On February 4th the Perseus Group in conjunction with other likeminded organisations convened a press conference to discuss Module 4 (Vaccination) of Baroness Hallett’s Covid Inquiry. I attended virtually. The various presentations were depressing.
Two contributors described their experience of being at the inquiry, and from their descriptions the entire setup of the inquiry is faulty. Questions had to be submitted in advance; many were turned down. Attempts by some witnesses to escape from the rigid format by asking their own questions, or elaborating on answers, were shut down. I hesitate to use the word ‘ruthlessly’ but it seems appropriate. It became apparent to the above participants that their entire understanding of the inquiry was wrong; it was not designed to look at the scientific evidence (indeed at one point it was specifically prohibited) but designed to examine the official response to the pandemic predicated on the ‘truth’ that the vaccines were safe and effective. Although it was suggested that trust needed to be established, that aim manifestly failed (not least because of the now overwhelming evidence that the vaccines are neither safe nor effective). One speaker pointed out that the coercion to be vaccinated, not least for children, abandoned all notion of informed consent. On that basis those doctors who promoted vaccination with vicious loud statements should be arraigned before the General Medical Council for unethical practice. If the vaccines worked they might have escaped on the defence of the common good outweighing individual rights, but they didn’t so such a defence cannot apply.
It is notable that the inquiry’s concentration on the work of the Government’s dis- and mis- information operation assumes that anyone questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is spreading such information. In reality the main source of dis- and mis- information is the Government: the manifest failings of the MHRA have been concealed; the safe and effective narrative is a sham.
I have yet to see any news report of the meeting but hope one will appear somewhere. I also hope that transcripts of the speakers’ presentations will become available. I note that the Perseus Group has made several witness statements to the Hallett Inquiry; whether these have been put on the inquiry website is a little difficult to determine, as the ‘statements’ tab leads to a list which is 809 pages long. I got through the first five without finding anything sensible buried among the trivia. Maybe the submissions are there somewhere. Somehow I doubt it.
Much of the content of the presentations – by Prof Angus Dalgleish, Dr Clare Craig, Dr Ros Jones, Dr Elizabeth Evans and Nick Hunt, among others – mirrored what I have said before.
So in summary we are faced with an inquiry that (as I have also said before) is led by the wrong experts (lawyers) who are asking the wrong questions of the wrong experts (mainly politicians, civil servants and non-clinical doctors). It is not only ignoring medical and scientific evidence but, by the way it limits witnesses, actively suppressing it.
It cannot possibly achieve its stated aims of discovering what went wrong and how to stop problems in any future pandemic. It should therefore be terminated to avoid throwing good money after bad. The People’s Vaccine Inquiry is convened by folk who are not receiving millions of pounds of fees, but are working effectively pro bono. Expand it to cover all aspects, and it will in my view come up with all the answers and plans for the future.
Dr Andrew Bamji is a retired Consultant Rheumatologist and was President of the British Society for Rheumatology from 2006-8. He is the author of Mad Medicine: Myths, Maxims and Mayhem in the National Health Service. His Covid blog can be found here.
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