MHRA warns against using Midazolam while GMC encourages its use to treat Covid

“What people in the [UK], and indeed international viewers, may be interested to know is that our MHRA … issued advice on benzodiazepine and opioids in March 2020, just before this guidance from NICE came out, and it’s diametrically opposed to this NICE guidance,” Clare Wills Harrison said.

Wills Harrison, a UK lawyer, has several legal cases where midazolam has clearly been misused.  Midazolam seems to have been used in the UK the same way as remdesivir has been used in the USA so last week Dr. Bryan Ardis interviewed Wills Harrison.

In March 2020, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) issued a reminder of the risk of potentially fatal respiratory depression when benzodiazepines and opioids are used stating:

“We remind healthcare professionals that benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine-like drugs and opioids can both cause respiratory depression. When co-prescribed, the depressive effect on the central nervous system is additive. Therefore, they should only be co-prescribed if there is no alternative. Warnings about the risks of co-prescribing these products were reviewed in Europe in 2018.”

The words “reviewed in Europe in 2018” contain a link to a document from the Co-ordination Group for Mutual Recognition and Decentralised Procedures  – Human (“CMDh”).  The opening paragraph reads:

The 18 March 2020 MHRA guidance also notes the advice to be given to patients which includes: “For benzodiazepines or related drugs and opioids, the patient information leaflet advises that these medicines increase the risk of drowsiness, difficulties in breathing (respiratory depression), and coma, and that these effects may be life-threatening.”

Despite MHRA’s warnings, a few weeks later, on 3 April 2020, NICE advised clinicians that benzodiazepine and opioids could be used as a treatment for Covid.

“It gets worse as far as I’m concerned,” said Wills Harrison, highlighting a statement from the General Medical Council (“GMC”) on 14 April 2020 which stated:

“We want practitioners to know that it is entirely appropriate to follow these guidelines and that we would not have concerns about prescribing decisions based upon them.”

Despite benzodiazepine and opioids not having a UK marketing authorisation for this purpose and despite the MHRA’s warning in March, the GMC does not seem to have any concerns, said Wills Harrison.  Instead, GMC’s document says:

“‘Sufficient evidence’.  I suggest there wasn’t, two weeks into the so-called ‘pandemic’, sufficient evidence of that drug combination working,” Wills Harrison said, adding that regarding “sufficient information,” as is the case in the USA, there has been and is no informed consent.

Wills Harrison highlighted further key points in the GMC’s statement which are very disturbing.  “They clearly state that sedation and opioid use should not be withheld for fear of causing respiratory depression,” she said.

The GMC statement also stated: “We want practitioners to know that it is entirely appropriate to follow these guidelines and that we would not have concerns about prescribing decisions based upon them.”

“So, you have: possibly inexperienced practitioners, possibly people in a panic because of the narrative that’s coming out of the media and they’ve got a green light to prescribe this medication … it’s a green light to use midazolam and morphine, or other opioids, in this way,” said Wills Harrison.

There is no anti-viral benefit from either midazolam or morphine yet these are the two drugs that were being advised to be used for Covid, a respiratory illness.