A LEADING medical journal has published a scathing editorial accusing the British Government of “suppressing science for political and financial gain”.
The BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, claims “Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health”, adding “politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement”.
Explaining their stance, they state: “The UK’s pandemic response relies too heavily on scientists and other government appointees with worrying competing interests, including shareholdings in companies that manufacture covid-19 diagnostic tests, treatments, and vaccines.”
They add: “Government appointees are able to ignore or cherry pick science—another form of misuse—and indulge in anti-competitive practices that favour their own products and those of friends and associates.”
The UK government is currently facing a legal challenge after it awarded £250m worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts to a US jewellery company.
The BMJ reports that the not-for-profit legal organisation the Good Law Project and EveryDoctor, a doctor-led campaigning organisation, claimed that one of the contracts was awarded to the jewellery company without any advertisement or competitive tender process.
The case is one of a number of lawsuits launched against the government by the legal campaigning group over contracts and positions awarded during the pandemic.
The group is also mounting a separate High Court challenge to the government’s decision to award lucrative contracts to companies with little or no experience in the supply of PPE.
Good Law Project director, Jolyon Maugham QC, told the BMJ: “At last we can all see—in simple black and white—the staggering sums flowing from public coffers to private pockets. “Who could blame individuals for joining the queue if the government is handing out free money?
“But you and I, and our children, are going to have to pay higher taxes because the government’s incompetence handed fortunes big enough to last generations to obscure foreign businessmen.”
The BMJ have called for “full transparency about decision making systems, processes, and knowing who is accountable for what” from the government.
“Science is a public good,” they state.
“It doesn’t need to be followed blindly, but it does need to be fairly considered.”
They add: “When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die.”
