The United Kingdom’s public health service is reportedly refusing to release data on the potential relationship between the COVID vaccine and excess deaths.
The reason?
It would upset people to know the truth.
The question is whether British citizens have become so passive and yielding that they will support their government, keeping them from learning the facts about vaccines and allowing them to reach their own conclusions.
The UK has long embraced speech controls and censorship to protect citizens from unacceptable views or what one criminal defendant was told were “toxic ideologies.”
Social media companies assisted governments in censoring opposing scientific views during the pandemic, including those regarding the potential dangers of the vaccines.
Over the years, dissenting faculty members have been forced out of scientific and academic organizations for challenging preferred conclusions on subjects ranging from transgender transitions to COVID-19 protections to climate change. Some were barred from speaking at universities or blacklisted for their opposing views.
Many of the exiled experts were ultimately proven correct in challenging the efficacy of surgical masks or the need to shut down our schools and businesses. Scientists moved like a herd of lemmings on the origin of the virus, crushing those who suggested that the most likely explanation is a lab leak (a position that federal agencies would later embrace).
Scientists have worked with the government in suppressing dissenting views. For example, The Wall Street Journal released a report on how the Biden administration suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab leak theory, as dissenting scientists were blacklisted and targeted.
When experts within the Biden Administration found that the lab theory was the most likely explanation for COVID-19, they were told not to share their data publicly and were warned about being “off the reservation.”
Universities and associations joined the crackdown. Scientists questioning the efficacy of those blue surgical masks and the six-foot rule were suppressed. So were those arguing that we should, as in Europe, keep schools open. These experts were also later vindicated, but few were rehired or reestablished in universities or associations.
It was all done in the name of protecting the public from opposing views or data.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that little has changed.
According to the Telegraph, the agency declared that releasing the data would lead to the “distress or anger” of bereaved relatives if a link were to be discovered.
It also suggested that the data might stress or undermine the mental health of the families and friends of people who died.
The story has received little attention in the media, which previously joined efforts to suppress opposing views during the pandemic.
We have no idea what the data actually says, but there should be uniform agreement that the public has a right to know.
The controversy is reminiscent of the position of the British courts on sharing information with patients. In the United States, there is a strong common law in favor of disclosing to patients any risks or complications associated with possible treatments or surgeries. In the UK, the courts took a more deferential view of doctors. As with the agency’s position, the rationale was hard for many in the United States to comprehend, let alone accept.
For example, in Sidaway v. Bethlem Royal Hospital (1985), the court rejected the need for a surgeon to inform a patient of a low risk of nerve damage from a laminectomy, writing:
“I confess that I reach this conclusion with no regret. The evidence in this case showed that a contrary result would be damaging to the relationship of trust and confidence between doctor and patient, and might well have an adverse effect on the practice of medicine. It is doubtful whether it would be of any significant benefit to patients, most of whom prefer to put themselves unreservedly in the hands of their doctors.”
The decision to withhold the data on vaccines shows the same arrogant assumptions.
If I had a loved one who died from the vaccine, I would like to know about it.
The government is essentially arguing a Jessup rule that “you can’t handle the truth.”
We will now see if the British people have lost all self-respect and separation from their government in yielding to this decision.
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