It’s good to see that Jim Watson and I share at least some common ground on vaccination (Anti vaxxers, letters, September 30); and I’m not sure that a polarised tit-for-tat on your letters page casts any more light than heat on these questions. I could engage with Jim’s scientific illiteracy at length, for example, and his misunderstanding of scientific research procedures and associated truth claims.

But what concerns me even more is the intimidation to which critics of vaccination are being subjected by establishment apologists for mass vaccination. I have it on very reliable authority that some complementary health practitioners have been instructed not to say anything in public or in print about vaccinations, or else they risk being struck off their professional register.

This is an absolutely appalling state of affairs – when in a supposedly free society, practitioners have to stay silent about real-world evidence that contradicts the official narrative on vaccine safety because if they don’t, the ‘Thought Police’ of establishment science will effectively destroy their careers. This is exactly what philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend warned us about over 40 years ago in his book Science in a Free Society – i.e. the incipient authoritarian tendencies of mainstream science.

We would all do well to revisit that great book to understand more deeply just what is unfolding today under the cover of mainstream patriarchal science, with its ruthless determination to silence any voices that dare to dissent from its narrowly mechanistic and domination-obsessed worldview.

Yours etc.

Dr Richard House

Stroud