British Indian medic calls for public apology over COVID vaccine mandates
London (PTI): British Indian cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, a vocal campaigner for a more evidence-based approach to all COVID vaccines, and a fellow medic on Friday called for medical bodies to publicly apologise for the implementation of COVID vaccine mandates they claim have fuelled distrust and conspiracy theories.
Writing in the peer-reviewed journal ‘Science, Public Health Policy and the Law’, Malhotra and research psychologist Dr Andrea Lamont Nazarenko call upon the public health establishment to address the shortcomings of COVID-era public policy and acknowledge wrongdoings.
Both authors acknowledge the need for decisions guided by the best evidence available in the early days of the pandemic but insist that such justification cannot extend indefinitely.
“Until the most urgent questions are answered, nothing less than a global moratorium on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — coupled with formal, unequivocal apologies from governments and medical bodies for mandates and for silencing truth seekers — will suffice,” they write.
Dr Malhotra, an advisor to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, is campaigning for wider information access on vaccines as the Chief Medical Advisor to Make Europe Healthy Again.
In the journal commentary entitled ‘Mandates and Lack of Transparency on COVID-19 Vaccine Safety has Fuelled Distrust – An Apology to Patients is Long Overdue’, Malhotra and Nazarenko argue that science must remain the foundation of public health.
“The pandemic demonstrated that when scientific integrity is lacking and dissent is suppressed, unethical decision-making can become legitimised. When this happens, public confidence in health authorities erodes,” they write.
“The role of public health is not to override individual clinical judgment or the ethics that govern medical decision-making. This is essential because what once appeared self-evident can, on further testing, prove false – and what may appear to be ‘safe and effective’ for one individual may be harmful to another,” they add.
The article has been welcomed by international medical experts and scientists, who believe in an urgent need to rebuild public confidence in health authorities.
“It might be impossible to go back in time and correct these major public health failings, which included support of futile and damaging vaccine mandates and lockdowns and provision of unsupported false and misleading claims regarding knowledge of vaccine efficacy and safety, but to start rebuilding public confidence in health authorities (is) the starting point,” said Dr Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease, Australian Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Institute, Adelaide, Australia.
“This article is a scholarly and timely review of the public health principles that have been so clearly ignored and traduced. Without a complete apology and explanation we are doomed to pay the price for failure to take up the few vaccines that make a highly significant contribution to public health,” added Angus Dalgleish, Emeritus Professor of Oncology, St George’s University Hospital, UK.
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EC-TMC meet ends on bitter note; CEC asks TMC delegation to 'get lost', MP accused of 'shouting'
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New Delhi (PTI): The meeting between a Trinamool Congress delegation and the full bench of the Election Commission on Wednesday culminated on an acrimonious note, with the TMC saying the panel's chief asked them to "get lost" at the end of the seven-minute meeting, while the EC accused them of "shouting".
After the meeting, TMC's Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien told mediapersons that they handed over letters from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, and also apprised him of specific instances of poll officials having links with the BJP.
"Then he said, 'Get lost'. We have done eight to nine meetings with the Election Commission. Apart from the CEC, none of the other election commissioners spoke," O'Brien said.
"While we were walking out, one of my colleagues congratulated Gyanesh Kumar for being the only CEC to have notices moved in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for his removal," O'Brien MP said.
Meanwhile, sources in the Election Commission said the poll panel chief gave a "straight talk" to TMC leaders.
They accused O'Brien of shouting at the election commissioners and alleged that he asked the CEC not to speak.
The EC sources further said the elections in West Bengal would be "fear-free, violence-free, intimidation-free, and inducement-free."
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