Sadism & GPs shouldn’t mix
Harrop was worse than I knew. Graham Linehan and ripx4nutmeg share some revolting details of what he and Stephanie Hayden did to Caroline Farrow:
Not your average caring GP.
Caroline’s husband is a Catholic priest at two parishes and in 2019 Harrop asked Stephanie Hayden for a game of golf, using a picture of one of her husband’s churches. Hayden famously has a conviction for attacking a man with a golf club.
Taunts and “jokes” that went on and on, and more. Targeted sadistic relentless harassment of a woman he disagrees with over trans dogma. One month really doesn’t seem like enough after reading all that. (The worst harassment shown here was by someone else, but Harrop’s was only relatively less foul. The man’s a sadist.)
Ok Dr Harrop – write this 500 times on the blackboard:
primum non nocere
primum non nocere
primum non nocere
primum non nocere
……
I saw this earlier today, and I didn’t think I could be shocked any more by his antics, but I was very wrong. Holy cow.
Behaviour like this is a consequence of progressives taking up the Paradox of Tolerance as an instruction manual, rather than as a cautionary tale of the perils of epistemic hubris. For once I will spare the essay in the comments here, as I have a mind to write a few thousand words on this subject at me own, but the thesis in brief is as follows:
Karl Popper once pointed out that a society which tolerates every view will tolerate those views which do not themselves tolerate other views, and if the tolerant whole allows the intolerant part to proliferate, eventually the intolerant faction will take over and the society will be fundamentally changed. In order for a society to remain tolerant, there must be some class of views which it does not tolerate. Hence the paradox.
This, of course, offers a two-step plan for a sufficiently-organised minority to take over a tolerant society, or at least make deep inroads into it; namely, nurture an issue which can be framed as “inclusive” (modern-speak for “tolerant”), and claim that anyone who disagrees with you about any aspect of this issue is being “exclusionary” (modern-speak for “intolerant”), et voila, you have a recipe for justifying any amount of assholery to anyone who does not bow to the will of your faction. It really is a remarkable trick.
First, Durchwanderer, this sentence is a thing of beauty:
And I think you’re right, I’ve been thinking the same thing.
Second, the behaviour Ophelia describes is shockingly awful, but still not the worst. I suspect she held back because some of the worst behaviour can’t be linked directly to Harrop, even though he’s clearly as guilty as a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo. A site was set up specifically to harass Farrow and to extort significant donations to Stonewall from her. Her husband and children were threatened and much more.
It’s insanely horrible. This is why I still think a one month suspension is nowhere near sufficient, even though I accept that it has significant professional cost if he chooses to remain in the doctoring business. And even though I accept that much of this stuff is not within the GMC’s remit.
On a side note, someone told me today that he is still able to prescribe. A certain ex-doctor Webberly isn’t, but is still a source of many new ‘patients’. I hope the same thought doesn’t occur to either of them.
A thing that bothers me personally is this: I knew about most of this stuff and was horrified by it at the time. But when the tribunal came around, my brain had dialled down the horror a bit. It was only when I started to think about some of these individual behaviours that I remembered just what a nasty piece of work Harrop is. Stupid brain (yes, I know all brains do this and why.)
There’s no way Harrop is capable of learning and I shudder to think of him back in practice.