Replies to post #46048 on Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[janice shell]

Naked mole rats and (practically) eternal life:

https://www.wired.com/story/long-strange-life-worlds-oldest-naked-mole-rat/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

They're so cute...

[scion]

England’s NHS plans to share patient records with third parties

55m patients have until June 23 to opt out of having their health data scraped into a new database

Madhumita Murgia in London 3 HOURS AGO
https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748

England’s NHS is preparing to scrape the medical histories of 55m patients, including sensitive information on mental and sexual health, criminal records and abuse, into a database it will share with third parties.

The data collection project, which is the first of its kind, has caused an uproar among privacy campaigners, who say it is “legally problematic”, especially as patients only have a few weeks to opt out of the plan.

NHS Digital, which runs the health service’s IT systems, confirmed the plan to pool together medical records from every patient in England who is registered with a GP clinic into a single lake that will be available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes.

Cori Crider, co-founder of Foxglove, a campaign group for digital rights, said: “We all want to see the NHS come out of the pandemic stronger” but noted that the NHS had been “completely silent” on who would have access to the data.

“Is it pharma companies? The health arm of Google Deepmind? If you ask patients whether they want details of their fertility treatment or abortion, or results of their colonoscopy shared with [those companies], they’re not going to want that,” she said.

Foxglove has issued a legal letter to the Department of Health and Social Care, questioning the lawfulness of the plans under current data protection laws, and threatening further legal action.

Rosa Curling, a solicitor at Foxglove, wrote in the letter that she had “serious concerns” about the legality of the move because no explicit consent had been given and “very few members of the public will be aware that the new processing is imminent, directly affecting their personal medical data”.

Patients have until June 23 to opt out by filling in a form and taking it to their GP before their historical records will become a permanent and irreversible part of the new data set. Patients who opt out after the deadline can stop future data from being funnelled into the new system.

The plan to create a new data set was announced by Matt Hancock, health secretary, in early April and publicised mainly on blogs on the NHS Digital website, and through flyers at GP surgeries, said NHS Digital, which added that the plans had been in the works for three years.

But Phil Booth, founder of advocacy group MedConfidential, said: “They’re trying to sneak it out, they are giving you six weeks nominally and if you do not act based on web pages on the NHS digital site and some YouTube videos and a few tweets, your entire GP history could have been scraped, never to be deleted.”

He added that the NHS had “opaque” commercial relationships, often through middlemen, and that it would be difficult to trace who ultimately sees the data. NHS Digital says on its website that it publishes a monthly register of who it has released data to, and whether the data is anonymised or not.

Data that directly identifies patients will be replaced with unique codes in the new data set, but the NHS will hold the keys to unlock the codes “in certain circumstances, and where there is a valid legal reason”, according to its website.

NHS Digital said the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data regulator, had not objected to its plans, and that it was in the process of delivering a data protection impact assessment.

The plan comes following an attempt in 2013 to extract GP records into a central database, called the Care.data programme, which was abandoned in 2016 after complaints about confidentiality and commercial use.


https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748

[scion]

Dominic Cummings: Matt Hancock should have been sacked for lying and Boris Johnson thought COVID was a scare story, PM's former adviser claims

He says the government’s response to the COVID outbreak last year "fell disastrously short of standards required by the public".

Alix Culbertson
News reporter @alixculbertson
Wednesday 26 May 2021 16:22, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/dominic-cummings-says-government-failed-public-in-early-pandemic-days-and-apologises-for-deaths-12317232

Dominic Cummings has claimed that the health secretary should have been sacked for lying, and that Boris Johnson thought COVID was a "scare story" like swine flu in the early days of the pandemic.

In an explosive Commons hearing on coronavirus, the PM's former chief adviser has told MPs the government failed the public in the early months of 2020.

Explaining why Mr Johnson did not attend the COBRA meetings at the start of last year, he said: "The prime minister described it as the new swine flu, I certainly told him it wasn't.

"The view from No 10 was if the PM chairs COBRA and says it's just swine flu that would not help."

We're absolutely f****d': Dominic Cummings' key claims
https://news.sky.com/story/there-was-no-plan-cummingss-key-claims-on-early-pandemic-strategy-12317238

He added that the PM wanted to be injected with the coronavirus live on TV by chief medical officer Chris Whitty to show it was not harmful.

Lashing out at Matt Hancock, Mr Cummings claimed that he, the cabinet secretary and other senior officials called for the PM to fire the health secretary for "at least 15-20 things, including lying".

Mr Cummings said the PM "was close" to firing Mr Hancock in April 2020 "but wouldn't do it".

He added that Mr Hancock took too long to get test and trace set up and told the PM: "If we don't fire the secretary of state and we don't get testing into someone's hands, we are going to kill lots of people."

The PM's former chief aide also said:

• It is "crackers" that people like Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were the only two options at the last general election

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak supported locking down (and never threatened to quit over the second lockdown), it was the PM who did not think the pandemic "was the big danger"

• "It is crazy I should have been in such a senior position, I'm not smart, I've not built great things in the world - neither is the PM" - and he said he and the PM let down brilliant junior colleagues

• Plan A was herd immunity by September after one peak but after it was modelled 260,000 would die, or more, that was changed

• There was no plan for financial help for people and the Chancellor and his team had to create the whole scheme in a few days

• There was no plan for shielding in the pandemic plan but some "brilliant" officials in the Department of Health hacked together a plan in two all-nighters

• "Groupthink" prevented ministers and officials from realising how severe the situation was going to get

• When the PM got COVID, Mr Cummings said: "In lots of ways, the whole core of government fundamentally fell apart."

•There were claims it would be "racist" to close the borders because it would be tantamount to "blaming China"

• On telling the PM he was going to resign in December 2020, Mr Cummings claimed the PM told him: "You're right, I am more frightened of you having the power to stop the chaos than I am of the chaos, chaos isn't that bad because chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who's in charge."

• On Mr Hancock saying people would be tested before they returned to care homes and there was a shield around care homes, Mr Cummings said he lied and said: "Quite the opposite, complete nonsense - we sent people with COVID back to care homes"

• On whether or not to sack Mr Hancock, Mr Cummings said the PM was told: "Don't sack him now, he's the person you sack when the inquiry comes along."

• He would rate the government's response: "Some individual brilliant responses - overall system, total failure."

• He did not quit when he considered doing so in the summer because people urged him not to and: "Fundamentally I regarded [Johnson] unfit for the job and I was trying to create a structure around him to stop extremely bad decisions."

• He made the trip to Durham to get his family out of London following death threats and a gang outside his house where his wife and son, aged three, were threatening them

• He said it was logical at the time to go for a 30 mile drive to Barnard Castle to see if he could cope with driving 300 miles to Westminster, and had been writing his will in bed a few days before because he thought he was going to die.

"I wish I'd never heard of Barnard Castle and I'd never have gone, and I can only apologise," he added

• "Tens of thousands of people died who didn't need to die."

• Patrick Vallance was instrumental in getting the early vaccine contracts and "deserves absolutely enormous credit for his role in the vaccine taskforce"

• After March, the PM thought the UK should not have gone into lockdown and should have focused on the economy - "I thought that perspective was completely mad".

• Mr Cummings said: "Fundamentally the prime minister and I do not agree about COVID. I had very little influence on COVID stuff, I mean I tried, I made arguments, but as you can see on pretty much all the major arguments basically lost."

• He said he heard the PM say he would rather see "bodies pile high" than go into a third lockdown

• Asked if he is surprised about the chaos over the current travel traffic light system, he said: "No, it's deja vu all over again."

• His departure was inevitable in September, but Mr Cummings' girlfriend Carrie Symonds was something to do with it as she tried to change "a whole bunch of different appointments", was appointing her friends to jobs, was overturning the hiring process of one job, which was "unethical and clearly illegal". The PM's behaviour was "appalling", he said https://news.sky.com/story/cummings-says-resignation-linked-to-illegal-moves-by-carrie-symonds-to-appoint-friends-to-jobs-12317616

• Asked if he thinks the PM is a fit and proper person to get us through the pandemic, Mr Cummings said: "No."

At the start of the session, Mr Cummings said the government failed the public when they needed them most and apologised to the families of those who died in the early days of the pandemic.

Taking some of the blame himself, he said: "The truth is, senior minister, officials, advisers like me fell disastrously short of standards required by the public.

"When the public needed us the most, the government failed. I want to apologise to all those families who had people that died.

"I did think oh my god, is this what people have been warning about all this time?

"However, PHE, WHO, CDC, organisations across the western world were not ringing the alarm bells about it then.

"In retrospect, it's completely obvious that many institutions failed."

https://news.sky.com/story/dominic-cummings-says-government-failed-public-in-early-pandemic-days-and-apologises-for-deaths-12317232

[scion]

Peter Geoghegan @PeterKGeoghegan·7m BREAKING Parliament is to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit.

Huge result for @openDemocracy journalism - and transparency - as public administration and constitutional affairs committee launches Freedom of Information inquiry.

UK Parliament to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit

Public administration and constitutional affairs committee to launch inquiry in the wake of openDemocracy’s reporting on government secrecy

Peter Geoghegan
15 June 2021, 12.22pm
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/uk-parliament-to-investigate-michael-goves-orwellian-foi-unit/

THREAD

BREAKING🚨🚨🚨Parliament is to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit.

Huge result for @openDemocracy journalism - and transparency - as public administration and constitutional affairs committee launches Freedom of Information inquiry.https://t.co/rKW7KulKfR

— Peter Geoghegan (@PeterKGeoghegan) June 15, 2021