Abstract
As highlighted throughout a recent issue of this journal, medicine, and the work we do as clinicians, is inextricably linked to the politics beyond our hospital wards and clinic rooms. From vaccine rollout in the UK and globally, to lockdown policies, COVID-19 has brought the interface between medicine and politics to the fore. Daily, scientists and medics are in the media, grappling with these two disciplines.
A recent right-wing news website hosted a video campaigning for a warning to be attached to doctors, and other voices, in the media who straddle the boundary between expert and political activist.1 In this particular instance, the doctor highlighted had been critical of the government's handling of the pandemic, as well as historically having commented on ‘stealth’ privatisation within the health service and the link between austerity and public health. Clinicians who speak out on these issues are fulfilling their duties as a doctor by voicing their views and offering expert opinion.
Good Medical Practice,2 our ethical guidance, is explicit in its support for this. As well as formally stating that our role is to ‘protect and promote the health of patients and the public’, it is also clear that unlike politicians or pundits we ‘must make sure the information [we] publish is factual and can be checked’.
In 2018, Ron Klain, the newly appointed Chief of Staff in Joe Biden’s White House, foresaw pandemic politics playing out as they have done, defined by isolationism and nationalism, and scientific and vaccine scepticism.3 He was clear that to confront this head-on, medical professionals ‘have a knowledge and gravitas’ that benefits the public conversation, requiring ‘the medical community to take on the criticism and controversy’.
In the current political climate, frequent deviation from evidence-based decision-making put expert testimony from medics in opposition to political dogma. Because of this, in reality, there is no distinction between expert and activist.
