Hilarious! British General Medical Council Found To Have Invested Millions In Junk Food Companies Like McDonalds, Pepsico, Coca-Cola And Starbucks Etc.
Medical News - UK's GMC Mar 16, 2023 1 year, 9 months, 6 days, 14 hours, 35 minutes ago
A new revelation by the
British Medical Journal has found that UK’s General Medical Council (GMC) had been investing millions of pounds into various junk food companies while its chief executive gets paid over a quarter million pounds a year and another six staff on the council gets paid over 200,000 pounds a year.
https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p580
https://www.gmc-uk.org/about/who-we-are/our-chief-executive-and-senior-management-team
The GMC supposedly regulates doctors in the United Kingdom, sets ‘standards’, hold a register and ensure quality education and also investigate complaints.
The GMC charges UK doctors £161 as a one-off registration fee and then £420 in ongoing annual fees.
Physicians and healthcare professionals criticized the General Medical Council (GMC) after the BMJ revealed that the GMC had investments in junk food food firms, even pharmaceutical companies, private medical insurers and private healthcare providers.
A filed Freedom of Information request revealed that the GMC has investments totaling nearly 870,000 pounds in the food or soft drink companies Nestlé, McDonald's, Starbucks, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, and Unilever, which owns ice cream brands Magnum, Wall's, and Ben & Jerry's.
It was also found that the GMC had invested more than £1.2m in pharmaceutical companies, including Novo Nordisk, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Roche.
The GMC had also invested another £470,000 in private insurance or healthcare providers such as Humana Health and United Health Group, and more than £1.3m in a number of medical device manufacturers including Edwards LifeSciences, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Intuitive Medical, the makers of the da Vinci robotic surgical system.
It was revealed that GMC invests its money through Churches, Charities and Local Authorities Investment Management (CCLA) and it does have a say in what CCLA invests in and access to all decisions through CCLA's reporting.
The GMC gave CCLA £50m to invest in 2019, which as of January 2023 is worth £81.3m made up of investments in companies, funds, private equity firms, property, cash and money market securities.
Most doctors in the UK’s NHS system are overworked and underpaid and often in debts due to education loans etc.
In fact, doctors in the UK are current on a strike over low salaries and working conditions.
https://www.dw.com/en/uk-strike-expands-from-doctors-to-include-other-workers/a-65000678
A professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Dr Martin McKee told media, "Many doctors whose work involves de
aling with the harms caused by junk food marketing would, if they knew, despair at how their money is being invested."
Dr Sam Everington, a Tower Hamlets GP and chair of Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group added, "The GMC is funded by doctors in the UK. They would be horrified to know that their money is being invested in fast food companies that are the cause of so much disease and reduced quality and quantity of life and significantly more pressure on the NHS and workload of doctors. This is no different to investing in tobacco companies."
Dr Margaret McCartney, a GP in Glasgow added, "Practicing UK doctors have no choice but to pay substantial annual fees to the GMC. The organization must show that it is using its funds wisely and I'm not convinced it is. It is unclear to me why the GMC holds so much money and why it has chosen to invest as it has. When the chief executive is paid over a quarter of a million per year, and a further six staff on more than £200,000, doctors should know, with complete transparency, where their fees are being invested and why."
There are now calls from doctors across the United Kingdom for the chief executive of the GMC and all its six-key staff to resign.
The new revelations by the BMJ about the GMC also cast new doubts about the credibility of the GMC and even about the quality and standards of British physicians!
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