The wages of error are bounteous.
Sir Liam Donaldson was named by the magazine PR Week for sliding through the revolving door from the independent pure motives of public service into the greed and grab world of lobbying.
A suitable reward, some might say, for his ten years of service as the country's main medical officer. Perhaps. He was bold on his anti-smoking campaign but he ended his career on a whimper of abject failure.
The pharmaceutical industry will be served by his efforts in his new retirement job. They were not dissatisfied by his gullibility on Swine Flu that delivered £billions into their laps.
While others cautioned restraint Liam was hysterical in his Swine Flu fear-mongering. There was no epidemiology to justify hysteria but Liam stoked up the panic. He said " the outbreak is confronting the NHS with its "biggest challenge in a generation"... He forecast H1N1 would kill between 3,000 and 750,000 British people. The average, he warned, would be 68,000. By any standards that's a holocaust of deaths - mostly of children. Parents were frightened witless. Big Pharma smiled. The frenzy gave them a licence to print money.
Events proved his forecast was irresponsible alarmist rubbish. The result was that fewer than 500 deaths occurred in the UK of people 'with swine flu' and a mere 150 'of swine flu.' The media were so hyped-up that they reported these small totals as a national disaster. While any untimely death is a tragedy, the figures are very small. The average number of deaths in the UK from other causes is worth noting. Rough averages show that in Britain:
2-3 people die from lightning strikes each year
4 from an allergic reaction to wasp and bee stings
200 from food poisoning
3,000 in road accidents
6,000-10,000 from seasonal flu – although seasons vary in severity
155,000 from cancer
245,000 from heart disease and strokes.
150 flu deaths were far below the usual annual seasonal flu
Some countries behaved in a responsible way. Poland refused to buy a vaccine that had not been adequately trialled. That was the judgement of GSK who manufactured the drug. They told the Polish Government that they would not accept responsibility for any adverse effects. Liam Donaldson was passionate in urging wide use of the vaccines.
We are now wiser. European regulators last month said the flu vaccine is not suitable for those aged under 20. Pandemrix was the most widely used vaccine in the UK at the height of the 2009/10 flu pandemic.
Pandemrix should only be given to children and teenagers if other vaccines are unavailable and they still need protecting against the H1N1 strain of flu, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said.
It follows an investigation into reports from Finland and Sweden of children and adolescents suffering narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a rare sleep disorder which causes a person to fall asleep suddenly and unexpectedly.
But Liam Donaldson's glittering career continues. Last week the Independent reported,
"England's former chief medical officer has joined a global lobbying firm advising companies in the private health industry.
Sir Liam Donaldson, who retired last year after 12 years in the post, has been recruited by APCO Worldwide as a member of its international advisory council. The company has a string of UK healthcare clients including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers.
The appointment has renewed concern about former ministers and senior civil servants moving to positions in industries which they were previously monitoring. Last year, APCO signed up the former Labour cabinet minister John Hutton as a consultant.
The Labour MP Paul Flynn told PR Week: "This looks like another worrying example of the revolving door from independent public service to the world of commerce. There is widespread concern that former ministers, civil servants and generals swiftly metamorphose from high office into the paid servants of business, possibly after hawking around their contacts book and insider knowledge.""
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