Secret health scandal
Last October, I lost a good friend to lung cancer. He was 68. He had worked all his working life for the Royal air Force on transport aircraft, travelling the world until hearing problems obliged him to retire in 2007.
He was looking forward to many years of ‘pottering’ after those years of toil but, sadly, there were to be few pottering years for him.
My friend served in the first Gulf War in 1991 and, like most service personnel who went there, was injected with ‘medical defences’ against biological and chemical warfare.
He asked the medic at the time if the details of his treatment would be put on his RaF medical record in case his GP might need to refer to it at any time, and was assured that it would all be written up.
When he was sent to a cancer consultant in January 2015 and was asked to bring his medical records with him, the consultant could find no record of what had been injected in 1991. all details of that ‘ protection’ had been wiped — a highly illegal procedure authorised by someone at the Ministry of Defence to forestall any possible litigation at a later date.
I’m sure hundreds, if not thousands, of people suffered from that process. Members of the UK armed Forces sign the Official secrets act when joining up and are in danger of arrest if they speak out, even in retirement.
any life-extending treatment that consultant might have given my friend was restricted because he didn’t know what was in the patient’s system. Chemo wasn’t an option: my friend’s body rejected it. all the consultant could do was ‘manage’ his condition until death.
It’s a very serious offence for a doctor to erase or falsify medical records. Mass murderer Dr Harold shipman did this to more than 200 medical files of his patients who died.
this is beyond a scandal: it’s fraudulent activity by the state. My friend might have survived much longer if his medical history hadn’t been tampered with.
We should hunt down those who are guilty of this act and put them in the dock at the Old Bailey.
GERRARD JONAS, Standlake, Oxon.