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The Daily Sceptic
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How Far Down Does the Slippery Slope Go?

by Dr David McGrogan
3 December 2024 1:00 PM

Sometimes, an event can be important both in terms of its immediate consequences and as a harbinger of what is to come. The passage to the committee stage of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill here in the U.K. last Friday is one such event.

The Bill, if it becomes law – which now seems likely – will legalise ‘assisted dying’ along the lines of Canada, the Netherlands, and so forth in the U.K., and thereby bring us to liberalism’s very zenith. Here, the final promise of the liberal polity – that the state exists to liberate all individuals equally and totally, even in respect of the manner in which they die and the timing of their deaths – will be realised. The Bill is therefore naturally going to have radical consequences for people who fall under its application, but it is also indicative of something truly epochal – the final unmooring of liberalism from religious constraint, such that its true nature will be revealed as it floats untethered into the heavens.

It is important to be clear about the import of this. So-called ‘slippery slope’ arguments are familiar in respect of debates about assisted dying, and plenty of them were made in the House of Commons in the debate last week. Typically, we imagine said slope ending somewhere undesirable, but recognisable – the scenario most often depicted by those opposed to assisted dying is that of the elderly or terminally ill person feeling pressurised into taking his or her own life so as not to be a ‘burden’ on loved ones (or the health service).

But we will learn in the coming decades that the slope extends much more steeply downwards beyond that point. If we accept the basic premise of modern liberalism – that the state exists for the total and equal liberation of all human beings – then we have to recognise that assisted dying for the terminally ill is really just the first step towards a final outcome in which the ‘right to die’ is absolute. It is inevitable, given liberalism’s imperatives, that sooner or later the distinction between the terminally ill and the merely ill will break down; and it is inevitable after that that the distinction between the merely ill and the healthy-but-depressed will likewise collapse. And from there matters will descend to darker places yet. Good liberals, gesturing always towards equality of opportunity, will come to insist on the equality of opportunity to die. This may take years or decades. But it will happen. And from there, all bets are off – the slippery slope will be shown to be like the side of a great mountain.

In Jack Vance’s most disturbing novel, Wyst: Alastor 1716 – the inspiration, incidentally, for News from Uncibal’s title – we find a bleakly humorous forewarning of what is in store. The first half of the story is set in the city of Uncibal, a place in the grip of a “novel philosophical energy” known as “egalism”, which aims to achieve “human fulfilment, in a condition of leisure and amplitude” through the doctrine of “mutualism”.

Central to this project is “a drastic revision of traditional priorities” so that the conditions of genuine “mutualism” can be assured; the result is the complete emancipation of every individual from familial, sexual, romantic or societal bonds, in order that they be made both equal and free. Nobody may own property and all must share everything with whomever asks. Equal access to sex must be enjoyed, so that ‘copulation’ is to be performed on demand even while nobody is permitted to try to make themselves more sexually appealing than anybody else. Children are brought up separately from parents. Almost nobody bothers to work; anywhere one finds something productive being done it is being performed by an immigrant.

Naturally enough, the results are anything but ‘human fulfilment’. Indeed, one of the favourite pastimes of the populace is the performance and observation of suicide. This takes place at the so-called “Pavilions of Rest”, of which we are told there are currently five, lying within a grand bazaar known as Disjerferact.

“The most economical operation is conducted upon a cylindrical podium 10 feet high,” the main character, Jantiff, writes home to his family:

The customer mounts the podium and there delivers a valedictory declamation, sometimes spontaneous, sometimes rehearsed over a period of months. These declamations are of great interest and there is always an attentive audience, cheering, applauding or uttering groans of sympathy. Sometimes the sentiments are unpopular, and the speech is greeted with cat-calls. Meanwhile a snuff of black fur descends from above. Eventually it drops over the postulant and his explanations are heard no more.

The next is known as Halcyon House:

The person intent upon surcease, after paying his fee, enters a maze of prisms. He wanders here and there in a golden shimmer, while friends watch from the outside. His form becomes indistinct among the reflections and then is seen no more.

Then there is the Perfumed Boat:

The boat floats in a channel. The voyager embarks and reclines upon a couch. A profusion of paper flowers is arranged over his body; he is tendered a goblet of cordial and sent floating away into a tunnel from which issue strains of ethereal music. The boat eventually floats back to the dock clean and empty. What occurs in the tunnel is not made clear.

This is followed by the “convivial” Happy Way-Station:

The wayfarer arrives with all his boon companions. In a luxurious wood-panelled hall they are served whatever delicacies and tipple the wayfarer’s purse can afford. All eat, drink, reminisce; exchange pleasantries, until the lights begin to dim, whereupon the friends take their leave and the room goes dark. Sometimes the wayfarer changes his mind at the last minute and departs with his friends. On other occasions (so I am told) the party becomes outrageously jolly and mistakes may be made. The wayfarer manages to crawl away on his hands and knees, his friends remaining in a drunken daze around the table while the room goes dark.

The last is “a popular place of entertainment, and is conducted like a game of chance”:

Five participants each wager a stipulated sum and are seated in iron chairs numbered one through five. Spectators also pay an admission fee and are allowed to make wagers. An index spins into motion, slows and stops upon a number. The person in the chair so designated wins five times his stake. The other four drop through trap doors and are seen no more.

This is all of course played for sardonic humour, and sure enough it is shortly revealed that the corpses of those who kill themselves in the Pavilions are “macerated and flushed into a drain, along with all other wastes and slops” and then made into a slurry which is “processed, renewed and replenished” at a central plant and turned into food for the city’s inhabitants. But the point is deeply serious: taken to its extreme, if people are to be equal, then why ought the matter of death be an exception? And since the only way to achieve equality in death is to give everybody the right to die when they choose, then why place any restriction on the time of the choosing, or the manner of dying that is chosen?

From those predicates, of course, it is only a very short step to a market in the provision of death, and indeed its transformation into a form of entertainment. And from there it is only a short step to commercial operations relying on the liberalisation of suicide, and promoting its deployment. From there, suicide as spectacle – suicide as pleasure – naturally follows.

Michel Foucault, in many ways the harbinger of the liberal end-state, showed that this is all far from a joke. In an interview he laid the reasoning out very plainly. Since, he argued, suicide is unique to humanity – we are the only animal that does it – we ought to celebrate it, and indeed make it an art:

We should consider ourselves lucky to have at hand (with suicide) an extremely unique experience: it’s the one which above all the rest deserves the greatest attention – but rather so that you can make of it a fathomless pleasure whose patient and relentless preparation will enlighten all of your life. Suicide festivals or orgies are just two of the possible methods. There are others more intricate and learned.

And he extended the thought with a lurid fantasy:

In my opinion a person should have the right not to be rushed, which is very bothersome.

Indeed, a great deal of attention and competence are required. You should have the chance to discuss at length the various qualities of each weapon and its potential. It would be nice if the salesperson were experienced in these things, with a big smile, encouraging but a little bit reserved (not too chatty), and sophisticated enough to understand that he is dealing with a person who’s basically good-hearted, but somewhat clumsy, never having had the idea before of employing a machine that shoots people. It would also be convenient if the salesperson’s enthusiasm didn’t stop him from advising you about the existence of alternative ways, ways that were more chic, more your style.

He even imagined the existence of places like Japanese ‘love hotels’ where couples rent a room for a few hours to have sex, but which were dedicated to suicide: “places without maps or calendars where you can enter into the most absurd decors with anonymous partners to look for an opportunity to die free of all stereotypes”. He continued, “There you’d have an indeterminate amount of time – seconds, weeks, and months perhaps – until the moment presents itself with compelling clearness. You’d recognise it immediately. You couldn’t miss it. It would have the shapeless shape of utterly simple pleasure.”

If this all would have sounded far-fetched a month ago, inhabitants of London were in the days leading up to the ‘assisted dying’ vote treated to a series of adverts on the Tube extolling the virtues of “choice”. Each depicted somebody looking forward to their own death and the alleviation of their suffering. These were funded not by a business but a charity (strictly a not-for-profit company) called Dignity in Dying. But they gave us a foretaste of a life to come, wherein public billboards – let’s, in the interests of time, not concern ourselves with targeted ads on social media or TikTok – extol the virtues of dying in particular ways, and at the hands of particular operators for an attractive fee.

The ad at the top of this post has garnered the most interest because it is the one which most nakedly and brazenly gestures towards the future that I have here laid out, but the one which I found most interesting and indicative is this one:

Notice the tagline: “When I cannot stay, let me choose how I go.” Obviously this is supposed to emphasise that ‘assisted dying’ is going to take place in the context of terminal illness. But it also gives the game away, I am sure entirely unconsciously: the point about life is that none of us can stay. We are all in this sense terminal cases. Given this is so, the logic becomes clear – we must all be free to choose how we go. And this is the direction in which matters will inevitably flow. Since it is fair for Jenny, the bass guitarist and mum with terminal cancer, then it will sooner or later become fair for Johnny, the unemployed man who sees no point in going on; fair for Sarah, the lonely old lady living in poverty; fair for Ben, the extrovert attention-seeker with an undiagnosed personality disorder; fair for Geoff, who wants to make a grand political statement; fair for Bethany, who has low self-esteem. Once permitted, there is no principled limit on the scope of assisted dying’s purview, and no principled limit on who will in the end obtain the ‘right’ to it.

This of course foregrounds the importance of the relationship between liberalism and Christianity. Classical liberalism emerged within the context and rubric of a religious society with firmly entrenched moral norms – one of which being that, since life was a sacred gift, suicide was wrong. Over time teaching softened, such that suicide became seen as a desperate consequence of depression or pain, but the central legal prohibition on ‘assisting’ suicide was retained. This was partly because of practical concerns about identifying the circumstances in which ‘assistance’ should be made lawful, but it was mostly because people were squeamish about the idea of the state sanctioning the practice. And that squeamishness derived from a basically religious impulse: the idea that life itself has intrinsic moral value.

Despite declining church attendance and declining importance of religion in public life, this squeamishness has largely endured, even while most people have no real answer for the moral values they take for granted. But we are now (certainly here in the U.K., anyway) far into the process of secularisation and particularly de-Christianisation, such that we can begin to see emerging what our culture will look like in a post-religious age. What we are glimpsing is a society that is thoroughgoingly liberal – liberal to the Nth degree, being unconstrained by the moral norms which classical liberalism took for granted. This will be a society deluded into thinking it is governed by reason and the intellect. But what it will really be is a society in which each and every individual seeks from the state what is in his or her self-interest – a true sibling society characterised by an insistent demand for the combination of freedom and equality which every atomised individual necessarily desires as his or her ideal.

There will be absolutely nothing preventing death itself becoming the subject of this remorseless and unfettered liberal drive, and nothing therefore preventing the right to die from becoming universalised, lionised and ultimately commercialised (though undoubtedly, in the interests of true equality, there will be state-run operations ‘free at the point of use’). The slippery slope will go steeply down and our passage down it will be rapid. Without a basic commitment to the sanctity of life, with the emphasis on sanctity in the strict sense, Foucault’s fantasy – Vance’s parody – is the position to which liberalism will take us. We will live in a world in which the fantasy of equality and freedom in death is a guarantee, and in which the “simple pleasure” of suicide is not merely made available, but marketed and encouraged. This future lies ahead of us; the slope is slippery.

Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.

Tags: Assisted Dying BillAssisted suicideHuman rightsLiberalismMichel FoucaultSlippery slopeSuicide

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30 Comments
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Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
3 years ago

He’s trying to save his own skin. Not me Guv! However, more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth and all that.

58
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Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

He was on record before this as opposing lockdown.

46
0
Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
3 years ago
Reply to  Moist Von Lipwig

I may have misjudged him, if I have done so then I will hold my hands up.

15
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Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

Fair enough. We all make mistakes. If you do or I do, best to admit them rather than cling to the same old rubbish in defiance of reality, as the Branch Covidians do.

12
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wiaruz
wiaruz
3 years ago
Reply to  Moist Von Lipwig

Why didn’t he resign and go public with his criticisms?

0
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  wiaruz

He went public with his criticisms at the time.

0
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Jo Starlin

Why do you assume that he’s only speaking out now?

Does history begin at the point where the corporate media finally chooses to report it?

40
0
stewart
stewart
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Either way, he’s seems to know where the money is. Before he got paid for being on SAGE (I assume they got paid for it) and now he’s cashing in with his book criticising SAGE.

Sounds like he’s doing very well out of the whole experience.

13
-2
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  stewart

Would you prefer that he’d never been on SAGE and offering a dissenting voice, or that he didn’t write an expose on it now?

8
0
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Apparently, he would

0
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago

We always knew this kind of thing must have been happening. Undoubtedly there were other incidents like this within SAGE (probably involving Dingwall) and I expect this was repeated within the Cabinet, MPs more widely, journalists, “Public health” figures, academics.

56
0
sophie123
sophie123
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Jennie Harries & masks, in 2020

18
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

Yes good point. Andrew Hill and Ivermectin.

14
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

plus every CO2-climate sceptic that spoke out.

15
0
mka1221
mka1221
3 years ago

Further evidence that the lockdowns were coordinated by a very select group, two or three people at most, irrespective of the chosen scientific advice.

58
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago

Which one? Every graph shown was implausible!

42
0
The Rule of Pricks
The Rule of Pricks
3 years ago

Whilst its nice that hes standing up now (and stood up a little during) he needed to be screaming from the rooftops at the time rather than muttering under his breath.

If he genuinely thought at the time that lockdown were wrong/he was being censored or threatened etc he needed to make sure that his and everyone else’s who thought the same were being heard.

Its not difficult to trace a message back to the original sender by the way. He needs to name names.

And given all he has ‘revealed’ recently he needs to address the question of WHY.

Why was he told to correct his views? Why wasnt he listened to? Who did he raise all these things with? Why did they ignore him? For what reasons? Who was running the ‘big brother’ approach etc

We need names and reasons, and ideally payback and sanctions.

Last edited 3 years ago by The Rule of Pricks
86
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John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  The Rule of Pricks

He needs to name names.

I thought the same. But, perhaps whoever issued the threat is dangerous enough not to name?

29
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Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
3 years ago
Reply to  The Rule of Pricks

Michael Gove is the most obvious answer, together with Dommunist Dictator and Carrie Antoinette though the latter two were at loggerheads for reasons of personality, not ideology.

Add Kim Jong Johnson to this too for not having any convictions of value and doing whatever seems or seemed expedient at any given millisecond.

36
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  The Rule of Pricks

What makes you think he wasn’t screaming from the rooftops?

Reality and history are not defined by what the corporate media chooses to report from one day to the next.

27
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Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Indeed we on this site know plenty of things – none of them good BTW – all of which MSM espec BBC chooses not to report and probably also goes some way to make sure they are buried [fact checking, trusted news initiative etc etc etc]

10
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Enough alternative media outlets would have given him a platform.

5
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago

Did this get missed from Prof Fenton?

https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2022/03/official-mortality-data-for-england.html

Official mortality data for England reveal systematic undercounting of deaths occurring within first two weeks of Covid-19 vaccination

Our new research (full paper with first author Clare Craig available on ResearchGate) has discovered over 26,000 covid and non-covid deaths expected to have occurred within two weeks of first dose vaccination have been omitted from the latest UK ONS deaths by vaccination status report:

34
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

The ONS data also fails to include millions of people categorised in the UK NIMS database as ‘within 21 days vaccination’ status:
Our analysis compares expected deaths in the ONS dataset to those that have occurred in the whole population. We only use data from UK government sources including data from NIMS and UKHSA. We found implausibly low number of non-covid deaths in the ‘within 21 days of first dose’ category:
The ONS dataset only includes the number of non-covid deaths equivalent to the number expected to have occurred in the third week after vaccination only. So the expected deaths for the first two weeks post first dose vaccination are missing. This is the case for all age groups 60+. For example, here is the 70-79 age group:

12
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TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

For covid deaths the same patterns are evident, across all age groups 60plus. This is a significant and rather troubling anomaly warranting an explanation. Covid deaths are also implausibly lower than expectations

6
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TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  TheyLiveAndWeLockdown

Yes I think their line of enquiry is very important. If it can be properly shown that there’s no or minimal evidence that the vaccines protect against severe outcomes, then we may finally get Nuremberg 2.0 started.

I was uplifted by the suggestion the ONS are co-operating with their enquires. Time should tell if that is the case.

10
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TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  TheGreenGoblin

Perhaps to understand how much we know about “their” little scam

3
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John001
John001
3 years ago
Reply to  TheGreenGoblin

Reminds me of the old phrase ‘helping the police with their enquiries’!!!

3
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  TheGreenGoblin

I’ll eat my hat if there is ever any Nuremburg 2.0 type trials or tribunals. What government would ever sponsor or call for such a tribunal? After all, the tribunal – if legitimate – would PROVE that the leaders of every government in the world (except maybe Sweden) were guilty of crimes against humanity.

No government-created entity ever investigates itself. This might have happened in the past – regarding relatively small matters – but not now – and not with a “crime” this massive.

11
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Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago

I read that in full earlier today, and would heartily recommend it.

And, please, before we start frothing “Well, he would say that now, but why didn’t he say something earlier?”, the point is that he did, and was shushed and told to praise the Emperor’s New Modelling.

It’s only being reported now because the dirty, dirty smear merchants are selling whatever bit of controversy they can dredge up. Let’s not shoot the messenger for being held in the oubliette for years.

45
-1
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Some people just like yelling incoherently at others. It’s the virtue signalling circus moving on.

6
0
miketa1957
miketa1957
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

The way I see it, in a lot of cases, when people *did* say stuff at the time, they were rubbished, cancelled, and so forth, and then were in no position to observe let alone affect anything. So to some extent, people coming out now, when the total failure of policy is becoming more and more apparent, is better. Difficult call, I know.

22
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TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

Scientist who questioned ‘risk-benefit ratio’ of vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds leaves JCVI role | Daily Mail Online

7
0
TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  miketa1957

Yep. This point is key. The media blackout and institutional forces meant truly speaking out would relegate you to the outcasts. And those outcasts already included a number of prestigious scientists and it made no bloody difference whatsoever.

10
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago

That Upton Sinclair quote is apt for this page:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
One wonders how many SAGE members would agree with that sentiment.

41
0
emel
emel
3 years ago

If he won’t name names, there is little point in him complaining about it.

13
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  emel

I think “two senior government scientists” narrows it down to, well, the two senior government scientists.

27
0
RickH
RickH
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Knighthoods anyone? Just bend over.

12
0
sophie123
sophie123
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

who is controlling those 2? They don’t believe their own BS, we know that much. So why are they spewing it?

Ive heard rumours one has a dark secret. Something to do with St James’ park. So maybe being blackmailed. But the other?

17
0
Jabba the Hut
Jabba the Hut
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

Fauci and Gates are mixed up in it some where especially where Vallance and Witty are concerned.

19
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  Jabba the Hut

The eco health Spook front group?

2
0
TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  Jabba the Hut

Yep all roads lead back there. With luck, a Republican Senate majority in the midterms and the inquests can really get rolling.

6
0
rtaylor
rtaylor
3 years ago
Reply to  TheGreenGoblin

They may tank the financial system by then to keep the masses occupied.

4
0
Less government
Less government
3 years ago
Reply to  sophie123

Vallance appears in the FOIA released emails from Fauci January 2020, involving the virus origin Wuhan lab cover up. He knew what was going on.

0
0
rtj1211
rtj1211
3 years ago

So basically, a bunch of pompous Government bureaucrats were doing anything they could to stifle dissent and have shamelessly covered up all their uselessness ever since?

And the useless ones got knighted?

46
0
Catee
Catee
3 years ago

“Prof Woolhouse felt the predictions were “so implausible” that he was concerned about a loss of scientific “credibility”.”

Well he wasn’t wrong, not just scientific credibility, medical, legal, govermental or educational, in fact I’ll never trust anything anyone in any public service, quango, charity etc ever again.

39
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JamesM
JamesM
3 years ago

Yes, I agree with the first comment, I think Woodhouse is to some extent trying to escape culpability. However, if it is true that he was leant on, then certainly there should be an investigation into who was responsible. In the meantime, not one member of SAGE has been held to account for the wildly inaccurate modelling that has led to colossal economic damage. It is a disgrace that Whitty and Vallance remain in post. 

Last edited 3 years ago by JamesM
39
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Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  JamesM

What leads you to the conclusion that this is about escaping culpability?

4
-3
JamesM
JamesM
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

I believe the flawed modelling that led to the restrictions, together with the decision to proceed with the mass vaccination of those at low risk from Covid, will in time be seen as the biggest scientific scandal in decades. Prof Woodhouse was part of the scientific establishment when these measures were imposed. But full credit to him for speaking out now.

14
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TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  JamesM

Don’t forget the suppression of early treatment options, and the implementation of lockdown itself (even if the modelling was accurate it should never have been more than a few weeks at most by any science or logic).

I can only hope it leads to massive reform of policy making, drug regulation and the entire democratic process. But i guess I shouldn’t hold my breath.

15
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  JamesM

The crux of my point is that “speaking out now” implies that he wasn’t before.

All we can tell is that corporate media have chosen to publish him now.

If we take the article at face value, it seems that he was speaking up all the way through this debacle, but not being listened to by anyone in a position to promote his views.

I’m not sure that we can blame him for that, given that learning how to manipulate the meedja to promote your narrative is a skill that’s more likely to be picked up by Faucis and Fergusons than actual scientists.

5
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
3 years ago
Reply to  JamesM

If we get out of this, and the Davos Deviants haven’t finished yet, this last two plus years will be revealed to have been THE greatest crime against humanity in the history of the world.

7
0
WasSteph
WasSteph
3 years ago

There were avenues available to speak out. Not BBC or Sky obviously, but I don’t recall him being on Talk Radio or Planet Normal, for example. Easy to have had doubts after the event, not so easy to shout them out throughout, but he certainly should have done. Those of us who wrote to our MPs over and over only to be told that the Science was settled and they had no choice have been badly let down. I will never forgive my MP; voting for “Covid certification” was the last straw.

25
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Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  WasSteph

You don’t recall him being on any of the particular fringe outfits that you personally prefer?

Then I’m certain that he said nothing to anybody, because as All True Scientists know, absence of evidence is hard evidence of absence.

3
-3
WasSteph
WasSteph
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

“Fringe”? Hardly. What outlets do you recall him appearing on?

3
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  WasSteph

None. As I say, we must hang him first as an example to others, and then consider the evidence.

2
-2
WasSteph
WasSteph
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Well if you want to but you won’t find me attending the lynching. Just because I think it’s a travesty not to have spoken out doesn’t mean I want to string him up.

2
0
Lister of Smeg
Lister of Smeg
3 years ago

The Prof should name all those who emailed him and publish those emails – giving them a taste of their own medicine.

20
0
Milo
Milo
3 years ago
Reply to  Lister of Smeg

They’ll be on a server somewhere. As Hillary Clinton can confirm.

6
0
Bolloxed Britannia
Bolloxed Britannia
3 years ago

Ich bin innocent, i didn’t do it, i voz only following ze orders…..Fek off ya Neo National Socialist acolyte!

5
-2
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Bolloxed Britannia

You know, if we shoot every messenger when the corporate media finally chooses to report what they’ve been saying for years, we make a strong argument for them not bothering to speak out at all.

14
0
MikeHaseler
MikeHaseler
3 years ago

Sir Patrick said at the time: “At the moment, we think that the epidemic is doubling roughly every seven days.”

That’s strange … because in the spring they were telling Johnson that the epidemic was just doubling each week, whereas the reality if anyone had bothered to check the data (as any school kid could have done on a log-time graph) was that it was increasing 8-10 fold per week.

That’s why they made such a calamitous prediction saying the peak would be in June (Ref: Cummings in evidence to parliamentary committee & as stated by Johnson in press conference)… whereas at the rate it was actually increasing, by end of April, the entire UK would have had covid, so there was no way on earth the epidemic was going to peak in June.

Which … is why we got the chicken headed panic response when they finally did tell government that it was going to peak in April … probably days from the actual infection peak (which precedes the peak as shown by testing).

4
0
PatrickF
PatrickF
3 years ago

Nazi claims not to be a Nazi, then adopts the Eichmann defense: I was only obeying orders

3
-3
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  PatrickF

Yes, but more germane to any future reassessment will be this statement: “The science was evolving. We did what we did at the time using the best or accepted science of the time.”

Forgotten will be the millions of times we all heard “the science is settled.”

I wrote an article in July 2020 arguing that sports should not be cancelled and that COVID posed no health risk to healthy young athletes. I was right of course, but my detractors would say all of those sports leagues that DID cancel sports – and concocted all of those silly protocols – were just going by the known science at the time. This is a lie too. The reason I wrote my piece with such confidence is that the real science on COVID already showed that no healthy young athlete had any real risk of dying from COVID. This was probably known by March 2020, certainly by April or May 2020.

9
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago

Steve Kirsch has highlighted one of the more frightening examples of intimidation and retribution against a medical practitioner and professor who was willing to question the narrative. Here’s an excerpt from one of his recent Substack articles:

“There are many examples of the corruption of science during the COVID pandemic.
The most stunning one to me is the silencing of (German) Professor Peter Schirmacher.

Dr. Schirmacher is one of the top 100 pathologist in the world (he’s #67 on this list).
Dr. Schirmacher did a study of 40 people who died within 2 weeks after COVID vaccination and determined that at least 30% to 40% of those deaths were caused by the vaccine (see also Chief pathologist insists on more autopsies of vaccinated people). That’s a minimum. It could be far more than that, but he wasn’t able to conclusively prove that.

Other German researchers have independently replicated his findings (they found an even higher percentage of deaths that were highly likely caused by the vaccine):
When I tried to reach out to Dr. Schirmacher for more details, I was met with silence. Indeed, nothing has been heard from him since the news broken on his study.
How could that possibly be that to this day Schirmacher remains silent about his remarkable findings?

The answer to that question should be obvious. It is because he was silenced; they threatened his family if he spoke out about what he found. So he shut up like he was told.

This is not how science is supposed to work, is it? Fear and intimidation techniques should never be used to muzzle scientists, especially those scientists with information that could save hundreds of thousands of lives by revealing that the vaccines are unsafe and should be immediately stopped.

Link:

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-mit-president-l?s=w

14
0
Star
Star
3 years ago

If he was giving his book away for free he himself would have more of this “credibility” to which he refers.

2
0
TSull
TSull
3 years ago

Time to name names.

2
0
RW
RW
3 years ago

This guy is not what he tries to appears as, an opponent of government corona policies since 2020. He just believes said policies had been much righter if he had had greater influence over them. A telling example quote (from the end of the article):

He also says that lateral flow testing should have been ramped up much more quickly

[…]

He thinks it was a major factor in keeping us out of lockdown during the recent Omicron wave, with more than 80% of people testing at least once a week.

This implies that the recent Omicron wave was an inherently very dangerous event and the only reason why another lockdowns didn’t become necessary was mass testing of healthy people and house arrest for those who tested positive. Which – in turn – implies that he’s perfectly fine with using lockdowns and all the other public harm interventions we’ve come to know so well to mock-fight the spread of harmless diseases.

Verdict: Guilty.

8
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

You’re reading an implication into the corporate meedja synopsis and spin on whatever it was that he actually said (or didn’t say).

When did you first start trusting Sky to deliver accurate, informed, unfiltered and unbiased reporting?

2
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

If you want to argue against my understanding of this quote, please feel free to do so. If you have a better source for Woolhouse’s statements or some other proof that the article is misquoting him, please present it. I don’t expect Sky to deliver that, which is why I pointed out the Corona politics broadly ok, says SAGE expert message hidden in this quote.

If you just enjoy being abusive and/or are attacking me because you have no arguments, you can kiss a lower body part of me.

Last edited 3 years ago by RW
2
0
dearieme
dearieme
3 years ago

A bit late to be a hero, matey. Why not speak out at the time?

Anyway, he’s the sort of ass who believes that masks are useful. Bah humbug.

4
0
zebedee
zebedee
3 years ago

“An exponential projection will give you any number you like if you run it for long enough.”
Reductio ad absurdum? He could make a stronger statement that no epidemiological model demonstrates exponential growth so why listen to some data scientist who managed to fit the curve,

0
0
orvis
orvis
3 years ago

I see he is too spineless to say who told him to alter his views. Obviously does not want to give up a prestige position but wants to buy a little protection. Quite frankly as much use as a chocolate tea pot.

1
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago

“After a flurry of emails I was invited to ‘correct’ my comments,” he says.

“The invitation was passed on to me by a messenger so I cannot be sure precisely where in the system it originated.”

Nor did not end there, he says. “A couple of weeks later I was asked to give evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee. This generated another flurry of emails over an October weekend from two senior Government scientists concerned that I might criticise the CSA’s graph before the MPs.”

When asked where the message telling him to “correct his views” came from, he says he simply doesn’t know the source, but it was “not from a random person”.



Who invited him to correct his comments? he doesn’t say.

Who was ‘the messenger’? He doesn’t say.

Who were those two senior Government scientists? He doesn’t say.

Where are these e-mails? Publish them, Woolhouse!

I call this all bogus. Let’s have some facts.

Last edited 3 years ago by Emerald Fox
1
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

“Buy my book!”

Professor Mark Woolhouse, who sits on Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid-19 taskforce, has angered residents on a tiny Hebridean island.

A Scottish Government coronavirus adviser ignored Nicola Sturgeon’s advice and stayed at his island holiday home hours before lockdown restrictions were put in place.

Professor Mark Woolhouse, 60, has angered residents on Lismore by temporarily moving to the tiny Hebridean island with his family from Edinburgh.

The Edinburgh University epidemiologist sits on the First
Minister’s Covid-19 taskforce.
It comes just a week after Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, was forced out of her job after being spotted at her second home in Fife while telling the rest of the
country to stay in the house.

One islander, who didn’t want to be named, said: “It’s just another example of hypocricy.
“Locals in Lismore are far from happy because coronavirus refugees put the community in danger.
“There’s not even a doctor or nurse on the island.
“Just as Professor Woolhouse came here, various politicians were telling people to stay away from the Highlands and Islands.”

Scotland’s Rural Economy and Tourism Secretary, Fergus Ewing, said: “I am furious at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of some people travelling to the Highlands and Islands.
“This has to stop now. Let me be crystal clear, people should not be travelling to rural and island communities full stop.
“They are endangering lives. Do not travel.”

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-government-coronavirus-advisor-slammed-21853063

mouthopen.jpg
Last edited 3 years ago by Emerald Fox
1
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

‘Freedom Day’: Edinburgh University Professor calls England’s route out of lockdown ‘dangerous’ and ‘unethical’England’s unlocking on July 19 is a “dangerous, unethical experiment” and should be scrapped in favour of the model followed by the Scottish Government, according to an epidemiologist at Edinburgh University.
Professor Mark Woolhouse told Times Radio: “The concern at the moment is that the trajectory of hospitalisations and deaths in the UK is upwards, fairly slowly… and we want to see what that trend does.

“It’s widely accepted the number of cases would increase, we’ve known this would happen when we unlocked for many months now, we’d expect it…. so ‘dangerous, unethical experiment’ seems to be a very inaccurate description of what’s going on.

“This is unprecedented, it’s not an experiment but it’s an unprecedented situation because we’ve got a new pandemic here and the UK is in a particularly interesting position because we have such a successful vaccine programme.”

https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/freedom-day-edinburgh-university-professor-calls-englands-route-out-of-lockdown-dangerous-and-unethical-3311732

2
0
Less government
Less government
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

Beyond redemption.

0
0
wiaruz
wiaruz
3 years ago

So, why didn’t he immediately resign and go public? I don’t recall reading that he was a sceptic over the last two years. Maybe I missed it. But people like him who don’t speak out at the time are almost as bad as the Fergusons of this world.

3
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago

Feel free to write and ask him why he won’t name names!

Email: mark.woolhouse@ed.ac.uk

1
0
lyndar
lyndar
3 years ago

Finally these people are starting to speak out. It infuriates me that they’ve waited this long when it’s really too late to dislodge the gaslighting from the minds of the millions that believed all these lies. But maybe if even a few read this and realise how they were had it will be worth it. Better late than never I suppose.

1
0

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