“The Nuclear Health Service” by George E. Scott is published
Weapon of Mass Compassion 1948 – 1968
About the Book:
Cold War Britain did not just involve spies and military confrontation. Dr George Scott tantalisingly unwraps another dimension which enveloped the National Health Service and affected ordinary lives in some extraordinary ways. From its birth in 1948, successive governments secretly used the organisation to bolster national morale in the event of a nuclear confrontation. This involved a unique belief system based on a healthcare promise that neither the chronic and mentally ill, nor the millions of casualties resulting from a nuclear war, would ever be abandoned. With the propaganda message exploiting public trust in the NHS, the study reveals how doctors, surgeons, nurses and midwives were manipulated to front a psychological weapon that lasted for twenty years, but existed for no other purpose than to protect the British bomb.
Excerpt from the Book:
“The legacy of the Cold War remains in certain sectors of the NHS, such as the improvements in the blood transfusion organisation. Above all, it continues to be a political weapon that weaves its psychological power through the medium of universal compassion. A relentless battle rages to deliver this in line with its founding charter, and arguments abound as to whether the NHS is being broken up or improved. Successive governments and opposition parties embrace it to secure the moral high ground by fighting over which side can be trusted as its political custodian. Today, advances in medical practice and life expectancy have moved our own expectations to different levels that include more complex and expensive healthcare procedures. But a new vocabulary that includes privatisation, cover-ups, patient dignity, targets, whistleblowing, bullying, response times and special measures has seemingly provided an ever-increasing pathway of stepping stones away from the core value of universal care originally laid down. For all those machinations, however, the humanitarian credentials of the National Health Service do rise above that cacophony through television fly on the wall documentaries allowing us to witness the work of midwives or surgeons that projects the picture of compassion outside the amorphous bureaucracy of the system. Wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan have had their bodies put together in extraordinary ways and events such as the British Paralympics provided the ultimate pinnacle of that achievement. During the Cold War, it was the fear of government about the fear of the people over deterrence that directed sentiments into ways that were unique to that era. Taking a leaf out of that history, perhaps we should be aware of our vulnerability to the emotional politics of healthcare and their value as a distractive device that shapes our thinking both in peace and for war.”
The Nuclear Health Service by George E. Scott is available in hardback from Amazon at:
www.amazon.co.uk/Nuclear-Health-Service-George-Scott/dp/1785073478
The paperback version is also available to purchase from Amazon at:
www.amazon.co.uk/Nuclear-Health-Service-George-Scott/dp/178507346X
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