Andy Burnham appears on Sky news, BBC news GMTV to advise us all about the safety of Tamiflu on children. He has simply gone on to show not only is he a complete cretin but quite clearly the government is totally clueless when it comes to the swineflu/tamiflu issue. Now I am not saying anything medical, I am not a doctor but what is clear is the government and Mr Burnham are totally lost.
The Health Secretary appeared on breakfast television this morning in a bid to reassure concerned parents after scientists warned that children should not be given Tamiflu.
Instead he was confronted by a GMTV presenter who claimed that the drug had almost killed his daughter.
Andy Burnham insisted that the Government was right to advise children to take the anti-viral drug despite a warning from researchers at the University of Oxford who called on the Department of Health urgently to reconsider its pandemic strategy. But he was tackled live on TV by Andrew Castle, who said his older daughter, Georgina, had a respiratory collapse after being given the drug as a precaution during the containment stage of the pandemic. “I can tell you that my child - who was not diagnosed at all - she had asthma, she took Tamiflu and almost died,” he said. Georgina, 16, was given Tamiflu when five pupils at Alleyn’s School in south London were diagnosed with the illness in May.
Castle, said he feared for his daughter’s life as medical professionals backed away from the potentially contagious child. He said: “Nobody checked that she had swine flu beforehand. The Health Protection Agency just handed it out at Alleyn’s School in south London and a lot of kids suffered in the school very heavily. “We saw a respiratory collapse through it and it almost cost my older child her life. “The doctor’s surgery wouldn’t take her. The doctor said ’No, we can’t take her to A&E. So she’s just on the floor having this nightmare of a situation. A lot of people are in this situation. They don’t know what to do.”
Mr Burnham was forced to break off from defending Tamiflu to offer his sympathy. “It must have been a very worrying situation for you,” he said.
He also says its not his advice.
Well Andy when it comes out your mouth, when you are the man incharge of health, when you are speaking on behalf of the government it is your advice.
Just watch in complete amazement.
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Burham his not just clueless. He's downright irresponsible for allowing untrained call centre people to advise the public on whether or not they should take Tamiflu.
11 August 2009 at 15:06Tamiflu has potentially deadly side-effects. We struggle to purchase cough mixture at pharmacies and this stuff is just doled out, for crying out loud.
I've been banging on about this for some time and am of the firm opinion that big pharma have been lobbying governments, to boost their profits.
People are so afraid of speaking out, lest they be branded as "irresponsible" or "conspiracy theorists". For heaven's sake, don't let them cow any of you. Speak up, or they will win the propaganda wars!
Let's see which MPs end up on the boards of these companies and which pharma CEOs get knighthoods, shall we?
Nice to see a normally-tame member of the MSM bare his fangs when confronted with a lying little weasel like Burnham.
11 August 2009 at 16:00Shame it took a life-threatening incident with his own flesh and blood to stiffen his backbone. Still, beggars can't be choosers.
Burnham's lucky Mrs Castle wasn't the presenter in the family - she might have just tossed aside the mic and gone for the throat!
Great job by the interviewer - it IS unusual to see that these days but, thinking back to pre-Blair times, that's how interviews always were! As for that prat of a "Chief Medical Officer", he's just another government lickspittle who does and says as he's told!
11 August 2009 at 20:00Post a Comment