A chill wind passed through the dissident medical profession this week when Dr Sam White was permanently erased from the medical register. But it will not cause us to stop speaking truth to power or more importantly being open and honest with our patients about the potential harms of mRNA vaccines.

For those who don’t know of Dr White, he was an experienced General Practitioner who, like many others, found himself conflicted between his NHS practice expecting him to promote Covid-19 vaccines to his patients, while in his clinical practice seeing increasing numbers of people with vaccine injuries. After much soul-searching he resigned from his post in February 2021. A few months later, in June 2021, he recorded a short face to camera video explaining why he had decided to quit, which he then posted on a social media site. Perhaps to his surprise, it was viewed by millions and within a few days had come to the attention of his employer, namely NHS England, who blocked him from any NHS work, which he legally challenged. A GMC investigation then followed and his NHS suspension was reversed, but an Interim Orders Tribunal put conditions on his registration, namely that he must not use social media to express any medical opinion about the pandemic. Dr White challenged this in the High Court on the grounds that it breached his right to freedom of speech. The court upheld his challenge, as described in the BMJ here, though oddly enough the link to the actual judgement is no longer available, except via Wayback machine. Mr Justice Dove ruled that there had been “an error of law and a clear misdirection in the interim orders tribunal’s decision making process.” Its decision was “clearly wrong and cannot stand,” he added. He stressed that he was expressing no views on the merits of Dr White’s claims on social media. But he said the tribunal had failed to consider a provision in the Human Rights Act 1998. This states that a court or tribunal should not restrain somebody’s freedom of expression before a full hearing unless it was satisfied that after a full hearing the application to restrict publication was more likely than not to succeed. 

At the time, the GMC clearly didn’t think that Dr White was a danger to his patients (there had been no clinical complaints against him) nor even sufficient danger to public health for them to suspend him and for the next 3 years he was entitled to work and to speak freely, and many of his supporters had thought this was the end of it. But the wheels of ‘justice’ (ironically in this case more like the wheels of ‘injustice’) grind slowly and in August 2024, the GMC set up a full hearing by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS). By this stage, Dr White had moved entirely to a practice of naturopathic medicine and decided that he would not engage with the process – he neither attended nor was he legally represented. No-one who has experienced a GMC investigation will blame him at all for this decision – it is time-consuming, emotionally draining and very costly. But his absence may have enabled a serious miscarriage of justice.

The charge against Dr White concerned 5 video interviews about the pandemic which he had recorded between June 2021 and July 2022, and the hearing hinged around details of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Article 10, paragraph 1 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.”

However in certain circumstances, the law allows for these rights to be restricted, as in Article 10, paragraph 2: 

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”

The Tribunal chairman quoted from the case of Adil v GMC [2023] EWCA Civ 126. Mohammad Adil is a surgeon who was suspended by the GMC in 2020, again for a face to camera video which went viral. He also took the GMC to court but in his case he lost. In that case, “the Court held that the fact that a doctor expresses a minority view, even a view shared by a small minority is not sufficient of itself to render his conduct improper. Medical progress depends upon such debate and is littered with examples of what were thought to be heretical views becoming accepted wisdom, and vice-versa. Article 10 and the common law protect the right to express views with which most people disagree. Views contrary to widely accepted medical opinion are not sufficient to establish misconduct.” However, the judgement went on to say that this does not apply to views so far removed from any concept of legitimate medical debate and must be considered on the facts of each individual case. “There is an important qualitative difference between a doctor’s views which have some supporting scientific basis, even if not widely accepted, and views whose validity or accuracy is unconnected to any supporting evidential basis, in other words baseless.” 

With Dr White absent from the proceedings, the Tribunal seem to have assumed that his views on the safety of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines were ‘baseless’, whereas of course they are shared by a significant minority of doctors who have assembled a huge amount of scientific literature on vaccine harms. However, the judgement in quoting from his interviews has barely mentioned Dr White’s criticisms of the vaccine, for all of which he had provided many references to the GMC in 2021. It has instead focussed almost entirely on discussions about the ‘why’ of the vaccine rollout and the censorship, quoting Dr White speaking of: ‘evil’, ‘planned’, ‘globalists’, ‘tyranny’, ‘totalitarianism’, et cetera. These, of course, are all issues which are widely discussed but  are not subject to testing and writing up in peer-reviewed journals. They are a matter of opinion. The question of whether Dr White’s opinions in any way harmed public health has not been demonstrated by the GMC, yet the Tribunal “determined that, it was more likely than not, such comments undermined public confidence in the medical profession.”

Another aspect of Dr White’s absence was that, whereas the GMC were actually asking for a suspension rather than for his name to be permanently erased from the register, the Tribunal interpreted his absence as showing a lack of insight into the seriousness of his actions and a lack of any effort at mitigation or remediation. For a surgeon who has cut off the wrong limb or a physician who has missed a potentially treatable fatal condition, remorse and a desperate wish to ensure you never make the same mistake again, would be the universal reaction, even without censure from the GMC. But for a doctor who is in effect a whistleblower, it is hard to show remorse, whilst still hoping that your actions have indeed saved lives. 

The irony is that if the GMC really believed that Dr White was a danger to public health, they would have suspended him in 2021, at a time when the vaccine rollout was in full swing and we were heading towards a second winter of masks and lockdowns. Yet they appear to have made no effort to bring forward a full hearing, and have instead waited a full 3 years after his initial video before bringing this case. The rules for deciding on a penalty are that the Tribunal must consider whether the doctor poses a risk to future patients rather than only past. Given the government messaging with which Dr White disagreed all came to an end during 2022, it is hard to see what harm he is thought to be causing in 2024.

It was, however, made very clear that the penalty was not only intended for Dr White but also to send a clear message to other doctors considering speaking out. “Sanctioning doctors for comments likely to undermine public health and confidence in the medical profession so as to deter such behaviour engages the aim of the protection of public health and safety.” Indeed, coming close in the heels of Dr White, is a consultant psychiatrist, Dr Daniel Armstrong, also facing the possibility of being struck off for a single online video, “Navigating the Truth-deception duality”. And there are others with hearings in the near future. This is not about clinical complaints of patient safety. This is about doctors questioning the government about the management of the pandemic, especially the poor safety record of the vaccines. 

In May of this year, Professor Dame Carrie McEwen, chair of the GMC, published a statement in response  to  the contaminated blood scandal.  She commented robustly on the importance of protecting whistleblowers. “There is extensive commentary within the report about the importance of speaking up about both mistakes and near misses and a cautionary note about the need to protect those who do so from detriment to their career.” She said, “We are of course aware that referrals to us are sometimes used to intimidate. This is completely unacceptable, has significant consequences for doctors’ wellbeing and puts the safety of patients at risk….We’ve put a number of safeguards in place” and she committed to  assessing “whether further interventions are needed to prevent retaliatory or weaponised referrals.”  “also seen investigative media reports alleging that a number of NHS managers have taken actions to silence whistleblowers, including threatening referral to the GMC.”  The Telegraph (15th May 2024), published one such report under the title “The four-step ‘playbook’ the NHS uses to break whistleblowers”. 

A large group of doctors and other health professionals wrote to the GMC in June, highlighting their concerns over what appeared to be a witch hunt of doctors speaking out about covid-vaccine harms. The ongoing correspondence is published here. Several of the signatories to that letter had previously signed a fully referenced scientific letter to the Chief Medical Officer in June 2021 calling on him not to recommend covid vaccines for children, and found themselves referred by the DoHSC to the Counter Disinformation Unit.

A recent BMA survey showed that the proportion of doctors being discouraged from or even afraid of speaking out has risen significantly between 2018 and 2024, to the point where 61% of those polled in 2024 said they may not raise concerns because they were “afraid” they or colleagues could be “unfairly blamed or suffer adverse consequences”. 

The UK is not alone in its efforts to stifle free speech with eminent doctors being similarly sanctioned in Canada, Australia, and most recently the USA. Whistleblowing in academia is no easier.

If public confidence in the medical profession has fallen, rather than blaming dissenters for speaking out against the prevailing message, perhaps doctors need to take a hard look at their unquestioning acceptance of the ‘Safe and Effective’ message and ask themselves why is covid continuing, why are their vulnerable patients being recommended for another booster every 6 months, and yet why are they apparently busier than ever?

Many of the doctors currently being hounded for speaking out on social media, are the same doctors who are repeatedly thanked by members of the public for their honesty and integrity and especially for their efforts to support the vaccine injured, often ignored and disbelieved by others. Comments beneath an article in the Mail about Dr White’s erasure, suggest that many members of the public have rather more faith in Dr White than they have in the GMC.

The current situation of self-censorship amongst doctors combined with GMC overreach, risks serious ongoing harms to patients and must not continue.