Must not criticize Britain's socialized medicine system

This week, the respected Spectator magazine revealed that one of our top cancer surgeons, Professor Joseph Meirion Thomas, had been gagged from writing about the NHS.

The move came after a bid by senior figures within the medical establishment to remove him from his job. His ‘sin’ had been to write four comment pieces for the Daily Mail. The first two, about health tourism, argued calmly that the sheer weight of foreigners using the NHS was making it economically unviable.

The third explained how the preponderance of female doctors in the NHS was becoming a long-term problem because, after an expensive training, many were leaving to have families, often returning only in a part-time capacity.

But it was Mr Thomas’s fourth opinion piece, which questioned whether Britain’s modern GP system — with doctors increasingly unavailable to patients — was fit for purpose, that triggered the most vitriol.

The arrogance, viciousness and biliousness of the attack on Mr Thomas — not to mention his critics’ contempt for free speech — will astonish many readers . . .

The backlash began late on the night of November 18, just a few minutes after the first edition of the Daily Mail rolled off the presses carrying a comment article criticising Britain’s GP system by internationally renowned cancer surgeon Professor Joseph Meirion Thomas.

It was on Twitter, inevitably, where outrage started. A Left-wing medical blogger called Frozen Warning circulated a link to the piece, declaring: ‘GPs, prepare for battle. Prof J. Meirion Thomas, [the] most arrogant surgeon in the UK, is at it again.’

His call to arms was soon joined and over the ensuing days several hundred highly critical tweets, many of them peppered with gratuitous personal insults against the 68-year-old surgeon, were publicly shared by NHS staff.

Typical was the comment of Catherine Beanland, a GP from Ludlow, who branded Thomas’s article ‘unprofessional, ignorant, biased’. Damien Roland, a consultant at the University of Leicester NHS Trust, accused it of ‘demonstrating tribalism and arrogance’.

Rachel Imrie, a trainee GP from Edinburgh, called him a ‘gigantic, out of touch, idiot!’. Dave Jones, a Welsh doctor, meanwhile, said that Thomas ‘comes out with some c**p’.

Soon, these ad hominem attacks took a more sinister turn.

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