Swine Flu Weirdness

Like most of the rest of the world swine flu is gradually making its way through the British population. In the last two weeks the path of the epidemic reached an important milestone when the disease started killing people with no previous, underlying health problems. One of those people believed to have died from the virus was a GP, Dr Micheal Day who is suspected of catching the virus from patients he was treating although his exact cause of death has not been confirmed. Yesterday the local police in Bedfordshire took the unusual step of announcing that the autopsy showed Dr Day had died from "natural causes" This is peculiar because it is not standard practice for the police to make public the results of an autopsy in a case that is not suspected of being a murder. Also simply announcing that Dr Day died of unspecified natural causes doesn't even tell us if he died of swine flu or some other medical condition.

Rather then having anything to do with Swine Flu this announcement seems to be a response to a new wave of rumours surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly. For those of you who don't know Dr David Kelly was a British Government weapons scientist who worked on all those nasty little projects that the government doesn't want to own up to running. He also formed part of the UN weapons inspection team tasked with finding out if Saddam Hussein's Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After British Intelligence, in the run up to the Iraq war, claimed that Iraq had WMD's that could be deployed in 45 minutes Dr Kelly contacted the BBC with evidence that this claim was false. Acting on the information provided by Dr Kelly the BBC broadcast a series of news reports which destroyed Britain's case for going to war and essentially accused the Prime Minister of lying to Parliament and the British public. In the ensuing political storm the BBC was forced to reveal it's sources and Dr Kelly was dragged up in front of a Parliamentary Investigations Committee. Days after his grilling by MP's and with his career in tatters Dr Kelly was found dead in fields near his home after apparently committing suicide. Due to the circumstances of his death and Dr Kelly's involvement in a number of highly sensitive military projects a number of conspiracy theories, some from very credible sources, began to emerge proposing that Dr Kelly was assassinated by the Intelligence Services in order to keep him quiet.

Over the years these conspiracy theories have investigated thoroughly, if not publicly, and it is widely accepted that while British Intelligence did no directly assassinate Dr Kelly they deliberately and purposely created the conditions in which Dr Kelly would decide to kill himself. An assisted suicide if you like.

The more traditional definition of "Assisted Suicide" in which terminally ill or seriously disabled people end their own lives with the help of a doctor or a close friend has been a major topic of discussion in Britain in the last year to eighteen months. The current round of discussion began last year when Debbie Purdy, a woman with Multiple Sclerosis, appealed to the Law Lords to clarify if her partner could be prosecuted under the Suicide Act if he helped her travel to a country where assisted suicide or euthanasia is legal. Although the Law Lords felt it wasn't their place to rule on the issue Purdy's case is seen as the motivation for Lord Falconers amendment to the Coroners and Justice bill when it was debated in the House of Lords two weeks ago.

This makes me think that the sudden re-emergence of the discredited Dr David Kelly conspiracy theories is an attempt by the Intelligence / Civil Service to lobby the House of Lords to pass the amendment. The message seems to be that is assisted suicide was legalised it would take alot off pressure of the Intelligence Service in issues such as the Dr David Kelly case. Of course this would be an attempt to drive the direction of the discussion rather then to reach a logical conclusion because it is as unlikely that changes to the Suicide Act would have any bearing on the Dr Kelly case as it is that members of the Intelligence Services would ever be prosecuted for any offence. As the law change wouldn't actually protect any members of the Intelligence Services there must be a hidden agenda behind this lobbying and it recently just revealed itself. Over the last two days it has emerged that within the next decade or so Britain will no longer be able to meet its pension obligations or its obligation to provide social care to the disabled. Therefore it would seem that they want to legalise euthanasia because the state would prefer it if the old and the sick could just be put down by doctors rather then forcing the state to do it's job properly.

Yesterday it was also announced that a young British girl called Hannah who underwent groundbreaking heart surgery by having a second donor heart transplanted in to her in order to allow her existing, damaged heart to recover has made a full recovery. The name Hannah is a long standing tag used to identify an imaginary female MI5 officers and this story has been doing the rounds in medical circles for a number of years. The public announcement of success seems to be acting to lay the story and the possibly the whole strategy to rest. It was probably also announced on the same day as this swine flu story was a way to confuse everyone.