There follows a guest post by retired dentist Dr. Mark Shaw, who says the culture of silence and compliance exposed in the Shrewsbury maternity scandal, where doctors kept their heads down and their mouths shut about things which ran counter to the prevailing ideology, is also doing harm in the Covid vaccine rollout.
The Shrewsbury maternity scandal is the latest example of a failing NHS. It is both shocking and unsurprising at the same time that such failures should become exposed over a period of many years. Those who listen to Mike Graham’s excellent Talk Radio show will hear one caller after another ringing in about their horrendous NHS experiences – day after day, week after week. There is no virtue-signalling clapping here.
What appalled me most was Sajid Javid’s speech in which he condemned this particular NHS institution and blamed everyone in it without accepting personal (governmental) responsibility. The word ‘sorry’ came up in such a detached and cold manner that it almost seemed as if he was trying to make the public feel sorry for him having to deal with the hospital concerned.
I trained with medical students and nurses and made friends with many of them while at University. They all genuinely wanted to help people and I knew that they wanted to become healthcare professionals with the sole intention of making patients better if they were to fall ill. So how does a ‘Shrewsbury’ happen? It is the result of many things but a failure of Government policy and correctly managed funding is highest on the list and for that reason it is a disgrace for Sajid Javid not to acknowledge that and admit some culpability.
Another factor is GMC negligence and servile deference to Government direction. The NHS has been allowed over a number of years gradually to shut off direct face-to-face contact between patient and Doctor. A ‘them and us’ culture has pervaded through other healthcare staff and the system and patients’ queries and concerns are considered an inconvenience or even a nuisance. The GMC has made it difficult or even career ending to speak out in the interests of patients and whistle-blowing is so risky for staff that it is now a potentially useless patient safety mechanism. In my last article I wrote about the abandonment of the principles of good clinical practice and referred to the issue of blanket therapies and ideologies and why they should have no place in clinical practice (indiscriminate mass emergency vaccination being an example). According to the Shrewsbury Report it seems that doctors and nurses at the hospital had determined that an unwritten or non-publicly declared blanket ‘no caesarian birth’ policy was in force. These governance and good practice ethical issues lie at the GMC’s door.
We’ve seen similar things happen in the Government’s handling of the pandemic. Patients should never be made to feel guilty if sceptical or not fully compliant and obedient. They shouldn’t be made to believe that a particular treatment or course of action is absolutely necessary and very safe regardless of individual risk profile. The public weren’t allowed to debate, query or have concerns about Covid vaccination or be warned about the possible future implications, such as perpetual boosters or the lack of long term studies to evaluate the safety of this blanket strategy.
Another news headline in the last few weeks reported compensation for the destroyed livelihoods of sub-postmasters, where those in power were responsible for the abysmal failure to protect the innocent. It’s another example of government’s capacity to do severe harm and make dreadfully wrong decisions and policies that the public have to climb a mountain to challenge. A mountain that may take (and did in this example and those of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust scandal) years or decades to scale before the truth is revealed – and then only to find that the politicians or other persons responsible are no longer accountable.
We need laws and a justice system that can see what is happening or unfolding in front of our eyes through complete transparency and openness. No longer can we allow ’emergency pandemic laws’, freedom from liability for pharmaceutical companies, the withholding of ‘sensitive’ public health information (e.g. Pfizer trial documents), media suppression of expert opposing views or any type of pressure on healthcare professionals to keep quiet. The justice system needs antennae for those signs of corruption and then needs to halt it in its tracks and to take action against any authority or ‘expert’ that attempts to evade the safeguards wrapped in long held principles such as those that underpin medical ethics, freedom and the principle of being innocent unless proven guilty. I am absolutely convinced that, unless these issues are urgently addressed, the vaccination of young children against Covid has all the ingredients of the next scandal just waiting to let history record for posterity.
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