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First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:26 am
by Cardinal Fang
The report of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review was published today. It was looking at how 3 different medical interventions: the Primados hormonal pregnancy test, TVT mesh, and Sodium Valproate, had caused untold often lifelong harm for thousands of people, how victims were ignored, and how the medical culture, instead of recognising the dangers from these things (and the harm was evident in literature long before it was formally recognised) was defensive and unhelpful

It's fair to say that the report is fairly scathing. It will make for uncomfortable reading for a lot of doctors, regulators, and health professionals.

Amongst it's recommendations are that victims should receive an apology, and proper redress, that the MHRA is revised, that medical device regulation is strengthened, and that transparency of payments made to clinicians, teaching hospitals, & research institutions needs to improve.

Full report here: https://slingthemesh.files.wordpress.co ... t-2020.pdf

CF

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 12:34 am
by Cardinal Fang
If you read the sections about each of the individual treatments being reviewed (hormonal pregnancy tests, valproate, and pelvic mesh), it's striking that in all cases reports of harm were being reported years before action was taken (from page 62 onward). In the case of hormonal pregnancy tests for example, concerns were raised in the 1950s that it was causing foetal abnormalities. But they weren't fully withdrawn until 1978.

CF

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:56 am
by murmur
One does wonder how significant it is that it was women who did a lot of the reporting of problems.

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 1:19 pm
by Cardinal Fang
I suspect it depends on whether the findings are implemented or not.

A lot of the victims (and they are mostly women) have been ignored and fobbed off for years, sometimes decades.

If the report is acted on then their years of campaigning will be vindicated. If it's ignored it will be just another betrayal, in a long line of betrayals by Government regulators, and the medical community.

CF

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:42 pm
by murmur
Shirley, dear Cardinal, you aren't suggesting that NHS management, senior medics, politicians and the rest would do a Sir Humphrey on a report like this?

I'm shocked at the very idea, shocked, I tell you!

I still wish I'd got to a photocopier or a scanner with several internal reports I saw, which were later denied.

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:48 pm
by Sciolus
murmur wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:56 am
One does wonder how significant it is that it was women who did a lot of the reporting of problems.
Acknowledging Rule 12, the contaminated blood scandal shows that haemophiliac men can get shafted in a similar way.

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:54 pm
by murmur
Sciolus wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 5:48 pm
murmur wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:56 am
One does wonder how significant it is that it was women who did a lot of the reporting of problems.
Acknowledging Rule 12, the contaminated blood scandal shows that haemophiliac men can get shafted in a similar way.
Oh, of course, but Cumberledge wasn't looking at that...

As a personal anecdote, The Bread Goddess still describes our GPs reacting very differently to her when she presents with certain symptoms to how they respond when I present with the same or similar symptoms.

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 7:00 pm
by Stephanie
It's an excellent report, thank you very much for sharing

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:49 pm
by Sciolus
You'll never guess what happened next!
Spoiler:

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:51 pm
by Sciolus
Dammit, can't work this thing properly.

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 7:47 pm
by Sciolus
Well, R4 had this on the 6 o'clock news yesterday, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere else on the intertubes, so I had better explain my cryptic post.

The Comberlege report made a number of recommendations, and the government said it would implement some of them "immediately". Two months on, none of them have been implemented except to issue an apology. C made a speech saying "rumours were swirling" that the report had been subject to "ritual burial".

Re: First Do No Harm

Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2020 9:16 am
by murmur
Normal service hass been resumed for inconvenient NHS reports...

'S been endemic for donkey's years and is built into the culture from the department down to unit management level (The Bread Goddess and I have a wealth of anecdata on that. It's hard to call it data when the reports/documents in question have been thoroughly disappeared with no copies accessible).

And folk at the top wonder why us minions are/were cynical about their motivation and actions.