UKRAINE: Hysterical Western Reaction, Retaliation – May Lead to Wider War
By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | February 26, 2022
Russophobe, germophobe, it’s all the same.
I simplify. But it’s striking how the loudest Russophobic voices include all the same voices which were similarly hysterical about Covid – the mainstream media, the Labour Party, and the liberal elite (which includes much of the Conservative Party), while the few voices calling for even a modicum of restraint or understanding of Russia include anti-lockdown Farage (on GB News) and Trump, both of the Right. Piers Corbyn and Jeremy Corbyn, virtually alone on the Left have spoken up, while Starmer has forced 11 of his MPs who signed a Stop The War statement to withdraw their signatures.
The Labour Party in fact has tried to outflank the Tories on the Right, demanding the silencing of RT, the Russian broadcaster.
The Ukraine crisis rubs home the same messages we received loud and clear during the Great Covid Hysteria: Left and Right are meaningless now, the default option for any untoward contingency arising is to go to panic stations, muzzle any dissent, and bring in restrictions/interventions/sanctions without a thought about the side effects, or even direct consequences.
Just as Covid lockdowns were imposed regardless of wrecking society and economy, so the West is now imposing drastic sanctions on Russia without anybody even asking the question: well, might not Russia retaliate, with cyber attacks for example? It’s not appeasement to pause to consider if our moves might backfire, that’s just plain prudence and a sense of responsibility. And what about gas and petrol prices? Collapsing stock markets? Sterling, anyone?
Nor is it appeasement to appreciate that the problem didn’t begin just yesterday, that the West was asking for trouble sooner or later when it incorporated much of the former Soviet Union into its own sphere of influence (NATO membership), and started to establish forward military positions in Ukraine even though formally Ukraine was not a member of NATO. We poke the Russian bear and then cry in horror when it responds by showing its claws.
Grabbing other people’s land is always wrong. But tell that to the Americans, who have endorsed Israel’s annexation of Palestinian and Syrian territory without even a semblance of support from the inhabitants. The Americans have also stationed military forces in North East Syria, denying access to the region’s oil by the Syrian government, pretexting a pseudo-mission of ‘keeping ISIS out’ – when ISIS no longer poses any real threat. Tell NATO ally Turkey which mounted a similar ‘peacekeeping’ mission across its border into North West Syria, killing hundreds of Syrian government forces in the process and sustaining in control a local jihadi regime. Nobody in NATO breathes a word against any of this.
It’s not all bad news. The aggravation of the already dire energy situation is creating a new equation: people are realising you can have zero emissions, or you can be warm.
However, looking at the downside, the conflict over Ukraine could harm the cause of freedom supporters if the perception grows that we are siding with the nation’s enemies. Some might even say that our support for peace is toxic. But what is there to lose? We are demonised, harassed and persecuted already. And nobody else is interested in making peace, only in pouring fuel on the flames with arms supplies and punishing Russia with backfiring sanctions.
Putin may be making the same calculation, that he has nothing to lose. The West spurned feelers he put out about a neutral status for Ukraine, application of the Minsk accords on a settlement for the Eastern areas, and revival of arms limitation treaties. Why not go the whole hog and practise the same regime change tactics the West used or tried to use in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria?
Peter Ford is a global affair analyst and former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).
Dublin and Monaghan – Britain forgets its recent history of “unleashing war in Europe”
By Gavin O’Reilly | OffGuardian | February 26, 2022
In the early hours of Thursday morning – in what will perhaps finally result in the COVID-19 mainstream media narrative being permanently banished from the headlines – almost nine years of Western provocations via its Eastern European proxy state Ukraine would culminate in Russia launching a military intervention into its Western neighbour.
With attempts to peacefully resolve the situation peacefully by Moscow over the past several months ultimately proving fruitless due to Kiev failing to implement its side of the Minsk Agreements – which would see a federalisation solution in which the breakaway pro-Russian Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, located in the predominantly ethnic Russian Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, being given a degree of autonomy whilst still remaining under the rule of Kiev.
Instead, both Republics were given formal recognition by Moscow on Monday, in response to the breakdown in negotiations.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin outlining in his speech commencing the military operation that a decisive factor in launching the intervention was a failure by NATO to honour a previous agreement that it would not expand eastwards following the end of the Cold War, and that the intention of the operation is to destroy Ukrainian military infrastructure that would ultimately be used by the alliance against Russia should Kiev become a member.
One can only hope that the current situation doesn’t escalate further into a long-term conflict in which ordinary Ukrainian citizens will suffer, or indeed a catastrophic global conflict involving the use of nuclear weapons should NATO decide to intervene directly – with Ukraine having come under the influence of the US-NATO hegemony following the 2014 Euromaidan, a CIA and MI6 orchestrated regime-change operation launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend a trade deal with Brussels in order to pursue closer political and economic ties with Russia.
The immediate Western reaction following Thursday’s intervention however, was to predictably shift all blame onto Moscow and pay little to no attention to the almost nine years of provocations which had preceded it – such as Western support for the notoriously anti-Russian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard, established post-Maidan. Both of which played a key role in Kiev’s war on Donetsk and Luhansk following their secession in April 2014, a month after the historically Russian peninsula of Crimea voted to reunify with Moscow.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also accused Moscow of ‘unleashing war in Europe’, seemingly forgetting his own warmongering in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and also Britain’s not too distant history of unleashing war on its nearest European neighbour – Ireland.
In 1974, the occupied north of Ireland had been in a five-year-long grip of escalating violence – the civil rights movement, established in 1967 to seek equal rights for the north’s Irish Nationalist community, had been met with violence every time they took to the streets, being beaten and teargassed by a predominantly British Unionist police force.
This violence would eventually culminate in Bloody Sunday, the massacre of 14 civil rights demonstrators by the British Army in Derry in January 1972 – London having deployed its forces to the north in 1969, using the pretence of being a neutral peacekeeper between two warring sides as a means to counter the influence of the IRA, re-organised the same year in response to the ongoing violence, and whose membership would grow exponentially following the massacre.
Indeed, such was the violence inflicted on the Nationalist community of the north of Ireland by Britain and its proxies, that the southern 26-county Irish state would soon begin to dissent from its traditionally pro-British stance.
In 1969, during the initial outbreak of violence, then-Taoiseach Jack Lynch threatened to send troops to the north in order to protect Irish Nationalists, in 1970 government ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney would be dismissed from their posts following a collapsed trial where they were alleged to have planned to import arms for use by the IRA, and in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Irish police stood by as protesters burned down the British Embassy in Dublin.
Britain, fearing that Dublin would go on to become an official state sponsor of the IRA, decided that a message had to be sent.
On the 17th of May 1974, a Friday afternoon, three no-warning car bombs detonated during rush hour traffic in Dublin, killing twenty-seven people, ninety minutes later, another no-warning bomb would explode in the border county of Monaghan, killing seven.
300 people would suffer injuries as a result of the bombings also, with the Irish Free State returning to its traditionally pro-British stance regarding British occupation of the north in the aftermath.
These coordinated attacks, resulting in the largest loss of life in a single day during the most recent phase of conflict related to the occupation of Ireland, were carried out by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a Loyalist terrorist organisation operating under the command of the clandestine Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU) of the British army.
This use of proxy terrorist groups by Downing Street was later used as a tactic against both Libya and Syria in 2011 and into the present day, having been perfected by Britain’s unleashing of war in Europe in 1974.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront.
Financial conflicts within government advisory groups
JCVI – don’t bite the hand…
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | February 25, 2022
There’s a well known expression “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” It can be taken literally – if an animal bites the hand that feeds it, it won’t get fed. In the business or academic world, it means don’t upset your funder. It’s obvious really – if you do, they won’t fund you anymore. The bigger the amount received, the less of a good idea it is to upset the funder.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) “advises UK health departments on immunisation.”[i] The JCVI has a sub-committee specifically to advise on COVID-19 vaccines. The chair of the JCVI, Professor Andrew Pollard, recused himself from all JCVI COVID-19 meetings because he is involved in the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine at Oxford University – where he works. This was done to avoid any “perceived conflict of interest.”
Professor Lim Wei Shen was appointed chair of the JCVI sub-committee on COVID-19 vaccines. In August 2021, he stated categorically that 12-15 year olds would not be offered COVID-19 vaccines.[ii] Barely 6 weeks after that statement, 12-15 year olds were offered jabs.[iii] Barely 6 months later, on February 16th, 2022, the sub-committee issued a statement saying that, although 5-11 year olds are “generally at very low risk of serious illness from the virus”, they would be offered 2 doses of the Pfizer mRNA jab.[iv] This recommendation occurred despite the trials in children not being due for completion until May 2026.[v] We have previously noted that Professor Lim has a substantial conflict of interest: he has direct responsibility for material levels of funding received by his department from Pfizer.
At the time of writing, the most recent minutes for the sub-committee meetings are from May 2021. The sub-committee and main JCVI minutes report “Declarations of Interest” for the committee members. The Code of Practice describes the JCVI as “an independent Departmental Expert Committee and a statutory body.”[vi] Independent being the word of interest. One would expect this to mean “free from conflicts of interest”, but a closer look revealed that this was not the case.
The COVID-19 sub-committee of the JCVI has 15 core members (1 lay member). None of the members of this sub-committee declared conflicts of interests. Five of the 14 non-lay members provided additional information in their ‘non-declaration’ that revealed conflicts of interest. One, for example, declared funding from “the National Institute for Health Research, the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”, but didn’t consider any of that vaccine funding as a conflict of interest. A cursory search on the remaining nine members revealed that six had conflicts of interest – from running a COVID-19 vaccine trial to being their organisation’s representative for Pfizer. One member failed to declare that he leads the Pfizer Vaccine Centre of Excellence in Bristol.
The members work for organisations, which collectively have received approximately $1,000,000,000 – one billion dollars – from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation aims to “accelerate the development and commercialization of novel vaccines and the sustainable manufacture of existing vaccines.”[vii] No doubt the Gates Foundation would have welcomed the sub-committee’s decision.
The majority of the COVID-19 JCVI sub-committee members have conflicts of interest. These members don’t seem to realise that their research or institution receiving huge sums of money from pharmaceutical companies and/or the Gates Foundation is a conflict of interest.
Has this committee truly been able to provide an independent assessment of the risk and reward of the main products of interest of the Gates Foundation? Or has it made a decision to not bite the hand that feeds it?
Read full article here:
- [i] https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation#conflict-of-interests
- [ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RS1v7jN94w
- [iii] https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/09/nhs-rolls-out-covid-19-jab-to-children-aged-12-to-15/
- [iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-updates-advice-on-vaccinations-for-5-to-11-age-group
- [v] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04816643
- [vi] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/224864/JCVI_Code_of_Practice_revision_2013_-_final.pdf
- [vii] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-health/vaccine-development-and-surveillance
A few thoughts on COVID19 vaccination
By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | February 23, 2022
The first thing I want to say here is that there should be nothing in science that is beyond analysis and potential criticism. Because, once this happens, we can find ourselves in a very dangerous situation indeed. A place of unquestioned acceptance of the accepted narrative, with criticism enforced by the authorities.
Unfortunately, I believe this is the place we have reached with COVID19 vaccination. Here is just one example from the UK.
‘GPs have been warned that criticising the Covid vaccine or other pandemic measures via social media could leave them ‘vulnerable’ to GMC* investigation.’1
*GMC = General Medical Council. This is the body that can strike doctors from the medical register so they cannot work as a doctor.
‘Vulnerable to GMC investigation’. What a deliciously creepy phrase that is, dripping with unspoken menace, whilst pretending to be helpful. It sounds like something the Mafia would come up with.
‘I would keep quiet about this, if I were you.’ Baseball bat tapping gently on the floor. ‘No, this is not a threat, think of it as advice from a friend. We don’t like to see anybody making themselves, or their family, vulnerable, and getting seriously injured now, would we?’
It seems that, unless you prostrate yourself before the mighty vaccine, and intone ‘Our vaccine, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…’ and suchlike, you will be attacked from all sides … simultaneously. Indeed, to suggest that vaccines are not perfect in every way is the twenty first century’s equivalent of blasphemy.
‘he said Jehovah. Stone him.’
This does make any discussion on vaccines somewhat tricky. To criticize any individual vaccine, indeed any aspect of any individual vaccine, is also to be instantly defined as an anti-vaxxer. Then you will be furiously fact-checked by someone with a fine arts degree, or suchlike, who will decree that you are ‘wrong’.
At which point you will be unceremoniously booted off various internet platforms – amongst other sanctions open to the ‘vulnerable’. This includes, for example, finding yourself struck off the medical register, and unable to earn any money:
‘Hell, we ain’t like that around here. We don’t just string people up, son. First, we have a trial to find ‘em guilty, only then do we string ‘em up. Yeeee Ha!’
Spit … ding!
Yes, it seems you must support the position that all vaccines are equally wonderful, no exceptions. Try this with any other pharmaceutical product. ‘He doesn’t think statins are that great, so he obviously believes that antibiotics are useless.’ Would this sound utterly ridiculous?
But with vaccines… All are the same, all are great, not a problem in sight? I said, NOT! a problem in sight. However, I genuinely believe there are some questions which still have not been answered and simply because of the different types of vaccines that are available, no, not all vaccines are the same.
Just for starters, vaccines come in many different forms. Live, dead, those only containing specific bits of the virus, and suchlike. Now we have the brand new, never used on humans before, messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. So no, all vaccines are not alike. Not even remotely.
In addition to the major difference between vaccines, the diseases we vaccinate against vary hugely. Some are viruses, others bacteria, others somewhere in between, TB for example.
Some, like influenza, mutate madly in all directions. Others, such as measles, do not. Some viruses are DNA viruses – which tend to remain unchanged over the years. Others, e.g. influenza, are single strand RNA viruses, and they mutate each year.
Adding to this variety, some of those viruses which mutate very little, also have no other host species to hide in. Smallpox, for example. Which means that the virus was unable to run away and hide in, say, a chicken, or a bat. Others are fully capable of flitting from animal species to animal species. Bird flu and Ebola spring to mind.
Some vaccines just haven’t worked at all. For over thirty years, people have tried to develop an HIV vaccine, and have thus far failed. Early trials on animal coronavirus vaccines also showed some concerning results. Here from the paper ‘Early death after feline infectious peritonitis virus challenge due to recombinant vaccinia virus immunization.’
‘The gene encoding the fusogenic spike protein of the coronavirus causing feline infectious peritonitis was recombined into the genome of vaccinia virus. The recombinant induced spike-protein-specific, in vitro neutralizing antibodies in mice. When kittens were immunized with the recombinant, low titers of neutralizing antibodies were obtained. After challenge with feline infectious peritonitis virus, these animals succumbed earlier than did the control group immunized with wild-type vaccinia virus (early death syndrome).’2
Yet, despite all this massive variety flying in all directions, with some spike protein vaccines found to increase the risk of death (in a few animal studies), attach the word vaccine to any substance, and it suddenly has miraculous properties that transcend all critical thought. Vaccines move in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform.
Yes, of course, some have worked extremely well. The polio vaccine, for example, although I have seen some valid criticisms. Smallpox… I am less certain about. Even though it is held up as the greatest vaccine success story of all. Maybe it was. Smallpox has certainly gone, for which we should be truly thankful. It was a truly terrible disease.
My doubts about the unmatched efficacy of smallpox vaccine simply arise from the fact that diseases come, and diseases go. The plague, for example. This was the scourge of mankind at one time. It tore round and round the world and leaving millions of dead in its wake, over a period of hundreds of years.
We do not vaccinate against the plague, yet it is virtually unknown today. Cholera killed millions and millions, thousands each year in the UK alone. Now … gone. In the UK at least. This had nothing to do with vaccination either. Measles. There seems little doubt that the measles vaccine is effective. But vaccination cannot explain the fact that measles deaths fell off a cliff and were bumping along the bottom for years and long before we started vaccination programmes.
In the US vaccination did not begin until 1963. So, what happened here? The virus did not mutate, so far as we know. It did not mutate because apparently it cannot. Or, if it did, it would no longer be able to be infective. At least not to humans:
‘While the influenza virus mutates constantly and requires a yearly shot that offers a certain percentage of protection, old reliable measles needs only a two-dose vaccine during childhood for lifelong immunity. A new study publishing May 21 in Cell Reports has an explanation: The surface proteins that the measles virus uses to enter cells are ineffective if they suffer any mutation, meaning that any changes to the virus come at a major cost.’3
So, measles didn’t change, but it did become far less damaging. From around ten deaths per one hundred thousand in the first two decades of the twentieth century, down to much less than one.
Why? What I believe happened with measles is primarily that the ‘terrain’ changed. Nutrition greatly improved. Vitamins, perhaps most importantly vitamin D, were discovered and added to the food supply. Rickets and other manifestation of vitamin D deficiency were rife in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Virtually gone by 1940.
Of course treatments improved as well, although antibiotics (to treat secondary bacteria pneumonia following measles), did not come into play until the late 1940s, at the earliest.
What we see with measles is simply the fact that infectious diseases have far less impact when they hit a healthy, well nourished person (healthy terrain), than when they hit an impoverished and undernourished child caught in the war in the Yemen, for example.
So, yes, vaccines have played a role in improving human health and wellbeing, but we shouldn’t inflate their impact to the point where they have become the unmatched saviours of humankind. They have certainly not been the only thing that reduced the impact of infectious diseases. They were probably not even the most important thing. ‘Yes … how dare you say this… string up the unbeliever, I know, I know.’
Moving on, and I think this is even more pertinant to the disucssion that follows. If we cannot accept the possiblility that, at least some vaccines, may have significant adverse effects, if we will not permit anyone to look into this, in any meaningful way. Then we can never improve them. Criticism is good, not bad.
Speaking personally, I do not criticize things that I do not care about. Primarily, because I don’t care if they improve, or not. I only criticize things when I want them to be as good as they possibly can be. It is a character trait of mine to hunt for flaws, and potential problems. Both real and imagined.
Some criticism is, of course, close to bonkers. Suggesting that COVID19 vaccines contain transhuman nanotechnology and microchips of some kind that will become activated by 5G phones … to what end? ‘World domination Mr Bond. Mwahahahahaha etc.’ Quantum dots? Yes, these do exist. But they would be pretty useless at collecting informaiton, and suchlike. Give it fifty years and … maybe.
The problem here is that wild conspiracy theories are simply gathered together with reasonable science-based criticism, to be dismissed as a package of equally mad, unscientific woo-woo tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist, gibberish.
Which means that, when people (such as me) suggested that COVID19 mRNA vaccination could, potentially, lead to an increased risk of blood clots – this was treated with utter scathing dismissal. I did not understand ‘the science’ apparently. Fact check number one. ‘Oh, look… clots.’
When people questioned the ‘fact’ that the safety phases of the normal clincial trial pathway had been seriously truncated, and that some parts were just non-existent, they were told that they knew nothing of ‘the science’ either.
I looked on the BBC website to find out the ‘official’ party line on vaccine safety information, sanctioned and approved by HM Govt, and SAGE I presume. It was an article entitled ‘How do I know if the vaccine is safe?’ The information rapidly contradicts reality. They say:
- There are different approved types and brands available and all have undergone rigorous testing and safety checks
- Safety trials begin in the lab, with tests and research on cells and animals, before moving on to human studies
- The principle is to start small and only move to the next stage of testing if there are no outstanding safety concerns
The article then looks at fast track approval for vaccines against new variants
- The UK’s drug regulator says new vaccines can be fast tracked for approval if needed.
- No corners will be cut, with safety paramount.
- But lengthy clinical trials with thousands of volunteers will not be needed4
What is wrong here? Well, ‘if the principle is to start small and only move to the next stage of testing if there are no outstanding safety concerns,’ then this principle was not followed. After pre-clinical and animal testing, we move onto trials in humans. Phase I, then II and then III.
Phase I may include as few as twenty people to check that humans don’t simply drop dead on contact with the new agent (it has happened).
Phase II may include a couple of hundred individuals, and usually lasts a few months… a bit more safety, and an attempt to establish the potential size of any health benefit.
Phase III may have up to thirty or forty thousand participants. This phase often lasts for several years.
Well, with the Pfizer Biontech vaccine, the concept of waiting to move to the next stage of testing did not truly occur. Because phase II and III were combined… and the phase III trials have now been, effectively abandoned. They were not supposed to finish until May 2022 at the earliest, and now apparently, they are not going to finish at all. At least not as a double-blind placebo controlled trial.
Yet, we are still informed by the BBC, in all seriousness, that no corners were cut, or will be cut. The fact is that corners were absolutely one hundred per cent cut. Slashed to the bone would perhaps be more accurate. To pretend otherwise is simply to deny reality.
It normally takes around ten years for any drug, or vaccine, to move through the clinical trials process, with each step done in series. COVID19 vaccines took around six months from start to finish, with critical steps done in parallel, and the animal testing was rushed – to say the least. To claim that no corners were cut is nonsense. Nonsense that we are virtually forced to believe?
It is possible/quite likely/probable that vaccine development can be shortened, but please do not tell us that all the normal processes were followed. No-one is that easily fooled.
‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four[NK1] . If that is granted, all else follows.’ That freedom disappeared pretty early on in the COVID19 pandemic. I enjoyed the slant that ‘Important quotes explained’ had on the quote from Orwell’s 1984.
By weakening the independence and strength of individuals’ minds and forcing them to live in a constant state of propaganda-induced fear, the Party is able to force its subjects to accept anything it decrees, even if it is entirely illogical.
Of course, it could be that despite the speed with which these vaccines were pushed through nothing important was missed. It is almost certainly true that the standard ten years from start to finish in vaccine and drug development can be compressed, if everyone really wished. Bureaucracy expands to fill the space available.
But in general we are talking about a ten-year process, cut down to six months, or thereabouts. An additional concern is that this happened using mRNA vaccines, which represent a completely new form of technology. One that has never been used on humans before at all, ever.
We are not talking about the sixth drug in a long line of very similar drugs e.g. the statins.
- Lovastatin
- Fluvastatin
- Simvastatin
- Pravastatin
- Atorvastatin
- Cerivastatin
- Rosuvastatin etc.
Statins all do pretty much the exact same thing, in exactly the same way. Yet, each one of them still had to go through the entire laborious clincial trial process. Years and years.
‘Can we not just skip this phase…. please?’
‘No.’
‘Please?’
‘No.’
Hold on one moment, just step back, what was that at number six on this list, I hear you say… cerivastatin. You mean you’ve never heard of it. Well, it got through all the pre-clinical trials, then the animal trials. It then sailed through the human Phase II and III trials without a murmur. It was then was launched to wild acclaim. In truth that may be over-egging its real impact, which was a bit more ‘who cares, do we really need another one?’
Here from a 1998 paper: ‘Clinical efficacy and safety of cerivastatin: summary of pivotal phase IIb/III studies.’
‘In conclusion, these studies indicate that cerivastatin is a safe and effective long-term treatment for patients with primary hypercholesterolemia and also suggest that higher doses should be investigated.’ 5
Here from 2001, and an article entitled: ‘Withdrawal of cerivastatin from the world market.’
‘Rhabdomyolysis was 10 times more common with cerivastatin than the other five approved statins. We address three important questions raised by this withdrawal. Should we continue to approve drugs on surrogate efficacy? Are all statins interchangeable? Do the benefits outweigh the risks of statins? We conclude that decisions regarding the use of drugs should be based on direct evidence from long-term clinical outcome trials.’ 6
Yes, as it turns out, cerivastatin caused far more cases of severe muscle breakdown, and death, in a significant number of people. Which meant that it was hoiked from the market.
The moral of this particular story is that, even if you DO do all the clinical studies, fully and completely, one step at a time, over many years, in a widely used class of drug, your particular drug may still be found in the long term, not to be safe. Not even if it is the sixth of its class to launch.
The cerivastatin withdrawal is not an isolated event. You can, if you wish, read this paper ‘Post-marketing withdrawal of 462 medicinal products because of adverse drug reactions: a systematic review of the world literature.’7. So, what happens if you try to compress the entire ten year clinical trial process into around six months, on a completely new type of agent?
… Well then, it may be time to cross your fingers and hope for the best. But please do not insult my intelligence, or the intelligence of anyone else, by trying to tell me that vaccines have undergone: Rigorous testing and safety checks. Compared to what, exactly? Certainly not any other drug or vaccine launched in the last fifty years. ‘We rushed them through, and launched two years before the phase III clinical trials were due to finish.’ would be considerably more accurate.
Two plus two does not equal five, it never has, and it never will. However much you try to browbeat me, and everyone else, into accepting that it does. Indeed, as I write this, the simple fact is that not a single phase III clinical trial has yet ever been completed, on any mRNA COVID19 vaccine, and possibly not ever will be, in truth.
To repeat, this does not mean that mRNA vaccines may not be entirely safe. However, it has become impossible to claim that we have not seen significant adverse effects from the mRNA vaccines. Effects that were not picked up in any phase of the clincial trials. Here, from the Journal of the American Medical Association in February. One of the most highly cited medical journals in the world:
‘Based on passive surveillance reporting in the US, the risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men.’ 8
I highlighted the first bit here. Namely, the words ‘based on passive surveillance reporting in the US.’ Whilst this adverse effect was not seen, or reported in the clinical trials it was picked up by the passive surveillance reporting system a.k.a. spontaneous reporting systems.
Drug adverse event reporting systems
Frankly, it is surprising that anything at all is ever seen using passive surviellance. In the UK we have the passive/spontaneous reporting system, known as the ‘Yellow Card system.’ In this US (specifically for vaccines) there is ‘VAERS’ (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).
When I use the term ‘spontaneous reporting’, I mean a system whereby someone may (or more likely may not) report an adverse effect to a healthcare professional. They may (or more likely may not) fill in a form, whereupon it goes through to VAERS, who then look at it and can decide whether or not the adverse effect may (or more likely may not) be due to the vaccine. Same basic principle in the UK.
How good are these types of spontaneous reporting system in picking up adverse effects?
Well, as far as I am aware, only one serious attempt has been made to look at how many drug and vaccine-related events were actually reported in the US. Here, from a study by The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality:
‘Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but under-reported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.’ 9
Fewer than one per cent of vaccine adverse events are reported. Their words, not mine. Even though, in the US, unlike the UK, there is a legal responsibility to report adverse events – I believe.
When the authors of this report tried to follow up with the CDC and perform further assessment of the system, with testing and evaluation, the doors quietly, but firmly, shut:
‘Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.’
This study was done over ten years ago, but nothing about the VAERS system has changed since, as far as I know, or can find out.
In the UK the Yellow Card system may be better, or it may not be. No-one has carried out the sort of detailed analysis that was attempted in the US. However it has been accepted that:
… all spontaneous reporting schemes have a problem with numbers: the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) itself says that only 10% of serious reactions and 2 – 4% of all reactions are reported using the Yellow Card Scheme. This means that most iatrogenic* morbidity goes unreported.’ 10
*Iatrogenic means – damage/disease caused by the treatment itself.
Frankly, I see no reason why the Yellow Card system would be any better than VAERS. The barriers to reporting are exactly the same. As the US report states:
‘Barriers to reporting include a lack of clinician awareness, uncertainty about when and what to report, as well as the burdens of reporting: reporting is not part of clinicians’ usual workflow, takes time, and is duplicative.’9
In other words, reporting an adverse event takes an enormous amount of time and effort. You don’t get paid for doing it, you certainly don’t get thanked for it, and you have no idea if anyone paid any attention to it. All made worse if you are not sure if the adverse event was due to the vaccine, or not.
I have filled in yellow cards three times, and several hours of work followed each one. As directed, I searched though patient notes for all previous drugs prescribed, the patient’s medical conditions, a review of the consultations and on, and on. Back and forth from the pharmaceutical company the questions went. Until the will to live was very nearly lost.
If you wanted to devise a system to ensure that adverse effects were under-reported, you could not devise anything better. Yes, doctor, please do report adverse effects to us. The result will be endless hours of work, with no attempt to report back that what you did had the slightest effect, on anything. Thank you for your continued and future co-operation. And yet this, ladies and gentlemen, is the system we have in place to monitor and review all drug and vaccine-related adverse effects.
Which becomes even more worrying because, as mentioned before a couple of times so far, nothing else of much use is going to come out of the clinical trials. With the Pfizer BioNTech trial, crossover occurred in Oct 2020. By crossover I mean the point at which they started giving the vaccine to those in the placebo group as well. End of randomisation, end of useful data. End of … well of anything of any use.
mRNA vaccines and myocarditis
Anyway, getting back to the JAMA study. Even with all the formidable barriers in place to reporting adverse events, JAMA reported an increase in the rate of myocarditis of around thirty-two-fold, as reported via the VAERS system.
I should make it clear that this was the increase seen in the most highly affected population. Males aged eighteen to twenty-four. [Myocarditis = inflammation and damage to heart muscle]. The risk was lower in females, and also in other age groups, although still high. But, to keep things simple, I am going to focus on this, the highest risk group, as far as possible.
The first thing to say is that a thirty-two-fold increase probably does sound enormous. Another way to report this would be, a three thousand one hundred per cent increase, which may sound even more dramatic?
However, myocarditis is not exactly common. In this age group, over a seven-day period, you would expect to see around one and three-quarter cases per million of the population. Multiplying this by thirty-two still only gets you to fifty-six cases per million.
Which is not exactly the end of the world. In addition, most cases may fully recover. Although, having just said this, I have no long-term data to support that statement. The closest condition we have to go on as a comparator, is post-viral infectious myocarditis. And this has a mortality rate of 20% after one year and 50% after five years.11
Which means that myocarditis is certainly not a benign condition of little concern.
Anyway, at this point, you could argue that if around only one in twenty thousand men, in the highest risk population, suffer from myocarditis post-vaccination, then this does not represent a major problem.
It could indeed be worse to allow them to catch COVID19, where the risk of myocarditis is even higher than with vaccination. In reality, we may be protecting them from myocarditis through vaccination. This certainly seems to be the current party line. I might even agree with it… maybe. So, as is my wont, I looked deeper.
I looked for the highest rate of (reported) post-viral infection myocarditis, in younger people. I believe it can be found here. ‘Risk of Myocarditis from COVID-19 Infection in People Under Age 20: A Population-Based Analysis’ 12
Here, the reported rate was around four-hundred-and-fifty cases per million. On the face of it, this is much higher than the fifty-six cases per million post-vaccination. Approximately ten times as high. But … there are, as always, several very important buts here. There were two key factors that alter the equation.
First, in the JAMA post-vaccine study, the time period for reporting myocarditis was limited to seven days after vaccination. Any case appearing after that was not considered to be anything to do with the vaccine and was thus ‘censored’. In the study above, the time period was far longer. Anything up to ninety days post-infection was counted. A period thirteen times as long.
In addition, although it is difficult to work out exactly what was done from the details provided, the four-hundred-and fifty study only looked at young people who attended outpatients at hospital. These would have been the most severely affected by COVID19, or who had other underlying medical conditions. So, they represent a small proportion, of a small proportion …. of everyone who was actually infected. The vast majority of whom would only have suffered very mild symptoms, or none at all.
In short, we are not remotely comparing like with like here. I find that we very rarely are. We are not only going to vaccinate a small proportion, of a small proportion, of the population who are at high risk of myocarditis. We are going to vaccinate virtually everybody. So, the two populations are completely different.
Leaving that to one side, where else can we look for a comparison between the risk of post-vaccine myocarditis vs post-infection myocarditis. The CDC published this statement.
‘During March 2020–January 2021, patients with COVID-19 had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19, and risk varied by sex and age.’ 13
Their figure appears to have been entirely derived from a paper published in the British Medical Journal : ‘Risk of clinical sequelae after the acute phase of SARS-CoV-2 infection: retrospective cohort study’ 14. Different age groups were studied here which, again, makes any direct comparison tricky.
This study found a sixteen-fold increased risk, rather than a four hundred and fifty-times risk. A sixteen times risk is around half of the post-vaccination myocarditis risk reported in JAMA, in the eighteen-to twenty-four-year-old group.
Again, though, there were major differences. In the BMJ paper the observation period for inclusion of myocarditis considered to be ‘caused by’ COVID19, was one hundred- and forty-days post infection, not seven days. Twenty times as long for cases to build up.
Equally, after looking at nine million patients records over a year, slightly over two hundred thousand were diagnosed as having had COVID19. Of these, only fourteen thousand had post-infection problems, known as clinical sequelae. In this sub-group, which represents, one point two per-cent of one per-cent of the total, population there were so few cases of myocarditis that they didn’t even appear in the chart published in the main paper. You had to go to supplemental tables and figures 15
To be frank, there are far too many unknowns and uncontrolled variables kicking around here to make any accurate comparisons. However, I do not think it would be unreasonable to suggest that the risk of myocarditis post-vaccination, from these studies, is roughly the same as if you are infected with COVID19.
Once again though, we need to take a further step back. All of our figures here only make sense if all – or the majority of cases of myocarditis – are actually being picked up. What if they are not?
Worst case scenario
SAGE – the UK Governments scientific advisory group for emergencies – have been accused of scaremongering, and only presenting worst case scenarios for COVID19 hospital admissions and deaths. They are not the only ones. This is a worldwide phenomenon.
However, as Sir Patrick Vallance – one of the key members of (SAGE) – has stated, in response to such criticism.
‘It’s not my job to be an optimist’: Sir Patrick Vallance takes swipe at critics accusing scientists of scaremongering over Covid saying ministers need to ‘hear the information whether uncomfortable or encouraging.’ 16
SAGE believe it is their role to highlight the worst possible scenarios, the highest possible death tolls, and such like. So, let us now do the same, and focus on the worst-case scenario regarding mRNA vaccines and myocarditis. Whether ‘uncomfortable or encouraging’.
The worst-case scenario starts like this. If the VAERS system only picks up one per cent of vaccine related adverse effects, this means that we can start by multiplying the JAMA figures by one hundred.
Thus, instead of fifty-six cases per million, the reality is that we could be looking at five thousand six hundred cases per million, post-vaccination. Or very nearly one in two hundred.
If, in this model, we then include the possibility that post-vaccination myocarditis is as damaging as post-viral infection myocarditis, it means that one in four hundred eighteen to twenty-four-year-olds could be dead five years after vaccination.
Do I think that this is likely? I have to say that no, I don’t, really. Although this is where the figures, such as they can be relied upon, inevitably take you. Just to run you through the process a bit more slowly.
- Relying on the VAERS system, JAMA reported a thirty-three-fold increase in myocarditis post COVID19 vaccination. An increase from 1.76, to 56.31 cases per million (in the seven-day period post vaccination)
- It has been established that VAERS may pick up only one per cent of all vaccine related adverse effects
- Therefore, the actual number could be as high as five-thousand six-hundred cases per million ~ 1 in 200.
- Myocarditis (post viral infection) has a mortality rate of 50% over 5 years. So, we need to consider the possibility that post-vaccination myocarditis will carry the same mortality.
- Therefore, the rate of death after five years could be one in four hundred (males aged 18-24)
There are approximately sixteen million men aged between eighteen and twenty-four in the US.
Total number of deaths within five years (men aged eighteen to twenty-four in the US)
16,000,000 ÷ 400 = 40,000
(Divide by five for the UK) = 8,000.
Now, if I were in charge of anything, which I am not, which is probably a good thing, I would hope to have been made aware of these worst-case scenario figures. I would then immediately have begun to do everything I possibly could to verify them.
For starters I would want to know two critical things:
1: Is the VAERS system truly only picking up one per cent of vaccine related adverse effects?
2: Does vaccine related myocarditis lead to the same mortality and morbidity as caused by a viral infection?
If the answer to both of these questions were, yes, then I would have to decide what to do. And that could not possibly, be nothing. At least I would hope not. Yet, nothing appears to be exactly what is currently happening.
As you can tell, I still cling to the concept of ‘first do no harm.’ Today, with COVID19, it seems this this idea has become hopelessly naïve. The current attitude seems to be. ‘We are at war; you must expect casualties’ ‘Also, careless talk costs lives.’ So, my friend, I advise you to keep your ‘vulnerable’ mouth shut, if you know what is good for you.’
Well then, I just hope for everyone’s sake, that these figures are completely wrong. They are, after all, only a model. A worst-case scenario created using the most accurate information available at this time. However, as per the SAGE underlying philosophy, I believe it is important to present the information whether uncomfortable or encouraging.
The thing that concerns me the most is that we have a worrying signal emerging about the mRNA vaccines. A signal surrounded by a lot of noise, admittedly. Yet, the ‘official’ response continues to be to sweep the entire thing under the carpet. ‘Nothing to see here, move along.’
Postscript
As with regard to the GMC, and the threat of sanctions, as you can see, I am only following their guidance
‘Healthcare professionals must also be open and honest with their colleagues, employers and relevant organisations, and take part in reviews and investigations when requested. They must also be open and honest with their regulators, raising concerns where appropriate. They must support and encourage each other to be open and honest, and not stop someone from raising concerns.’ 17
What do you do if it is the GMC itself that may be stopping someone from raising concerns. Should I report the GMC to the GMC? I imagine they will find themselves innocent of any wrongdoing. Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes?
2: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/2154621
3: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521133628.htm
4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55056016
6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC59524/
7: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4740994/
8: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2788346
10: https://wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/psb.1789
12: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34341797/
13: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
14: https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1098
15: https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/suppl/2021/05/19/bmj.n1098.DC1/daus063716.wt.pdf
Warning to the BBC: You can’t gag TCW
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | February 23, 2022
THE BBC gets very righteous and uppity when it’s dishing out the criticism – but doesn’t like it when it’s on the receiving end.
A classic example came my way on Monday with a message from TV Licensing about a TCW Defending Freedom blog. Basically, it was asking me to ‘censor’ a sentence they didn’t like.
I wrote back to BBC Director-General Tim Davie and here I’m publishing my reply to him as an open letter. The contents are self-explanatory …
Dear Mr Davie,
I am the editor and proprietor of the website TCW Defending Freedom, which registers between one and 1.4million page impressions a month.
On Monday of this week, we published a blog about Justin Trudeau’s use of emergency powers to end the protest in Ottawa by Canadian truckers.
It contained the following paragraph: ‘For example, violent Black Lives Matter protesters have been free to run riot in the US, while peaceful pro-Trump supporters have been arrested. In the UK, minimal, even helpful, action was taken against disruptive Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain protesters, while single mothers are jailed for not having paid their TV licence fee. Unvaccinated citizens are penalised and scapegoated everywhere, while illegal unvaccinated boat immigrants are rescued by coastguards and the RNLI and welcomed generously into society.’
To my surprise, I received an email later that day from Alex Skirvin alexander.skirvin@bbc.co.uk in which he stated: ‘I am getting in touch from TV Licensing regarding your recent piece, ‘Iron fist for the truckers, velvet glove for eco-terrorists.’
‘The piece states: “In the UK, minimal, even helpful, action was taken against disruptive Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain protesters, while single mothers are jailed for not having paid their TV licence fee.”
‘This is inaccurate. Nobody is imprisoned for non-payment of the licence fee – the maximum sentence is a fine which may be imposed by a court.
‘If a court fine isn’t paid this is a separate matter, a custodial sentence may be imposed, but that is entirely a matter for the courts. In 2020, there were no admissions into prison associated with failing to pay a fine in respect of the non-payment of a TV licence in England and Wales. To ensure readers are correctly informed, please could you update the piece?’
I would like to ask you the two following questions:
Was this an authorised communication from BBC licensing?
Is it now the BBC’s official view that no one is jailed in consequence of non-payment of the licence fee?
Technically, of course, a custodial sentence is the consequence of non-payment of a fine imposed because of evasion of the licence fee. But the fact remains that the root cause of such a sentence – the sine qua non – is because offenders have not paid their licence fee.
In all the circumstances, I do not regard what our columnist wrote to be inaccurate, and I would also like an apology for being approached in this unprofessional and rather disrespectful way.
We are publishing this as an open letter on the TCW Defending Freedom website tomorrow.
Yours sincerely,
Kathy Gyngell
Editor, TCW Defending Freedom
New textbook to be published without ‘undue influence of pro-Israel groups’
MEMO | February 22, 2022
UK Publisher, Pearson, has given assurances that UK lobby groups supporting the State of Israel will no longer play a role in their editorial decision-making process in the soon to be released textbook covering the Middle East.
Pearson, a major international education company, which oversees national exams for 14- to 16-year-olds in the UK, came under the spotlight over two of its GCSE school textbooks, after revelations last year that they had been significantly altered following pressure from pro-Israel groups. GCSEs are the academic qualifications studied for by UK high school students to the age of 16.
Details of the extensive “biased” and “misleading” alterations were exposed by a report, by Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, Middle East specialists in History and in Arabic, respectively, and members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP).
Their eight-page report uncovered “dangerously misleading” changes to the books published by Pearson, titled “Conflict in the Middle East” and “The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change”, both by author Hilary Brash, which are read by hundreds of thousands of GCSE students annually.
The alterations were made following intervention by the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), working together with UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Both are amongst the most vocal pro-Israeli groups in the UK.
Pearson finally withdrew the textbooks in June. The publisher confirmed earlier this month that it is partnering with specialist educational charity, Parallel Histories, to develop new educational materials on the topic.
Writing in the Times Higher Education recently, Chalcraft urged academics to keep an eye out for bias in school textbooks. Recounting what he called the “undue influence of pro-Israel groups on a history textbook”, Chalcraft stressed the value of engagement to avoid a similar interference in the future.
Commenting on the report Chalcraft co-authored with Dickins, he said that the modified textbook “read to [me] as though it had been reworked by lawyers acting as if for a client (Israel), rather than by historians acting to educate schoolchildren about a complex history”.
Equally problematic, warned Chalcraft, was the discovery “that the pro-Israeli lobby groups had been invited into the editorial process, and had collaborated with Pearson over many months”. He revealed that no pro-Palestinian groups had been invited to the table and that “something” had gone “dangerously wrong”.
Chalcraft said that he and Dickins had been reassured by Pearson that no lobby groups are involved in the production of new materials on the topic.
An Open Letter to the Professional Bodies of Counsellors and Psychological Therapists in the UK
Therapists for Medical Freedom | February 17, 2022
We write as a group of registered counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists in clinical practice in the United Kingdom.
We are contacting you to express our grave concerns around Vaccines as a Condition of Deployment (VCOD) mandates for health and social care professionals, and the implications that these could have for our profession.
Whilst we welcome the recent suspension of the NHS vaccine mandate [1] to allow space for further public consultation, we are also aware that Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has made it clear that the debate on mandatory vaccination is far from over. He was quoted in The Times on 7th February as demanding that medical regulators send the “clear message” that healthcare workers must be vaccinated against coronavirus. [2]
The implication here is that the onus of enforcing and policing the vaccination status of healthcare workers could be shifted from employers to professional/regulatory bodies. We are concerned about the silence of our professional bodies on this matter and now seek urgent clarification on their positions.
We call upon our professional bodies to publicly reject any policy of mandating COVID-19 vaccines as a condition of registration and/or deployment amongst their membership – either now or at a future point. Furthermore, we urge them to commit to protecting the right to informed consent and bodily autonomy, both for their professional membership and the clients we serve.
In particular, we would like the professional bodies to consider and respond to our professional concerns on the following points:
1. Mandatory vaccination policies conflict with our professional ethics as counsellors and psychological therapists.
One of the core principles common to the Ethical Frameworks of all our professional bodies is that of upholding client autonomy and their right to informed consent to treatment.
As health practitioners, we rightly understand that no medical or clinical intervention can be considered universally safe. We know from our own practice that even authorised, regulated and ethically sound medical treatments can still pose significant risks and have the potential to cause harm at an individual level.
As such, suitability for any medical treatment needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis and can only be authorised with informed consent from the client (so long as they have the capacity to do so), after they have been given full and accurate information around any potential risks.
This principle of informed consent is not only vital to our ethical practice, it is upheld as a central principle within wider medical ethics and international human rights law. For example, in the UK all medical interventions in the NHS must be fully voluntary and in line with this principle of informed consent:
The decision to either consent or not to consent to treatment must be made by the person, and must not be influenced by pressure from medical staff, friends or family… If an adult has the capacity to make a voluntary and informed decision to consent to or refuse a particular treatment, their decision must be respected. [3]
In March 2015, a significant judgement about the nature of informed medical consent was made in the UK Supreme Court. [4] The court clarified that doctors must: “take reasonable care to ensure that the patient is aware of any material risks involved in any treatment,” in which, “a reasonable person in the patient’s position would be likely to attach significance to the risk, or the doctor is aware that the particular patient would be likely to attach significance to it”.
The court ruled that UK doctors can no longer rely on simply sharing the consensus of a body of medical opinion (‘the Bolam test’) as a basis for a patient’s informed consent, but a personalised risk assessment must be given. In the case of COVID-19 mandates, this means that generic claims that ‘the science is settled’ or ‘vaccines are safe and effective’ – cannot be used to justify their safety for an individual. [5]
The public and professional discourse on COVID-19 vaccination mandates are an example of how social pressure can be exerted on individuals to have a particular health intervention, even without a full individual risk assessment or any long-term safety data. As such, mandates can be considered medically coercive and in direct violation of the legal principle of informed consent.
We call on our professional bodies to recognise that coercion does not equal informed consent.
2. COVID-19 vaccines are far from universally ‘safe and effective’.
COVID-19 vaccinations use novel technologies which have been in widespread use for little more than a year, are still in clinical trials and for which by definition no long-term safety data is available.
Since the start of the vaccine rollout, we have already seen a significant shift from the COVID-19 jabs being promoted as being ‘safe and 100% effective’ [6][7][8][9] – to a recognition that there can be serious, even fatal side effects for a small minority of people. Their overall efficacy, especially in reducing transmission and preventing the spread of Coronavirus, is also far from what was originally hoped for.
Furthermore, since their general release, some COVID-19 injections have now been discontinued for use within certain demographics due to safety concerns. For example, the AZ and Moderna vaccines have been discontinued for young people in several countries after safety concerns arose around the risks of blood clots, following several high-profile deaths. In more recent months there have been emerging scientific studies showing the risks, particularly to younger males, of serious side effects such as myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination, as well as ongoing concerns about the impact of vaccines on the female menstrual cycle. Both concerns have led to the commissioning of major safety investigations through additional clinical trials.
Whatever the outcome of these investigations, the fact remains that our understanding of these novel COVID-19 vaccines and the risks they pose to human health is far from comprehensive or complete.
Whenever there is risk of significant harm from a medical intervention, especially when the treatment is newly developed and those harms could be life-threatening, it is imperative that there is free choice for the individual to refuse that treatment without fear of negative consequences.
For professional bodies to require mandatory vaccination as a condition of professional registration, for acceptance on professional training courses, or as a condition of employment, would amount to unethical coercion of its professional members. To do so would place the professional bodies in direct violation of the principle of informed consent.
We ask that the professional bodies join us in speaking out against the unethical nature of mandatory vaccination policies, and publicly affirm their commitment to the ethical principle of informed medical consent.
3. Informed consent goes beyond issues of safety and risk.
As counsellors and therapists, we recognise that assessing the safety profile of a specific intervention is only one aspect of the complex decision-making process that informs our consent to medical treatment.
An individual’s moral, spiritual and political beliefs, as well as their cultural practices, life experiences and approach to managing their health, will also have an impact on their willingness to give, or withhold, informed medical consent.
Many of us take a holistic, person-centred approach to working with our clients. As such, we believe in the validity, authority and importance of these broader factors that can be drawn upon to inform medical consent. We see these wider factors as valuable, essential and equal; individuals have a right to refuse a medical treatment on wider grounds than its official safety profile or potential side effects. We are particularly concerned about the impact of mandates on those who have complex health conditions, those who have prior experiences of being harmed by medical treatments, those who favour their natural immunity, and those with religious or ethical concerns about the development process of the vaccines.
Current government guidelines for vaccine mandates only grant ‘medical exemption’ to staff with a tiny number of officially permitted medical conditions [10], with no allowance for many broader concerns that could be central to someone deciding not to consent to a COVID-19 injection. We believe that the government has no lawful right or moral authority to draw up a set of very limited medical criteria and then insist that these are the only permitted circumstances in which someone can be officially ‘exempted’ from vaccine mandates without facing redeployment or job loss.
As counsellors and psychological therapists, we uphold the right of every individual to make an informed choice about whether to take a COVID-19 vaccination, or indeed any other medical intervention, based on their own personal circumstances and medical history. We call on our professional bodies to uphold that right for practitioners and the clients we serve.
4. Professional bodies are failing in their duty of care to members who are affected by NHS vaccination mandates.
It would be incongruent for professional bodies to enshrine the principle of informed consent within their ethical codes of conduct for working with clients, whilst their professional members are not permitted to make autonomous decisions about their own medical treatment.
Mandatory vaccination policies, and the loss of the right to informed medical consent, is causing significant psychological distress to many UK counsellors and therapists, especially those working in the NHS. Many of these affected practitioners have been loyal, paying members of their respective professional bodies for decades. The silence and seeming lack of engagement from our professional bodies around this issue is both disturbing and disappointing given how severe the consequences are for members who face job loss.
The exact number of counsellors and psychological therapists who stand to be affected by NHS vaccine mandates is uncertain, as to our knowledge, there has been no formal consultation process around this issue by any of the professional bodies.
However, Therapists for Medical Freedom have now facilitated numerous free, volunteer-run support workshops for affected therapists, which have often been full to capacity. We have also had hundreds of communications from distressed members who are under significant stress from the vaccine mandate process. Many have complained to us about experiencing an utter lack of clarity, guidance or support from their professional body.
Professional bodies have a duty to represent the interests of their paying members, especially at times where their human and employment rights are under threat in a professional context.
Therapists affected by vaccine mandates deserve better treatment and representation than they are currently getting from professional bodies. This situation must change, and we appeal to professional bodies to address this with the utmost urgency.
5. Vaccine mandates will have negative consequences for clients accessing therapeutic services.
NHS England estimated that had the vaccine mandate policy been implemented in April as planned, this would have left the NHS down by at least 80,000 staff, as many planned to leave the profession rather than comply with the policy. [11]. This number would increase exponentially if vaccines were mandated as part of the professional registration process, thereby affecting health professionals working outside of NHS services, which applies to most therapists and counsellors in the UK.
To lose a significant number of counsellors and therapists at a time of national crisis could pose significant harm to clients. COVID-19 and the wide-ranging impact of restrictions on the population has left a legacy of new and worsening existing mental health problems. The Centre for Mental Health estimates that 8 million adults and 1.5 million children will need mental health support in the years following the pandemic. [12]
Those of us who have worked to provide psychological therapies throughout this challenging time are now seeing an unprecedented rise in demand for NHS and voluntary sector counselling and therapy services, to the point where people in need now face dangerously long waiting times. [13] Across the UK, even private therapy services and individual practitioners are in short supply, with many having to make difficult decisions to turn away people in need because they simply do not have the resources to treat them. At a time of increased mental health need, vaccine mandates would therefore be detrimental for current and future clients.
We call upon the professional bodies to provide reassurance that clients’ access to therapeutic support will not be restricted based on vaccination status, either now or in the future. We also call on them to reject policies that will risk the loss of experienced practitioners, put further strain on existing services and staff, and potentially dissuade others from training to enter the field.
6. It is essential to consider the wider context to mandatory vaccination policies and to remember the lessons of history.
As counsellors and psychological therapists, when faced with an ethical dilemma, we are encouraged to look beyond the issue itself and consider the wider field and context – including any relevant historical, sociological and political factors. Therefore, when considering the ethics of vaccine mandates, we must consider more than just the risk posed by COVID-19 vs the benefits and risks of vaccination.
When we step back and consider the wider socio-political context, we can clearly see that:
- Governments do not always act in the best interests of the public they are appointed to serve, whatever their political rhetoric might be. We are seeing numerous examples of this emerging now, for example the conflicts of interests in the awarding of PPE contracts and the flouting of COVID-19 rules by senior government figures. [14]
- There have been numerous instances in human history, especially at times of ‘national emergency’, where government bodies have actively lied to the population, exploited the situation to further their own aims, or have sought to conceal important information, especially when it could harm their wider political agenda. [15][16][17]
- The health care system has a long history of being vulnerable to exploitation by political lobbyists, corporate donors or becoming compromised by internal pressures from within government or from regulatory bodies. Consider examples from our recent history – public health advice given to reassure the public of the safety of tobacco, pesticides, GMOs – which have later been proven to be manifestly unsafe, despite the proclamations of the government-sanctioned public health experts of the time. [18][19][20]
- Many authorised medical treatments have later been discovered to be causing significant harm to human health and have been withdrawn from public use, despite having passed required safety checks and being widely embraced by the medical orthodoxy of the time. [21][22][23]
- We are being exhorted to “trust the science” when there is no such thing as ‘the’ science. Rather, science has always comprised a breadth of opinions, conclusions, methods and ethical standpoints. History has shown us that public trust has not always been as safe as we would hope for in the hands of scientists and medical professionals, especially when there are financial interests at stake. [24][25]
- Politicians, pharmaceutical companies, peer-reviewed medical research, clinical trials, regulatory bodies and individual expert opinion – all of these are vulnerable to human error, corruption and conflicts of interest which are not always declared or formalised. [26][27][28]
In the context of our collective history, as ethical health practitioners, we have a responsibility to ask difficult questions if we see draconian policies such as vaccination mandates being introduced in our society. We must continue to think critically about who would profit and benefit most from such policies. Might there also be vested interests, whether in government, science and medicine or the pharmaceutical industry, that could stand in the way of open and transparent discussion? [29][30]
It is not the terrain of ‘conspiracy theory’ for therapists and other health professionals to demand that government and medical experts are scrutinised and held to account for the policies they impose upon the public. As a profession, we must make room for alternative perspectives and difficult questions without these legitimate concerns being dismissed or slandered as ‘anti vax’, ‘dangerous disinformation’ or even more alarmingly, as ‘far-right extremism’.
It is not acceptable for our Professional Bodies to simply dismiss or silence any dissenting voices within their membership, or to ignore these difficult questions. Nor is it acceptable for heavy-handed policies such as COVID-19 vaccine mandates to be supported and justified by our professional bodies on the sole basis that they are acting in line with ‘official legislation or government guidance’ without any independent analysis of the actual effectiveness, ethics, or impact of the guidelines – or any acknowledgement that governments do not always act solely in the public interest.
Our professional bodies have a duty to carefully scrutinise any mandated public health measures that compromise our medical autonomy. They must not be accepted on face value as being in the public interest simply based on the assurances of government and its approved health advisors, or pharmaceutical companies with vested interests.
Recommended Actions:
It is time for the professional bodies who represent counsellors and psychological therapists in the UK to show courage and break their collective silence on the issue of mandatory vaccination in our profession.
In light of all the above, we call on our professional bodies to:
- Uphold the values that are written and protected within their own ethical codes by publicly affirming their commitment to protecting the right of therapists and clients to freely give or withhold their consent to medical treatment without fear of coercion or punishment.
- Affirm that their commitment to upholding the right to informed consent will stand regardless of the emergence of new future variants, waves of disease or novel medical treatments.
- Engage with Therapists for Medical Freedom and other groups of concerned professionals in a process of dialogue around the ethics and legality of vaccine mandates in our profession.
- Pledge to protect the rights of therapists and clients who have exercised their lawful right to informed consent to refuse COVID-19 vaccinations.
- Use their authority as professional membership bodies to prohibit the implementation of discriminatory policies around COVID-19 vaccinations within their organisational membership and associated training institutes – and to publicly speak out against such discriminatory practices in the wider field.
- Remind their members that we each have an ethical responsibility to think critically for ourselves when assessing any government health advice, especially when it is mandated. Professional bodies should help facilitate this broader risk assessment process within their membership, especially the potentially negative impact that any existing or future public health advice might have on practitioners and clients.
- Take into account the broader historical, social and political context when assessing the ethics of mandatory health interventions. We cannot forget the harm that has been caused to human health and civil liberties when the right to refuse medical treatment has been denied to populations at other times in history.
We await to hear your considered responses on these important matters of professional ethics, legislation and human rights, and look forward to beginning a process of dialogue with you.
Yours sincerely,
Therapists for Medical Freedom
Principal Signatories:
Jennifer Ayling, Psychotherapeutic Counsellor, UKCP
Clare Beatson, Counsellor, BACP
Elizabeth Bentley, Psychotherapist, BACP
Johann Burton, Counsellor, NCS
Paula Charnley, Counsellor, BACP
Ben Harris, Psychotherapist, MBACP
Julie Horsley, Counsellor, NCS
Frances Kandler-Singer, Psychotherapist, BACP
Naintara Land, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Rachel Maisey, Counsellor, BACP
Kate Morrissey, Psychotherapist, BACP
Melanie Pickles, Counsellor, BACP
Dr. Bruce Scott, Psychoanalyst, UKCP & CP-UK
Dr. Gary Sidley, Clinical Psychologist (Retired)
Deborah Short, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Elizabeth Smith, Psychotherapist, Pre-Accred
Leanne Ward, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Sarah Waters, Psychotherapist, MBACP
Supporting Signatories:
Marc Allen, Trainee Therapist, Pre-Accred
John Bates, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Antoine Bowes, Counsellor, BACP
Dr. Faye Bellanca, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Caroline Brett, Psychotherapist, BACP
Jacqueline O’Brien, Psychotherapist, (retired)
Sheila Burchell, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Dr. Erika Filova, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Dr. June Golding, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Andrew Harry, Counsellor, UKPTA
Susan Hayes, Psychotherapist
Jessica Horton, Counsellor, BACP & BPS
Isla Hunter, Psychotherapist, BABCP
Gabrielle Lake Mitchell, Trainee Therapist, BACP
Maggie Leathley, Psychotherapist, BACP
Jane Margerison, Psychotherapist, BACP
Jonathan Martin, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Gary McKeever, Counsellor, BACP
Caroline Montanaro, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Dr. Naomi Murphy, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC & A-CP
Dr. Rachel Newton, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC & BPS
Sue Parker Hall, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Kay Parkinson, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Dr. Helen Payne, Psychotherapist, UKCP & ADMP UK
Carolyn Polunin, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Dr. Kate Porter, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Tracy Rees, Trainee Therapist, Pre-Accred
Dr. Helen Ross, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
David Scott, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Patricia Taddei, Psychotherapist, UKCP
Dr. Lucie Turner, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Dr. Alice Welham, Clinical Psychologist, HCPC
Tracy Williams, Counsellor, BACP
Dominique Wynn, Psychotherapist, (Retired)
Sign the Open Letter
Are you a Counsellor, Psychotherapist or Clinical Psychologist based in the UK who is concerned about the impact of vaccine mandates on the profession? (whether you are personally vaccinated or not).
If so, please sign the letter.
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From the Archives
There are ZERO Amish kids suffering from cancer, diabetes or autism – WHY IS THAT?
YourDestinationNow | July 8, 2023
The current population of Amish folks in America is quickly approaching 400,000, with the largest concentrations of 90,000 in Pennsylvania and 82,000 in Ohio. Amish have settled in as many as 32 US states, and have an average of 7 kids per family, so the population is growing rapidly. In a brand new, comprehensive study (as of June 2023), presented by Steve Kirsch to the Pennsylvania State Senate, it was calculated that for Amish children, who are strictly 100 percent not vaccinated (fully unvaccinated), typical chronic conditions barely exist, if any at all. … continue
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