Feud at General Medical Council as doctors accuse regulators of failing to crack down on medics spreading Covid vaccine conspiracies
Angry doctors have accused the General Medical Council of negligence for failing to act against medics who spread false information about Covid-19 jabs.
They say the physician regulator ? charged with protecting patients and upholding medical standards ? is shirking its legal responsibility to properly monitor its members.
All practicing doctors in the UK must be registered with the body.
Six clinicians have launched a crowdfunding initiative to raise ?15,000 for a judicial review of the GMC’s decision not to bring leading doctors before an suitability panel.
They say that failure to do so will have serious public health consequences. Dr David Nicholl, one of the six and a neurologist in Birmingham, said: ‘I am so angry that the GMC is not doing anything.
Angry doctors have accused the General Medical Council of negligence for not cracking down on medics spreading false information about Covid-19 jabs, photo taken by model
The medics are crowdfunding to file a case against medics promoting conspiracy theories
?It is in direct defiance of what it should stand for.
‘I am a staunch supporter of freedom of expression, but with that comes responsibility. The question here is whether doctors should be free to say in public what they want, whatever the consequences may be.’
A small number of high-profile British doctors have used their social media statuses to repeatedly spread misinformation about vaccines, the doctors claim. This includes heavily disputed claims on Twitter and in TV interviews that some or all of the Covid vaccines are ineffective and are causing widespread serious heart problems.
In a statement last week, the group said some of the anti-vax messages suggested “certain deaths are attributable to the vaccines, while there is no evidence to support that link.”
It added: ‘We don’t mean that vaccines occasionally do harm. We mean deliberately and repeatedly misrepresenting the evidence on vaccines in a way that significantly overemphasizes their harm.
“The GMC has a legal duty to investigate physicians who … behave in ways that bring the profession into disrepute.”
The group said the inaction is in stark contrast to the recent expulsion of North West Leicestershire Conservative Party MP Andrew Bridgen for making ‘false and misleading’ anti-vaccination statements.
Watchdog Ofcom ruled last month that GB News was guilty of allowing a doctor to compare the vaccine rollout to ‘mass murder’.
The statement from the six doctors added: “Surely the GMC should also investigate doctors who make statements that are scientifically incorrect and misleading?”
Trisha Greenhalgh, professor of primary health care at the University of Oxford, expressed her support for the action on Twitter.
She said: “I agree that the GMC should not routinely wash its hands of such cases.”
In a statement to The Mail on Sunday, the GMC said: ‘We take action where there is evidence of a risk to patients or public confidence or a serious breach of appropriate professional standards or behaviour.
“We do not take this responsibility lightly and realize that our decisions can sometimes be disappointing to complainants.”