Neale Hanvey: We must follow the science on Covid-19 vaccines
THERE’S been a worrying trend in politics in recent years where dogma, hyperbole and adherence to false “received wisdom” have been allowed to triumph over observance of the law, empirical evidence and truth.
This has manifested in various ways but has almost always been accompanied by vilification of those raising the alarm and the monstering of those most affected.
Such behaviours are evident in the handling of the Post Office Horizon scandal, the victims of malpractice in gender medicine, women attacked for defending sex-based rights and the victims of Covid-19 vaccine injury.
While I have been on the receiving end of such attacks, I remain resolute in my position. This is not because I am pig-headed, a dinosaur or a conspiracy theorist, it’s because I draw on my professional experience and critical thinking skills to analyse, evaluate and interpret information in a logical and systematic manner.
No more clearly can this be demonstrated than by a recent attempt from “an unnamed SNP source” who contacted the Dundee Courier advising it that the questions I have been raising in Parliament on behalf of vaccine-injured constituents constituted “apparent support for conspiracy theories”.
The sad reality is this was an ill-informed political smear rather than an accusation of substance, and when I represented the factual basis of my concerns to the journalist – who initially seemed very eager to participate in the smear – the story was dropped.
Investigating clinical injury is something I have done many times. Thankfully such injuries are often transient and a full recovery is achieved. In most cases they are down to human error as opposed to negligence but addressing concerns thoroughly and diligently is essential to reassure the injured party and minimise any repeated risk.
On rare occasions, the impact can be far more serious, with the consequences devastating or even fatal. In either case, the need to investigate without an agenda is paramount as there is nothing to be gained by trying to protect any individual, organisation, corporate or political interest for risk to be understood, managed and mitigated.
Since I started looking into vaccine injury, I have established that there are serious questions to be answered but to date there has been little political appetite to do so north or south of the Border.
Politicians, clinicians and industry each carry a duty of honesty and candour, and they must not dismiss emerging clinical evidence. Whether we like it or not, this issue must be addressed openly and urgently.
After decades of direct involvement in the management and delivery of numerous clinical trials, my starting point is a matter of unavoidable fact.
Any agent has the potential to cause harm or injury to the subject. The responsibility to identify, report and address such risks are the foundation of good clinical practice and are central to any clinical trial protocol.
Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guidelines are the standards on which good science is based. GCP is not about having a nice bedside manner or knowing which treatment to prescribe – it is a set of internationally recognised ethical and scientific quality requirements that must be followed when designing, conducting, recording and reporting on clinical trials that involve people.
The rights, safety and wellbeing of the trial subjects are the most important considerations and should prevail over interests of science and society, including commercial or political interests.
Clinical trials should always be conducted in accordance with the ethical principles that have their origin in the Declaration of Helsinki, GCP and applicable regulatory requirements.
And this matters because there are allegations that the big pharmaceutical companies responsible for developing the mRNA-based Covid vaccines have deliberately hidden evidence of significant complications in their published trial data.
I spoke to one woman who was severely injured during the initial trials but who discovered all record of her case was removed from trial data. If substantiated, this is a breach of every principle of GCP and the Declaration of Helsinki.
What has been established clinically is that mRNA technology doesn’t replicate at the site of administration as was originally suggested. It travels to distant tissue and replicates spike protein in all tissue and organs. This is problematic for a variety of reasons.
According to the esteemed University of London Professor of Oncology, and principal of the Institute for Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy, Professor Angus Dalgleish, this has precipitated serious and sometimes fatal consequences.
He and other clinical academics have been arguing for some time that the vaccine has induced a coagulation condition called Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (TTS) which leads to both blood clot formation and a reduction in available platelet cells needed for normal blood clot formation.
This can lead to stroke, pulmonary emboli (lung clots) and heart attacks, all of which can be life-limiting or fatal. Another antibody that Dalgleish has linked to the spike protein exerts an effect on myelin and is associated with paralysing Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) and Transverse Myelitis, a swelling of the spinal cord.
In a speech in the Commons last month, I cited multiple clinical studies and reviews raising further serious concerns about mRNA vaccines including their impact on cardiac inflammatory markers, cancer relapse, excess mortality and the abandonment of ethical practice in the rush to find a vaccine during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
I have also uncovered that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has received 489,004 Covid-19 vaccine suspected adverse drug reaction reports, 2734 of which are associated with a fatal outcome. The true number is unknown, due to limited public awareness, under-reporting and – most worryingly – a refusal from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and UK Government to open Record Level Data (RLD) to clinical academic scrutiny.
The need for an urgent rethink has been given fresh impetuous following AstraZeneca’s admission that “the AZ vaccine can, in very rare cases, cause TTS”. This admission runs counter to previous comments in 2023 that AZ would “not accept that TTS is caused by the vaccine” and comes after a £100 million class action lawsuit was filed in the UK on behalf of 50 victims claiming the vaccine was responsible for severe injuries and deaths.
This is an important development for victims because the government’s own Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme is totally inadequate.
I raised this specific point during the recent debate and I am pleased to see that Health Secretary Victoria Atkins (above) has since ordered a review of the scheme as Covid vaccine claims soar.
The bottom line is that dogma, hyperbole and adherence to false received wisdom won’t cut it. We must investigate the impact of mRNA as a technology without agenda.
As I said at the start of this column, there is nothing to be gained by trying to protect any individual, organisation, corporate or political interest for risk is to be understood, managed and mitigated.
Questions being raised on this issue must be answered with full access to ONS record level data for clinical academics as a minimum. If we are to tackle the problem, we must first understand the extent of it.
None of these clinical experts are quacks or conspiracy theorists.
As the Government said so often during the pandemic, we must follow the science.
[This article was first published in The National on 14.05.2024]