Last weekend we saw the tragi-comedy of the Reform UK Conference.
One of the most dangerous parts of it, aside from the singing, was their platforming of Dr Aseem Malhotra.
In his talk to the faithful, he claimed that it’s very likely that our royals- presumably King Charles and Princess Catherine – got cancer because they had had the Covid vaccines.
“He thinks it’s highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a factor, a significant factor in the cancer of members of the royal family,” said Malhotra, who had previously said: “This isn’t just his opinion many other doctors feel the same way.”
FullFact, of course, could debunk this evidence-free claim very quickly:
Cancer Research UK told the Guardian: “There is no good evidence of a link between the Covid-19 vaccine and cancer risk. The vaccine is a safe and effective way to protect against the infection and prevent serious symptoms.”
Speaking to the Science Media Centre, Brian Ferguson, professor of viral immunology at the University of Cambridge, said: “Evidence that mRNA vaccines cause cancer is simply untrue…. There is no credible evidence that these vaccines disrupt tumour suppressors or drive any kind of process (biochemical or otherwise) that results in cancer. It is particularly crass to try to link this pseudoscience to the unfortunate incidents of cancer in the Royal Family.”
Professor Anne Mills, director of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “There are no credible data for the cancer claims.”
Later in the speech Malhotra appeared to refer to the Covid vaccine as being “unsafe and defective”.
FullFact once again produces something other than wild assertion Malhotra was presenting in response.
The NHS says all Covid vaccines in use in the UK have met “strict standards” of effectiveness, as well as safety, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that clinical trials have shown Covid vaccines are “safe and effective, especially against severe illness, hospitalization, and death”. This is well supported by many pieces of research.
No-one of course should deny that there have been serious side effects of the vaccine seen in a few cases. There have. Very rarely. And FullFact don’t deny as such. But it’s hard to argue with the cost-benefit analysis when:
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data shows that, in England, 63 deaths involving Covid vaccines were registered up to July 2023. But analysis from the UK Health Security Agency found that the vaccines prevented 127,500 deaths in England up to 24 September 2021.
At another point Malhotra claimed that:
we knew that the Covid vaccine wasn’t stopping infection or transmission
This was of course not true. We weren’t taking it for fun. Unless he meant wasn’t stopping every single case of it. But that’s not what he said.
A UK Health Security Agency vaccine surveillance report, published in September 2021, cited estimates that the Pfizer vaccine was 80% effective against infection with the Delta variant. It also said: “Uninfected individuals cannot transmit; therefore, the vaccines are also effective at preventing transmission.”
He also claimed that the chairman of the British Medical Association praised Malhotra’s analysis of the evidence and said that his own colleagues just got their information from the BBC.
The chair of the BMA at the time claims that that is a total lie and that he definitely said no such thing.
Dr Nagpaul told us in a statement through the BMA that the comments attributed to him were “inaccurate”, adding: “I definitely did not say that my senior medical colleagues were getting information about the Covid vaccine from the BBC.”
On the contrary, I specifically recall advising Dr Malhotra that the BMA and the senior medical profession was guided by and relied on data and information from Public Health England, the World Health Organisation, and the JCVI. The BMA also has a public health committee which has experts who were providing additional expertise regarding Covid and the vaccine to the Association.
Madcap vaccine denial is another Reform UK import from the US of course. Dr Malhotra is himself a senior advisor to the US health secretary / vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy over in the US – a country the Reform party leader, Farage, seems to much prefer over his own.
Over there vaccines “hesitancy” is causing suffering and death already – perhaps most famously in the cases of the poor unvaccinated children unnecessarily dying of measles.
Protect our children. We must not let these dangerous fools come anywhere near to a place where they can be involved in setting British health policy.