Evidence-based Breaches of the Codes for Ethical Behaviour
This post presents a detailed examination of how the codes of ethical behaviour were disregarded; it is, as one reviewer commented, “an anthology of the evidence”, and supports Part 6. It ends with the Voices of the Silenced—the victims
It focuses on the ethical criteria set out by Professors Paton and Keown, but it will be apparent throughout how the principles of medical ethics as set out by Dr Liz Evans and the BMA, as well as the Nolan Principles for public servants, were breached, in particular that of ‘Informed Consent’.
According to Professors Paton and Keown, coercive public health measures such as lockdowns must meet at least five ethical requirements:
- They must be effective.
- They must be necessary.
- They must be proportionate: their likely health benefits must be significant enough to outweigh their negative effects.
- Officials should minimise their harmful impact.
- Policymakers must be transparent and provide the public with an explanatory justification for their policy.
Dr Liz Evans sets out the principles of Medical Ethics in a Christian context.
First, do no harm, Bodily Autonomy, patient-centred care, Privacy, Informed Consent and Confidentiality.
The BMA has also set out medical ethical behaviour in its code entitled “The Ethics Toolkit: The Doctor-Patient Relationship”, which contains a detailed version of these principles under the headings below:
- Patient autonomy and choice 3. Communication and honesty 4 Honesty, openness, and truth-telling 5 Trust and mutual respect.
Criterion 1: Were the policies effective?
The Covid policy tragedy covered much more than lockdowns-it included PCR tests, modelling, vaccine passports, masks, failure to consider the totality of the effects and failure to carry out a risk versus benefit analysis.
“Every single policy not only failed to mitigate deaths from the virus but evidently made the situation worse”. ( Professor Neill, Scottish Covid Enquiry)
The evidence on the government policies designed to manage the pandemic (if there was one) and which failed and made the situation worse is HERE, together with comprehensive evidence refuting the use of Lockdowns as a credible public health policy.
That article also includes essential data on the economic cost of the policies and the resulting damage to health.
What follows updates the evidence against lockdowns and shows how the policy contravened criterion one of the conditions necessary for ethical behaviour: effectiveness.
Did lockdowns, school closures and other NPIs reduce spread?
The report of the US Select Committee is a damning indictment of Covid policies.
The committee reported that with regard to school closures and lockdowns, they:
-Unnecessarily damaged Americans’ mental health.
-Disrupted the development of American children and young Adults.
-Unnecessarily had severe consequences for Americans’ physical health and
-(their)Unscientific (nature) caused more harm than good.
With regard to school closures and associated NPIs, the committee found that they:
-Were not supported by available science and evidence
-Adversely impacted academic performance that will continue for years.
-Significantly contributed to increased instances of mental and behavioural health issues
-Made an already alarming trend in declining physical health worse
-Forcibly masking young children, ages two and older, caused more harm than good and further that
–The six-foot social distancing requirement was not supported by science.
The research by Dr Gerry Quinn et al., published in May 2025, also provides a comprehensive rebuttal of the scientific justification for government policies and is interesting reading in the context of the government’s ‘Seven Principles of Ethical Behaviour’ referred to above.
The full report HERE.
Four Major Policy Problems were identified. There was:
- An over-reliance on COVID-19 Models Without Adequate Empirical Evaluation
2. Insufficient Critical Evaluation of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs)
-Multiple studies have found the NPIs to have been remarkably ineffective. Most NPIs (lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates) were not part of pre-pandemic plans and lacked strong evidence; viral incidence was largely independent of the stringency of NPIs.
-Harmful effects included physical, mental, economic, and social damage, especially to children, the elderly, and disadvantaged communities.
3. Inconsistent Assessment of Pharmaceutical Interventions (PIs)
- mRNA/DNA vaccines were heavily promoted without a clear public understanding of their novel nature.
-Effectiveness was overstated
-Safety concerns were minimised, and informed consent was undermined.
4. Suppression of Legitimate Scientific Dissent
Quinn et al. take this point a step further in their discussion of ethical considerations, which they say were ignored.
Quinn explains that “the original justification for carrying out population-wide vaccination programmes was based on the explicit assumption that vaccinating the population past the theoretical “herd immunity threshold” would substantially reduce viral transmission.
Therefore, many governments introduced a fairly coercive policy of vaccination, in many cases making it mandatory or at least “socially difficult” for people to make an informed choice.
They show where there is a demonstrable net harm, e.g., young adults and children whose risk of severe COVID-19 is much lower than the risk of vaccine injury from the mRNA vaccines”. In clear breach of criterion 3 as well.
“We believe that these mandates breached the core ethical principles of informed consent and bodily autonomy, we question whether it is ethical to mandate any medicine on any section of the population” In clear breach of medical ethical principles set out by Liz Evans (see above).
Professor Ian Brighthope, who is a Fellow of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, and of which he was President for 26 years, in his submission to the Australian Covid Royal Commission on 1st February 2024 (watch HERE) addresses both the science and ethics of lockdowns, and he too demonstrates how governments breached all the ethical principles outlined above.
Note that he too refers to the refusal of the authorities to listen:
“The lockdowns, masking, social distancing, hygiene, testing, tracking, and tracing were introduced based on flawed science. This approach is essentially ineffective, dangerous to the health of the population, extremely costly, and is a reflection of the failure to fully research, train in, understand, plan, and manage infectious diseases.
In summary, Covid-19 posed very little risk to people of good health. …..Furthermore, other serious issues that have arisen from the poor management of the pandemic include the coercion to force vaccinate, the lack of informed consent provided to patients, the attacks on doctors and healthcare workers who spoke out about their concerns regarding the toxicity of the vaccines and lost their jobs, the very high levels of vaccination injuries and deaths and in particular the vaccine-induced deaths of Australian children, and the government’s refusal to withdraw the vaccines.
As far as I’m concerned and my teams are concerned, COVID was more like a bad flu, and the lockdowns were totally unnecessary. Epidemiological studies actually have proven that.”
His full presentation is available HERE.
Further comprehensive rebuttals of lockdowns as an effective public health policy are HERE and are well summarised by Thomas Meunier and Michael Senger.
“Full lockdown policies in Western European countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic”.
“Ultimately, these lockdowns failed to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus and killed tens of thousands of children in every country in which they were tried”.
The biggest question remains: were the policies necessary?- as required by Criterion 2: Was there a pandemic at all- a deadly virus sweeping the world?
Criterion 2: Were the restrictions necessary? Was Covid Deadly?
1 Covid’s median Infection Mortality Rate (IFR) was 0.0003% at 0–19 years of age and 0.002% at 20–29 years of age. And, consistent with the very low IFR estimates in the non-elderly, excess death calculations showed no excess deaths among children and adolescents during the Covid era in any country with highly reliable death registration data.
2 Denis Rancourt’s research, published in June 2025, provides evidence that there was no pandemic. This massive study concludes:
“all-cause mortality data for Europe and the USA, we have shown that geotemporal mortality patterns during the early months of the declared SARS-CoV-2 pandemic are incompatible with the paradigm of a spreading viral respiratory disease.
This means that the paradigm that a spreading viral respiratory disease caused the excess mortality during COVID 19 is false”.
His rigorous examination of death data concluded:
“The evidence suggests that aggressive medical interventions, experimental treatments, institutional panic, lockdown-induced stress, and systematic testing programs that funnelled vulnerable people into dangerous treatment protocols created the excess mortality attributed to COVID-19. Rather than responding to a naturally occurring pandemic, the data indicate that the declared pandemic response itself generated the mortality catastrophe through iatrogenic (treatment-caused) deaths and stress-induced illness.”
Professor Neil’s excellent presentation presents the data around the patterns of death in the UK and across Europe and clear evidence of excess deaths in hospitals, care homes, and at home due to the policies. It also discusses the attribution and certification of deaths and reveals the fraudulent use of PCR testing.
He concludes:
“There never was a pandemic in the conventional sense, as understood by the public, that involved mass casualties or even the realistic threat of additional risk from a supposedly novel virus. If we had done nothing, the world would not have noticed anything unusual”.
“We’ve come to the conclusion [that] the evidence strongly supports [the view] that there was no pandemic”—Professor Martin Neil at the Scottish People’s Covid Inquiry on 22 February 2025.
Indeed, it appears that the government’s own committee agreed.
“The unanimous view of the committee was that this infection should NOT be classified as a HCID (high consequence infectious disease)”. Professor Tom Evans, Chair of ACDP (Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens). 13th March 2020. (Fighting Goliath book co-authored with Professor Fenton).
At a sweep, these statements remove all justification for the restrictions placed on society, including, of course, children and, of course, demonstrate how criterion 2, that of necessity, was breached.
“the elite intellectuals with all their honorary awards believe they have the right to say what’s going on” Alan Watt Cutting through the Matrix.
Criteria 3,4 and 5 Proportionality and Transparency
Criteria 3 and 4: Did benefits outweigh harms? Were the actions proportionate? Did officials seek to minimise harms?
Absence of Proportionality Analysis
“Public policy, particularly in times of crisis, must be judged not only by intent but by proportionality. Were the measures imposed justified by the threat? Were alternatives considered? Were the broader harms weighed against the intended benefits? Lockdowns imposed sweeping restrictions with significant social and economic consequences—mental health deterioration, educational disruption, delayed medical care.
Yet the evidence for comprehensive cost–benefit analysis remains unclear. If such analyses were conducted, they have not been transparently presented. If they were not conducted, the implications are more serious still. An inquiry that does not demand rigorous justification for the most far-reaching policies in modern history fails in its most basic duty”. Professor Ian Brighthope
As David Bell and Carla Peters highlight in their excellent article, A cost-benefit analysis of the response to COVID–19 found lockdowns to be far more harmful to public health (at least 5–10 times) in terms of well-being than COVID–19”.
And as the authors of the cost-benefit analysis state in their comprehensive review, Covid–19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink:
“School provides essential educational, social, and developmental benefits to children. School closures don’t seem to have an impact on community outbreaks. Modelling predicted that school and university closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths”.
Clearly the policy actions were out of proportion wrt the risk Covid posed.
As Paton and Keown conclude:
“The lockdowns imposed unprecedented restrictions on human rights and freedoms, including the right to education, to work or run a business, and to practice one’s religion. It was insufficient merely to claim that a lockdown would prevent some infections and deaths from COVID-19.
Rather, and at a minimum, deaths avoided by lockdown needed to be so significant as to outweigh the obvious and enormous negative consequences of lockdown itself. These conditions (not unlike the “strict scrutiny” test applied by the US Supreme Court to assess interference with constitutional rights) rightly set a high bar for interventions such as lockdowns”.
Criterion 4: officials should seek to minimise harm
A new study by Lombardo et al. (April 2026) found that:
“COVID-19 and associated restrictive measures were associated with significantly increased prevalence and likelihood of reporting suicidal thoughts and self-harm in young adults, people reporting a pre-existing mental health condition, and people with disabilities. A general upward trajectory emerged over time in connection to suicidal thoughts and reporting self-harm amongst specific groups, even during lockdowns lifting”.
“The highest overall prevalence of suicidal thoughts by age group was reported by 18- to 24-year-olds”.
“Findings of increased prevalence of suicidal thoughts and self-harm amongst young people are consistent with evidence from Owens et al. 39, which suggests that….lockdown caused a well-being crisis in young people”.
Mental and developmental health harms through the ages are presented HERE by Professor Hill and Dr Goldin. Do give a voice to the silenced by reading another excellent report from Bologyphneom- the pain of the victims.
Kate Blackwell KC. Counsel to the Scottish Covid inquiry provided harrowing evidence of the situation faced by bereaved families.
Testimony highlights
- No end-of-life visits.
- Ongoing guilt and anxiety.
- ‘Relaxed restrictions’ allowed brief window visits at the end of life.
- ‘Inhumane’ policies.
- Families had to choose who could attend a funeral.
- unable to obtain details of how loved ones had died
- humiliation
‘‘People experienced profound feelings of anger, sadness and guilt that they could not be with or comfort their loved ones at the end of their lives’’.
Similar harrowing accounts were also given at the UK Enquiry, and HERE providing damning evidence wrt the vaccine from the UK’s leading cancer specialist, Professor Angus Dalgleish, as well as setting out harms.
These examples clearly demonstrate that the authorities breached Criteria 3 and 4 as set out by Professors Paton and Keown and the first principle of medical ethics that of ‘do no harm’
This is taken from a long document. Read the rest here substack.com
Some bold emphasis added
Header image: Ben Garrison