19 July 2022: MacNiven - C

The afternoon evidence session had been gazumped by the all too brief debate in Parliament on the issue of interim payments. It goes without saying that Michael Ellis would not budge, even in the face of mounting pressure. How these people sleep at night is … no wait, they sleep when it is light because they can only go out in the dark. Silly me.

Returning to the Inquiry, the witness took his seat and immediately opened up his phone while waiting to re-start. He was maybe checking his believability ratings. Who is going to break it to Mr MacNiven that he could not find them because he is not on the chart? (The chart doesn’t go below zero.)

The questions reverted to the ongoing requests from the SNBTS for resources to introduce surrogate testing, albeit at a lower level (presumably thinking they might be more successful if they were not asking for so much). The Dr Dow thesis was still being cited as an authority source. It caused the witness to request the displayed document be scrolled up to show a list of names who were sent the latest request. The witness highlighted a new name who he described as someone who so far had not turned up in the “dramatis personae”. He must have a side-line as a Greek philosophical sophist and is using his appearance in this public “Forum” to advertise this capacity.

The issue of “to test or not to test” was rehearsed. The witness was clearly versed in the arguments by mentioning concerns over false-positives and all the usual rebuts to calls to test. There was evidence for testing, such as the examples of other countries, and evidence against testing, such as the lack of studies (which surely someone should have commissioned long before). In line with normal bias towards only giving significance to those things that agree with your version of the truth and rejecting any which might cause a cognitive dissonance, all of the medical and scientific experts on a list of people who wrote to the Lancet presenting reasons for testing were simply dismissed as being “wrong”. When Counsel sought to consider the arguments for this flat dismissal, Mr MacNiven in a most cowardly way refused to engage due to his inability to recall the details. So, this mere historian with his high level intellectual rigour felt it was acceptable to dismiss a host of people, who had dedicated their lives to the topic upon which they were writing, was willing to say they were all wrong but offered not one word of justification. Not one. When this witness could not help but shake his head in utter disbelief and in an exaggerated way at the sheer arrogance of the witness while typing, when looking up and seeing the witness looking at him, tried to fix eyes during the head shake, but the witness looked away (… coward indeed). He had stated how much his mind was open to new evidence, but when such alternative views to the preferred line were presented, the excuse was the lack of desire to spend money on something not universally certain. Yes, that was the justification for rejecting the calls. If the same logic was applied to Covid, it might have saved a lot of money for no overall difference in the sad death rate.

Things got very warm in the Hearing Room, not due to the record temperatures. The witness accused Counsel of attempting to get to a certain place by his line of questioning. Audience arms were raised to the heavens in incredulity which appeared to rattle the witness. (Good!) Eventually he seemed to pull back on what he had said about Counsel, but it was too late. His card was well and truly marked. Like having your attention irresistibly drawn to keep looking at an open wound, the witness seemed unable to stop himself searching the room for support of his logic. All he found was more head shaking at his vocalised looseness of the bowels.

Mr MacNiven tried out as a QC by seeking to lead the evidence himself. He quoted text from Lord Penrose, as if that was some kind of universally accepted authority. He must not have seen the many quotes in all kinds of settings labelling Penrose was a “Whitewash”. So, he was backing the wrong horse there. (This writer acknowledges the usefulness of Penrose in collating some documents, but his so-called “analysis” of the evidence he had available to him was too focused on the first four letters of that word, making the “-ysis” part redundant.

The witness must realise how different a trip it is to be a witness in this Inquiry compared to the holiday for the lads that was Penrose. Too bad, we say. However, since Mr MacNiven appeared to have eventually realised, despite his air of assurance, how he had lost the battle to be believed and lost the war to get away with his past actions, it did not help getting to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (and certainly not his truth, but the real truth). The result was that his answers became either shorter, or he went on a Jackanory journey with his fictions. As if a Penrose justification was not enough of a misjudged choice to back up his case, he then referred to Chris Ludlum as a believable authority. When faced by implausible narrations which must have been due to psychedelics, it is sometimes said, “I want some of what he’s on,” but as before, this writer would prefer not to go there.

Basically, he didn’t see the contradictory evidence to his preferred thinking, he didn’t see what his own experts produced when it didn’t match what he want to hear, he didn’t see anything which included calls for a Public Inquiry, he didn’t see how people ought to be compensated or at least supported for the harms they suffered (“nobody was harmed”, “it wasn’t an urgent matter”, “it was a complex issue”), he didn’t see any other this. Mr MacNiven was not and will probably not be the first and only witness with selective vision. The scotoma he was suffering from could be an entry into the next Guinness Book of Records. Amazingly, Mr MacNiven in the most unabashed way, then took all the credit for he got involved after Chris Ludlum’s ultimatum. Therefore, we all ought to be eternally grateful to the witness for his heroic actions on our behalf. However, in reality that claim is less likely to add to the witnesses’ kudos and more likely to add to his ignominy.

The next bit would possibly have been a significant revelation to many. It related to the trials being carried out by Prof Ludlum in Edinburgh. It turns out that according to Mr MacNiven, the patients on whom CL tried the experimental treatment didn’t need it for medical reasons but they were being very public-spirited by putting themselves forward to take part in his trials. This lack of medical expediency was the reason for Chris Ludlum seeking financial coverage (… of his posterior in case something went wrong). Counsel picked-up on the witnesses’ statement that people were “public-spirited” and what that meant about consent. Apparently, the trial conducted by the Edinburgh Haemophilia Centre Director (and future boss-man at the UKHCDO, followed by Chairing the commercial arm of that august body) had operated in a very unusual way, and so everyone was glad when it turned out to have caused no problems for the receivers of the new stuff, apparently. This writer recalls a radio programme featuring an innovative clinician who stated that it took at least 15 years of monitoring to begin to be able to say that there were no long-lasting negative impacts of people receiving new treatments. It did not sound as if this longitudinal aspect of research was followed.

The witness had previously said that there was no mechanism for patients to engage with the SHHD, rather the interface was via their treating clinicians. Patient representative groups, however, were “a different kettle of fish”. (Who could he be referring to … swim, swim.). For the witness, any meetings involving groups did not count as contact with patients. Suddenly and belatedly, the witness found a trite saying he could pretend was his own when he referred to the raising of difficulties with past treatments that, “These patients” (that’s many of us reading this) had “expected to be made better” by the NHS but had been infected and, “It created a great deal of sympathy for them within the SHHD”. (This writer assumes that when someone within the SHHD was found to have such sympathetic feelings, they were immediately culled from the Department and moved on to Scottish Natural Heritage or some other cuddly bit of the administration.)

Before going out for the break to await core participant questions, not for the first time the witness went over to the person putting up the evidence documents on screens as requested by Counsel. What reason could the witness have for needing to speak to that chap about, twice. (Poor guy.)