We continue our year ending tradition of publishing our top ten most read articles of the year. At number two is Sally Beck’s first report on the inquest into the death of Derek Dimmock, at which the scandal of the mass use of midazolam on patients transferred from hospitals to care homes at the start of covid has come under the spotlight. This article was first published on March 17, 2025.
MIDAZOLAM goes on trial today with a family suspecting their 86-year-old father was unlawfully killed by the controversial end-of-life drug. They are just one of many families who believe NHS covid policy was used to euthanise patients, not treat them. The case will be heard by a senior coroner, after five pre-inquest review hearings (PIRH) determined whether it merited a full hearing.
Derek ‘Del’ Dimmock, from Putney, south-west London, was given enough midazolam to ‘kill an elephant’, a source close to the family said. The much-loved grandfather, who also had dementia, was admitted to hospital with gout, which is easy to manage if caught early. His family say that instead of treatment, he was euthanised.
Gout is a painful type of arthritis which usually responds to anti-inflammatory drugs such as steroids. Instead, it is alleged that Royal Trinity Hospice, south London, prescribed Mr Dimmock Nice Guideline (NG)163, an end-of-life pathway. It included midazolam, a benzodiazepine generally used to reduce anxiety which can also depress breathing. Midazolam is also in the US to execute prisoners, combined with the opioid morphine.
Professor Patrick Pullicino, a retired neurologist who raised the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) alarm, said: ‘Midazolam depresses respiration and it hastens death. It changes end-of-life care into euthanasia.’ LCP terminally ill patients were denied food and water and administered opioids instead. Families complained they were not informed of the protocol, and that patients did not give informed consent.
If senior coroner Dr Julian Morris rules ‘unlawful killing’, this could support whistleblowers who say the UK used covid deaths as a cover for mass killing of the elderly, disabled and infirm whose care had become a drain on NHS budgets.
Witnesses called to give evidence include four doctors and seven nurses who administered the drugs. One important medical witness left the country last month, it is believed.
The five-day inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court has wider implications that the British government endorsed euthanasia – NG163 end-of-life pathway was implemented in April 2020, during the first few months of the covid pandemic. (In March 2021, NG163 was renamed NG191.)
Derek Dimmock’s son Paul attended a meeting at the House of Commons in June 2023, hosted by former Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen, to discuss midazolam misuse in NHS hospitals and in care homes.
During the pandemic, health secretary Matt Hancock said on record that he had increased orders of midazolam, and that he backed assisted dying. The Conservative minister had been against the practice but changed tack during covid after supporting a colleague who was terminally ill.
Official figures from April 2020 show that the number of prescriptions for midazolam more than doubled compared with previous months. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data clearly show a correlation between midazolam and 55,000 excess deaths, although authorities will argue that it was administered to patients dying with covid.
The above graph is an independent analysis of raw data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), and NHS prescriptions for England and Wales.
Chart from OpenPrescribing, a website that analyses England’s prescriptions made by GPs.
Fears were raised that midazolam was also unnecessarily administered to elderly care-home residents to hasten their deaths. Whistleblowers claimed the sedatives were misused and given to dementia patients to subdue them, but those claims were disputed by the Association for Palliative Medicine.
Amanda Hunter, founder of Care Unlock, an organisation set up to end inhumane covid care home restrictions, said: ‘Had I not got my mum off the “palliative pathway” that Hinchingbrooke Hospital decided was in her “best interests” in September 2021, she too would have been a victim. I proved she wasn’t dying and fought in the Court of Protection to bring her home.
‘I should have been forewarned about what the NHS were capable of when they gave up on my mum in 2019. I nursed her back to life in her care home. In 2021, it happened again. She was neglected and abandoned by the NHS when she most needed care. Unforgivable.’
Coroners have a crucial role investigating deaths, especially where there is suspicion of corporate wrongdoing – the corporation in this case being all those involved in our health service. The coroner will determine the cause and circumstances of Derek Dimmock’s death. If his findings are negligence, misconduct, or unlawful killing, it could lead to legal actions against individual doctors or the originators of the NG163 protocol.
Sally Beck recently reported on the latest hearing in the Derek Dimmock case. You can read it here.
