All eight people terror supsects arrested in connection with last week’s attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow turn out to have been NHS employees. Five were qualified doctors, two trainee doctors, and one a hospital laboratory technician.
According to a report in today’s Daily Telegraph about the trial of three men who have pleaded guilty to charges of ‘cyber-terrorism’, as long as three years ago ‘the use of doctors for terrorist purposes was being discussed in jihadi terrorist circles’.
That time gap would have given ample opportunity for many more Al Qaeda terrorist cells to have infiltrated the NHS, assuming those arrested in connection with the car bombings turn out turn out to be such.
In view of this, plus recent concerns raised by Muslim women that confidential information about themselves that they had given their gps could, if up-loaded onto the proposed central NHS data-base, be accessed and used against them by radically-minded co-religionists, it seems to me imperative that all work on this NHS project be suspended forthwith.
How can we possibly be sure any sleeper cells of jihardis that had infiltrated the NHS would not use any access their jobs might have given them to confidential medical records of patients for nefarious ends, even whilst they are awaiting orders to carry out some major attack?
The answer is we cannot. Given that it seems almost certain the NHS has been infiltrated by jihardis, the obvious practical implication of these facts seems to me clear: work on the project of a central electronic data-base of medical records should cease forthwith. In sheer cost-benefit terms, the risks it now poses to life and limb now seem to outweigh any potential medical benefit it might provide.
Comments (3)
And - further to Brian's comment - given that some of those who live among us may become unacceptably 'persuasive', the correct strategy, surely, is not simply a reactive one of putting up walls etc - although this may be necessary in the short-term - but a robustly proactive one. This might include: (a) modulation of immigration to prevent our borders being crossed by (still less, citizenship being freely given to) those of cultural backgrounds likely to be incompatible with the UK cuture and values; and (b) actively seeking, detaining and removing those who have illegally crossed our borders and / or remained here beyond their permitted time. Will any extant political party have the guts to do this? Unlikely - more votes in plastering concrete over the green belt.
Posted by anon | July 11, 2007 10:08 AM
Posted on July 11, 2007 10:08
Almost all advances (and there are some seriously good reasons to wish for universally accessible medical records) can be used for good or evil. The previous commentator is 100% correct.
We have already built a high wall around our Parliament (it should be open), covered our streets with cameras and subjected ourselves to the most absurd restriction on air travel to name a few.
The answer is to recognise the real problem and firmly say that we are not going to fundamentally change the way we live no matter how they try to "persuade" us.
Posted by Brian of London | July 10, 2007 6:23 AM
Posted on July 10, 2007 06:23
A central NHS database surely will enable better medical attention to be provided to the great majority of patients. Although it is true that there may be a threat from extremists working n the NHS, the way to answer this threat is not to stop improving the NHS, but to stop degrading the NHS by employing those who pose a danger to our citizens during their most vulnerable periods of ill-health.
Posted by anon | July 6, 2007 4:38 PM
Posted on July 6, 2007 16:38