crime against humanity, for leaders who intentionally unleash an infectious disease on their citizens or foreigners. Others have argued similarly for environmental crimes.8
If not murder or a crime against humanity, are we seeing involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in public office, or criminal negligence? Laws on political misconduct or negligence are complex and not designed to react to unprecedented events, but as more than two million people have died, we must not look on impotently as elected representatives around the world remain unaccountable and unrepentant. What standard should leaders be judged by? Is it the small number of deaths in countries such as New Zealand and Taiwan, or the harsher standard of zero excess deaths? Deaths do not come as single spies but as a battalion of bereaved families, shattered lives, long term illness, and economic ruin.
From the United States to India, from the United Kingdom to Brazil, people feel vulnerable and betrayed by the failure of their leaders. The over 400 000 deaths from covid-19 in the US, 250 000 in Brazil, 150 000 each in India and Mexico, and 100 000 in the UK comprise half of the world’s covid death toll—on the hands of only five nations.9 Donald Trump was a political determinant of health who damaged scientific institutions.10 He suffered electoral defeat, but does Trump remain accountable now that he is out of office? Bolsonaro, Modi, and Johnson have had their competence questioned in differing ways, and McKee and colleagues argue that populist leaders have undermined pandemic responses.11 The prospect of accountability in autocracies such as China and Russia is more distant still and relies on strong international institutions and the bravery of citizens.
More than a few countries have failed in their response to the virus; the global missteps are many and well documented by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.1213 Its report calls for comprehensive use of non-pharmaceutical interventions—the means, they say, by which these interventions curb a pandemic are “well known”—and for governments to support equity, reinvent and modernise the global pandemic alert system, take pandemic threats seriously, and cooperate better with other nations and WHO. Acting urgently and collaboratively in these areas will allow the world to be best prepared for any future pandemic.
Hollow excuses
But the global picture does not absolve individual leaders and governments from responsibility.14 Many of the independent panel’s conclusions place the blame squarely at the doorsteps of rulers, although you will be hard pressed to find a single politician who has admitted responsibility for the extent of premature death, let alone resigned. Several have expressed contrition, but “sorry” rings hollow as deaths rise and policies that will save lives are deliberately avoided, delayed, or mishandled.
Others say they have done all they can or that the pandemic was uncharted territory; there was no playbook. None of these are true. They are self-serving political lies from the “gaslighters in chief” around the globe.15 Some attempt to defend their record by claiming that their country has done more testing, counts deaths better, or has more obesity and population density. All of these may contribute, but counting methods or population factors do not explain the sheer scale of the variation in performance.
If citizens feel disempowered, who might hold negligent politicians to account? Experts in science might do so, but official scientific advisers have often struggled to convince politicians to act until it is too late or kept silent to avoid public criticism. So might doctors, with their responsibilities to public health.16
The media might help here, remembering their duty to speak truth to power, to hold elected officials accountable. And yet much of the media is complicit too, trapped in ideological silos that see the pandemic through a lens of political tribalism, worried about telling pandemic truths to their readers and viewers, owners, and political friends. In fact, truth has become dispensable as politicians and their allies are allowed to lie, mislead, and repaint history, with barely a hint of a challenge from journalists and broadcasters. Anybody who dares to speak truth to power is unpatriotic, disloyal, or a “hardliner.”
Ministers in the UK, for example, interact with the media through sanitised interviews, stage managed press conferences, off-the-record briefings to favoured correspondents, and, when the going gets tough, by simply refusing to appear. It is this environment that has allowed covid denial to flourish, for unaccountability to prevail, and for the great lies of “world beating” pandemic responses to be spun. “The most important lessons from this pandemic,” argue Bollycky and Kickbusch, “are less about the coronavirus itself but what it has revealed about the political systems that have responded to it.”17
How many excess deaths does it take for a chief scientific or medical adviser to resign? How long should test and trace fail the public before a minister of health or chief adviser steps down? How many lucrative contracts for unscientific diagnostic tests that are awarded to cronies or errors in education policy will lead to a ministerial sacking?
Getting redress
Where then should citizens turn for accountability, if they don’t find it in their leaders and feel unsupported by experts and the media? The law remains one form of redress, and indeed some legal avenues, including criminal negligence and misconduct in public office, are being explored,1819 although proving any such claims will be difficult and drawn out. But the notion of murder, at least “social murder,” is hard to shake emotionally, and strengthens with every denial of responsibility and every refusal to be held accountable or to change course.
That leaves three options. The first is to push for a public inquiry, as The BMJ and others argued for in the summer of 202020—a rapid, forward looking review rather than an exercise in apportioning blame that will identify lessons and save lives. The second is to vote out elected leaders and governments that avoid accountability and remain unrepentant. The US showed that a political reckoning is possible, and perhaps a legal one can follow, although research suggests that mishandling a pandemic may not lose votes.21 The third is for mechanisms of global governance, such as the International Criminal Court, to be broadened to cover state failings in pandemics.
In the UK, which was responsible for about 1% of global deaths in the 1918-19 flu pandemic and now accounts for 5% with a smaller proportion of the world’s population,922 elections are a few years off. As the current government holds a parliamentary majority, avenues for redress seem blocked. What’s left in these circumstances is for citizens to lobby their political representatives for a rapid public inquiry; for professionals in law, science, medicine, and the media, as well as holders of public office, to put their duty to the public above their loyalty to politicians and to speak out, to dissent lawfully, to be active in their calls for justice, especially for disadvantaged groups.
The “social murder” of populations is more than a relic of a bygone age. It is very real today, exposed and magnified by covid-19. It cannot be ignored or spun away. Politicians must be held to account by legal and electoral means, indeed by any national and international constitutional means necessary. State failures that led us to two million deaths are “actions” and “inactions” that should shame us all
“I came to realize that, compared to reality, my story is as tame as a holiday postcard.”
Alan Cassels Retweeted
Ken Milne MD
@TheSGEM
·
Stories like this add to my skepticism about medical research.
Nancy Olivieri: How John le Carré changed my life
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/12/22/nancy-olivieri-how-john-le-carr-changed-my-life.html
Alan Cassels
@AKECassels
·
6h
Hosted by the Therapeutics Initiative
@Drug_Evidence
@samizdathealth
@DrDavidHealy
·
8h
Talk next Wednesday at TI in Vancouver on the effect of drugs on Sex torpedoes Evidence Based medicine
https://www.ti.ubc.ca/2021/01/12/feb-10-therapeutics-initiative-best-evidence-webinar-sex-and-post-ssri-ebm-dysfunction/
@RxISK @joanrlaporte @AKECassels @pauljohnscott @Fiddaman @leoniefen @SimonBreidert @PatrickDHahn @billiamjames
Alan Cassels and Billiam James are in Victoria and Vancouver.
‘Seroxat’ offspring, born of a Calgarian, headed off to Canada aged 18 having got herself a job on a stud farm in London, Ontario, then a job on a ranch near Nanaimo, then a server, then a dog walker, then 3-months backpacking in India, and now has started studies at a college in Victoria for four years for social work. All in all, ten years.
We don’t speak much of the left-behind, but the left-behind can make strides and hopefully get to where they are going.
She torpedoes everywhere on her bike – thanks for the perfect photo, Alan
https://twitter.com/AKECassels
Looks like Vancouver and Victoria BC are the places to be…
She would like me to relocate there and I am giving this serious consideration.
Victoria – Scottish-like scenery, great climate – the perfect home for writing … a great last adventure for the Seroxat mom?
(Our adventure to Tofino in her room-mate’s dodgy car – “what’s that funny noise mum?”
Its Christmas time, snow, howling rain, dark. We have a flat. Out we jump and flag down the only one vehicle in ages. He happens to be hunky, religious, and scrambles around for the completely rusted-up, never used, jack, under a weird looking spare tyre. All done, we all hug)
Shipwreck
“His latest book Shipwreck of the Singular charts falling life expectancies across the Western world and links these to the greatest concentration of Fake Literature on earth which centres on the medicines our doctors give us.”
‘The Constant Gardener’ …
Obviously very exciting times for the Seroxat mom. Your daughter has done so well because, as we often say, the Seroxat user is only part of the suffering that ripples from their centre. Let’s get Covid sorted now so that you may fulfil your dream – if you can ever leave Scotland behind. Maybe a long vacation would be a good start?
Very lucky to have a 180 degree view of loch mountains and forests which is what I take from Scotland and the currently non-existent traffic and non-existent people – I feel this whole experience can open up new reservoirs of thought. Just miss my little go-getter who embraces what the world has to offer. Her adopted dog from India is stuck around Delhi but should breeze in to Vancouver airport soon, the agricultural protests in India holding up his transit. She volunteered in a stray animal rescue during her trip and she has this amazing knack of forging firm friendships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k44bjSdz9qc
Nice to find ‘jewels in the crown’ and those with a common aim.
Thanks Mary, as we sail in with Shipwreck … today it arrived!
Another prize winning title …
Dr. Nancy Olivieri @DrNancyOlivieri
·
2m
! In my @UofT #Pharma course we use 2 days to discuss medical scandals incl #Study329-about 364 days less than necessary. Need another course (?two) on these alone.
@PloederlM I know you’ve seen this but others may have not: #Study352 TY @Mad_In_America
https://madinamerica.com/2019/12/the-whistleblower-and-penn-a-final-accounting-of-study-352/
Dr. Nancy Olivieri @DrNancyOlivieri
Replying to @DrNancyOlivieri
Infamous #Study329 of #SSRIs in which #Pharma & its paid researchers covered up severe harms incl #suicide – in *adolescents.* Nice. Massive effort was undertaken by
@JoannaLeNoury @DrDavidHealy @psychepi et al to expose this deceit:
https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4320
What happened?…2/3
Dr. Nancy Olivieri @DrNancyOlivieri
Replying to @DrNancyOlivieri
Nothing.
Peter Doshi reports the tragedy and scandal: https://bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4629… (another prize winning title)
This is why anyone who prescribes a drug needs to see *all* the data – not only what #Pharma & its payees decide to show the world Pinned tweet by @eturnermd1 says it all.
https://twitter.com/eturnermd1
Now you see ’em, now you don’t …
June Raine of MHRA has spoken at last – but still has not published any update
More data are ‘continually becoming available for this older age group’ and the MHRA’s Public Assessment Report ‘will be updated to reflect this’, she said.
(GPs should ‘reassure’ older patients Oxford jab is safe and effective, says MHRA
Older patient Oxford vaccine
Costanza Pearce
03 February 2021
GPs should advise their older patients that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective in those aged over 65, the medicines regulator has said.
It comes as France’s health authorities have joined several other European countries including Germany, Sweden and Belgium in recommending that the Oxford vaccine should not be given to older patients.
But the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that it is ‘confident’ in its decision to authorise the vaccine in those over 65, based on scientific evidence.
MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said: ‘Current evidence does not suggest any lack of protection against Covid-19 in people aged 65 or over who receive Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca.
‘The data we have show that the vaccine produces a strong immune response in the over 65s and that it is safe.’
She added: ‘We are therefore confident in our decision to authorise the vaccine in this age group and everyone in this age group who has received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine can be reassured that it works and is safe.’
GPs have not been instructed to offer an alternative vaccine to any patients expressing concerns about receiving the Oxford jab, an MHRA spokesperson added.
NHS England was approached for comment.
Dr Raine added that the MHRA’s decision ‘is in line with that made by the European Medicines Agency’, which has authorised the Oxford vaccine in adults aged 18 and above – including over 65s.
More data are ‘continually becoming available for this older age group’ and the MHRA’s Public Assessment Report ‘will be updated to reflect this’, she said.
It comes as a new study has suggested that the Oxford vaccine may reduce transmission by 67%, as well as ‘sustained protection’ of 76% during the 12 weeks between doses.
And yesterday the health secretary announced that the NHS has vaccinated more than half of all people in their 70s and nine in 10 over 80s against Covid.
This ‘elderly person’ was vaccinated yesterday but with the PfizerbioNtech vaccine. Shall now be taking full notice of news regarding the mixing of vaccines which was the talk of the NHS staff on duty. They find this quite favourable – I’m not yet convinced as I think it may be a cover-up for not having enough of the Pfizer doses for a second jab for all of us who’ve had our first!
June Raine made the briefest of appearances on BBC1 News this evening. She simpy assured viewers that there was nothing to worry about ,the vaccines are safe and everyone should go ahead and get vaccinated. The majority of people will not know where they can get hold of the info below , I guess relatively few would decide against if they did know the full details but would likely spread the word All she had to do was add to her statement that people could see the data for themselves. RE: CSC 29847 -RE: Covid vaccines
Inbox
MHRA Customer Services
1:50 PM (7 hours ago)
to me
Dear Susanne
Thank you for your email.
Further to our response of 21st January we are pleased to confirm we have now published the data and this is available to view at the following link of our website page below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-adverse-reactions
Kind Regards
Peter
MHRA Customer Service Centre
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU Telephone 020 3080 6000
I’m so anxious and scared to have a vaccine that was produced within 7 months when it takes 7 years to do proper trials on a vaccine.
I had my life destroyed on SSRIs and still today I suffer massively in my life as a result of the damaged caused. Yet still MHRA and drug company’s still deny my harm and at the same time give treatments for the exact same cause of the problem their drug caused me. How the fuck do Scientists not see this contridiction?
Corruption is the only words I can come up with. If these people really cared about the effects of their products they would also be interested in the harms done.
My life means nothing to them nor does anyone else’s life mean anything to them either.
Truth is truth, lies are lies, which group do you want to belong too? And our lives are supposed to be in their hands?
We have to take back control of our safety!
I want a pure honest independant MHRA to keep us all safe one that is not corrupted by Pharma.
Pharma are behaving like illegal drug dealers. If they truly cared about patients they would be concerned about public concern about their practices.
Ring any bells, Anne-Marie…
The full article as highlighted by Susanne, with a RR in Wales, her comment is below –
‘Social murder’
Juan Gérvas @JuanGrvas
·
1h
How many excess deaths does it take for a chief scientific or medical adviser to resign? “Social murder” Engels
Asesinos sociales, de Engel (1845) a la pandemia #covid19 ¿Cuántos muertos para dimitir los “expertos” y los “coordinadores” de alertas?
Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n314
Extract:
If citizens feel disempowered, who might hold negligent politicians to account? Experts in science might do so, but official scientific advisers have often struggled to convince politicians to act until it is too late or kept silent to avoid public criticism. So might doctors, with their responsibilities to public health.16
The media might help here, remembering their duty to speak truth to power, to hold elected officials accountable. And yet much of the media is complicit too, trapped in ideological silos that see the pandemic through a lens of political tribalism, worried about telling pandemic truths to their readers and viewers, owners, and political friends. In fact, truth has become dispensable as politicians and their allies are allowed to lie, mislead, and repaint history, with barely a hint of a challenge from journalists and broadcasters. Anybody who dares to speak truth to power is unpatriotic, disloyal, or a “hardliner.”
Ministers in the UK, for example, interact with the media through sanitised interviews, stage managed press conferences, off-the-record briefings to favoured correspondents, and, when the going gets tough, by simply refusing to appear. It is this environment that has allowed covid denial to flourish, for unaccountability to prevail, and for the great lies of “world beating” pandemic responses to be spun. “The most important lessons from this pandemic,” argue Bollycky and Kickbusch, “are less about the coronavirus itself but what it has revealed about the political systems that have responded to it.”
Hollow Excuses
I bent over backwards with the use of Seroxat in my life to point out all the serious shortcomings I was up against and every single doctor and associated medic in my care should have been hauled over the coals for their unscrupulous behaviour, but, who would do this?
My formal complaint to the surgery to address issues of bullying and persecution where a meeting was held with the practice manager (a friend), the practice nurse (a friend) and the Doctor herself (a friend), she picks up the phone and calls the Doctor and Dental Union of Scotland. I get a letter telling me so.
My complaint to the Clinical Director at the mental hospital as to his psychiatric consultant’s negligence was met with him calling NHS Highland to discuss the matter. They decided between them not to pursue the matter.
My complaint to the Scottish Ombudsman led to her telephoning the surgery to query their behaviour. The response I received from her was just a repeat of the prevailing attitude.
Not one person reached out to me.
In each instance, it seemed I was wearing the invisibility cloak.
And where was the owner of the practice while all this was going on? Busy building up private practice empires in Canada.
His phone call to me was unapologetically unsoundly nasty.
What do you do you do when you fail, you build it all up again. His patient responses on Canadian health sites were largely along the lines of ‘good riddance’.
A whole generation of the SSRI-harmed is under the radar and,
Anne-Marie is perfectly correct as a paid-up member of the Castaway’s Club …
From Rapid responses thebmj
06 February 2021
Re: Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant Kamran Abbasi. 372:doi 10.1136/bmj.n314
Dear Editor
History is littered with examples of the atrocities which ensue when doctors abandon their traditional principles and judgement in favour of unquestioning subservience to government diktat – medical involvement in torture, human experimentation and psychiatric punishment of political dissidents being familiar examples.
Abbasi takes as axiomatic that there was no prior immunity in the population, that lockdowns are effective, that computer modelling is realistic, that statistics have been accurate and that WHO statements are reliable. All of these parameters have been widely challenged by knowledgeable and conscientious researchers whose findings were often disregarded, censored or vilified.
From a medical perspective, it was clear early on in the crisis that disregarding clinical acumen in favour of blind obedience to abnormal ventilation measures, reliance on an unsuitable laboratory test for diagnosis and management, and abandoning the duty of care to elderly hospitalised patients and those awaiting diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases, would create severe problems down the line.
Doctors who had empirically found effective pharmaceutical remedies and preventative treatments were ignored, or worse, denigrated or silenced. Information regarding helpful dietary supplements was suppressed.
This was further compounded by rule-changes to death certification, coroners’ instructions, autopsy guidelines, DNR notices and the cruel social isolation policy enforcement regarding family visits to the sick and dying.
When medical professionals allow themselves to be manipulated by corrupt politicians and influenced by media propaganda instead of being guided by their own ethical principles and common sense based on decades of clinical experience, the outlook becomes very bleak indeed.
Historically, public respect for and trust in doctors has exceeded that awarded to politicians. The unquestioning capitulation of medicine to an authoritarian executive and predatory corporate power may have undermined the doctor-patient relationship for a generation.
Competing interests: No competing interests
06 February 2021
Janet Menage
GP retired
None
Wales, UK
And in comparison with detailed info above:-This site is intended for health professionals only (ignore this heading on Pulse Today)
It’s A massage printed in a journal for GPs who could use it to gain very dubious consent for vaccinations. Ssurely not?! ‘Every report matters’ says June R. There’s no information regarding what other medications were being taken by the group who did report adverse reactions …..is the number of reports that she thanks people for reporting, reasonable enough to make conclusions from? Is the MHRA ignoring this still by just collecting numbers and simplified data?
Home News Clinical areas Immunology and vaccines Approved Covid vaccines are safe, says ‘reassuring’ MHRA report
Approved Covid vaccines are safe, says ‘reassuring’ MHRA report
covid vaccines safe says MHRA
Sofia Lind
05 February 2021
The vast majority of side effects reported in the UK for the first 7.4 million doses of Covid vaccines that were administered have been ‘mild and short lasting’, the MHRA has said.
The most commonly reported side effects were a sore arm, fatigue and mild flu-like symptoms, according the first yellow card scheme summary report on Covid vaccines from the the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
These short-lasting side effects ‘reflects a normal immune response to vaccines’, the MHRA said, adding that the findings were ‘reassuring’.
The safety update report was based on detailed analysis of data up to 24 January 2021, at which point 5.4 million first doses of the Pfizer jab and 1.5 million doses of the Oxford jab had been administered, in addition to half a million second doses, mostly with the Pfizer jab.
At the time:
16,756 yellow cards had been reported for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine;
6,014 had been reported for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine; and
50 had been reported where the brand of the vaccine was not specified.
This means that, for both vaccines, the overall reporting rate was around three yellow cards per 1,000 doses administered, the report added.
The report said: ‘For both vaccines, the overwhelming majority of reports relate to injection-site reactions (sore arm for example) and generalised symptoms such as “flu-like” illness, headache, chills, fatigue (tiredness), nausea (feeling sick), fever, dizziness, weakness, aching muscles, and rapid heartbeat.
‘Generally, these happen shortly after the vaccination and are not associated with more serious or lasting illness.’
In December, GPs were told not to give the Pfizer vaccine to patients with a history of ‘significant’ allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food, following two incidents related to the vaccine.
However this advice was updated by NHS England in early January to say these patients could receive ‘any’ Covid vaccine as long as they are not allergic to any specific vaccine ingredients – although patients should still be monitored for 15 minutes following injection with the Pfizer jab.
Today’s MHRA report said: ‘Widespread use of the vaccine now suggests that severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are very rare (less than 1 in 10,000 people receiving this vaccine), and have been reported at a rate between 1 and 2 cases per 100,000 doses administered.’
It added that ‘similar reporting’ was seen in the US with the same vaccine and noted that ‘anaphylaxis can also be a very rare side effect associated with most other vaccines’.
‘Following very substantial exposure across the UK population, no other new safety concerns have been identified from reports received so far,’ the report said.
MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine thanked ‘everyone who has reported potential side effects’ via the yellow card scheme, as ‘every report matters’.
She added: ‘The data we have collected provides further reassurance that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and continue to meet the rigorous regulatory standards required for all vaccines. We remain confident that the benefits of these vaccines outweigh any risks.
‘Our priority is to ensure the public have safe and effective vaccines and we will continue to analyse, monitor and review all the safety data for these vaccines.’
Over 10 million people had received their first Covid vaccine dose in the UK as of Wednesday this week.
June R of the MHRA – Why in your happy clappy massage on the 5th Feb (above) did you not mention this concern which you surely must have known about?
It depends which version we read online as to how long it will take to tweak the Astra Zenika vaccine and how safe it will be especially for ‘elderly’ (elderly seems to have a shifting age group)
Re South Africa Variant
By Yueqi Yang
6 February 2021, 21:25 GMT
Updated on 7 February 2021, 11:42 GMT
Shot doesn’t appear to protect against mild, moderate cases
Early data of the study is due to be published Monday, FT saysOxford/AstraZeneca jab fails to prevent coronavirus from South African strain: Study
WION Web Team
London, United Kingdom Published: Feb 07, 2021, 07.37 AM(IST)
Among coronavirus variants currently most concerning for scientists and public health experts are the so-called British, South African and Brazilian variants, which appear to spread more swiftly than others
The study from South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand and Oxford University showed the vaccine had significantly reduced efficacy against the South African variant, according to a Financial Times report published earlier in the day.
Among coronavirus variants currently most concerning for scientists and public health experts are the so-called British, South African and Brazilian variants, which appear to spread more swiftly than others.
“However, we have not been able to properly ascertain its effect against severe disease and hospitalisation given that subjects were predominantly young healthy adults,” the AstraZeneca spokesman said.
The trial, which involved 2,026 people of whom half formed the placebo group, has not been peer-reviewed, the FT said.
“Oxford University and AstraZeneca have started adapting the vaccine against this variant and will advance rapidly through clinical development so that it is ready for Autumn delivery should it be needed,” the AstraZeneca spokesman said.
Earlier this week, Astra’s executive vice president for biopharmaceutical research scaled back expectations for how the vaccine would work against the variant.
And in ‘Bloomberg ‘on the same day June R said her massage to the nation.
A large U.S. study of the AstraZeneca shot will also include data on virus variants, as well as showing more definitively how well the vaccine works in people age 65 and over, Pangalos said. Results from that study are due in the next four to six weeks, he said.
And in all of this, where are the UK Government? – still sorting out the hotels in which to quarantine people who arrive here. Hoteliers are ready and waiting; some air travellers are arriving expecting hotel accommodation for their 10 days, only to be told that “they must quarantine – it’s the LAW” somewhere. Who checks this out? “It’s not needed, they MUST quarantine it’s the LAW – no ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, it’s the LAW! They reckon, apparently, that all will be set to go in ANOTHER COUPLE OF WEEKS! – and even then will only cover travel from a selection of countries, leaving the cunning to break their journeys and arrive here from an acceptable country. All this continues and the virus flourishes by changing course periodically. How many more deaths do we need to see before they call a halt to all this dithering? It’s time we called out “Enough!” – in just the same way as we should when it comes to drug wrecks.
Waste not. want not and let’s not lose face . Boris has made an ‘optimistic’ statement today now the news is spreading along with the variant that UK will continue using Astra Zeneca vaccine against S African variant S Aftica stated they will not be using it. Neither will USA .