Covid vaccines, the GMC, and the row over Aseem Malhotra

The cardiologist has used his social media platform to claim, among other things, that the mRNA Covid vaccines "likely contributed to all unexpected cardiac arrests, heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, and heart failures" from 2021 onwards.

It is not a view shared by mainstream science, and Dr Malhotra's activities have angered medical colleagues who have compared the situation to the MMR scandal of the late 1990s when now-discredited research by Dr Andrew Wakefield falsely claimed that the childhood vaccine was linked to autism.

What has infuriated many, however, is that while Dr Wakefield was ultimately struck off by the GMC in 2010, the regulator has so far rebuffed repeated pleas to investigate Dr Malhotra, an Edinburgh University medicine graduate who is now in private practice.

Dr Andrew Wakefield (centre) and his then wife, Carmel (second right), arrive at the General Medical Council hearing which found he showed a 'callous disregard' for the suffering of children in his MMR research (Image: PA)

It is all the more puzzling when other medics have faced sanctions.

Mohammad Iqbal Adil - an NHS consultant with 30 years experience - was suspended following a GMC investigation and subsequent tribunal for claiming in online videos that the Covid-19 pandemic was a hoax.

Now Dr Matt Kneale, a Manchester-based doctor and co-chair of the lobby group, Doctors Association UK (DAUK) - a long-time critic of the GMC - has taken the highly unusual step of suing the regulator over its failure to step in.

In documents filed with the High Court in England, Dr Kneale alleges that Dr Malhotra peddled “unscientific and dangerous misinformation” about the Covid vaccines.

He warned that the lack of any repercussions risked creating a “wild west” where any doctor could say almost anything without consequence.

For its part, the GMC has argued that Dr Malhotra's comments were not “egregious enough” to bring his professional competence into question.

Asked by the Herald to elaborate, a spokesman for the GMC said it was unable to comment on individual doctors but "thoroughly [examines] all relevant information before making a decision about whether it meets the statutory threshold for investigation".

He added: "We take action where there is evidence of a risk to patients or public confidence or a serious breach of proper professional standards or conduct.

"We do not take this responsibility lightly and realise that our decisions can sometimes be disappointing for complainants."

People queue for Covid jags at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow, which was temporarily converted into a vaccine hub at the height of the pandemic (Image: PA)

Writing earlier this month in The Skeptic magazine, Dr Kneale said his legal argument - should the judicial review go ahead - will contend that the GMC "wrongly applied an absolutist free speech defence, rather than properly considering whether Malhotra used his medical status to spread vaccine falsehoods".

For those uninitiated with the saga, Dr Malhotra underwent something of a Damascene conversion after his 73-year-old father - Dr Kailash Chand, a former deputy chair of the BMA - suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in June 2021, six months after his second Pfizer vaccine dose.

Dr Malhotra - a celebrity doctor and author who had previously appeared on television during the pandemic encouraging people to get vaccinated - went on to link the jabs with "inexplicable" post-mortem results showing severe blockages in his father's arteries which had been absent in heart scans a few years prior.

In September 2022, Dr Malhotra published a much-criticised review in the Journal of Insulin Resistance describing the Covid vaccine rollout as a "reckless gamble" which was contributing to a spike in cardiovascular deaths and should be immediately paused.

He has publicly supported disgraced MP Andrew Bridgen, who compared the use of Covid vaccines to the Holocaust.

BREAKING:

Andrew Bridgen sues Matt Hancock over covid vaccine row @MattHancock first please do the right thing and apologise. Second you must support @ABridgen calls for suspension of the mRNA jab as data on significant cardiac harms is overwhelming https://t.co/tEcsbafyqh

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) January 26, 2023

The scientific backlash has been fulsome and wide-ranging, blasting everything from the credibility of the journal itself (it has rarely published anything at all, Dr Malhotra sits on its editorial board, and the paper's editors included vocal vaccine sceptics) to the quality of the data underpinning Dr Malhotra's claims.

The bottom line is that national statistics up to December 2022 simply do not show an elevated mortality rate for non-Covid causes among vaccinated individuals compared to the unvaccinated, which - after tens of millions of doses - would be clearly evident if Covid vaccines really did increase the risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular events.

Another question, however, is how much sway a GMC probe would actually have on public opinion.

Its censure of Wakefield arguably turned him into a celebrated martyr among antivax campaigners; perhaps the regulator hoped to avoid something similar with Dr Malhotra and his 566,000 Twitter followers?

By the end of March this year, the proportion of five-year-olds in Scotland who had received both MMR doses stood at 89.8% - the lowest coverage since at least 2014 and well short of the 95% needed for herd immunity.

This is particularly alarming given a surge in measles incidence: 5,699 cases - including 139 in the UK - were reported in the World Health Organisation's European region between January and May this year compared to 944 in the whole of 2022 (though still well below the 80,000 reported in 2018)

Exactly how much of that can be blamed on any lingering MMR-autism fears versus increased mixing and basic complacency is hard to unpick, however.

Measles cases in Europe have rebounded in 2022, though numbers remain well below the 80,000 reported across the region in 2018 (Image: WHO)

There are roughly one to three deaths for every 1000 measles infections - a much higher case-fatality ratio than Covid - but a dramatic reduction in the prevalence of the disease as a result of vaccines means that parents today have been lulled into a false sense of security.

In Scotland, responsibility for routine childhood vaccines has also been transitioning since 2021 from GP surgeries to health boards which may have impacted uptake, though coverage here is higher than the UK average (86%) and much higher than London (75%).

For measles, as with Covid, vaccines have been life-saving. But exactly what counts as crossing the line when it comes to medics and misinformation remains much less clear.