The vindictive persecution of an ethical doctor

The extraordinary treatment of whistleblower GP Dave Cartland and how it fits into the bigger picture

Feb 12, 2026

Dear Church Leaders (and everyone else)

This post is an update on whistleblower GP Dave Cartland, who I featured in this posts last summer:

A tale of two doctors

July 29, 2025

Read full story

For context, here are the opening words of a statement he made in 2022 under the title Breaking the silence:

My name is Dr Dave Cartland, and I am 39 and a practicing GP in the UK down in sunny Cornwall. I qualified in 2014 as a GP, and prior to that worked my foundation years in the West Midland’s Foundation programme and GPVTS (Black country).
I qualified from Birmingham Medical school in 2008 as a graduate entry medic, completed a Biomedical science degree in 2004 with a large component of this reading in immunology, virology, microbiology and medical statistics.
I proudly qualified with first class honours and went on to publish work in Angiogenesis as part of the Birmingham angiogenesis research group in 2005. I am a married father of 4 awesome children who are my life and have two faiths… Jesus Christ and Aston Villa FC.

He then went on to outline his perspective on the covid narrative, highlighting issues in relation to testing, death certification and data manipulation. Citing his duty to “first do no harm”, he expressed particular concern in relation to informed consent and the safety of the covid shots.

More than four years later, a lot has happened, including a GMC tribunal last summer in which he was struck off the medical register.

According to his website:

Dr. Cartland was de-registered following the decision of a closed panel of the professional medical body (GMC) in June 2025. Despite not being allowed to present most of his evidence to defend the accusations made against him at the hearing, nor bring any witnesses in his defense.

This account by independent journalist Sally Beck provides useful context:

An extract:

Paul Diamond KC, the barrister who represented Dr Cartland at the hearing, said that the General Medical Council’s (GMC) barrister Thomas Moran KC, had ‘dutifully and skilfully portrayed him in the worst light possible’. He added: “We do have a difficult case and we do recognise elements of misconduct by Dr Cartland, but we do refute that it’s serious misconduct.” He said that it was at the lower end of the scale, because the conduct had taken place in the ‘Twitter zone’.
He described how the online debates had personally affected Dr Cartland. “He has lost his job, individuals contacted his workplace, watched his children and even involved the Football Association, because he was a referee. There was a mob that had turned on him.” He added: “Dr Cartland is a fine doctor and no risk to patients. There were positive comments from patients in his appraisals and in testimonials from them.”

I am reminded of this post featuring an interview with Paul Diamond:

Paul Diamond on medical ethics and the covid era

February 24, 2025

Read full story

Dave Cartland’s 5th February statement

But being struck off the medical register was not the end of the matter. Last week, Dave Cartland put out this update (also available on YouTube). A transcript is below, with some additional comments plus reflections at the end:

This has been a video that I really didn’t want to record, and I’ve been putting it off…for a couple of days… but I think it’s best that the public hear about what’s happened…
I’ve been struck off as a doctor for incidents not involving any patients… no negligence, no harm… for internet behaviours… calling out misinformation that was harmful, in my opinion, and making safeguarding concerns regarding pregnancy and giving the jab to children… and calling out those that said it was safe in both those cohorts. I also wrote five letters to allow people to go and visit dying relatives abroad… or sick relatives. And that led to me being struck off.

I still find it extraordinary that so few doctors spoke out against recommending covid injections for pregnant women. It was my understanding that, since the thalidomide scandal in the 1960s, giving pregnant women any medical treatment with no long-term safety data would be a complete no-no, let alone an mRNA injection described by the pharmaceutical companies as a gene therapy in their regulatory submissions. The persecution of doctors pointing out such basic aspects of medical ethics shows how far we have fallen.

I note that, at the time of writing, the UK’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ website still states that: “COVID-19 vaccines are strongly recommended in pregnancy”

And I am reminded that, in the words of a 2015 Sunday Times article: “When the thalidomide scandal erupted in 1961, the drug was soon banned. Yet pregnant women in Spain continued taking it until the 1980s — and the authorities refuse to accept responsibility…”

So I’ve kind of accepted that [I’ve been struck off]... I’ve gotten used to the idea. The plan was always really to hand my licence back if that happened. And that, if the opposite happened, if I won… I wouldn’t have been back in the NHS… as it currently is…
Halloween… I get a knock on the door… I thought it was trick-or-treaters… took some sweets out. But then I found a chap with an envelope I needed to sign for, and it was a letter from the DBS [Disclosure and Barring Service]. And for those who don’t know, the DBS is this newly-reformed Criminal Records Bureau [CRB] check. So if you go for a new employment somewhere, you are checked [for] criminal convictions. So it’s essentially a list for criminals.

Here is what is stated on the DBS website:

“The idea is to protect vulnerable people from potential harm caused by predatory, violent, and abusive criminals.”

They were basically telling me that, due to my strike-off reasons, the GMC were duty-bound to forward that information to DBS… for them to assess putting me on the barred list for vulnerable adults and children.
The day before yesterday… time flies when you’re sat in bed crying all day… they put me on the list. I’ve got the letter here. I’ll just read a bit….
“Thank you for sending us the information for us to consider.”
“We have considered all of your information and decided that it is wholly appropriate and proportionate to include you in the adults and children’s barred list.”
It basically tells me… if I work with any of those two groups… that I’m subject to a £5000 fine and/or custodial sentence, and that anyone else who employs me with children or adults that are vulnerable...
(And, by the way, the DBS say that anyone seeking health advice is vulnerable. So if you come and ask me about fungal nail infection treatments over the counter, you’re “vulnerable”.)

Since speaking out about, Dr Cartland has been offering online consultations via this website:

[The letter] basically… warns that if anyone employs me in those roles, they’ll also be prosecuted.
And it goes on basically to cite the GMC’s decisions about the Twitter stuff and… some really quite tricky stuff to accept…
For example, this is their reason for why they put me on the children’s list:
“Our concerns in relation to your conduct are not impacted by the age of those in your care. If you were to work or volunteer in regulated activity with children, you may similarly consider it acceptable to act in a way which you see fit for yourself and aligns with your own beliefs or ideology, or is intentionally harmful, irrespective of the impact on those who may be reliant on you. You may consider it acceptable to falsify documentation.”
At that point, I’m just going to say I falsified nothing. I put my opinion in a letter of support to allow people to flash [that] letter, if required, at the back end of 2023/2024… to Border Force. None of them actually had to show their letters. None of them were added to medical records.
It wasn’t a vaccine exemption certificate. And the GMC didn’t know when I wrote [the letter] because it was just my own admission. So they didn’t know the date… Nor did they quote to me the eligibility criteria that I “flouted” during the process.
So this is their reason for banning me from working with children…
“You may consider it acceptable to falsify documentation and be of the belief that you are entitled to ignore and flout international policies and protocols.”
As I mentioned, they couldn’t quote [anything that I had] flouted.
“…and failed to consider your professional obligations in doing so. Furthermore, you may actively go against the advice given to you. And overall, it is considered that your conduct poses a considerable safeguarding risk if you were to continue to work or volunteer in regulated activity with children.”
It then goes on to say basically how they realise how much going on this list will mess up my life. And I’ll give you a few quotes:
“It’s acknowledged that being included on the adults and children’s barred list would significantly impact your future career volunteering opportunities as well as impacting your earning capacity and lifestyle.”
It goes on to say:
“We also realize that this can impact your mental health, provide stigma and give and affect your general well-being. However, any interference with your human rights…”
Sweet irony…
“…must be balanced with the rights of the vulnerable groups. And it is believed that you may pose a risk of causing significant emotional harm to vulnerable adults and children. Your inclusion in the adults and children’s barred list is necessary and a proportionate safeguarding measure.”

I wonder if this is how the DBS usually writes letters to people being put on the barred list.

Cartland continues…

There are no children involved in my GMC case. There are no vulnerable adults involved in my GMC case. There has been no crime committed, no civil action successfully completed, no judge, no jury, no abuse, no harm. [But] I’m banned from working with children and vulnerable adults now.
For those of you who know what I’ve been doing since the strike-off… my absolute passion has been to referee grassroots football. I had to retire [from playing football] due to injury, and it’s the next thing that I took up, and it’s kept me fit, it’s kept me sane and I love refereeing youth football, women’s football, adults, open age, and [veterans’] football.
I’m now unable to do that, because it’s looking likely that the FA… they’ve already said they’ve suspended me being appointed to future matches while they do a risk assessment… It doesn’t look good… doesn’t look good. I’ve refereed over nearly 60 games this season… enjoyed every minute. I’ve got promoted. I love it. And because of this [letter] I can now no longer referee children’s football.
I’m on a criminal list… having committed no crimes. You’ll probably tell by my demeanour… [I’m] absolutely mortified at this. But I think people need to know that this is what has happened
It’s not just a strike-off. It’s not just the anonymous contact with children’s services… [people] making anonymous complaints... It’s not just the anonymous police reports… This will make me unemployable... You need a DBS check for working in supermarkets as far as I’m aware.
Wrongthink leads to complete a disassembly of a wrongthinker’s life. There’s nothing that they haven’t touched or contacted. When I say they, I don’t even know who they are. They contacted wife… ex-wife… neighbours, hit pieces written about me and. I stood up for children… pregnant women… medical ethics… patient safety, ironically… safeguarding concerns. And now, apparently, I’m a safeguarding risk.
Anyone that can help… I’m absolutely mortified, as you can tell… just putting out a cry for help really… as to anyone who could potentially help me with this.
There is an appeal process… you get three months… at the High Court Upper Tribunal, which I’ll be pursuing. But [please] spread the word. That’s all we can do in these weird times… these strange times… just put publicity… shine a light on these things. I’m not a bad person. I’m just a normal family guy that had concerns about a jab that he even took himself.
So God bless you all. Thank you all for listening/reading. And please share this far and wide and… call this absolutely disgraceful decision out.
Take care…

A recent update

As if the above weren’t bad enough, there have since been further developments:

…another revelation... I’m now on interim suspension… for all football-related activities. I was delighted to be dusting the boots off tomorrow night… at a kind of leisure league-type… informal… 11-a-side… men’s game, where there may or may not be 16, 17, 18-year-olds. Either way, the revelation is… all the football-related activities… everything from playing, coaching, administrating the football team, refereeing, voluntary stuff, and even standing by a football pitch and watching the game… This is what they’re doing.
The second revelation is… obviously the DBS passed this down the chain yet again. So it’s already gone from the GMC to the DBS… [and now] to the FA. And the DBS also trigger a child safeguarding assessment. So I’m led to believe that’s impending too. What is going on? What on earth have I said that is so bad? What do they want from me…? I can’t watch a football match. I can’t play a football match.
The strange thing is that, when you become a ref, you decide if you want to do youth football or not. And if you don’t want to do youth football, you don’t need an enhanced DBS check. The second point is that this is playing football… when you sign up for a team, you don’t DBS check the players. It’s just not done. If you did then you’d have thin squads. So it just doesn’t happen.
I’m... utterly bemused… as much as I was when I received the original DBS letter. This is so sinister… so totalitarian… so dystopian… all football-related matters, albeit interim… And this, by the way… is not anything to do with the Cornwall FA... This is top-level FA…

The bigger picture

The treatment of Dave Cartland looks vindictive. The contrast with the way e.g. this doctor was treated last year is particularly stark:

Police investigated but did not charge Dr Foy-Yamah, but the Medical Tribunal Practitioners Service (MPTS) concluded on the balance of probabilities that he had raped the woman

I guess Cartland might ultimately be successful in his appeal. But in such cases the process is the punishment, with all the attendant stresses and costs, financial and emotional. And it is surely no accident that any doctor contemplating speaking out would hardly be encouraged by seeing what has happened to their now-former colleague from Cornwall.

But in any case, it is important to see at least something of the bigger picture here.

I am reminded of this post from Maryanne Demasi, a former TV presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) who is now an investigative journalist who writes for online media and top-tiered medical journals:

Here is some context re Merck’s anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx…

The approval of rofecoxib (Vioxx) by the US Food and Drug Administration has led to the “single greatest drug safety catastrophe in the history of this country or the history of the world,” charged one of the agency’s own experts, Dr David Graham, in US Senate hearings last Thursday.
Dr Graham, associate director in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety, said an estimated 88 000 to 139 000 Americans had heart attacks and strokes as a result of taking rofecoxib. The number, he said, far exceeds earlier disasters such as the 100 children killed in the United States by an elixir of sulfanilamide in the 1930s and the 5000 to 10 000 children born in the 1960s with birth defects related to thalidomide. Both events led to sweeping regulatory changes in the United States.

Demasi, who was recently awarded the Australians for Science and Freedom (ASF) Australian of the Year Award for science, points out that:

During the Vioxx scandal, Merck was caught keeping an actual “hit list” of doctors and academics who criticised the drug

And that:

Internal emails revealed executives discussing plans to “seek them out and destroy them where they live…”

Once upon a time, this sort of thing generated headlines in the mainstream media:

If you have not seen it before, I strongly recommend this video from Brandy Vaughan, a former Merck sales executive who founded learntherisk.org, a website dedicated to educating people on the risks associated with vaccines:

The first few paragraphs of this article sum up what happened in December 2020, just as the first covid shots were being administered in the US:

Brandy Vaughan, a former sales executive for the pharmaceutical company Merck and the founder of learntherisk.org, a website dedicated to educating people on the risks associated with vaccines, was apparently found dead by her nine-year-old son on December 8.
According to Children’s Health Defense, Vaughan is reported to have died of “gallbladder complications,” although the source of the report has not been cited, nor has it shared the specific cause of the complications (such as a gallbladder rupture).
Soon after learning of her death, a friend… shared screenshots of a Facebook post Vaughan had written in December of 2019, in which she assured readers that she was not suicidal and did not take any drugs that would cause her to die suddenly.

It doesn’t take much to imagine how things might have turned out differently had someone with the background, courage, charisma and profile of Brandy Vaughan lived to see 2021.

There is alas no shortage of examples of whistleblower doctors being persecuted. And until enough people speak out, there will surely be more.

One way of supporting Dave Cartland is to share his story.

Another is to sign this petition:

An extract:

The designation of an individual as a risk to adults and children, in the absence of criminal findings or transparent due process, raises grave concerns regarding proportionality, procedural fairness, human rights compliance, and misuse of safeguarding mechanisms.