Stephen Hawking supports demand for inquiry into Jeremy Hunt’s ‘weekend death’ claim
![Stephen Hawking [Image: National Geographic Channels/Pau].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160916-Stephen-Hawking-National-Geographic-Channels-Pau.png)
Stephen Hawking [Image: National Geographic Channels/Pau].
Stephen Hawking, Robert Winston and a number of senior doctors are urging Theresa May to hold an inquiry into Jeremy Hunt’s claim that 11,000 patient deaths a year are caused by a lack of medics on duty in hospitals at weekends.
In a letter to the Guardian they claim the health secretary has caused a “devastating breakdown of trust between government and the medical profession” by misrepresenting the evidence on the “weekend effect”.
Hunt has come under fire since he began maintaining last year that “there are 11,000 excess deaths because we do not staff our hospitals properly at weekends”. Critics, including the British Medical Journal, have rejected his claim and accused him of highly selective use of complex evidence about the higher number of patients who die within 30 days of being admitted to hospital on a weekend.
The letter is a significant new challenge to Hunt’s integrity over the weekend effect and what lies behind it.
Source: Doctors urge inquiry into Jeremy Hunt’s NHS ‘weekend effect’ claims | Society | The Guardian
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A challenge to this Hunts integrity? integrity? He’s never had any!
This is the same man who lied about thousands then hundreds of preventable deaths at mid staffs and has never apologised as the enquiry came to the conclusion of maybe one he wants to privatise the NHS and will continue to make these outlandish claims to support his position.
I’ve been sitting here watching a black cloud go by that resembles a flying pig. Omen for honesty or TM
Not holding my breath on this one. May has already said publicly that she will not allow the Junior Doctor’s to succeed, crushing them like Thatcher did to the Miners if necessary. The mere fact that Hunt was not dispatched like Osborn shows that she has no problem with his campaign to privatise the NHS.
Good that Stephen Hawkins is prepared to challenge her politically as hopefully the public respect his intelligence above that of May’s. I fear however that it is a done deal.
Again, how is the man still in a job?
Hunt is a thoroughly dishonest individual, as has been proved beyond doubt beginning with his embezzlement of expenses. Stephen Hawking is right to demand an Enquiry.