𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐝

✔continued: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲: 𝗕𝗠𝗝 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 Tracking Down John Bell.

The need for financial transparency to ensure trust in science and medicine has long been recognised, including by Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser. While employed at GlaxoSmithKline, Vallance wrote a 2005 commentary for the Lancet, stating, “[I]nteractions with industry are important for medical advance, but they need to be open and unambiguous, and there is an institutional responsibility to ensure this is the case.”

Vallance continued, “Inferences should be drawn from attempts to hide interactions. These responsibilities are as true for patients’ organisations as they are for professional bodies and universities.”4

The BMJ’s information requests uncovered several emails showing government officials discussing our original emailed questions. Citing various exemptions to freedom of information, the government heavily redacted these communications. For example, 24 hours after The BMJ requested copies of any financial disclosure signed by Bell and other Vaccine Taskforce members, a BEIS official decided against any disclosure. Emailing his colleagues, he wrote, “Of course, we would not pass them any of the forms.”

The government heavily redacted the emails and removed officials’ names; however, one exchange implies that Bell did not fill out any conflict of interest (COI) forms. “Just confirm, there isn’t any written COI from John?” one official asks. Another official then emails to ensure that the government alerts Bell that The BMJ is asking questions about his financial interests.

In the emails that the government released after The BMJ’s FOI request, officials also discuss The BMJ’s reporter. One asks if the government might be forced to make the information public through FOI requests: “This chap seems to have a bee in his bonnet about conflicts of interest more generally too. Could the COI declarations ever be revealed through an FOI?”

The BMJ’s FOI request also uncovered a heavily redacted version of the BEIS response to our request in November for COI forms. The email’s subject line is titled, “FOR CLEARANCE,” but the government has blacked out multiple names and emails, hiding who had final clearance. A section of the official internal response characterises our reporter as an extremist for sending the questions. “To note, the journalist looks like a campaigner on the issue of pharma companies influence on politics and has some quite extreme views on a verity [sic] of topics,” the email reads.

“Should departments be fingering certain journalists as ‘campaigners’?” asks Peter Geoghegan, a reporter with openDemocracy, who The BMJ asked to review the emails. “Is that their job? It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t have had an effect on their engagement with The BMJ.”

The BMJ has previously raised concerns about Bell’s financial ties to industry, during a campaign it ran from 2009 for access to the clinical trial data on Tamiflu (oseltamivir), with an open letter to Bell published in 2012.5 At that time Bell was on the commercial board of Roche and received $420 000 from the company in 2011.67

Since The BMJ approached Oxford University and the government last November about Bell, he has made appearances in many media outlets—such as the BBC, Channel 4 News, CNBC, and the Financial Times—to comment on public policy. Yet questions remain about the exact sum and nature of his self-confessed “long list” of financial investments, and how that might affect the government’s coronavirus policy.

✔𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲: 𝗕𝗠𝗝 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗴𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 Page 2 of 2
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Tracking down John Bell: how the case of the Oxford professor exposes a transparency crisis in government

As testing and the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine are hailed as UK pandemic successes, why won’t Oxford University or the government disclose the “long list” of financial interests of a high profile researcher at the centre of both? Paul D Thacker investigates…

1.64K viewsDeanne Santini, edited 23:16