![\"Leonard](\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Leonard_Lawrence.jpg\")
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Misdiagnosed and drugged, the true story of Leonard Lawrence<\/p>\n
Story by CCHR United Kingdom<\/p>\n
Leonard Lawrence was a fully fit and experienced commercial\/airline pilot. He had been working for British Aerospace since 1989 when he experienced and recorded his first \u2019fume event\u2019 \u2013 the presence in a plane\u2019s onboard air system of toxins. In the most serious cases, these toxins contain organophosphates identical to those responsible for deaths and brain damage among agricultural workers. Research was conducted on behalf of the United States Air Force and early warnings were given in 1955 of the neurological dangers of aircraft cabin bleed air.<\/p>\n
On the 29th of November 1991, just as his aircraft reached take-off speed, the flight deck filled with hot acrid fumes that were so dense it was impossible to see the instruments and controls and impossible to breathe.<\/p>\n
Both Len and his captain were blinded by the fumes as, their eyes and skin burning, their aircraft began to ascend at over 160 mph. Only willpower and long experience enabled the captain to feel his way among the array of instruments for the \u2019dump valve\u2019 control, which would evacuate the contaminated air from the aircraft engines.<\/p>\n
The incident was over in about fifteen seconds, and both pilots soon regained their eyesight, enabling them to commence emergency mayday procedures with Air Traffic Control and safely achieve an emergency forced landing.<\/p>\n
This was by no means an isolated experience, as evidenced by the fact that British Aerospace and others later entered into a secret settlement agreement regarding aircraft fumes. In the course of an Australian senate inquiry in 1999, a spokesman for British Aerospace admitted: \u2019There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that there is a general health issue here. The number of people who have symptoms indicates that there is a general issue. With the weight of human evidence and suffering, which is quite clear, there must be something there.\u2019<\/p>\n
Len himself experienced a series of these events, the last in 2004, when he was co-pilot to a recently-retired Civil Aviation Authority flight operation inspector.<\/p>\n
Len recalls that he and the captain were aware of an oily smell. What followed was and remains a blank. The plane had descended to five hundred feet above Amsterdam \u2013 not aligned to any runway \u2013 before they pull out of the descent and return to the correct flight path.<\/p>\n
Both men were still suffering from mental confusion, and this time it didn\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n
The next day they were flying together again when they received an instruction from Swiss Air Traffic Control to re-route their London bound flight. \u2019Both the captain and Len were unable to process the information being given,\u2019 says Len. \u2019That was my last ever flight before I resigned. I could not, and indeed still cannot, think clearly enough to fly.\u2019<\/p>\n
Having helped to avert a number of potential disasters caused by the ongoing mechanical fault and the airlines\u2019 failure to fit air quality sensors to their aircraft, Len selflessly retired when he felt he was no longer safe to fly. It might be thought that his employers owed him some respect and appropriate treatment for the damage he had sustained in their employ.<\/p>\n
Instead, Len was sent to a psychiatrist, who ignored both the symptoms and the chain of causation, declaring Len to be \u2019mentally ill\u2019 and in need of pharmaceutical drugs.<\/p>\n
There was no mystery about the real causes of Len\u2019s problems. As the Australian Senate enquiry had been told five years previously, \u2019The source of the odours has been identified as primarily Mobil Jet Oil II leaking past oil seals in the engines and or APU unit (Auxiliary Power Unit) into the air conditioning system.\u2019<\/p>\n
In the case of organophosphate poisoning, the psychiatrist\u2019s action was not merely one of standard incompetence and drug pushing. It is recognised that pharmaceutical drugs are inclined to react with the existing toxins to cause cell damage and develop even more poisonous compounds, so are the last thing that should be prescribed.<\/p>\n
As a \u2019mental case\u2019, Len was held by the Official Solicitor to the Senior Courts and medicated with psychiatric medication until he lost mental capacity. Multiple Court of Protection, Medical Certicare\u2019s, were issued to protect Len, but these multiple Court of Protection, Medical Certificates were never disclosed to the Court of Protection by the Official Solicitor and others.<\/p>\n
Len was held for more than a year, during which time, to add insult to injury, his assets, savings and home were disposed of illegally by barristers and solicitors without the knowledge of the Court of Protection.<\/p>\n
Having lost his home and his marriage the British Airline Pilots\u2019 Association came to his rescue, by-passing the Official Solicitor and referred Len to the Civil Aviation Authority\u2019s psychiatric advisor, Professor Gordon Turnbull FRCP, FRCPsych, RAF (Rtd) who immediately took Len off the drugs and arranged for him to receive long overdue specialist treatment for organophosphate poisoning.<\/p>\n
Len Lawrence is clearly a survivor. He has lived through industrial poisonings, multiple losses, corporate and official obstruction and efforts by psychiatrists to suppress and silence him. Not only is he still with us, but he continues to fight for the exposure of cover ups and crooked deals that affect us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Misdiagnosed and drugged, the true story of Leonard Lawrence Story by CCHR United Kingdom Leonard Lawrence was a fully fit and experienced commercial\/airline pilot. He had been working for British Aerospace since 1989 when he experienced and recorded his first \u2019fume event\u2019 \u2013 the presence in a plane\u2019s onboard air system of toxins. In the … <\/p>\n