Nineteen months on, MHRA claims about GcMaf are still unproven
A LETTER in your pages on 10 September asking why the States had shifted their position on Immuno Biotech's GcMaf and banned its importation was met with the following response by the States: 'We would seek to remind your readers of the background. Following information received from the MHRA that this product was being produced in a manner that represented a risk to public health... (the States and the MHRA decided to prevent its importation until the producer could satisfy us that it was being manufactured in an environment that is licensed to European standards...)' The MHRA said no such thing. If it did, then why did it not say so in its public statement, which said that there may be a risk posed, not that there was a risk? This is one of the main bones of contention – that the ban has been imposed on the strength of a possibility rather than a definitive.
How could the MHRA possibly have said it posed a risk when they hadn't tested the product, including conducting any sterility tests? (And my understanding is that 19 months later they still haven't come up with the results of any tests they may have conducted).
If the MHRA were definitive (that it posed a risk) in other correspondence with the States preceding the ban then where is that correspondence and where is the associated evidence?
Furthermore, on 9 March 2015 the States issued a fact sheet which then HSSD Minister Paul Luxon wrote was 'the best source of full information.' Yet when we analyse that fact sheet carefully we find that events point to the ban coming in before the MHRA's announcement.
The other argument in the States' reported statement on 3 September is that given that there is an ongoing criminal investigation it would be inappropriate to lift the ban.
It's an old trick – we saw it with the CISX scandal; we kept getting refusals to comment while the GFSC investigation was ongoing. It's happening again with Providence.
If the States are in the business of reminding us of the background as they claim, then why did they omit to point out that Immuno Biotech boss David Noakes said right from day one that the MHRA and the States would never prosecute Immuno Biotech over this matter, and that by keeping the investigation(s) ongoing they would use it as a ruse to justify suspending indefinitely IB's trading and suppress GcMaf?
It is somewhat ironic that while Mike Hadley admits to going to HSSD not long before the ban saying 'I think Immuno Biotech are making unproven claims,' the claims of the States and the MHRA 19 months later are still unproven.
MATT WATERMAN,
Flat 2,
3, Burnt Lane,
St Peter Port,
GY1 1HL.
