The current Covid19 situation has highlighted a number of issues with medical care. One of the things that most shocked me is a claim by a doctor writing for the Spectator that there has never been a controlled trial, whether among humans or animals, as to the effectiveness of intubation and ventilation when it comes to respiratory problems.

Dr Matt Strauss has said that the effectiveness of ventilation and intubation has been taken as a matter of faith by doctors and drew a connection between this belief today and the Eighteenth century belief by medics that blowing tobacco smoke up a drowned person’s anus would revive the drowned person. Personally I think that this is a pretty good analogy for a medical procedure which medical staff may believe works but which has never been properly tested or assessed. The situation appears to be one where there is anedotal evidence that intubation and ventilation works but where no proper study has been done.

Dr Strauss said:

As I previously reported in the Spectator, there has never been a randomised control trial to show that sedating people with severe pneumonia in order to put a breathing tube down their throat (the process known as intubation), in order to hook them up to a mechanical ventilator is lifesaving at any particular point in their illness. Neither has there been such a trial in chimps, dogs, sheep or rats. Yet it is a firmly entrenched belief that intubation and ventilation are necessary once a patient requires a high level of supplemental oxygen. Or it was.

Dr Strauss then went on to describe how an ‘underground’ network of doctors is questioning the practise of ventilation and intubation in certain cases and how some have paid the price for speaking out.

I would strongly recommend that you click on the Spectator piece as it makes for very interesting reading.