Professor Paul Offit, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Professor Phillip Buckhaults, University of South Carolina
Mr Charlie Massey– CEO – The General Medical Council
Cc Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health, Sir Christopher Whitty – Chief Medical Officer, Lord Patrick Valance – Minister of State for Science Research and Innovation.
Dear Mr Massey,
I am writing to address the specific allegations that I am undermining trust in the medical profession by spreading “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” and have been spreading/fuelling “conspiracy theories”. I‘ve been asked to respond to the General Medical Council’s Assistant Registrar specifically about what has changed since the initial complaints were first made against me by anonymous doctors in 2021. This is the spirit of this letter.
In this open letter, I make the case that there is overwhelming evidence that calls for the suspension of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (which, by technicality, is a genetic therapy) because of serious harms. In my professional opinion, the current position of the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Chris Whitty, and the government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Lord Patrick Vallance, to not support a pause and independent investigation of the safety of the vaccines is now untenable given accumulating evidence of harm and corrupt practices. This stance has considerable support from fellow doctors (including an internationally eminent oncologist and immunologist), data scientists, patients, lawyers, politicians (including a former government minister in Boris Johson’s cabinet) and public figures. I also emphasize in this letter that the challenges we face go beyond simple disagreements about the science. Institutional issues, such as collusion with pharmaceutical companies prioritizing profit over patient welfare, and the unprofessional behaviour of some colleagues, stand in the way of patient safety and the delivery of high-quality healthcare. These deeply rooted problems must be addressed.
Throughout my career, I have consistently adhered to the highest principles of ethical, evidence-based medical practice. My expressed concerns about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine uphold these values. Yet, I have been defamed publicly for following the ethical and scientific principles that guide the profession. In this letter, I reveal how fellow medical professionals used defamation of character in attempts to censure me. The behaviour of my colleagues is unscientific, unethical, and unprofessional. Those defaming me are breaching General Medical Counsel (GMC) guidance in having respect for colleagues and, by such behaviour, are themselves bringing the medical profession into disrepute.
Because the decisions you make after receiving this letter have huge global ramifications, and because I have lost trust in the political and medical establishments’ ability to appropriately deal with what has resulted in an ongoing catastrophic public health calamity, I feel obliged to make this letter public.
Sunlight is the most powerful disinfectant for malodorous health policy.
Principles of Public Life
Dr. Aseem Malhotra
I start this letter by reminding those in receipt of their duty to uphold the seven Nolan principles of public life: selflessness, objectivity, integrity, accountability, honesty, openness, and leadership.(1) It is emphasised that leadership also means holding others accountable who are not adhering to those principles. I have held several leadership roles throughout my career. I was appointed to be the youngest Trustee of the King’s Fund that advises government on health policy in 2015, where I completed a full term of six years. Prior to and overlapping that time I served as a public-facing ambassador for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges for six years in three official roles: 1) a member of the obesity steering group, 2) Consultant Clinical Associate; and 3) a member of the Choosing Wisely Steering group, where I coordinated a widely publicised campaign with the BMJ and the Academy to wind back the harms of too much medicine. (2) This was a campaign that started very successfully but appeared to end abruptly pre-pandemic. My entire career has upheld the principles of the profession and my current stance on the COVID-19 vaccine is not different.
Barriers to Unbiased Scientific Advancement
The primary accusations made against me are that I was acting in ways that spread “misinformation” about the COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting that the mainstream views of vaccine were “objective truth”.
My stance on the COVID-19 vaccine has remained clear: The COVID-19 vaccines have not demonstrated adequate safety in unbiased studies and have clear evidence of harm for some individuals. I am committed to patient safety and quality healthcare. Since these drugs are not adequately tested, they should be suspended from the market. This stance has caused significant turmoil among some colleagues, who refuse to engage in meaningful scientific dialogue and remain steadfast and dogmatic in their views despite the growing evidence to the contrary.
Acting in good faith, I want to emphasise that I do not believe that those in medical leadership positions are ill-intentioned (although on the surface may rightly appear to be falling well short of adhering to the Seven Nolan Principles). The barriers to a more complete picture of the truth in relation to the COVID-19 vaccines are primarily psychological, not intellectual. These psychological processes are part of a broken system, which will be described below, and exacerbated by a culture of too much hubris and less humility within the profession. This is a topic well discussed by my mentor and referee, the former chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and GMC, Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, and will not be discussed much further here. (Please feel free to contact him regarding these comments in addition to being a character reference for myself). Specifically, two major barriers to engaging in meaningful scientific dialogue and advancement is a result of the psychological processes of fear and wilful blindness.
The first psychological barrier to the truth is that of fear. Under a state of fear human beings, including doctors, are less able to engage in critical thinking. Critical thinking is a foundational component of science, which should underscore all our decision-making as evidence-based practitioners. Fear propagation was a major tactic used by authorities to make the population more compliant with the vaccine. In early 2023, the Telegraph Newspaper revealed secret WhatsApp messages showing that the Secretary of State for Health’s, Matt Hancock, plan to exaggerate the risk of COVID-19 to “frighten the pants off the public”. This fear campaigns were successful in altering perceptions of the general public and professional communities. A 2021 survey in the United States showed that 30-50% of the public believed their risk of the unvaccinated being hospitalised from COVID was 50%, (3) when the actual figure was closer to 1%. Consistent with a Theory of Planned Behaviour, the strategy they used resulted in a gross over-estimation of risk, which created fear that motivated increased vaccination rates. As previously pointed out by the director of health literacy at the Max Planck institute Gerd Gigerenzer, “without understanding the numbers involved, the public are vulnerable to exploitation of their hopes and fears by political and commercial interests”. (4) It is my belief that the anonymous doctors filing claims against me share in the perceptions of fear – fear of both the (unsubstantiated) risks of COVID and the truth being revealed, by people like me.
The second psychological barrier is wilful blindness. (5) Wilful blindness is when human beings or institutions turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety or to protect prestige and fragile egos. Well-known examples of institutional wilful blindness include the BBC and Jimmy Saville, Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, and the Catholic Church and child molestation. It is my strong opinion that the political system, the medical establishment, and the legacy media continue to be wilfully blind to what is, in my view, the most horrific medical product to be injected into hundreds of millions of people globally.
I personally understand the power of wilful blindness – and how our medical establishment creates the type of indoctrination that allows this to occur. Despite being recognised as the most outspoken doctor in the world for over a decade, pointing out the excesses and manipulations of industry to the detriment of public health and democracy, I had a blind spot to the potential risks of vaccines. This is despite a history of calling for public inquiries into the murky practices of the pharmaceutical companies on numerous occasions in the mainstream press prior to the pandemic. This included speaking on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, and articles in Mail Online, The Guardian, and the I Newspaper, which featured a front-page story of me speaking in the European Parliament in 2018. (6) The most prominent medical supporter of this issue, who accompanied me to Brussels, is Sir Richard Thompson, Past President of The Royal College of Physicians and former personal physician to her majesty Queen Elizabeth the second. The title of my talk, which made front page of the I newspaper in the EU parliament, was “Big Food and Big Pharma, Killing for Profit?” I understood the harms of the pharmaceutical industry for patient health. I was aware – and yet, I admittedly and understandably had a blind spot when it came to vaccines. On Good Morning Britain, I publicly supported the use of the COVID-19 vaccine for high risk and older people from ethnic minorities. I personally took two doses myself under the false belief it would protect my patients. I am quoted stating, “traditional vaccines are amongst the safest of all pharmacological products”. That does reflect the published evidence with a serious adverse event rate of 1-2 per million doses. The co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration Peter Goetzche’s analysis of prescribed drugs being the third leading cause of death globally (after heart disease and cancer) does not feature any vaccine. Up until the pandemic, I’d never come across or even heard of a patient that was “vaccine injured”.
When I began to read the science on the COVID-19 vaccine, combined with personal and clinical experience my eyes opened and blindness disappeared.
For this reason, I understand why many doctors still remain wilfully blind to the possibility of the COVID vaccines causing any significant harm. They are still stuck in the same indoctrinated mindset I was in until the latter part of 2021.
The problem is institutional – and must be fixed.
Truth Amidst Lies
I have been asked to respond with any new evidence and/or support of my stance to pause and investigate the COVID-19 mRNA genetic therapies. I initially starting to publicly raise serious questions on the safety of the COVID-19 mRNA products in November 2021; but I have long been a vigilant and outspoken advocate for healthcare improvement, consistently highlighting the need to address the harms within the medical system. Understanding the significant and harmful shortcomings of the medical system – including the aforementioned psychological barriers to the truth – is crucial to begin to fully comprehend that extraordinary public health calamity we find ourselves in.
I understand the complaints to the GMC began shortly after an interview on GB News, where I raised concerns of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increasing cardiovascular risk and called for an end of mandating the vaccine for NHS staff. In a similar timeframe, I also went public on BBC News and Sky News. The original stimulus behind these interviews was me being a whistle blower through the I newspaper where I highlighted a cover up between the department of health and NHS England on ambulance delays that contributed to my father’s death. (7) I utilised those opportunities to highlight the inconsistency between what we know about the safety and effectiveness of the covid vaccine and public health policy. Specifically, I found it strange that Sajid Javed announced a mandate after it became widely known the vaccine wasn’t stopping infection or transmission, and in the context of reports of serious harm and death. It appeared to me to be medically negligent to mandate this product. Rationally and Intuitively, it occurred to me that the only beneficiaries of the mandates would be Pfizer and the pharmaceutical industry. These suspicions were proven correct last year, when US investigative journalist, Lee Fang, uncovered that in the summer of 2021 Pfizer paid tens of thousands of dollars to respected civil rights and grass roots organisations in America to push the mandate narrative. (8)
The concerns about mandates were not unique to me. I was been contacted by many unvaccinated NHS colleagues, publicly and privately, asking me to help stop the mandates. They feared job loss. I told them to stand firm and not capitulate before the April 2022 deadline. In December 2021, I had a two-hour phone conversation with the then-chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, and explained the evidence available to the medical community at the time. We discussed how to influence Sajid Javed to U-turn on this announcement. At the end of the conversation, he said explicitly:
“Aseem, none of my colleagues appear to have critically appraised the evidence as well as you have, most of them are getting their information on the COVID-19 vaccine from the BBC”.
Such a statement was replicated by the Chair of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, after it became clear the vaccine wasn’t stopping infection. She admitted her initial “optimism” for the COVID-19 shots came from a CNN news report. The CNN News report she was referring to was almost verbatim reproduction of Pfizer’s press release, which headlined in November 2020 with “Pfizer and BioNTech say final analysis shows coronavirus vaccine is 95% effective with no safety concerns”. Unfortunately (and I say this reluctantly having done many interviews and unpaid work for them), the BBC, like CNN, has been one of the most egregious purveyors of misinformation during the pandemic. They shared a similar headline, “The first effective coronavirus vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting COVID-19”. As far as I’m aware, there has never been a correction, apology, or explanation from medical leadership or mainstream media of why they promoted a narrative that turned out to be completely false.
If the medical profession continues to place its trust in the legacy media—an entity widely known for distorting the truth—where the majority of health stories fail on most criteria for accuracy – how can we possibly restore trust in the profession itself?
In fact, lack of the acknowledgement of being wrong about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, along with the health policies involving coercion and mandates, is in my view a major root cause why there has been a huge decrease in trust in the medical profession. A recent publication from the United States revealed that trust in doctors is at an all time low at 40% having dropped from 72% in April 2020. (9)
A culture within certain sections of medical leadership that fails to adhere to the Seven Nolan Principles is partly to blame. Prior to exposing the ambulance delay that played a role in my father’s death in the I newspaper (which also made BBC News headlines), I sent a message to a cardiology training programme director explaining the situation. His reply was “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you will only make yourself enemies”. I was appalled that the prevailing culture within our medical profession discouraged honesty out of fear of interpersonal repercussions. What happened to the principles of integrity and leadership? Similarly, one Royal College president called me when I publicly raised patient safety issues on the COVID-19 vaccine and said “ You’re never going to get a gong”; in other words, what appeared more important to this person than protecting patients was getting honours from the Royal family, presumably by turning a blind eye to such atrocities.
This experience of culture is not merely anecdotal to me; it speaks to dysfunctional behaviour within the medical establishment. The former Editor of the BMJ, Richard Smith, wrote in 2016 about the evidence of pervasive covering up of research misconduct within British institutions. He concludes, “something is rotten in the state of British medicine and has been for a long time”. (10 ) Similarly, in 2015, Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet, commented on commercial distortions of the scientific evidence. He wrote, “possibly half of the published medical literature may simply be untrue” and that “science has taken a turn towards darkness”. He asked, “who is going to take the first step to clean up the system?”.(11)
Despite the accusations and attacks against me, I maintain a deep commitment to quality healthcare in the UK. I remain committed to the patients many of whom have already written supportive letters to the GMC. These include patients I’ve managed with long covid and with vaccine injury. This is why the current Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting, is copied on this letter. He must be made aware that the NHS cannot, and will not, make any significant improvements to quality of care until we correct the root cause of the problem: commercial distortions of the scientific evidence.
Two Major Misdiagnosis of the Medical Profession.
In relation to these accusations, there are two major systemic problems that need to be corrected in order to fulfil the obligation of the medical profession to serve patients: 1) Quality of clinical data; 2) Transparent information about potential risks to physicians (lack of informed consent at the level of institution/physician).
The first misdiagnosis – quality of evidence – is both historical and current. With rare exception, results of industry-sponsored clinical trials are not independently verified, leading to an exaggeration of and bias toward the safety and effectiveness of all pharmaceutical products. When the industry sponsors science, an undeniable confluence emerges between scientific results and profit. Most doctors are not aware of this confounding, and thus patients and policy makers aren’t aware either. This would not be such a major issue if the pharmaceutical industry was benign and well-meaning, but because of the weak regulations on industry and science, they cannot be. Pharmaceutical companies have a fiduciary obligation to produce profit for their shareholders. They are not responsible for high-quality treatment or obligated to serve patients in any way. This is where the problem lies: profits over people. As pointed out by cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst in a talk at the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine, “the real scandal is that those with a responsibility to patients and scientific integrity, namely academic institutions, medical journals and doctors, collude with industry for financial gain”.
The diagnosis made by the pre-eminent forensic psychologist Dr Robert Hare and law professor Joel Bakan over 20 years ago is that Big Corporations (such as Big Pharma) are psychopathic in their pursuit of profit. Institutionally, they show the same characteristic behaviours as individuals with psychopathic tendencies: callous unconcern for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit. This diagnosis as far as I’m aware has not been rebutted or challenged. The evidence is clear that the majority of the largest pharmaceutical companies have racked up billions in fines over the past three decades for illegal marketing of drugs, manipulation of trial results, and hiding data on harms.
Since we cannot rely on the pharmaceutical corporations – which have profit as the top priority – to produce unbiased data, the onus is on the evidence-based practitioner to openly discuss the quality of evidence. This is precisely what I have done – because I believe in placing people over profits.
The second misdiagnosis, which has particular relevance to the COVID-19 vaccines, is the lack of transparent information about the real risks associated with the products. Accountability in a medical system involves all key stakeholders doing their part to ensure the best possible outcomes for patients. In this case, it is the responsibility of the regulatory bodies to synthesize and translate dense evidence to support the implementation of evidence-based medicine by doctors. Yet, in the case of COVID-19, the overwhelming majority of doctors (including myself) were completely unaware and uninformed of the risks. Importantly, this was not because the information was not available. In fact, there was a WHO-endorsed list in 2020 of potential serious adverse events from the mRNA jabs that could occur because of vaccination. The list of adverse reactions involved every single organ system, including the cardiovascular system for which I am an expert. Reactions included but were not limited to: cardiac arrythmia, cardiac arrest, myocardial infarction, pericarditis, heart failure, chest pain, ischaemic stroke.
If the medical establishment had the capacities to distribute the presumed benefits of the COVID-19 vaccine on a wide and prevalent scale, why then was this list of potential harms not equally disseminated?
Without the physicians being aware of potential side effects, it is impossible to properly serve patients or practice evidence-based medicine at scale. Physicians cannot diagnose something that they do not know is a possibility post-vaccination. For example, one of the most extraordinary and shocking stories of misdiagnosis was the death of a fit and healthy 32-year-old psychologist who suffered a massive stroke 10 days after taking a COVID vaccine. The medical team looking after him – likely unaware of the potential harms – put “natural causes” on the death certificate. His wife, adamant that this was caused by the vaccine, pursued the truth and ultimately won her case to get the cause of death changed to reflect the truth: Death as a result of “unintended consequences of the vaccine”. (12) As stated above, the indoctrinated belief about vaccine safety led to a blind spot on vaccine injury on behalf of the physician.
Benefits versus Harms of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine: Best Available Evidence.
Serious harms from the vaccine have been confirmed from a combination of clinical, mechanistic, randomised controlled trials, observational, pharmacovigilance, and autopsy data. In these studies, the majority of deaths that occurred within two weeks of taking the vaccine died as a direct result of the mRNA product. There is undeniable evidence that there are serious risks associated with COVID-19 vaccine for at least some individuals.
The next important questions are:
- For whom does the vaccine harm?
- How frequent are people harmed?
- How does this rate compare to potential benefit on totality of best available evidence?
As of right now, the data is clear that the vaccines cause greater harm than benefit.
From a scientific perspective, the highest level of evidence is the randomised controlled trial (RCT). This is what we rely on for best available evidence. As mentioned above, a major barrier to the practice of high-quality evidence-based medicine is the reliance on industry-sponsored trials and misinformation being spread by the media. The media propagated headlines based on industry-sponsored RCTs, and many doctors, policymakers, and patients accepted them as truth. This is the situation we find ourselves in – which drives the accusations made against me.
However, re-analysis of Pfizer and Moderna’s original RCTs by independent scientists, published in the journal Vaccine, revealed that one was more likely to suffer a serious adverse event (e.g., a life changing reaction, a disability, or hospitalisation) from taking the vaccine than one was to be hospitalised with COVID. The rate of short term serious adverse events was 1 in 800. (13)
In other words, these vaccines caused more harm than good from the beginning – and the data was there, ready to be analysed in an unbiased way! If it were not for people, like myself, speaking out about potential risks, this data may never have been re-analysed – and patients would continue to be harmed.
Of importance, the majority of the serious adverse events documented in the re-analysis are likely to reduce life expectancy. Currently, we only know about short term (within two month) harms through a trial that was designed to minimise the appearance of side effects. Medium- and longer-term harms – such as the acceleration of cardiovascular disease, cancer, auto-immune conditions, and mental health issues – are hypothesized to make the serious adverse reaction rate significantly higher. We must continue to be vigilant about safety studies and conducting high-quality, unbiased research.
Additional examples of inaccurate data include data released by the UK Health Security Agency in early 2023. They reported that for those over 70 years old, 2,500 people would need to be vaccinated to prevent one hospital admission from COVID. This is likely a grossly exaggerated benefit because, on average, those who remained unvaccinated tended to have lower socioeconomic status and baseline poorer health, which was not corrected for even though covid and all-cause mortality is at least two-fold higher in this subpopulation. More recent data reveals that denominator in the highest risk age group ( those aged over 90) to be 7000 – in other words, serious harm from the vaccine is at least eight times greater than potential benefit of preventing severe hospitalisation from covid.(14) This is yet another example of a failure to replicate industry-sponsored science, suggesting bias in industry-sponsored results and a need to be critical appraisers of scientific evidence.
A similar story of the overstatement of findings without attention to methodology applies to the highly publicized headline, “millions of lives saved” from a WHO report. While the headline is attractive, the data is derived from a modelling study that doesn’t enter into the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine studies (poor quality evidence) and has been described by the director of the Centre of Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, Carl Heneghan, as “implausible”. (15) It’s like saying the best football team in the premier league is a 4th division club whilst completely ignoring the Liverpool and Manchester cities of this world. In other words such a claim is fake.
Two of the world’s pre-eminent experts in oncology and immunology respectively feel there is strong mechanistic and clinical evidence through different pathways including prolonged immunosuppression and DNA contamination the Covid mRNA vaccines cause cancer. Please read correspondence from Professor Angus Dalgliesh and Professor Robert Clancy attached to this letter. The thought that billions of people have been injected with a potential carcinogen is so horrific to bear one can understand why medical professionals who encouraged patients to take the vaccine would rather choose to bury their heads in the sand. But such wilful blindness will not eliminate and ongoing problem. It is staggering beyond comprehension that the U.K is still recommending this product on such poor efficacy with serious unprecedented harms including irrefutable risk of death in the short term is a sizeable minority. I have no doubt in my mind that many people are walking around as a ticking bomb of heart disease, strokes and cancer as a result of this mRNA vaccine. We must do all we can to identify who is at risk and act to reduce it as much as possible.
Ultimately, what we have heard through the media is not evidence. The information provided to physicians is not unbiased science. It is pure propaganda, supported by a complicit and wilfully blind legacy media that is understandably losing trust amongst the population. The medical establishment simply cannot ignore the real-world impact of this horrific medical product on an increasingly vaccine injured and aware population. A recent survey in the United States revealed a large proportion of the public felt the covid vaccine was responsible for thousands of deaths, indicating that they no longer trust the information provided by the medical establishment. What they are told (e.g., “vaccines are safe and effective”) and what they believe (e.g., “vaccines are responsible for the excess death rate”) differ. The establishment is losing its credibility. People continue to be injured and die – and instead of senior scientists and medical leadership acknowledging these cold hard facts and addressing them properly, they spend time attacking professionals like myself, who are merely committed to providing the best possible evidence and care to patients.
The Root Cause: Institutional Corruption
The issues discussed in this letter merely scratch the surface of the complex and intertwined dynamics that maintain corrupt and colluded practices. The conditions that yielded disastrous health policy that killed millions are deeply rooted. In my opinion, the root cause is simple: Collusion and corruption of governmental bodies by psychopathic corporations that prioritise profits over the health of the people.
I often wonder how medical leaders—individuals who have dedicated their lives to saving and improving people’s health—can be so easily convinced to follow health policies that are not supported by unbiased or high-quality science. In my view, this is a problem of either the grossly ignorant, fearful and wilfully blind, or financially conflicted.
Why would medical leadership choose – after the accumulation of evidence now available through science, internal Pfizer documents released through courts, and US White House reports of corrupt practices – to deliberately support a narrative and “evidence” that supports the pharmaceutical industry? Only a policy maker (likely unwittingly) influenced as a downstream effect of the psychopathic determinants of health would behave in such a way. The aforementioned behaviour of the two people known to me in medical leadership positions asking me to “keep quiet of patient safety issues” are clear examples of these downstream effects. Our establishment is overinfluenced by a psychopathic entity. The conditions that drive this influence are deep. The entities are not independent – and any perception that our industry is independent is, in my view, grossly undermined by the fact that there is a revolving door between industry and government. Readers may recall the career path of Jonathan Van Tam, who left his government role as Deputy Chief Medical officer to accept a lucrative position at Moderna! (16)
As a respected leader in the medical community for decades, I have many first-hand experiences observing this type of intertwined corruption between industries. For example, prior to official publication of my paper calling for a suspension of the mRNA vaccines in the Journal of Insulin Resistance in September 2022, I acted in good faith and met personally with the chair of the health select committee, Jeremy Hunt, at a meeting organised by the Kings Fund a few months earlier. At the time, he thanked me for my campaigning for Action On Sugar and being a whistleblower in exposing ambulance delays. He recognized my work as having integrity and evidence based. We discussed, in person and followed up via email, about my own critical analysis of the data on the mRNA products, and why they should be suspended. This was a man who should, in theory, have influence to make a change; instead, he ultimately deferred me, shifting responsibility to the UK drug regulator, the MHRA.
According to a 2022 BMJ investigation, the MHRA “cannot be trusted” to be independent because they received 86% of their funding from the very industry they’re supposed to regulate. They were described as “a prime example of institutional corruption”. The same investigation revealed the US FDA receive 65% of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry. (17) In February of this year, the All Party Parliamentary Group of Pandemic Preparedness wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Health, Steve Brine, stating that the MHRA is a “serious risk to patient safety”. (18) They also released a public statement given by its chair, June Raine, proudly proclaiming that the role of the organisation has shifted from being “protector of the public “to “enabler” of Big Pharma in reference to drug approvals. It is beyond comprehension as to why a body whose duty it is to protect patients is changing its focus to support a psychopathic entity! Sadly, comments such as June Raine’s are not rare within the industry. Recently released secret WhatsApp messages by investigative journalist, Isabel Oakeshott, documented the former Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, asking the MHRA to shut down vax concerns at the very beginning of the roll out of the Astra Zeneca vaccine.(19)
Shutting down public concerns and silencing those speaking the truth is alone an absolute scandal.
The corporatisation of the mind has occurred in the profession – and this is in direct conflict with the Seven Nolan Principles. If we want to reclaim the integrity of the profession, it is critical that medical leadership disentangle from the pharmaceutical industry and refocus on what matters: quality science that saves patients.
This process begins by acknowledging the harms, investing in quality science – and not defaming those speaking the truth!
Personal Defamation for Speaking Up
On a personal level, the last few years have been a particularly challenging time. Having lost the last surviving member of my family in the summer of 2021, most likely as a result of the Pfizer vaccine, I have been suffering from depression, anxiety, chest pains, and a persistent flare up of an autoimmune condition. I’ve spent thousands of pounds undergoing investigations including two CT coronary angiograms in consecutive years and an upper GI endoscopy. Fortunately, these results have been normal, but symptoms persist. I have been formerly diagnosed with “vaccine injury specifically adversely affecting my gut microbiome through complete obliteration of bifidobacteria”. This is associated with cardiovascular disease, depression, and autoimmune disease. An advanced blood test has also suggested I’m at potentially increased risk of cancer, despite having no family history and being in perfect metabolic health.
Despite the pain I’ve endured over the past few years, I continue to speak out for the people – and the profession. I believe deeply in our profession and the foundational principles upon which it is based.
My commitment to the profession has been faced with attack by fellow colleagues. This is perhaps the most disappointing part of the past few years. What kind of human being publicly attacks and tries to humiliate an individual whose entire family is dead, simply for speaking up for the vaccine injured and patient safety? A dispassionate observer could describe this as insensitive at best, and sociopathic behaviour, at worst (again, in part, explained by the psychopathic determinants of health).
A prominent medic Dr Rachel Clarke, on several occasions, published multiple defamatory tweets since 2022 where she refers to me as “ex -NHS doctor” and “Britain’s most notorious anti-vaxxer”. She weaponised a Mail on Sunday story (which can only be described as a hatchet job on myself and two other public figures) on statins. I lost my NHS job that I loved, and was told by several NHS cardiologists (many of whom were supportive of my stance) that I would find it difficult to get back into the NHS for a consultant post because of this Mail on Sunday article. Recently, five years later, a libel case launched by the two others named in the piece was won. The article has been taken down. The corruption and the truth was revealed – yet, my job was still lost. Others who have posted similar defamatory tweets or made such comments include individuals such as Dr Matt Kneale and Trish Greenhalgh. Is this the type of behaviour that is deemed acceptable professional conduct by the GMC?
In my view, these healthcare professionals – through their relational aggression – are the ones undermining trust in the profession. They deliberately undermine voices raising patient safety concern. Such behaviour is in my view a danger to public health.
In keeping with the Seven Nolan principles, I can no longer remain passive in this situation, and I’ve therefore referred Dr Rachel Clarke, Dr Matt Neil and Professor Trish Greenhalgh to the GMC for such flagrant and egregious breach of GMC guidance. GMC guidance is clear:
“You must treat colleagues with kindness, courtesy and respect. To develop and maintain effective teamworking and interpersonal relationships you must: listen to colleagues, communicate clearly, politely and considerately, recognise and show respect for colleagues’ skills and contributions, work collaboratively with colleagues and be willing to lead or follow as the circumstances require…You must be compassionate towards colleagues who have problems with their performance or health. But you must put patient safety first at all times.” (20)
It is clear through the behaviour of these individuals that they are not acting in accordance with GMC. I publicly affirm in this letter that all accusations against me be dropped, and the attention instead be placed on the individuals who actively seek to hide the truth and censure those speaking out for patient safety.
A Path Forward
My advocacy to suspend the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is not an isolated voice. Many others stand with me, driven by a shared commitment to protecting public safety and ensuring accountability. There are increasing calls for a suspension of the COVID-19 mRNA products from a global community of doctors, academics, politicians and public figures. This includes the former Wimbledon champion, Pat Cash, and Jay Naidoo, who is the trade union leader (and close friend of the late Nelson Mandela, who served in his first cabinet). The GMC has received their correspondence. More specifically thousands of healthcare professionals including the nominated new director of the US National Institutes of Health, Dr Jay Bhattacharya, have signed the HOPE accord, a petition which explicitly gives the following recommendations: (21)
“Given that this is an international issue we recommend the following to all governments and medical establishment bodies worldwide:
- THE IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION OF THE COVID-19 mRNA VACCINE PRODUCTS
A growing body of evidence suggests that the widespread rollout of the novel Covid-19 mRNA vaccine products is contributing to an alarming rise in disability and excess deaths.The association observed between the vaccine rollout and these concerning trends is now supported by additional significant findings. These include the discovery of plausible biological mechanisms of harm demonstrated in laboratory and autopsy studies, as well as high rates of adverse events seen in randomised clinical trials and national surveillance programs. Altogether, these observations indicate a causal link.This new technology was granted emergency use authorisation to address a situation that no longer exists. Going forward, the burden of proof falls on those still advocating for these products to compellingly demonstrate that they aren’t resulting in net harm. Until such evidence is presented, regulators should suspend their use as a matter of standard medical precaution. - A COMPREHENSIVE RE-EVALUATION OF THE SAFETY AND EFFICACY OF ALL COVID-19 VACCINE PRODUCTS
Independent investigations must be properly resourced to allow a comprehensive re-evaluation of all Covid-19 vaccine products.There must be a full exploration of mechanisms of harm to provide insight into their impact on the human body, both short and long term. Effectiveness must be reassessed through a comprehensive review of actual clinical impact on illness and mortality, as opposed to synthetic results based on modelled assumptions.We call on the scientific community to come forward with findings from unpublished Covid-19 vaccine studies. This will help mitigate publication bias, whereby unfavourable results were often rejected or withheld due to fears of reputational damage. Crucially, government bodies and the pharmaceutical industry must also provide full transparency, granting access to previously undisclosed anonymised patient-level data from clinical trials and surveillance programs.These cumulative actions will help determine any real world benefit of these products versus the true extent of the damage caused.
- THE IMMEDIATE RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT FOR THE VACCINE-INJURED
The denial of vaccine injury is a betrayal of those who followed official directives, often under coercion from mandates restricting their access to work, education, travel, hospitality and sports.The vaccine-injured must be recognised and every effort made to understand their conditions. Support should include readily accessible multidisciplinary clinics offering investigation and treatment as well as appropriate compensation for all those who have been harmed. - THE RESTORATION OF ETHICAL PRINCIPLES ABANDONED DURING THE COVID-19 ERA
Fundamental and cherished principles of medical ethics were disregarded on the premise of an emergency. These included: ‘first do no harm’, informed consent, bodily autonomy and the notion that adults protect children – not the other way around. The precautionary principle was inverted. Also, particularly concerning was the erosion of free speech – a democratic principle that underpinned the ability to question untested interventions whilst ensuring other principles were upheld. The consequence was exposing the public, especially healthy young people – including children – to unacceptable risks of harm.Emergencies are never a reason to abandon our principles; it is precisely at such times that we most profoundly depend on them. Only after acknowledging they were wrongly abandoned can we commit to upholding them consistently and in doing so, better protect future generations. - ADDRESSING THE ROOT CAUSES OF OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT
The medical profession must lead by admitting we lost our way.
By drawing attention to these medical and ethical issues surrounding the Covid-19 response, we hope to validate and amplify the call to establish the relevant facts and ensure vital lessons are learned.An honest and thorough investigation is needed, addressing the root causes that have led us to this place, including institutional groupthink, conflicts of interest and the suppression of scientific debate.We ultimately seek a renewed commitment to the core principles of ethical medicine, returning to an era in which we strive for transparency, accountability and responsible decision-making throughout the spheres of medicine and public health.”
At this point in time, the evidence of the COVID mRNA product doing significantly more harm than good is overwhelming, even for the highest risk groups. The longer the General Medical Council, the Secretary of State for Health, and the Chief Medical Officer delay on acting on this, the greater the harm to public health, the further decrease in trust in the medical profession, and the more strain on an already failing NHS. It is evident that many physicians and medical leaders remain either unaware of the latest evidence or too deeply entrenched in the corrupted ties between the healthcare profession and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize clear conflicts of interest.
Let me be unequivocal: my mission is to protect patients from harm, not to serve pharmaceutical profits.
I ask for these unsubstantiated accusations against me be dropped and unprofessional, relational aggression showed against me be condemned – so that we can all go back to serving patients and restoring trust in the medical profession.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr Aseem Malhotra
Consultant Cardiologist
HUM2N Clinic, Chelsea.
