One of the most critical concerns in medicine is the massive influence of the pharmaceutical industry over the medical profession. Our antivirals series has shown this pervasive action.
Bias exists when professional judgements from registered medical practitioners concerning a primary interest, such as the welfare of patients, may be influenced by secondary interests, such as financial gain or loss. Conflicts of interest can affect how healthcare professionals use, see and interpret evidence. Conflicts of interest, perceived or real, can also cause a huge loss of public trust in medicine, healthcare and government.
When it became clear that TV doctors Ranj Singh, Nighat Arif and Philippa Kaye had all received thousands of pounds in contracted service fees from AstraZeneca, there was, unsurprisingly, an outpouring of concern. All three doctors had been vocal in their public support for COVID-19 vaccines, of which AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria was one of the first to become available and widely used in the U.K.
All three have insisted, via X, that their payments were for promotional work relating to AstraZeneca’s nasal flu vaccine in winter 2021 only and not their COVID-19 vaccine. The Human Medicines Regulations state that celebrity endorsement of drugs is not allowed, so it is unclear how this campaign stayed on the right side of the legislation.
Whether an individual doctor’s paid promotion of a vaccine for a respiratory disease should be considered a conflict of interest when publicly recommending other vaccines for respiratory disease is probably a debate for another day.
According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)’s Disclosures U.K. database, AstraZeneca’s payment of £12,500 to Dr. Philippa Kaye was declared in 2020. Since then, Dr. Kaye has publicly supported AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine and downplayed side-effects generally from all COVID-19 vaccines, saying the side-effects “are a good thing” and “your body showing you that its immune system is working”.
Also listed on the ABPI’s Disclosure U.K. Database is Dr Ranj Singh’s payment of £22,500 by AstraZeneca, declared in 2022. He appeared on BBC Morning Live on May 7th 2024 to discuss legal action over injuries and deaths linked to AstraZeneca’s vaccine. In both cases, as the doctors failed to declare their previous paid work with AstraZeneca, we assume they must be in breach of their contracts due to Clause 24 of the ABPI’s Code of Practice, which deals with Contracted Services. It states that all contracts for such services must include a requirement that the contractor declares his involvement with the contracting pharmaceutical company whenever he speaks publicly about any matters related to that pharmaceutical company.
If the declaration of interest was not included in AstraZeneca’s contract with the TV doctors, then the pharmaceutical company would be in breach of the ABPI Code and must self-report these incidents to the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA) as breaches of the code.
Concerns about payments from pharmaceutical companies are not confined to these three TV doctors. The ABPI Disclosures database also reveals that AstraZeneca declared a payment of £5,892 in 2022 to Jonathan Van-Tam, the former Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England and member of the U.K.’s Vaccine Task Force – a payment which Van-Tam has not declared as a potential conflict of interest in academic work such as this SARS-CoV-2 study. This is not the only time that concerns have been raised over Van-Tam’s close connections to industry, with his appointment in 2023 by Moderna as a consultant causing controversy around the so-called ‘revolving door’ between public and private sector jobs.
In 2017, Tom warned: ‘The U.K. turns to Witty, Vallance, and Van Tam for leadership. Revolving doors‘? The consequence was predictable: the solution to every illness is more pharmaceuticals.
Meanwhile, another U.K. Government adviser and frequent media commentator on the benefits of COVID-19 vaccinations, including for children, Professor Peter Openshaw, was paid £2,251by Pfizer and £6,012.78 by Moderna in 2022. On September 14th 2021, Openshaw stated on BBC Today that, in relation to younger age groups having the vaccine, “If you want myocarditis, get Covid. Although there is a signal from vaccination, the signal from catching the virus is much greater in terms of inflammation of the heart.” At the time, a pre-print study put the risk of 12-15-year-old healthy boys experiencing cardiac adverse events such as myocarditis after vaccination at around four times higher than after being admitted to hospital for COVID-19.
It’s also worth noting that an individual practitioner’s obligation to declare involvement with a pharmaceutical company starts when the contract is signed, not when actual payment is made. Furthermore, the exact payment date to individual practitioners is not currently disclosed. Disclosure to the ABPI needs only to be made within six months of the end of the year in which payment was made. Meaning actual payment could be up to 18 months after the actual payment and even longer after the contract was signed. Therefore, we need much greater clarity about the exact timing of payments to highly influential doctors and the timings of when the negotiations started.
Arbitrary time limits severely hamper research into payments made by the pharmaceutical industry for disclosure imposed by the ABPI. Currently, its code of practice only requires data to be published for three years, after which they are deleted. As pointed out in a comprehensive article about the ABPI’s Disclosure U.K. database, written by retired pharmaceutical physician Dr. Alan Black, the life cycle of a medication, from preclinical phases to active marketing, can run into decades, so “time-limited transparency is not genuine transparency at all”.
Healthcare professionals are also free to refuse consent for a payment to be attributed to them in the Disclosure U.K. Database. In addition, any payments made to journalists are not required to be attributed to specific individuals; instead, they are included in an aggregated amount paid to all journalists in a given year.
Serious reform is needed and has been for a long time. Not much seems to have changed even since the ‘First Do No Harm: Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review of 2020‘, which declared the need for “a statutory requirement similar to the Physician Payments Sunshine Act 2010 in the U.S.” to properly deal with the thorny issue of “transparency of interests”.
As two registered medical practitioners, we urge Parliament to pass urgent legislation considering non-disclosure of any relationship between medical practitioners, media, pharmaceutical industry and Government a crime.
As the consequences of what has been going on for decades become more evident through the magnifying glass of the Covid panic, there is an urgent and vital requirement to salvage what is left of the credibility of medical practitioners.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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The jab manufacturers were given indemnity. Surely a private prosecution could be made against Openshaw for stating a fact on BBC Today that could not be known or proved, which he knew or should have known could cause potential harm.
“urge Parliament to pass urgent legislation….”. A bit like spitting in the wind this side of the General Election, and who knows after that? In the meantime, we’ll have to make our own choice, and maybe try to influence others as well, but I agree that there has been a loss of confidence in quite a few organisations involved in it all.
Yeah it is a bit like putting Hitler in charge of foreign policy!
I was going to cite astrophysics as a rare branch of science untainted by money and politics, can’t think of many others, … but suppose an asteroid is detected that has a tiny but non-zero chance of hitting Earth. Just imagine the propaganda war that would ensue, the right-wing do-nothing-hope-for-the best people, versus the left wing convert-entire-economy-to-war-footing (massive increase in the public sector) to save as many people as possible. Somewhat like COVID.
Down tick simply because you completely and utterly miss the point that many of use would have it all figured out from day one. I agree on the basics of the Sheeple will be told a load of crap. I utterly refute the “the right-wing do-nothing-hope-for-the best people” nonsense. You are very clearly one of the nutcases who claimed we Sceptics were all barmy and anti-vax when, in actual fact, most of us were pro-vax, anti-lies and anti drugs which lead to people dying.
I strongly suggest you are in the wrong place.
You are correct, almost, in saying “left wing convert-entire-economy-to-war-footing”. The issue here is that politicians are so frightened of doing anything which may be unpopular they almost always do the wrong thing. It is not so much about left / right, ideology or partisanship as it is about Bravery and Conviction.
Today’s politicians don’t care one iota about popularity until elections come round. Between elections 99% of MP’s do exactly what they are told to do and so long as their salaries and expense claims are paid on time they CGAF about their
constituentsplebs.To even imagine that the people matter to politicians is simply ignorance and failure to understand
our democracythe game.With a tiny, tiny few exceptions our MP’s did nothing about the theft of our liberties throughout the Scamdemic and as the Pandemic Preparedness Treaty and the International Health Regulations agreement looms it is the same few speaking up.
The vast majority of MPs are nothing more than lazy, treasonous grifters.
Have you been watching ‘Don’t Look Up’, that film with Leo the climate propagandist who doesn’t practice what he preaches?
Doesn’t this ruling date back to the days when “Doctors” went on TV to advertise cigarettes and claim they were good for you? Heck, squaddies in the first world war called them Coffin Nails because they killed you but well-paid “Doctors” (do no harm they all signed up to) were, and still are, telling people to kill themselves!
Not much in this world ever changes.
And the Church was also telling people to kill themselves during WW1.
Do elucidate.
Those that refused to fight were not only given the white feathers by feminists, but the Church also came down hard on conscientious objectors.
Why not solve the underlying problem? Abolish the law (or laws) which require prescriptions for drugs, ie, move back to a situation were drug stores sell … well … drugs and anybody who wants them can by them there. At present, the only way for the pharmaceutical industry to be able to sell most of its products is when doctors prescribe them. Corruption naturally ensues.
The so-called opoid epidemic which is about abuse of the power to presribe drugs to turn people into very lucrative drug addicts conclusively demonstrates that the original intervention of the (US) nanny state failed to accomplish what it was supposed to accomplish. How about a revolutionary new idea, namely, trust people to behave generally rational?
Have you actually read what you said? You are claiming corrupt Doctors prescribed Opioids; there is plenty of evidence to support that and I agree with you there. However, your solution is to allow anyone and everyone to buy whatever they want over the counter. Many of those people would be on free prescriptions in the UK. Your idea is to, be honest, what one may expect an opioid addict to say
Strangely, drug use was never a real problem in society until the ‘muricans started their crazy war on drugs around the middle of the last century. That’s another stupid idea which keeps backfiring and it’s high time to end this experiment. It failed horrendously and very expensively.
Considering that the present situation is highly lucrative for organized crime gangs, your statement is exactly what one would expect a drug-dealing mobster to say.
NB: I don’t really believes this, I’m just stating this to illustrate the point.
I’m not sure what you are arguing for in the post. I don’t think RW is advocating opioids being given out for free. Are you against the state giving away drugs for free, or against giving people the choice to go to hell their own way?
I am coming round to the view that all drugs should be legalised.
As an unpleasant matter of fact, people who are officially regarded as “drug addicts” do get opoids for free, or rather, paid for by the public health insurance, in Germany. That’s part of their ‘therapy’ under certain conditions. I’m no longer required to pay for this but I’m still rather annoyed that I had to in the past.
Yup, I would be annoyed too
There is also the drug related crime with people desperate to get their hits. I had someone attempting to break into my car once and that was said to be someone addicted to drugs.
I don’t quite understand what that’s supposed to mean in the given context.
Most professional beggars, especially the guys running around asking everyone (or almost everyone) for spare change, are very likely addicts working in their chosen profession, so to say. But everyone knows this¹. I’ve also entertained the thought that the backyard of the house I’m living in could really be named Abandoned Syringe Plaza at times. They also love to use it as public toilet. But that’s just what these people do: Commit petty (and not-so-petty) crimes to get money and engage in all kinds of antisocial behaviour. They’d also be doing that if their hobbies weren’t illegal unless the police would make an effort to stop this.
¹ Well, not everyone, but the police certainly does, they just usually have some ‘very good reason’ to leave them alone. Like being bought, for instance. NB: That’s a guess of mine.
It is just that addicts can get desperate so will take any opportunity to steal something, but to solve that problem drugs would have to be free, let alone legalised. But it would smash organised crime, just like tugging boats back to France would smash those Trafficking gangs.
These kind of antisocial (and usually pseudo-homeless, ie, permanently living in hostels) petty criminals do that and many of them also take all kinds of drugs. But they’d also be doing that if Heroin could be legally bought as they’re not doing this because they’re “Heroin addicated” but because they’re antisocial, pseudo-homeless petty criminals. There are also Heroin addicts who work like mad in shit jobs, say, night shifts in abbatoirs. I’ve personally known a few.
Perhaps with an age limit? Peter Hitchens is the anti-drugs guy, but as someone who only had hash in some Coffee once I don’t pay it much attention.
I have a lot of time for Hitchens and used to agree with him on this but since “covid” I have come to think that I don’t want the state to force people to keep themselves “safe”, and for the state to determine what “safe” means.
As for an age limit, that’s a good point. It’s parents outsourcing the job of keeping their kids safe to the state, but perhaps there are practical reasons to have the state continue to do that.
All hypothetical – we’re going in the opposite direction.
I wonder how this issue will play out with the new-statins, the wonder weight-loss medication. To me they have given the game away by referring to statins, which I decline to take, but what if I decline to take something that actually is a wonder drug.
My strategy is to wait and see if any plausible sceptical position emerges, but would it be censored/corrupted out of existence?
Don’t worry they will get their comeuppance. At the moment most of the population knows that something is wrong with the injection but for obvious reasons they would rather not think about it. Who wants to spend the rest of their life wondering if they have turbo cancer or not. This will pass and also the level of disability and general malaise will become more and more apparent. Very soon it will become clear that there is no point in pretending that things will get better because the visible trajectory shows that they will become much worse rather quickly. At such a point even weak-minded people rightfully conclude that there is nothing left to lose. Any fightback in our future will involve efforts to balance caring and fighting duties. Could any society realistically consider that they have a future in such an environment.
Take a look at this, that preening narcissist Singh is already trying to take big steps backwards. He should be struck off immediately, how could anyone trust him now with their’health’?
https://youtu.be/BnTjmSv8VNo?si=Rr5kHPTaYPSIrcvC
All written down baby. How many you or your surgery administered. The tidy little profits involved. The gullible people. The deaths shortly thereafter.I wouldn’t be worried that these people will escape justice. When the truth comes out they will be lucky even to make it to trial.
Don’t forget the other TV Drs like The Naked Scientist, Dr Sara Kayat, the human Windmill Dr Sara Jarvis’ think she lives Herefordshire as she was on BBC Hereford & Worcester Radio. She spent Lockdown on Jeremy Vine lecturing anyone that disagreed with this whole Psyop in her usual condescending way. She also excluded family members in the Christmas of 2021 over the Plan B.
And what about Dr (S)hilary Jones? I’m sure there are a few other high profile names missing too.
Take a look at this from Paul Weston, the stench of corruption really does run deep
https://youtu.be/BnTjmSv8VNo?si=Rr5kHPTaYPSIrcvC
There is only one question. Do you have the energy to fight it or not? Did they get away with it? They hope so. I am not a virtuous person but I would never inject someone with something just to make money or grease the machine. The custodians of your health were happy to do that. Make of it what you will.
Smugness is easy up until the point that it isn;t and it can change very quickly. This isn’t small potatoes. We are talking about the greatest betrayal of the most private relationship possible which is recognised within our legal framework. It is no joke for healthcare professionals given that they oversaw this nightmare and betrayed all of their patients on every level. I don’t wish them harm because I won’t have to.
What sort of outcome do you envisage for these particular healthcare professionals?