Covid-19: Response and Excess Deaths

Neale Hanvey Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The hon. Gentleman has put on record what he wanted to say in that intervention. All I am saying is that, as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, I receive a large number of letters, not just from my constituents but from across the country, from people who have been adversely affected. I do not think anybody is challenging the authenticity of their circumstances or the complaints they make.

I am going to close—I know a lot of other people want to participate in the debate—with one such letter that came not from one of my constituents, but somebody else. She gives her name, but I will not repeat it. She says:

“After receiving my covid-19 vaccination, I experienced severe adverse reactions that resulted in hospitalisation. These reactions encompassed stroke-like symptoms, including seizures, tremors, inability to work or talk, irregular heart palpitations, low oxygen levels, vertigo, brain fog, memory loss, balance issues, tingling, high blood pressure and more. Despite undergoing extensive examinations, a recent diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder has highlighted my ongoing struggles with headaches, declining eyesight, and daily seizures.

Before vaccination, I was a healthy 34-year-old; however, now I am severely disabled, unable to work, and filled with uncertainty about my future, especially with the imminent arrival of my baby. Unfortunately my situation is not unique; thousands of individuals are suffering similar consequences. Despite assurances of safety, many have been left with life-altering disabilities or worse. I am writing to urgently request an investigation into cases like mine to address the impact of vaccine-related injuries.”

She goes on to give the batch number, and to quote the rather lame response from the MHRA.

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

The hon. Gentleman has just illustrated very clearly the fundamental difference between some of the points that have been made about prophylaxis and anaphylaxis. When people are given a drug that could precipitate or trigger an anaphylactic reaction, they are given prophylactic cover to prevent that. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the consequences—as described by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)—of spike protein embedding itself throughout the body, prompting a systemic inflammatory response that is not acute, as with anaphylaxis, but chronic. That reaction to the vaccine is very different from a normal allergic reaction that is anaphylactic and will be treated appropriately.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing his scientific expertise to the debate, because I am no scientist; I am a mere lawyer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

I will begin by picking up on a few of the points that have been raised this afternoon. First, there is a parallel with a very important report that we received last week, and to which the Government responded on Monday: the Cass review. When concerns were first raised about what was happening in gender identity development services, those of us who spoke up at that time suffered both political and public pile-ons that were very uncomfortable. It gives me no pleasure to have been vindicated by the content of the Cass review. Certainly, when the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) first raised his concerns on this issue, he was also subjected to a political and public pile-on. The reason I raise that is that this cannot be how we tackle thorny issues. We must have a much more reasoned and mature approach to these things, where ideological positions are not sacrosanct and we have the flexibility to engage with, and look at, the points that are being raised.

My second point is about the discussion regarding correlation versus causation. It is fair enough to say that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but it is sufficient evidence for us to start asking questions about what is actually there. That is a fundamental question that anybody who has been involved in any scientific endeavour must surely understand.

My next point is a slightly more difficult issue to raise, because it is quite emotive. Like many others in this Chamber, I have had two vaccines and a booster. My family had the same, but there is a question about the presumption that that is what saved lives. We cannot prove that, unfortunately—that is just not the way it works—but what we do have to grapple with is the fact that the treatment we were given, like any agent, can cause harm. We have a responsibility to interrogate those concerns, which is why I am very disappointed that module 4 of the inquiry has been delayed.

My last point is about the record-level data and the importance of how it is tabulated. The methodology for assessing excess deaths has changed; that might be a reasonable change in practice at a time of peace, if you like, but we have just come through a very difficult period with the pandemic. Changing the methodology immediately afterwards seems perverse at best and deeply concerning at worst, because it is important that from this moment on, we are able to understand how trends are changing in a directly comparable way. With a change in methodology, that becomes impossible, so it is not a good idea—just in terms of scientific rigour, it is problematic.

I will start off my contribution by expanding on some of the comments I made during the debate on 16 January, because we had very limited time to speak in that debate. I want to take us a step back, away from the emotive issue of whether there is correlation, causation, and a relationship between excess deaths and the covid vaccine, and remind ourselves of the principles that underpin how clinical trials should be conducted. The ethical principles that underpin those trials have their origin in the declaration of Helsinki and are consistent with internationally published good clinical practice guidelines and, obviously, all of the regulatory mechanisms that fall out from those guidelines.

Anybody who has been involved in clinical trials of any type will know that, as I have said, any agent has the potential to cause injury or harm. That is just the nature of the beast, and one of the things we try to establish during a clinical trial is to find out the harm, however minimal or maximal it may be, so as to mitigate it, manage it or rule the agent out because it is too risky. Performing such a test rigorously is the foundation of good clinical practice, and I make these comments as someone who has been involved in the management and delivery of clinical trials over many years. I think that, as politicians, as clinicians and as the industry, we all carry a duty of honesty and candour in these matters.

[Andrew Bridgen]

With the hon. Gentleman’s experience, and he has looked at the Pfizer trial documents, is it not clear that Pfizer only trialled the experimental vaccine for eight weeks with a 22,000 vaccination group and a 22,000 placebo group, and then it vaccinated the placebo group? So how can anyone tell anybody what the long-term effects of these vaccines are when people were only ever monitored for eight weeks after vaccination?

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who makes a really important point. The answer to that is that it is impossible, and that is the fundamental point. We cannot measure late effects if we do not have evidence of late effects.

[Dr Mullan]

Would the hon. Gentleman inform the House, in what is normally done, what percentage of medicines are normally subjected to a longitudinal study before they are put on the market?

[Neale Hanvey]

I am sorry, but I did not quite catch the hon. Gentleman’s question.

[Dr Mullan]

Can the hon. Gentleman tell the House what percentage of medicines that normally go to market are subjected to a longitudinal study, which is what he is talking about, before that is done?

[Neale Hanvey]

That was not actually the point I was making. I was making the point that any clinical trial, whether something is ruled in or ruled out, is subject to GCP guidelines, and it is up to the medical research ethics committee to sign off the protocol.

[Dr Mullan]

indicated dissent.

[Neale Hanvey]

Well, the hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but that is my experience. I worked at University College London Hospitals and the Royal Marsden, and those are the principles that we applied in such a context. I can only speak to my experience. I am not a member of the ABPI, so I cannot give him those types of data. I am talking about GCP as a general principle. If he does not believe in GCP as a general principle, that is a different discussion.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am no apologist for big pharma companies, but does the hon. Member not acknowledge that there was time pressure in producing a vaccine to mitigate all the things we have heard about—lockdowns, our economy being stalled and all the rest of it? Does he not acknowledge that there was time pressure?

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I think we all understand the situation that we were in. I am not using a retrospectoscope to say that things should not have been done in the way they were done. However, they should have been conducted absolutely in accordance with GCP guidelines, and that is the fundamental crux of the matter. I am not suggesting for a moment that that was not the spirit in which the various companies entered into this, but we are talking about—

[Dr Mullan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neale Hanvey]

Will the hon. Gentleman let me finish the point I am making?

I am sorry, but I have now forgotten the point I was going to make to the hon. Lady. I do not think anybody entered into this to do the wrong thing, but there are fundamental questions about how we move things forward now and whether harm was inflicted as part of the administration of these agents.

[Dr Mullan]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neale Hanvey]

I will give way one more time.

[Dr Mullan]

I am very grateful. I raise this because the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) made a point about timelines, saying that the trial was done in eight weeks and asking how the vaccine could possibly be safe. The reason why I mentioned longitudinal studies is that a common deliberate attempt to mislead people about what went on with the vaccine is to suggest that, because the trial was done over a short period of time, it could not possibly have been done correctly. Typically, trials take a long time because it takes a long time to recruit the right number of patients and to do the work. In such a trial, the same number of patients go through it over a longer period, but that does not change the baseline data, which is based on how many patients there are. We do not typically use longitudinal studies, and that vaccine trial was done by using a lot of people in a short space of time to create the same amount of evidence.

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that clarifying point. People I have spoken to who were involved in those clinical trials have raised serious and significant concerns about the way that their experience after the drug was administered to them, and the impact that it had on them in an acute way, was either minimised or written out of trial data. That is a serious allegation, and everyone should be interested in understanding the detail. It is certainly not what I would understand would fit within the principles of GCP, and there are serious questions about how trial studies were conducted. As the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire said, the longitudinal element of that was impossible—we are now seeing that—but that does not mean we can ignore it, absolutely not. The principles I have been outlining are there because they are the basis on which good science is established and based.

Let me move to some of the questions that we must raise and answer today, openly and transparently, and with full access to ONS record-level data. I am not saying that that should be disclosed to all and sundry, but surely the Government cannot defend the position that they are not willing to release that information to interested clinicians and clinical academics as a minimum. Those are the people who need to interrogate the data. It is of little relevance to me—I do not have the means or academic ability to interpret it—but it is something that interested clinical academics should have access to.

Let me move on to what we know about some of the issues surrounding mRNA technology. We know that it does not replicate locally, as we were assured it would do on launch. It metastasises to distant tissue, and replicates spike protein systemically distant from the site of administration. That is problematic for a number of reasons. According to the University of London Professor of Oncology, and principal of the Institute for Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy, Professor Angus Dalgleish, this has precipitated various serious and sometimes fatal consequences due to antibody development mediated by the spike protein. I will not go into the detail of that, but at a meeting convened by the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, Professor Dalgleish told us that the UK Government and their agencies are in serious denial about this issue, resulting in many deaths being poorly understood.

Let me give a couple of examples. Vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia is one of the principal causes of blood clot formation, which can cause stroke, pulmonary emboli, and other cardiac-related events including heart attacks, all of which can be life-limiting or fatal. Another antibody linked to the spike protein exerts an effect on myelin, and is associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome and transverse myelitis, which is a swelling around the spinal cord. Professor Dalgleish believes that that constitutes medical negligence, because the facts are there for all to see. He contends that many deaths are as a direct result of unnecessary vaccination. Furthermore, he advises that there are a greater number of yellow cards in MHRA for covid vaccines than for all other vaccines recorded, and nothing has really been done.

In a recent written answer to me, it was confirmed that the MHRA has received 489,004 spontaneous suspected adverse drug reaction reports relating to the covid-19 vaccine, up to and including 28 February this year. Across the United Kingdom, 2,734 of those reports were associated with a fatal outcome. Of course the true number is unknown—that is the nature of yellow card reporting, as only a fraction of adverse events are reported—and that is probably because of limited public awareness about some of the potential consequences and complications of vaccines, and the well-understood under-reporting of those adverse events. That is important, because the yellow card system is a key element of safe and effective clinical care. If things are not being evaluated properly, I can think of no greater betrayal of the MHRA’s clinical governance responsibility. I suggest that accountability for that must be swift and decisive. The rigorous assessment of these data is essential and must be actioned urgently. Will the Minister now engage with the MHRA and invite it to come to the House to explain the facts on these reports?

Another issue, which arises from a further written question that I tabled, relates to the role of the MHRA. It has a crucial role—in fact, it is a statutory function—to provide post-marketing surveillance and to operate the yellow card system, but the Minister responded to my question about the assessment of the potential implications of the BMJ article “Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is ‘likely’ responsible for deaths of some elderly patients, Norwegian review finds” by stating:

“The MHRA communicates safety advice based upon consideration of the totality of evidence from all relevant information sources, rather than the strengths and limitations of individual data sources.”

Surely, a fundamental step in any meta-analysis of published data is to interrogate the robustness of those data and for the public to have confidence that that is happening.

That point links right back to where I started, on the Cass report. One of the fundamental failings that the report identified was circular citation among various different organisations. They were validating one another’s position to create a false impression that there was an evidence base for the practice they were involved in. If the MHRA will say, “We do not interrogate the data when we do a meta-analysis,” who does? Who will validate the data? If I can hand over to the MHRA a whole load of numbers and it will just count them and accept that I have said my methodological rigour is robust, that is not good enough as far as I am concerned.

The Minister’s response to my written question was that the MHRA does not

“assign causality at the level of individual reports,”

as that is not its responsibility. If that is the case, whose responsibility is it? Who is interrogating the data and making that decision? If no one is, how can we get from correlation to a developed picture of causation? That is an essential step. It raises fundamental questions about that responsibility and the reliability of the data that the MHRA is relying on. If we are to learn anything from the general implications of the Cass report, we must have a clear steer from the MHRA on how these fundamental scientific principles will be observed and upheld.

I will canter through some important published evidence, which comes back to the correlation/causation discussion. In a 2021 study looking at cardiac inflammatory markers in patients receiving mRNA vaccines, Steven Gundry observed that mRNA vaccination numerically increased markers

“previously described by others for denoting inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle”

in a patient population receiving the vaccine. A 2022 study by Fraiman et al. noted that the

“excess risk of serious adverse events”

identified in their study pointed

“to the need for formal harm-benefit analyses”.

That suggestion is wholly consistent with the principles set out in the declaration of Helsinki and is an ethical imperative.

In 2023, a pre-print Lancet study by Nicolas Hulscher et al., including leading cardiologist Peter McCullough and Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, reviewed 325 autopsies after covid vaccination and found that 74% of the deaths were attributable to the vaccine. That study, which was published online, was then swiftly removed, allegedly for issues with ideological rigour. I wonder whether it was the MHRA that did the assessment of its rigour. Surely those data and findings—however problematic some of the methodology might have been—demand further scrutiny, not removal.

A December 2023 Lancet Regional Health study by Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard et al. examined excess mortality in England post the covid-19 pandemic and the implications for secondary prevention. It stated:

“Many countries, including the UK, have continued to experience an apparent excess of deaths long after the peaks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Numbers of excess deaths estimated in this period are considerable.”

It noted that

“overall trends tend to be consistent across the various methods.”

It continued:

“The causes of these excess deaths are likely to be multiple…Further analysis by cause and by age- and sex-group may help quantify the relative contributions of these causes.”

I ask again: should we not at least be curious about this?

The study continued:

“The greatest numbers of excess deaths in the acute phase of the pandemic were in older adults. The pattern now is one of persisting excess deaths which are most prominent in relative terms in middle-aged and younger adults, with deaths from CVD causes and deaths in private homes being most affected.”

That is a completely different clinical picture. It continued:

“Timely and granular analyses are needed to describe such trends and so to inform prevention and disease management efforts.”

Documents recently disclosed as part of a freedom of information lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration indicate that the agency was aware that the safety monitoring system for Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine was “not sufficient” for assessing associated heart conditions when it licensed the company’s vaccine. Those documents also reveal numerous manufacturing concerns with Pfizer batches that were released to the public and show that the FDA knew about a phenomenon known as vaccine-associated enhanced diseases in those who were vaccinated and experienced breakthrough covid-19.

Let us move on to what we do not know. We have had no real progress on the points raised in the debate, particularly on record-level data. We need either that data to be released to clinical academics and others or a cogent explanation for why that is not happening. Why were those concerns kept hidden by the FDA? Are similar concerns or issues being hidden by the UK Government? Some of the points made about the delay in the MHRA taking action on clinical impacts is relevant to that point.

According to a House of Commons Library briefing, the Government-operated vaccine damage payment scheme, which has been discussed in both this debate and the previous one, provides only a one-off tax-free payment, which is currently a modest £120,000, to applicants where a vaccine has caused severe disablement. Data on VDPS claims relating to covid-19 vaccination is not routinely published, so we do not have particular metrics that establish how many claims are being made against those vaccines.

The most recent data is from September 2023. According to the NHS Business Services Authority, at that time it had received 7,160 claims relating to covid-19. Following medical assessment, 142 claims—just under 2%—were awarded, and 3,030 were rejected. A further 192 claims were found to be “invalid”. We need to understand why that was. What are claims being measured against and who is interpreting the clinical assessment information? We must also ask whether the exclusion criteria are reliable, given the concerns raised in the debate.

Based on the data that I have here, there are currently 3,796 unresolved claims, 1,010 of which have been unresolved for more than six months. If the 142 successful claims receive the full payment, the total cost will be around £17 million. If there are a further 177 successful claims from the unresolved cases, the associated cost will be a further £21 million. I am advised that the Government set aside some funding for this issue, but this has the hallmarks of the contaminated blood scandal written all over it. We must get ahead of the game and make sure that people get the compensation that they desperately need at a time when it is important to them.

There is another question: why are the Government so willing to pick up the tab on vaccine injury, however inadequate the scheme is, given the fatalities and the significant life-limiting impact on the victims? These concerns have been amplified significantly following the publication in The Spectator Australia of an account by genomics scientist Kevin McKernan of his accidental discovery. It states:

“While running an experiment in his Boston lab, McKernan used some vials of mRNA Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccines as controls. He was ‘shocked’ to find that they were allegedly contaminated with tiny fragments of plasmid DNA.”

His concern has been considered further by Professor Angus Dalgleish, who noted that the contaminant, simian virus 40, is

“a sequence that is ‘used to drive DNA into the nucleus, especially in gene therapies’ and that this is ‘something that regulatory agencies around the world have specifically said is not possible with the mRNA vaccines’. These SV40 promotors are also well recognised as being oncogenic”—

or cancer-inducing genetic material. Other scientists have confirmed those findings. Professor Dalgleish further notes:

“To put it bluntly, this means that they are not vaccines at all but a…Genetically Modified Organism that should have been subject to totally different regulatory conditions and certainly not be classed as vaccines.”

Worryingly, Professor Dalgleish also notes that oncologists have contacted him from across the world, and the consensus is that this is thought to be precipitating relapse in melanoma, lymphoma, leukaemia and kidney cancers. He concludes with the following warning:

“To advise booster vaccines, as is the current case, is no more and no less than medical incompetence; to continue to do so”—

with his cited evidence—

“is medical negligence which can carry a custodial sentence.”

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and his quotes from Professor Angus Dalgleish, who I remind the House is the most cited oncologist in the UK. I invited him here to witness this debate since he had some input into it. He could not attend, because he is speaking at a conference in Berlin on this very issue.

[Neale Hanvey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point of information and for acknowledging an important scientist in this debate. It is a great honour to have worked in the same institutions as Professor Dalgleish, as he provides great leadership on this technology. He makes a valuable and impeccable contribution to this problem. He concluded that piece by saying:

“No ifs or buts any longer. All mRNA vaccines must be halted and banned now.”

Will the Minister answer the following question? Is big pharma being exempted from liability, and if so, why? The loss of trust in big pharma is substantial and, worryingly, because of that the value of vaccination itself has been deeply damaged. Personally—I say this frankly—I will never accept another mRNA vaccine, and I am far from alone. Will the Minster agree to full disclosure of the data and an investigation of the facts? Will she also commit to instructing the Office for National Statistics to release the record level data, or will it take someone like New Zealander Barry Young, a whistleblower imprisoned for publishing its record level data, to surface concerns about the covid vaccine programme? As we have seen with the Horizon scandal, the Government must never bury the facts when lives are being lost and futures destroyed. There is no greater betrayal.

In closing, the foundations of good clinical practice are under threat. I will put that in context with the December 2023 Pathology Research and Practice paper on “Gene-based covid-19 vaccines” from Rhodes and Parry. They gave the following warning:

“Pandemic management requires societal coordination, global orchestration, respect for human rights and defence of ethical principles. Yet some approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by socioeconomic, corporate, and political interests, have undermined key pillars of ethical medical science.”

None of these clinical experts are quacks or conspiracy theorists. As the Government said so often during the pandemic, we must follow the science.