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A group of health professionals have expressed concern to the General Medical Council (“GMC”) about the use of GMC referrals against doctors speaking out about the safety of the covid-19 injections.

They highlighted cases of doctors facing fitness to practise investigations and job losses due to their public expression of safety concerns.  And they urged the GMC to protect whistle-blowers reporting covid-19 vaccine harms.

In response, GMC Chair Professor Carrie MacEwen said that healthcare needs a culture where doctors can feel they can speak out about concerns for patient safety. 

However, in their response to Prof. MacEwen, the group expressed the lack of reassurance among doctors regarding protection when raising patient concerns and raised the online harassment and death threats that doctors receive for raising concerns about the safety of covid injections – which is a concern for patient safety. 

These concerns are often expressed online because doctors are being ignored when they raise them through the official channels.  And, despite a doctor’s right to freedom of expression being upheld in the High Court, the GMC continues to investigate reports referred to them of doctors who express concerns about vaccine safety online.

Prof. MacEwen responded again but failed to adequately address the points raised by the doctors.

“It is hard to dispel the feeling among dissident doctors that there is a target over their heads, with certain hostile actors itching to find any excuse for a GMC referral,” the HART Group said.

At the end of June, 80 health professionals wrote to the General Medical Council (“GMC”), to express their concern at what would appear to be the use of GMC referrals against doctors speaking out about the poor safety profile of the covid-19 vaccines.  The letter stated:

In addition to trying to give full information to our patients, we have also been placing our safety concerns in the public domain as part of Good Medical Practice requirements to speak out if seeing harm to patients.

As well as our open letter, we have also written to you in support of several doctors reported to the GMC regarding their use of social media to highlight covid vaccine harms, with fitness to practise investigations based on ‘bringing the profession into disrepute’. This includes some who have been struck off, others who have had investigations spread over years and yet others who have lost their jobs.

We are also aware of doctors who have been referred to occupational health services because their refusal to endorse government guidelines was construed as a sign of mental illness. A group of over 50 senior doctors and academics were referred in June 2021 by the Department of Health and Social Care to the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) following a fully referenced letter questioning covid vaccines for children. Far from bringing the profession into disrepute, many of these doctors have received overwhelming gratitude from the vaccine injured.

An open letter to Professor MacEwen at the GMC, 28 June 2024

The letter urged that the GMC apply the same protection to whistle-blowers reporting covid-19 vaccine harms that the GMC had rightly observed were missing decades ago in the contaminated blood scandal.

In the wake of the contaminated blood scandal, GMC chair Professor Carrie MacEwen said “We are of course aware that referrals to us are sometimes used to intimidate. This is completely unacceptable, has significant consequences for doctors’ wellbeing and puts the safety of patients at risk.”

She also referenced “investigative media reports alleging that a number of NHS managers have taken actions to silence whistleblowers, including threatening referral to the GMC.”

The letter in June signed by 80 doctors also urged that a moratorium be called on all GMC investigations which do not arise directly from complaints about actual patient care.

The doctors received two replies.  One was from Prof. MacEwen.  She said that healthcare needs a culture that supports speaking up about patient safety concerns, that the GMC encourages doctors to speak up and suggested whistleblowers make use of a helpline and the available online guidance.

Prof. MacEwen then addressed GMC’s investigations into doctors’ conduct:

Members of the public are often at their most vulnerable when seeking and receiving healthcare. Trust and confidence in the profession is therefore essential so that individuals feel able to seek care and support, communicate honestly with their doctor and trust in the advice they are given.

Where concerns are raised with us about a doctor’s conduct, we are therefore required to consider whether we need to investigate to determine if the behaviour undermines, or is capable of undermining, the trust and confidence that a fully informed and reasonable member of the public places in the profession. This may occur even where the behaviour is outside clinical practice, or the concerns raised do not involve patient care.

Response from Professor MacEwen, A further letter to the GMC, 12 August 2024

After consulting with her colleagues, Dr. Rosamond Jones, a retired Consultant Paediatrician and convenor for Children’s Covid Vaccines Advisory Council, penned a response to Prof. MacEwen on 20 July.  It was co-signed by:

Dr, Jones’ response was published by the Health Advisory & Recovery Team (“HART”) Group on 12 August.

Addressing Prof. MacEwen’s suggestion for doctors who wanted to blow the whistle to seek advice online and/or use the GMC helpline, Dr. Jones said, “Despite the links and resources you have directed me to, a substantial number of doctors do not feel reassured that they are protected by the institutions to raise patient concerns as indicated by the number of doctors who signed our original letter to you.”

Dr. Jones then acknowledged that doctors do have to behave responsibly on and off duty.  The problem, Dr. Jones said, was how the term “bringing the medical profession into disrepute” is defined.

It could be argued that high-profile doctors with significant conflicts of interest pushing covid-19 vaccines, often with unsubstantiated and exaggerated claims of safety and efficacy, have contributed to the huge loss of trust in the medical profession.

Also, the large number of doctors telling patients with obvious adverse events that they are suffering from panic attacks or anxiety and failing to complete Yellow cards.

We have also seen numerous examples of doctors telling their patients verbally that their symptoms are related to vaccine injury and yet refusing to put this in writing.

As we said in our previous letter, many of the doctors being hounded for speaking out on social media, far from bringing disrepute, are being repeatedly thanked by members of the public for their honesty and integrity and have been acting as support for the vaccine injured.

Response to Professor MacEwen, 20 July 2024

Dr. Jones referred to a recent court case where a doctor’s right to use social media was upheld. 

Dr. Sam White was restricted by the GMC’s Interim Orders Tribunal (“IOT”) from posting freely on social media. Dr. White appealed to the High Court, which ruled in December 2021 that the IOT’s order breached his rights to freedom of expression, as protected by the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights. This decision established that doctors have the right to express themselves on social media, as long as they do not harm the reputation of the profession or the public trust.

Related: Dr. Sam White Has Won His High Court Appeal Against the General Medical Council

However, as Dr Jones pointed out, the GMC doesn’t seem to have considered this court ruling in other cases they are investigating.  In addition to this, doctors are experiencing online harassment even from other doctors which the GMC seems to be ignoring:

One doctor who has been under investigation by the GMC for over 2 years, with a catastrophic impact on his ability to obtain a job and hence his financial security, has received death threats on Twitter from an ex-colleague but neither the GMC nor the police thought this worthy of investigation.

We have read Twitter posts by detractors discussing which doctor they will target next and what good sport it will be. We have several other extremely worrying examples of the hounding which is going on, for any doctors who are questioning the safety of the mRNA covid-19 vaccines.

Response to Professor MacEwen, 20 July 2024

Dr. Jones pointed out why doctors are, in desperation, turning to social media to have their concerns heard:

We would also point out that it is often due to the very lack of interest doctors receive when expressing concerns through the official channels, that they resort to social media. For example, one doctor approached their local NHS whistleblowing department with her concerns about the vaccine harms she was witnessing in her patient group, but her concerns were never addressed and further emails received no reply.

Response to Professor MacEwen, 20 July 2024

At the end of the letter, Dr. Jones asked the GMC three questions:

• What safeguards has GMC in place to ensure its investigations are proportionate to the actual risk to patients? 
• How do you define what brings the profession into disrepute? If there is no clear definition, how can doctors ensure they comply with the requirement to highlight harms to patients and yet not find they have fallen foul of this very vague rule? 
• Would you be willing as requested in our original letter to meet with a small group of us either in person or online to discuss these issues further and hear some of our experiences first-hand?

“The current situation of self-censorship amongst doctors risks serious ongoing harms to patients and cannot continue,”  the letter concluded.

Prof. MacEwen responded to Dr. Jones’ letter on 16 August.  Addressing how “bringing the medical profession into disrepute” is defined, Prof MacEwen said: “We do not consider if ‘a doctor has brought the profession into disrepute’ – as you say in your letter, instead we can take action if a doctor poses a risk to public confidence in the medical profession.”

Regarding action the GMC may take in such cases, Prof. MacEwen said:  “We will firstly consider if a doctor’s behaviour meets our threshold for investigation, that is whether it poses a risk to public protection which includes confidence in the profession. Examples of matters that may pose a risk to confidence in the profession include dishonesty, violence or criminal conduct.”

“This last point was interesting,” HART Group noted, “given the recent Independent article ‘Doctors and nurses accused of rape left free to work in NHS’.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Prof. MacEwen ignored Dr. Jones’ request for a meeting “to discuss these issues further and hear some of our experiences first-hand.”

Considering the doctors’ letters and GMC’s responses, HART Group concluded:

It is hard to dispel the feeling among dissident doctors that there is a target over their heads, with certain hostile actors itching to find any excuse for a GMC referral. HART wrote a year ago about the problems of self-censorship and this still reads well now.

Meanwhile, Pierre Kory and Paul Marik have finally lost their American Board of Internal Medicine certification, over 4 years after they founded the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).

A further letter to the GMC, HART Group, 12 August 2024

You can read Dr. Jones. Letter, Prof. MacEwen’s response and HART Group’s commentary in full HERE.

Featured image taken from ‘What Doctors Say in Private About Covid Vaccines’, Children’s health Defense, 9 March 2022