Distinguished physician has seen the light

Time to listen to Dr. Malhotra's wisdom

Prominent London cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra went on the record that the COVID-19 vaccines need to be suspended until all the raw data associated with the products can be thoroughly analyzed. It turns out this eminent specialist was one of the first persons to take the full seHries (two doses) as well as serve as a key proponent, speaking about the importance of the product on Good Morning Britain. But something changed with the death of his father. A fit and active man in his 70s, Malhotra’s father died due to cardiac arrest shortly after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Malhotra recently published the findings of his investigation in the peer-reviewed Journal of Insulin Resistance. Now Malhotra advocates for suspending the mass vaccination campaign arguing that the evidence of effectiveness and true safety has been probably covered up by both manufacturers—Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna, and possibly the government. The doctor has gone on the record that he believes that the COVID-19  “mRNA vaccines likely accelerate coronary artery disease.”  Ingraham calls it “a global scandal.”

Here are some excerpts from his new article that I strongly recommend:

Background: In response to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), several new pharmaceutical agents have been administered to billions of people worldwide, including the young and healthy at little risk from the virus. Considerable leeway has been afforded in terms of the pre-clinical and clinical testing of these agents, despite an entirely novel mechanism of action and concerning biodistribution characteristics.

Aim: To gain a better understanding of the true benefits and potential harms of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) coronavirus disease (COVID) vaccines.

Methods: A narrative review of the evidence from randomised trials and real world data of the COVID mRNA products with special emphasis on BionTech/Pfizer vaccine.

Results: In the non-elderly population the “number needed to treat” to prevent a single death runs into the thousands. Re-analysis of randomised controlled trials using the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) technology suggests a greater risk of serious adverse events from the vaccines than being hospitalised from COVID-19. Pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety. Mirroring a potential signal from the Pfizer Phase 3 trial, a significant rise in cardiac arrest calls to ambulances in England was seen in 2021, with similar data emerging from Israel in the 16–39-year-old age group.

Conclusion: It cannot be said that the consent to receive these agents was fully informed, as is required ethically and legally. A pause and reappraisal of global vaccination policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.

Contribution: This article highlights the importance of addressing metabolic health to reduce chronic disease and that insulin resistance is also a major risk factor for poor outcomes from COVID-19.

A case study

Case studies are a useful way of conveying complex clinical information and can elicit useful data that would be lost or not be made apparent in the summary results of a clinical trial.

On 26 July 2021, my father, Dr Kailash Chand OBE, former deputy chair of the British Medical Association (BMA) and its honorary vice president (who had also taken both doses of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine six months earlier) suffered a cardiac arrest at home after experiencing chest pain. A subsequent inquiry revealed that a significant ambulance delay likely contributed to his death.3 But his post-mortem findings are what I found particularly shocking and inexplicable. Two of his three major arteries had severe blockages: 90% blockage in his left anterior descending artery and a 75% blockage in his right coronary. Given that he was an extremely fit and active 73-year-old man, having walked an average of 10–15 000 steps/day during the whole of lockdown, this was a shock to everyone who knew him, but most of all to me. I knew his medical history and lifestyle habits in great detail. My father who had been a keen sportsman all his life, was fitter than the overwhelming majority of men his age. Since the previous heart scans (a few years earlier, which had revealed no significant problems with perfect blood flow throughout his arteries and only mild furring), he had quit sugar, lost belly fat, reduced the dose of his blood pressure pills, started regular meditation, reversed his prediabetes and even massively dropped his blood triglycerides, significantly improving his cholesterol profile.

I couldn’t explain his post-mortem findings, especially as there was no evidence of an actual heart attack but with severe blockages. This was precisely my own special area of research. That is, how to delay progression of heart disease and even potentially reverse it. In fact, in my own clinic, I successfully prescribe a lifestyle protocol to my patients on the best available evidence on how to achieve this. I’ve even co-authored a high-impact peer-reviewed paper with two internationally reputed cardiologists (both editors of medical journals) on shifting the paradigm on how to most effectively prevent heart disease through lifestyle changes.4 We emphasised the fact that coronary artery disease is a chronic inflammatory condition that is exacerbated by insulin resistance. Then, in November 2021, I was made aware of a peer-reviewed abstract published in Circulation, with concerning findings. In over 500 middle-aged patients under regular follow up, using a predictive score model based on inflammatory markers that are strongly correlated with risk of heart attack, the mRNA vaccine was associated with significantly increasing the risk of a coronary event within five years from 11% pre-mRNA vaccine to 25% 2–10 weeks post mRNA vaccine. An early and relevant criticism of the validity of the findings was that there was no control group, but nevertheless, even if partially correct, that would mean that there would be a large acceleration in progression of coronary artery disease, and more importantly heart attack risk, within months of taking the jab.5 I wondered whether my father’s Pfizer vaccination, which he received six months earlier, could have contributed to his unexplained premature death and so I began to critically appraise the data.

Is the vaccine doing more harm than good?

The most objective determinant of whether the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the harms is by analysing its effects on ‘all-cause mortality’. This gets round the thorny issue as to what should be classified as a COVID-19 death, and also takes full account of any negative effects of the vaccine. It would be surprising – to say the least – if during an apparently deadly pandemic, an effective vaccine could not clearly and unequivocally be shown to reduce all-cause mortality.

Pfizer’s pivotal mRNA trial in adults did not show any statistically significant reduction in all-cause mortality, and in absolute terms there were actually slightly more deaths in the treatment arm versus in the placebo.

Work by Fenton et al. showed an unusual spike in mortality in each age group of the unvaccinated population, which coincides with the vaccine roll-out for each age group.48 The rapid shrinking in the size of this population means a small-time lag could theoretically produce this effect artifactually. Alternative explanations must include the (more likely) possibility that a rise in mortality after vaccination was misattributed to the unvaccinated population: in other words, those counted as ‘unvaccinated deaths’ would in fact be those who had died within 14 days of being vaccinated (a freedom of information [FOI] request has now confirmed that authorities in Sweden were indeed categorising deaths within 14 days of dosing as unvaccinated, creating a misleading picture of efficacy vs death).

One has to raise the possibility that the excess cardiac arrests and continuing pressures on hospitals in 2021/2022 from non-COVID-19 admissions may all be signalling a non-COVID-19 health crisis exacerbated by interventions, which would of course also include lockdowns and/or vaccines.

Given these observations, and reappraisal of the randomised controlled trial data of mRNA products, it seems difficult to argue that the vaccine roll-out has been net beneficial in all age groups. While a case can be made that the vaccines may have saved some lives in the elderly or otherwise vulnerable groups, that case seems tenuous at best in other sections of the population, and when the possible short-, medium- and unknown longer-term harms are considered (especially for multiple injections, robust safety data for which simply does not exist), the roll-out into the entire population seems, at best, a reckless gamble. It’s important to acknowledge that the risks of adverse events from the vaccine remain constant, whereas the benefits reduce over time, as new variants are (1) less virulent and (2) not targeted by an outdated product. Having appraised the data, it remains a real possibility that my father’s sudden cardiac death was related to the vaccine. A pause and reappraisal of vaccination Policies for COVID-19 is long overdue.