A censored letter from a concerned doctor
A rapid response from a London consultant written to the British Medical Journal in 2021 was removed because it was "being used to spread misinformation"
Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)
While working on a forthcoming post I came across something from April 2021 that I had almost forgotten about — a letter from a doctor to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which I remember reading on the BMJ website at the time.
We will come to the content in due course. First, some context…
The context
A BMJ article
The letter, written by London-based consultant K Polyakova, was in response to this BMJ article , Do doctors have to have the covid-19 vaccine?:
The piece essentially consists of the views of four “experts” presented under four headlines as follows (NB the quotes in the article are longer):
We have a duty to protect patients
Vageesh Jain, public health specialty registrar, University College London
— who says, “As it stands, legally, you don’t have to have a covid vaccine. But ethically, clinically, epidemiologically — whichever way you slice it — I would argue you do.”
We should lead by example
Colin Melville, General Medical Council medical director and director of education and standards
— who says, “Choosing to have the vaccine or not is a personal choice dependent on individual circumstances. But at a time when health professionals have never been more valued, we should lead by example.”
If you refuse, prepare to justify why
Rob Hendry, medical director at the Medical Protection Society
— who says, “Medical staff who refuse the vaccine should therefore be prepared to justify their decision and, where possible, mitigate any risks. We would encourage healthcare workers who are reluctant or refuse the vaccine to explore… the wider benefits of reducing the transmission of covid-19 with their supervisor and occupational health.”
We can protect others by being vaccinated
Sarah Ali, consultant in diabetes and endocrinology, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
— who says, “Working as a patient-facing doctor and looking after people who are considered to be clinically vulnerable meant that taking the vaccine was an easy decision for me.”
Hmm. Those four people were hardly representative of the wide range of views in the NHS at the time. And the article features little or no emphasis on the need for fully informed consent and what that actually means.
Thank goodness for organisations like NHS100K, formed in the context of the attempted coercion of NHS and care staff:
Responses to the BMJ article
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were plenty of “rapid responses” — emails to the BMJ editor that facilitate debate — which can still be viewed here. Those responses include Polyakova’s (also available at this link) which now appears merely as:
Somewhat encouragingly — for advocates of free speech at least — the other responses, including two that protest the removal of Polyakova’s letter, can still be viewed. Plus this one that cites data to extend Polyakova’s concerns to the population as a whole:
But it appears that Polyakova’s rapid response, which was taken down ten days after its publication, has been permanently removed. And as far as I can tell, no-one visiting the BMJ website can now see the original content.
The content
But, as the saying goes, “the internet never forgets”. Polyakova’s letter can still be found e.g. on YouTube here (with voiceover c/o NotOnTheBeeb), or in discussion on this podcast (from 32:45). It was also reported here.
This is what it said:
Re: Do doctors have to have the covid-19 vaccine?
Dear Editor
I have had more vaccines in my life than most people and come from a place of significant personal and professional experience in relation to this pandemic, having managed a service during the first 2 waves and all the contingencies that go with that.
Nevertheless, what I am currently struggling with is the failure to report the reality of the morbidity caused by our current vaccination program within the health service and staff population. The levels of sickness after vaccination is unprecedented and staff are getting very sick and some with neurological symptoms which is having a huge impact on the health service function. Even the young and healthy are off for days, some for weeks, and some requiring medical treatment. Whole teams are being taken out as they went to get vaccinated together.
Mandatory vaccination in this instance is stupid, unethical and irresponsible when it comes to protecting our staff and public health. We are in the voluntary phase of vaccination, and encouraging staff to take an unlicensed product that is impacting on their immediate health, and I have direct experience of staff contracting Covid AFTER vaccination and probably transmitting it. In fact, it is clearly stated that these vaccine products do not offer immunity or stop transmission. In which case why are we doing it? There is no longitudinal safety data (a couple of months of trial data at best) available and these products are only under emergency licensing. What is to say that there are no longitudinal adverse effects that we may face that may put the entire health sector at risk?
Flu is a massive annual killer, it inundates the health system, it kills young people, the old the comorbid, and yet people can [choose] whether or not they have that vaccine (which had been around for a long time). And you can list a whole number of other examples of vaccines that are not mandatory and yet they protect against diseases of higher consequence.
Coercion and mandating medical treatments on our staff, of members of the public especially when treatments are still in the experimental phase, are firmly in the realms of a totalitarian Nazi dystopia and fall far outside of our ethical values as the guardians of health.
I and my entire family have had Covid. This as well as most of my friends, relatives and colleagues. I have recently lost a relatively young family member with comorbidities to heart failure, resulting from the pneumonia caused by Covid. Despite this, I would never debase myself and agree, that we should abandon our liberal principles and the international stance on bodily sovereignty, free informed choice and human rights and support unprecedented coercion of professionals, patients and people to have experimental treatments with limited safety data. This and the policies that go with this are more of a danger to our society than anything else we have faced over the last year. What has happened to “my body my choice?”
What has happened to scientific and open debate? If I don’t prescribe an antibiotic to a patient who doesn’t need it as they are healthy, am I anti-antibiotics? Or an antibiotic-denier? Is it not time that people truly thought about what is happening to us and where all of this is taking us?
Competing interests: No competing interests
02 April 2021
K Polyakova
Consultant
London
Other censorship
The BMJ censorship first came to my attention when I noticed that a Reddit link featuring Polyakova’s letter (which I had sent to others in 2021) now gives this message:
On a related note, here is what you get if you click the YouTube link on the NHS100K.com website mentioned earlier:
In the context of the extensive censorship over the past few years, this is hardly surprising. But I do find it somewhat sinister. Especially given what we now know about the so-called covid vaccines.
Why were the modified mRNA injections — which have never been shown to prevent transmission — pushed so hard on healthcare workers? Presumably the authorities knew that once all doctors and nurses had been injected it would be easier to push the injections on the rest of society? Government employees next perhaps, including teachers. And then schoolchildren.
If that sounds far-fetched, consider…
the extent of the psychological manipulation…
e.g. this recent article by a medical whistleblower…
…and the fact that, despite the known harms, modified mRNA injections are still being pushed on children.
This image seems more apposite than ever:
Dear Church Leaders homepage (or via Substack, or e.g. DuckDuckGo, but not Google for some reason)
The Big Reveal — Christianity carefully considered (which can also be found via Substack, or e.g. DuckDuckGo, but not Google)