1./ Insightful comments by @soniasodha on David Bell and the Tavistock and a pattern of NHS silencing of whistleblowers. It's a particular problem when activist medics get into positions of authority and view any criticism as an assault on their cherished ideological position.
https://twitter.com/soniasodha/status/1388785016688320514
2./ But medical institutions have many other powerful incentives to ignore or silence criticism. In the 80s at the Bristol Royal Infirmary Stephen Bolsin, an anaesthetist, noticed kids suffered much poorer outcomes there from heart surgery than elsewhere.👇independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…
3./ At the inquiry a decade later he explained the department was anxious to keep its funding. Had an investigation been launched or news leaked about high death rates the doctors feared their funding would be cut. So babies just kept dying. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
4./ An estimated 140+ babies suffered brain damage too. It's a reminder when it comes to clinicians we must always remember they're a vested interest. It's no easier for them than it is for anyone else to admit they were wrong or their theories had unintended, terrible outcomes.
5./ If you build a career doing X to patients and evidence accumulates X is wrong there's a chance even good people will defend their position and convince themselves they're right. In 1994 BBC Horizon made a remarkable show about another example of this. genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/baf970949e3a46…
6./ Two Australian doctors argued that decades of treatment for stomach ulcers was based on a fallacy. It wasn't stress that was causing ulcers; it was bacteria. They were ridiculed by the entire medical world. A bacteria couldn't possibly survive in the stomach they said.
7./ In 2005 Warren and Marshall won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their discovery of Helicobactor pylori and its role in stomach ulcers. Dissent, based on evidence, improves medicine, whether its ulcers, childbirth, heart surgery or ...gender dysphoria. nobelprize.org/prizes/medicin…
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