Matt Hancock and the Midazolam Touch

I Can't Breathe - a Very British Way of Death

Sep 13, 2021

Stopping the lungs of people who are struggling to breathe may seem counter-intuitive but it is a protocol used in the UK to end the lives of Covid patients.

As happened to George Floyd, drugs can reduce lung function when the individual is already under stress. Instead of self-administration, in the UK nurses do the job. They even use the same drug, fentanyl, but the central role is played by midazolam.

The practice accelerated under the tenure of former UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock who stockpiled the drugs for their use in the Covid pandemic.

Sep 13, 2021

Former UK health minister Matt Hancock is running the London Marathon on Oct 4 to raise funds for a hospice.

He’s posted updates of his training, as he works on expanding his lung capacity. Runners say it’s important not to breathe too hard; to pace yourself for when you’ll need that last breath. [1]

Wayne Smith would have seen the irony — respiratory depression is the main way of dispatching people in care homes. He campaigned against such killings after the death of his father. He asked a simple question: Are hospices places you go to die — or be killed?

Death by lethal drugs has accelerated again, despite outrage that led to the supposed suspension of euphemistic ‘pathways’ after 130,000 people were euthanized in UK care homes in 2012.

Smith discovered that the ‘pathway’ has been revived for Covid and is being applied to otherwise healthy people in their 40s and 50s who are being killed using a UK variant of the worldwide Covid protocols. He found a long history of care homes and hospices reporting deaths at two-to-three times their average rate or stated capacity and he was seeking an answer.

Sadly, he did not live to get one. His body was found at home in British town of Chichester on Jul 25. Although he’d always kept in contact with friends, they had had no response since the 10th. Smith left no surviving family. [2]

Euthanasia protocols have always existed in the shadows as a grey area. While nominally illegal in the UK, it is not uncommon for a patient’s death to be hastened. In the UK it was called the Liverpool Care Pathway, although that was suspended in 2014 after the Neuberger review.

Newspapers reported that that far from excellent care in their last days, people were being killed to vacate beds and even for financial gain. In short it’s not ‘mercy killing’ if the patient isn’t dying. Baroness Julia Neuberger said the LCP must stop.

The research of Smith and his collaborators, including the journalist Jackie Deevoy, suggest all the worst aspects of LCP are back. And ministers are not innocent spectators.

Hancock’s role involves arranging for extra supplies of life-ending drugs at the beginning of Event Covid and parliamentary evidence of his discussion of euthanasia that suggests he has always been aware of the purpose to which these drugs would be put in the pandemic.

The SIN

The title of Secretary of State for Health now carries the suffix ‘and Social Care’. The role was held from 2018 to Jun 2021 by a former Bank of England economist Matt Hancock.

Public finances and tough choices in social care are Hancock’s bread and butter, in the tradition of rationality and thinking the ‘unthinkable’. He is a habitué of the World Economic Forum and the tax-exempt foundations of the Davos hinterland.

Guiding the public to accept hard choices was the focus of an Anglo-French summit in Paris in Feb 2019.

Science and Innovation Network (SIN) is based in 40 countries/territories around the world. Government documentation says it supports UK policy… strategic relationships… mutual benefits. [3]

Industrialists, psychologists, academics and bureaucrats gathered in the British ambassador’s residence two-and-a-half years ago to discuss:

genomics — sequencing and data collection from birth
sharing health data — what to do with populations, especially the old
behavioural science — how to get people to accept measures

Britain’s behavioural teams are more advanced than the French, presumably due to the history of the Tavistock Institute. ‘Well-established entities with a history of policy trials in health,’ include:

Public Health Improvement Research Network
Public Health England Behavioural Insights
Behavioural Insights Team

These have been activated during Event Covid, with members aboard the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) who calculate the degree of fear needed to motivate the public:

“The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased … using hard-hitting emotional messaging.” (SPI-B minutes of Mar 22, 2020).

The slim

Africans give the nickname ‘the slim’ to diseases that strike seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes pollutants or toxins are to blame — other times AIDS is cited. But the slim has been used for decades in the UK to kill without mercy.

People are deprived of food and water until their mouth blisters and they die of dehydration. In comparison, a lethal injection makes the process shorter but starvation is still used to avoid vomiting.

The procedure is detailed in this Marie Curie document from 2008 and the protocol is still used according to advice on the National Institutes of Health web site published as Covid-19 information in Jan 2020.

The shot

In May 2020 French-labeled midazolam was quickly given UK regulatory approval so that it could be diverted from France as a ‘precaution’ against shortages. The NHS stockpiled enough for two years of regular use.

Royal College of Anesthetists on Apr 2, 2020 prioritized midazolam as a ‘first-line’ sedative and Hancock told a parliamentary committee on Apr 17 that such intensive therapy were part of ‘a delicate supply chain’ as they ‘are made in a relatively small number of factories around the world’. [5]

One wonders why the French wouldn’t need it.

Can’t breathe

It is no ordinary sedative. Some legislatures in the U.S. banned its use in executions because it forcibly stops breathing. Dennis McGuire died on January 16, 2014, at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

McGuire was executed via lethal injection using a new combination of then untried drugs; sedative midazolam and painkiller hydromorphone. For 11 minutes he clenched his fists, gasping for breath, while snorting and choking, his priest said afterwards.

He took 25 minutes to die. For about half of that he would have been fully sentient. Midazolam takes 15 minutes to work so the patient has full feeling while the lungs are stopped.

It was developed to deal with short term seizures and works on the memory receptors in the same way as the execution drug Pentobarbital.

Ohio unofficially suspended capital punishment for three years after McGuire’s botched death using midazolam. Opponents of the drug said it represents a cruel and unusual punishment because it does not render the victim unconscious. The accompanying injection of a paralytic simply leaves them unable to communicate and effectively buries them alive. In 2015, however, the Supreme Court ruled that Oklahoma's use of midazolam did not violate the Eighth Amendment.

While the drug is considered controversial in execution by lethal injection the pharmaceutical industry continues to market it for a variety of other uses, including assisted dying.

Sister morphine

Many web sites have sprouted to defend government policy during Event Covid. One of them, Health Desk says: ‘midazolam was most likely used on ventilated patients with COVID-19. It is one of the two most commonly used benzodiazepine medications for sedation in the ICU. This medication is frequently used in critically ill patients to keep them calm, allow their bodies to recover through rest, and ease discomfort and other physical symptoms.’ [6]

The problem with this narrative is that ventilated patients rarely recover and thus the use of midazolam is indeed more likely to be used to end life.

It is a sister to morphine but considered more effective for specifically suppressing breathing or, supposedly, reducing the discomfort of dyspnea.

Meanwhile around the world there is a concerted effort to restrict therapeutic drugs in favour of rigid protocols, that vary with different health care systems. In the U.S. a nurse and whistle blower alleged that anyone who ‘tests positive for Covid’ is put on a Covid ward and fast-tracked to Remdesivir and a ventilator — whether or not they have respiratory symptoms. The damage to kidneys and lungs mean few survive. [7]

No bells

When his father died after a routine visit to hospital, Wayne Smith found that he had been given repeated overdoses of drugs like midazolam.

Lethal injections with various drugs have been used for 50 years in UK care homes including respiratory suppressors like diamorphine and midazolam, along with hyoscine and haloperidol.

Nurses call them by the euphemism ‘just in case drugs’. When they are about to use them, they say ‘we’re just making her comfortable.’

Smith scoured official records and contacted relatives. He found fully-able people in their fifties with pneumonia were being killed instead of treated. They are moved into side rooms, denied a last call to relatives and denied buzzers and other means of calling for help.

If only the bell tolled. Instead people die silenced, choked and suffocated.

No answer

Freedom of Information requests to the NHS have found that records on controlled drugs are being kept only for two years despite the recommendation of the Harold Shipman inquiry they should be kept for 11 in case of malpractice or crime. [8]

A topic as big as how to finish life should be a focus for public debate. Smith found he could not even ask questions. The lawyers don’t like it and nor do the police. The ACPO (police chiefs) and the Law Society have an agreement not to investigate each other. It is policy although it is neither lawful nor legal.

The more data Smith compiled, the more councils, police and regulatory bodies refused to investigate. Examples such as:

Princess Alice Hospice, Esher – 20 beds, expected average 340 deaths a year. In 2011 it recorded over 700, of which 98 were unexplained.
St Barnabas House, Worthing – 20 beds, avg 245 deaths annually. In 2012 recorded 782.
St Wilfred’s Hospice, Chichester – 14 beds, avg deaths 170. In 2012 it had 552.
St Giles Hospice, West Midlands – 27 beds, avg 328. In 2011 had 1,007 deaths.

These turnouts coincided with what the Daily Mail highlighted as a key year for the pathway: 130,000 people were euthanized in UK care homes in 2012. The trajectory since then is unclear. Wayne Smith was trying to find out. He faced tough resistance from institutions who clearly did not want the numbers publicised. [9]

Corpse positive

The coroner said the corpse had Covid. There was no autopsy.

Reuters fact Cheka said: ‘The West Sussex coroner told Reuters that a COVID-19 test at the mortuary showed that Smith was COVID-positive. This test result, alongside a history of COVID-19 related symptoms leading up to the death, satisfied the coroner that Smith died of COVID-19, a spokesperson said via email.’ [10]

Twitter has just suspended Smith’s collaborator Jacqui Deevoy, a long-established newspaper journalist, while Patreon has put her page under review. A recent article and sources can be found below. [11]

Information continues to emerge from other sources. Manchester mayoral candidate Michael Elston has said end of life care is being used on people in their 50s and younger.

Midaz touch

Nowadays government policy originates outside the civil service. The imbalance of resources is too great for officials to drive the debate. Private finance is increasingly used to build hospitals, run computer systems and deliver services with the rationale and methodology provided by banks and consultancies.

The inexorable logic of bankers is that the profitable, low-risk services can be privatised while the government pays for, but outsources, the liabilities like staffing and recruitment.

Within this context an ageing population is the greatest liability since the cost falls not only on the health service but on pensions, housing and social care. A quotation comes to mind: one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.

Few people have the confidence to discuss the savings to be made from shortening people’s lives — apart from Bill Gates (that appears to be one of his roles — see James Corbett’s series). You can be sure it is discussed on the margins of conferences like the World Economic Forum at Davos. In 2019 Hancock shared a platform with Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, to discuss: ‘What If Everyone Had Their Genome Sequenced at Birth?’ [12]

Then there is the United Nations and the largely privately-run international nongovernmental organizations. These also serve to hollow out government and not only in developing countries. While purporting to help they weaken state capacity by delivering social services that the government is supposed to provide, as Susanna Campbell wrote in 2018. [13]

Hancock is the poster child for decision making in what once were portrayed as smoke-filled rooms but today are the painfully-bright think tanks of corporate-funded NGOs. We see this from the Rockefeller-backed CommonPass to the panoply of Gates-funded bodies like GAVI and CEPI advising on vaccines. Ministers become a middleman or a dealer on the street corner — the public to one side, their supplier to the other.

If there is any minister who covered all the relevant bases in the run up to Event Covid it was Hancock. With his background as a Bank of England economist he is close to former bank governor Mark Carney, COP26 climate change finance chief and one of the logicians of The Great Reset. [14]

Hancock held roles in the Cabinet Office from 2015 to 2016 under prime minister David Cameron and was in charge of the press as minister for digital and culture until 2018. In April 2020 Hancock arranged for extra shipments of midazolam — negotiations that must surely have originated some months earlier, perhaps in those French SIN meetings.

Crucially he is on record discussing the “good death” protocol with Dr Luke Evans MP This quickly bore fruit. Prescriptions for the drug midazolam doubled during height of the pandemic [15] [16].

One piece of information is missing: death figures. The numbers coming out of Public Health England and the UK government’s Covid dashboard are delayed and wildly inconsistent. For example the former lists 3,459 deaths from Feb to Sep 2021 and the latter 19,790 deaths from Feb to Aug 2021. An overview is impossible — and that’s where the work of independent researchers is essential to truth and accountability.

Like others who got Lockdown off the ground — and people out of the hospitals and into the hospices and nursing homes — Hancock has stepped away for now. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, too. Will they come back for another round, we shall see. After all, this is a marathon.

Or perhaps they have already shot their bolt.

Midazolam clears out the tenants, the eaters, the claimants and the liabilities but the financiers may have miscalculated. For damned are those who aspire to the midaz touch.

[1] Matt Hancock, Twitter

[2] Bitchute, Aug 4, 2021 — Wayne Smith The Man Investigating Midazolam Murders Found Dead

[3] UK Gov, Apr 2019 — SIN France organises first UK-France bilateral workshop on Behavioural Science at Paris British Embassy

[4] Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute, 2008 — Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient

NIH, Jan 2020 — Midazolam: an essential palliative care drug

[5] The Pharmaceutical Journal, May 2020 — Supplies of sedative used for COVID-19 patients diverted from France to avoid potential shortages

[6] Health Desk, Jun 2021 — How is Midazolam being used for COVID-19?

[7] BMJ, Sep 10, 2021 — Covid-19: Hospital may cease giving patient ivermectin, US court rules, as prescriptions soar

Stew Peters Show, Sep 8, 2021 — Nurse whistle blower

[8] UK Government’s response to the Fourth Report of the Shipman Inquiry

[9] Daily Mail, 2012 — Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year

[10] Reuters Fakt Cheka, Aug 2021 — UK coroner said Wayne Smith died of COVID-19