Opioid Drugs. At least 456 patients have been killed by them after 'inappropriate' prescribing

There is an Opioid drug scandal currently hitting the headlines in the USA. Not even the mainstream media can ignore the number of people who have died, are dying, or have become dependent on them. The scandal, many have said, is bound to come to Britain, sooner or later, as these dangerous pharmaceutical drugs are used with equal lack of care here as there.

What was not expected was that the scandal in Britain was neither sooner or later, it is with us, now, and it has been with us for over 20 years!

At least 456 patients died after being prescribed opioids "without justification" at a Gosport hospital in what a review has described as a "dangerous" and "institutionalised regime" of prescribing. The enquiry, conducted by former Bishop of Liverpool James Jones, also found that an additional 200 patients with "missing medical records" may have also died due to "overprescribed opioids".

This conventional medical disaster dates back over 20 years, to the 1990's, when these pharmaceutical drugs were being routinely overprescribed. As usual, no one has been held to account for this human carnage. One doctor, who was responsible for prescribing the painkillers for over 12 years did face disciplinary action from the GMC, but she was found fit to continue to practise.

It would appear that the patients who have been harmed and killed by conventional medicine, and pharmaceutical drugs, can expect little redress. Relatives of the dead patients have had to toil for over 20 years for the situation to become known. Yet still no-one has been found to be responsible, not even been a doctor-scapegoat has yet been identified.

So be it! The problem is much deeper than a single doctor, much more serious than something that can be dismissed as a 'medical error'.

Even the report suggests a wider responsibility than one doctor, criticising "the exclusive focus on one individual when there were significant systemic problem at the hospital". Bishop Jones is reported as saying:
               "The documents seen by the Panel show that for a 12 year period a clinical assistant, Dr Barton was responsible for the practice of prescribing which prevailed on the wards. Although the consultants were not involved directly in treating patients on the wards, the medical records show that they were aware of how drugs were prescribed and administered but did not intervene to stop the practice."

This is almost certainly true. But this problem is worse, it is wider than just a single hospital. It is the problem of a medical system that relies on dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that routinely causes harm to patients.

The report says that medical staff, doctors and nurses, had "a responsibility to challenge prescribing where it was not in the interests of the patient". The records, however, showed no-one challenged the prescribing at the time, and everyone continued to administer the unnecessary and harmful drugs.

There is a wider problem here too. When should medical staff intervene in this way? All pharmaceutical drugs and vaccine are known to cause harm, often serious harm. This harm is routinely discounted by the conventional medical establishment. Yet whenever this is exposed, as in this case, the blame is placed on a scapegoat, and individual members of staff.

So how much harm can a pharmaceutical drug or vaccine cause before medical staff have a responsibility to blow the whistle? 

               A serious side effect?
               A disease?
               A death?

Conventional medicine promotes treatments that harm patients. Then they routinely deny the harm caused by these treatments. They report no more that 10% of the adverse drug reactions, and possible no more than 1%. They do not tell patients about these side effects when prescribing them, and when they do they discount their seriousness. Then, when a major problem emerges, there is a search for a scapegoat, either an individual, or an institution.

It is the conventional medical establishment, the entire system of medicine in which we invest, that should be on trial here, not just individual medical staff, or individual institutions.

In 2003 a report written by Prof Richard Baker (who was involved with the Harold Shipman case) found evidence of the routine use of opiates, and that the drugs had shortened the lives of some patients at the hospital. In this review he concluded that there was a "disregard for human life". Nothing changed.

It is well known that opioid drugs, and many other pharmaceutical drug groups, cause disease and death. Yet this knowledge, year by year, crisis by crises, does little to change conventional medical practice. The drugs continue to be prescribed. Patients are routinely harmed. There is an outcry. The outcry dies down. And nothing happens, nothing changes.

Dr Harold Shipman was convicted in 2000. His use of Opioid drugs, and the death of 100's of his patients, caused consternation at the time. Surely, this would change medical practice? As this crisis in Gosport demonstrates it has done no such thing. It goes on. It is allowed to go on. Whilst the conventional medical establishment is totally dominant, an almost monopolistic presence within the NHS, it will continue to go on. So my prediction is a simple one to make.

Opioid drugs will continue to be prescribed, this year, next year, and for many years to come. Conventional medicine will continue to discount the mayhem it causes, and as usual will (quite literally) get away with murder. It has done so, time and time again.

Cannabis as a Medical Treatment. The case of Billy Caldwell

Charlotte Caldwell is a mum from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Her 12 year old son, Billy, has very severe epilepsy, some days experiencing over 100 seizures. I will return to his condition at the end of the blog.

In a BBC Radio 5 Live interview Ms Caldwell said that conventional medicine had given Billy every imaginable drug, but none of them did anything for Billy's epilepsy. In 2017, she found cannabis oil. According to the Independent newspaper it was issued through a clinical trial in Toronto, Canada. It was prescribed by her family doctor, and cannabis oil reduced both the duration and intensity of Billy's fits, and has been doing so ever since.

A success story perhaps?

Not quite. Nothing is that easy with conventional medicine! For several months cannabis oil was prescribed by the family doctor, but then he was told by the Home Office to stop. Ms Caldwell brought cannabis oil from Canada, but this was confiscated at Heathrow airport earlier this week. She accused the Home Office as having "signed my son's death warrant". Later, the Home Office rejected her plea to legalise cannabis oil for her epileptic son, despite having what she described as a friendly meeting with a Home Office minister.

Apparently Billy was the first person in the UK to be prescribed cannabis oil, but in May (2018) his GP was told he could no longer do so by the Home Office. In doing so, Ms Caldwell felt that her son's death warrant had effectively been signed. It is, perhaps, easy to understand why she feels so strongly about the situation. She said that it was an “outrage” that UK parents should have to flee their own country to access life-saving treatment and urged the public not to confuse this issue up with the legalisation of recreational cannabis.

A Home Office spokeswoman came out with the usual bland and meaningless platitudes. They were "sympathetic to the rare situation that Billy and his family are faced with" but the Home Office stood by its position. It is unlawful to possess Schedule 1 drugs. The oil does not have a UK license. So it is illegal. Billy cannot have it.

So what is to be learnt from this situation. The issue of whether Cannabis should be proscribed, and  whether a proscribed drug that has medicinal benefits can be prescribed, will feature in most discussions on the situation. I will contribute little to this particular discussion, except that it would appear that conventional medicine is happy to prescribe dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to children, regardless of their ineffectiveness, and their harmful side effects.

But Cannabis, which probably has less side effects that the anti-epileptic drugs he took earlier, cannot be prescribed. This certainly protects the pharmaceutical industry (who do not profit from Cannabis production), but it does not protect Billy, and other epileptic children whose epilepsy cannot be control with conventional medical treatment (of which more below).

What will almost certainly not be discussed is that Billy is yet another young child who has an illness for which conventional medicine has no effective treatment, and who parents look outside the UK for an answer. When an answer is found the conventional medical establishment objects, in this case fully supported by the Home Office. It would seem that the law, and professional medical ethics, is applied to such cases, and every time the needs of the patient, his/her health, and his family, is discounted.

This is conventional medical arrogance at it very worst. Charlie Gard, Alfie Dingley and Alfie Evans know all about this arrogance. Doctor's know best. They know about the drugs we can take, and those we cannot take. They know that our children need to be vaccinated, and if parents don''t agree they should be forced. Mandatory medicine is on the horizon. Doctors want us to accept what we are given, regardless of whether their drugs and vaccines are ineffective, or dangerous, or both, to our health.

So conventional medicine has decided. Billy can be given anti-epileptic drugs, despite the fact that they do not work, and despite the fact that they are know to have dangerous side effects. But Cannabis oil is not to be allowed. This also comes with side effect, according to Ms Caldwell. Are they as bad as anti-epileptic drugs? Who knows.

I would advise Ms Caldwell to consult with a homeopath in Northern Ireland, and seek treatment for Billy that is free of side effects, and which can be very effective. 

Yet there is another important question that will certainly never be discussed.

Why does Billy have severe epilepsy in the first place?
Indeed, why do so many young children have severe epilepsy today?

Epilepsy is caused by a large number of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. including Amphetamines, Antidepressants, Antipsychotics, Antibiotics, Painkillers, Asthma drugs, and many more. But when young children are involved it is always important to look at vaccines, and the side effects doctors know they can cause.

               The DPT Vaccine, given to children just a few months old, has spasms, seizure, coma and epilepsy as  'side effects'.

               The MMR Vaccine, given to children after they are over a year old, has febrile convulsions and seizures in their list of 'side effects'.

So I ask my usual question. It is one thing (unfortunately quite a common thing) for the conventional medical establishment to be unable to treat a condition, and even to refuse to offer a treatment they do not wish to use.

But it is quite another for the conventional medical establishment to CAUSE a condition, not to admit it, to have no effective treatment for the condition they created, and then to deny a patient a treatment they have found for themselves, especially when it appears to be working.

This is arrogance bordering on criminality!

BATTEN DISEASE. Why are there so many 'new' and 'rare' diseases? Why are the causes always 'unknown'? Why is treatment for them so expensive?

The parents of Samuel Coles have started a new petition via Change.com. The reason is that he has Batten disease. This is how his mother describes the situation.

               "He’s five years old and obsessed with cars. Two months ago, we were given the devastating news that Samuel had been diagnosed with CLN2 Batten disease. It’s a rare disease that affects children. We’ve been told without treatment in the next few months our baby will lose his ability to walk and to talk as well as to eat. Eventually he’ll lose his vision and will develop childhood dementia before he is six. We’ve been told that Sam’s life expectancy is just six to twelve years old."

This must be a terrible situation for any parent. So I looked up Batten disease to see exactly what it was. What I discovered was not 'rare' or particularly 'new'. It seemed to describe what was happening to a large number of young children in recent decades. This is what the Batten Disease Family Association say.

What are Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses (NCLs)?
Commonly referred to as Batten disease, the Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses (NCLs) denote several different genetic life-limiting neurodegenerative diseases that share similar features. Although the disease was initially recognised in 1903 by Dr Frederik Batten, it wasn’t until 1995 that the first genes causing NCL were identified. Since then over 400 mutations in 13 different genes have been described that cause the various forms of NCL disease.

Wikipedia describes a long list of these diseases. Infantile neuronal ceroid (INCL); Late infantile NCL (LINCL); Juvenile NCL (JNCL), Adult NCL; Finnish variant of late infantile NCL (fLINCL); Variant of the late infantile NCL; Turkish variant of late infantile NCL: CLN7 or MFSD8; Northern epilepsy: CLN8; Late infantile NCL: CLN10 or CTSD and Infantile osteopetrosis. It says of all of them.

               "Batten disease is a fatal disease of the nervous system that typically begins in childhood. Onset of symptoms is usually between 5 and 10 years of age. Often it is autosomal recessive. It is the most common form of a group of disorders called the neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs)."

The problem I have with this is that we are now hearing it too often, different conditions, with complicated, highly technical explanations. It is time that conventional medicine began to ask some important questions.

1. Why are there so many of these 'new' and 'rare' diseases, previously unheard of?
2. Why are they described as 'genetic' when they are 'new' - where have these 'faulty genes' suddenly appeared from, and why have they suddenly become 'faulty'?
3. Why are all the diseases primarily concerned with the nervous system, and the brain in particular?
4. Why do they all appear to strike down previously fit and healthy children?
5. Why is the cause of these diseases usually described as 'unknown'?
6. Why, when talking about the cause of the disease, do doctors present a description of what is happening, and not a explanation for WHY it is happening, that is, why is it that a normal child does not continue developing normally?

Samuel' parents continue

              "There is a hope for us. A treatment called Cerliponase Alfa has been developed that’s been shown to slow down the progression of this cruel disease. Unfortunately, NICE is currently recommending that the drug is not funded by the NHS. That’s why my partner and I are backing this petition calling on NICE and NHS England to find a way to make this drug available to Samuel and other children like him. Will you join me?"

So another question is about the treatment that is usually available for these 'new' and 'rare' condition, which offer so much hope to distressed parents. Why are they usually unavailable? Why are they invariably so expensive?

Let me try to assist in answering some of these questions!

• What happens to most normal, healthy, fit babies? They are routinely given the DPT vaccination.
• What happens to most normal, healthy, fit children? They are routinely given the MMR vaccination.

These vaccinations are injected into the bloodstream, and they invariably contain poisons, usually heavy metals like mercury (thimerosol) and aluminium. Is this too much for some babies? Are some children unable to cope with these poisons?

What are the affects of mercury and aluminium poisoning? The MedicineNet. com website says this about mercury poisoning.

              "For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development."

The website talks about the sources of mercury, from rocks, from fish, from the air - but never from mercury that is injected directly into our bloodstream! A curious omission? A careless omission? Please read the rest of the article, it explains some of the effects of mercury poisoning "mercury exposure at high levels can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, and immune system of people of all ages" and in particular note the rather close likeness to some of Samuel's symptoms.

What are the effects of aluminium poisoning? Allow homeopathy to help in doing so. Homeopathy works by treating 'like' with 'like', that is, a substance that is know to cause a symptom can cure that symptom. These are a few of symptoms that the remedy alumina (made from aluminium) treats.

• Vagueness
• Seems closed, self protective
• Slowness, slow comprehension, dullness
• Answers slowly and vague. Seems not involved, speaks monotonously
• Restricted imagination, irresolution, incomprehension
• Sensation of being hurried, cannot stand being hurried
• Cannot do two things at the same time
• Aversion to conversation, cannot comprehend what everybody is talking about
• Confusion of identity. "Who am I?"
• Everything seems unreal
• Anxiety in the morning on waking

I am not familiar with Batten disease, but these symptoms appear to be similar (or like) those described in Samuel's parents petition. They certainly seem similar to Autism - a relatively 'new' disease, but certainly no longer a 'rare' disease - a disease that strikes at children who, for the first few months of their lives, were normal, healthy and fit. So let's try to answer those questions again. 

• Why are there so many of these 'new' and 'rare' diseases, previously unheard of? Our children today are routinely vaccinated, and they now receive more vaccinations than ever before, all of which contain one of these poisons.
• Why are they described as 'genetic' when they are 'new' - where have these 'faulty genes' suddenly appeared from, and why have they suddenly become 'faulty'? Conventional medicine appears to like the 'gene' explanation, 'genetics' has become the most favoured explanation of the cause of a variety of diseases.
• Why are all the diseases primarily concerned with the nervous system, and the brain in particular? The diseases are the direct result of injecting poison into the bloodstream of young babies and children.
• Why do they all appear to strike down previously fit and healthy children? Children are not vaccinated until they are several months old. Their development is normal up to the point  they have one too many vaccinations, when they can no longer cope with the poison in their bloodstream.
• Why is the cause of these diseases usually described as 'unknown'? Conventional medicine is either unable, unwilling, or just too embarrassed to admit that they are causing these 'new' and 'rare' diseases.
• Why, when talking about the cause of the disease, do doctors present a description of what is happening, and not a explanation for WHY it is happening, that is, why is it that a normal child does not continue developing normally? These are descriptions of the result of poisoning, with mercury, aluminium, or some other poisons, routinely used as an ingredient of vaccines. It is the vaccine poisons that start the abnormal processes that conventional medicine use to describe the disease.

The availability of treatment is typical of the conventional medical establishment, and its reliance on dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. First, they vaccinate, and profit from doing so. Second, the vaccination causes illness, and more treatments are presented to treat these iatrogenic illnesses - and they profit from these treatments too.

Conventional medicine is a merry-go-round,. Following each new treatment one illness leads to another, and each subsequent treatment makes us that much sicker. Soon we have multiple illnesses. But there is a treatment for everything, although a cure for very little.

I have every every sympathy for Samuel and his parents. They face a dreadful situation. Perhaps they should seek homeopathic assistance, it might offer more effective, and certainly safer treatment.

But more than anything I despair of the hold the conventional medicine has on most people, the confidence and trust placed in doctors, on conventional medical treatment, on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. We believe their propaganda. Medical science is winning the war against disease. Vaccines are entirely safe. Pharmaceutical drugs have side effects, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Ploughing more money into the NHS, asking for more of the same medicine, invites further increases in the already epidemic levels of chronic disease, and more 'new' and 'rare' diseases, the causes of which will remain 'unknown', and the treatment of which will be even more expensive, although no more effective.

'The doctor who gave up drugs', and are 'too many pills are making us sick'?

The wall of silence about the harm that is being caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines is gradually being undermined. The BBC has recently broadcast two hour-long programmes entitled 'The Doctor who gave up Drugs' in which Dr Chris van Tulleken explains why there are better alternatives for children than to taking drugs. This was his second series, the first being broadcast in 2016, both series a rather meek and mild attempt to point out the limited effectiveness of the drugs, and (to a more limited extent) the harm they can cause, and evaluating alternative treatments that are both safer and more effective.

Then there is a new book, James Le Fanu, a doctor and journalist, entitled "Too Many Pills: how too much medicine is endangering our health and what we can do about it", which has been described as an 'eye-opening account of the over-medicalisation of our lives'.

Yet is is quite obvious that the drug-fest continues, regardless. The number of prescriptions issued has increased by 300% over the last fifteen years. The use of painkillers have increased by 25% over the last 5 years, even though they have limited effectiveness, and do not deal with the cause of the pain. Antidepressant drugs, increasingly prescribed for young people, has increased by 50% over the last 7 years, despite van Tulleken pointing out that there is limited evidence of their effectiveness. The over-use of antibiotics will soon mean that they become completely ineffective, and there are concerns about whether conventional medicine will be able to survive without them.

So millions of patients are now taking a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs for a great variety of illnesses (and non-illnesses like blood pressure, cholesterol, et al). Le Fanu examines how the medicalisation of health now poses a major threat to our health and wellbeing. What he says, according to reviews, is in keeping with what this blog has been saying for the last decade, that the drug fest of the last 70 years is responsible for generating epidemics of drug induced chronic disease. It is, in other words, making us sick.

Yet both of these doctors are out-of-kilter with the wider medical establishment. Pharmaceutical drugs may be harmful, and this may be increasingly recognised, but most patients still find themselves pressured into taking drugs, often when they do not need them, and suffering from their adverse effects, and needing more drugs to deal with them. It is not unusual for patients now to be on 6, 8, 10, 12 and more drugs, and taking these drugs for many years without any noticeable improvement in any of their drug-induced conditions.

Watching the van Tulleken programmes it is clear that this doctor is aware of the problem of drug side effects, but not that these 'side effects' are really serious illnesses and diseases. For instance, he states that too many families are using too much Calpol (a liquid paracetamol drug for children). Yet van Tulleken then admits that he had to give his new baby some Calpol - on the evening that he had received his first vaccination. He said that he had never heard his baby cry like he did that evening, and he had a very high temperature, so he was forced to use it.

As a doctor, either he did not know, or perhaps the BBC did not allow him to say, that these two symptoms are well known, and officially recognised 'side effects' of the DPT vaccination.

I have not read the Le Fanu book, yet, but I do wonder just how much more insightful he will be. He is a doctor, so a member of the conventional medical establishment. He writes for mainstream media, the Telegraph, so he will probably not be allowed to be too critical. 

• Too many drugs? Yes, saying this is just about permissible. 
• Drugs are causing serious harm to patients? Probably not.

But Le Fanu does give us this story. In 2007, an Israeli doctor discontinued 320 drugs that were being prescribed for 100 frail nursing-home residents. In the following year, the number of deaths halved and emergency hospital admissions fell by two thirds. The doctor concluded that polypharmacy, the use of multiple drugs, was a disease “with potentially more complications than the illnesses these different drugs are prescribed for”.

I had done something similar in the late 1980's within a residential unit that I was managing at the time. Reducing the drugs round by 50% had no appreciable on the health of the residents, so the inevitable question was - why are they taking these drugs?

The dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are well known, even within the conventional medical establishment. Yet patients continue to be over-medicated, and increasingly so.

• Why have these two doctors said something controversial when what they both say is really uncontroversial?
• Why don't the multitude of doctors who are giving out harmful drugs to their patients know what is well known?

Answers on a postcard please! Or is it just that have doctors have allowed themselves to become little more than drug salesmen and women?

WARNING. 80% of older hospital patients discharged with the wrong drugs

The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (reference 2018; doi: 10.1111/bcp.13607; and doi: 10.1111/bcp.13613) has published a study by the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland that has found that around 4 out of 5 older patients are being discharged from hospital with 'inappropriate' medication, such as the wrong drug. Not unsurprisingly they say that it is causing a life-changing reactions, and even death.

This has been reported in the magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You", which should become a must-read magazine for anyone who wishes to maintain good health. They say that these prescribing errors are often responsible for the death of an elderly patient, and for those who are not killed suffer serious reactions requiring at least a further three hospital admissions before they recover.

• Around half of older patients die after they were given a wrong drug or weren't given the drug they needed, say researchers at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland.
• They analysed the records of 259 patients—with an average age of 77—who had been discharged from hospital. They were given a total of 2,411 medications, which means many had nine or more prescriptions, and 59% were given 'inappropriate medications', such as a wrong drug, and nearly 70 per cent weren't given the drug they were supposed to have.
• Over the following 40 months, around half had died, and the rest had been readmitted to hospital at least twice.

WDDTY states that this shocking problem is far worse than any other research had suggested, and refers to another study in which researchers found that 1 in 3 older people suffered a serious reaction to a drug after being discharged from hospital.

The new study involved 1,280 people, and the researchers said that the cost to the UK's NHS is £396m a year, with 90% of that figure being related to hospital readmissions.

POSTSCRIPT JUNE 2018

More research is now reporting a similar pattern, with GP's being urged to be 'vigilant' as a new study from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School revealed that between September 2013 and November 2015, one in six older adults "suffers preventable medication-related harm following hospital discharge". It found that within 8 weeks of discharge, 75% of patients who experienced drug-related harm needed more healthcare. The researchers estimated that such harm costs the NHS £396m every year, with more than 90% of this attributed to hospital readmission. This was reported in the doctor's e-magazine Pulse, and published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.

The discussion in the Pulse article focused on improving the follow-up and discharge procedures from hospital. The mainstream British media has been silent. No-where has there been discussion that the NHS is operating a dangerous form of medicine which almost inevitably harms patients. The Pulse article does say that the research finding follows a think tank report found that emergency re-admissions within 30 days of leaving hospital had risen by a fifth in the last seven years. Nowhere was there any recognition that conventional medicine, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs, was causing these costs, and that these were contributing to the NHS's funding crisis.

NO WONDER THE NHS IS IN CONTINUAL CRISIS!

THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF PATIENTS. Is it even an important issue for conventional medicine?

The German car company, BMW, has recalled 312,000 cars because of safety concerns. The cars may be affected by an electrical fault which can cause the engine to cut out completely whilst on the road. Alex Neill, of the magazine Which? has said the recall raised “serious questions about the adequacy of the car recall system in this country” as the issue had been raised a year earlier but only 36,000 were recalled.

               “Drivers will be asking why it took so long for BMW to fully recall these potentially dangerous cars in the UK, several years later than recalls around the same fault in a number of other countries.”

It is good to know that in this sphere, as in most other spheres of life, our concern about health and safety is considered to be sufficiently important to ensure that if there is any suspicion of danger that action is required to be taken.

Yet there is one area of our life, health care and treatment, where 'health and safety' concerns are NOT considered to be so important.

Antibiotic Drugs. These drugs, so long considered a miracle drug, and used routinely with millions of patients, are now implicated in causing all kinds of conditions emanating from the gut, including obesity, diarrhoea, iIrritable bowl disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, non-hodgkin's lymphoma, liver damage, diabetes, asthma, eczema, heart disease, breast cancer, mental disorders, and much else.

Statin Drugs. These frequently prescribed drugs have been implicated in causing death, liver dysfunction, kidney failure, diabetes, cataracts, muscle weakness and dementia. Yet they have never been withdrawn or banned, and they are prescribed to, and taken by millions of patients every day.

Painkillers. These commonplace drugs are known to cause the hospitalisation of millions every year, they can cause hearing loss, cardiovascular problems and heart failure, gastrointestinal disease, miscarriage, allergic reactions, and much more. Even doctors are reluctant to prescribe them now, in all the many form painkilling drugs now take, but they continue to be sold openly and cheaply 'over-the-counter' in any pharmacy and supermarket.

Benzodiazepine Drugs. The long-term dangers of these drugs has been known for decades but they still continue to be prescribed by doctors. The side effects include sleep disturbances, rebound insomnia, elevated anxiety, panic attacks, vision problems, tremors, seizures, psychosis and hallucination - yet nothing has ever done about them.

What all these pharmaceutical drugs have in common is that, despite their known dangers to patients, nothing is ever done to protect us from them. There is plentiful evidence of harm, but no action ever follows. The same can be said of antidepressant drugs, beta blocker drugs, steroids, and virtually any other kind of pharmaceutical drug and vaccine that is still sold to the public.

So whilst BMW might be facing justifiable criticism, the pharmaceutical drugs industry does not. Whilst motorists might feel they are being protected by health and safety laws and procedures, patients cannot feel they are being protected by medical science, or the drug regulation agencies. When it concerns our health, apparently, our health and safety does not appear to be important!

The precautionary principle is just not applied to conventional medicine, and to pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines in particular. Many pharmaceuticals are eventually withdrawn or banned but not until they have been harming patients, often for many decades.

• When there are suspicions that a drug is causing harm we are told that there is no proof (usually because no-one has ever bothered to investigate and find the necessary proof).
• When studies begin to prove that a drug is causing harm the research is either ignored, or it is said that the link is not 'causal', or that anyway "the benefits outweigh the advantages".
• Only when there is irrefutable proof of a link between a drug and patient harm are prescribing restrictions imposed on doctors.
• Only when this irrefutable proof continues, when patients become reluctant to take the drug, and so it becomes less profitable for the drug companies, is the drug withdrawn or banned.

So let's apply this to BMW drivers. Your car might be dangerous to drive, but there is no 'definite proof' that there is a fault with the car. When several other BMW drivers have the same fault the risk is considered slight, or restricted just to a handful of cars, and in any case the benefits of driving a BMW outweighs the disadvantages. When a BMW catches fire, and people are killed (one man has apparently died in the USA) there may be some minor restrictions imposed, for instance on when, where and how the car is driven, but it is still considered acceptable the BMW drivers take the known risks involved. Only when there are LOTS of cars affected, only when LOTS of BMW drivers complain, only when LOTS MORE people are harmed and killed, only when there is a danger that BMW drivers might refuse to buy another BMW car, is any action taken.

This is not acceptable, is it? So why should it be acceptable for patients taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines?

Keeping Healthy Naturally with Safe and Effective Medicine. My 'eureka' moment

Readers of this blog often ask me how I became interested in safe medicine, and why I have dismissed conventional medicine as too dangerous to use. Read about my 'Eureka' moment!

When I developed painful gastric ulcers, now over 40 years ago, I went to my GP. It was the normal, the routine thing to do. We all do it, still. It is what is expected of us. I was in pain, and the first drug I was given did not work at all, beyond some momentary relief. Then I saw a young doctor who gave me a new 'miracle' pharmaceutical drug which he said offered the prospect of a 'wonder' cure. Indeed, the drug did work. In fact it worked 3 times! Each time the ulcers calmed down for a few weeks, but the pain returned again within just a few weeks.

I was offered another course, indeed, it was suggested that I might have to take them on a long-term (life-time) basis. Fortunately, it was then that I discovered that this new 'miracle' drug caused serious 'adverse reactions' - to the heart. So for the first time I began to question what I was doing. All I knew, at the time, was that I did not want to swop a bad stomach for a bad heart!

My choice seemed to be between taking this 'wonder' drug, and risking its side effects, or putting up with pain which, at times, was quite unbearable. My doctor, and the NHS, gave me no advice about any other medical therapies. There was, they said (as they always say), no alternative!

So when I was in a lot of pain someone suggested that I consulted a local homeopath I told her that I did not believe in such things! I was that ignorant! But the pain just got worse, and as I was unwilling to take the drug I eventually went to see him. He questioned me for about an hour, then gave me a remedy. I took it, within a few days I felt better. Within 3 months I was pain-free. And I have remained pain free now for over 30 years, with no need to take a remedy! My stomach was cured, and remains so. And more importantly my heart is good too, I have suffered no side effects from either the remedy, or the drug!

The conventional medical establishment routinely dismiss such an experience as 'anecdotal',  or 'unscientific'. Yet homeopathy has performed these cures for millions of people, safely and effectively, and throughout the world, for the last 220 years, most of whom have found homeopath to be both effective and safe in treating illness. Still, conventional doctors tell us that there is 'no evidence' that homeopathy works! It is nothing more than a placebo effect! Only pharmaceutical drugs have an 'evidence base'.

So for me, and for many others over the years, this event becomes a 'Eureka' moment - initially for two reasons.

1. Conventional medicine does not tell patients the truth
First, I realised that my doctors was not telling me the truth, or at least, not the whole truth. The NHS, and the conventional doctors who treated me, did not tell me about the side effects of their new 'wonder' drug. They allowed me to take it without informing me about the damage it might do to my heart.

Nor did they tell me the whole truth. They did not offer me alternative treatment. They did not provide me with information about alternative treatments, linked to diet and lifestyle changes. They did not mention that there were therapies, such as homeopathy, that might treat my ulcers. And they certainly did not offer me access to homeopathic treatment, or any other form of traditional therapy. I had an ulcer. They gave me a drug. I took the drug. I discovered the side effects of the drug alone. Conventional medicine had told me nothing!

From that day I could no longer accept what doctors, and the conventional medical establishment, have told me. I have always felt the need to ask questions about the safety and effectiveness of the medicine we are routinely offered.

2. Making sense of ill-health
Second, I began to study homeopathy, informally at first. It was fascinating. Suddenly I began to make sense of the world of health and disease in a way I had never done before. Disease was not something that struck people down, indiscriminately, for no reason. I had gastric ulcers because of my stress-full lifestyle, because of what I was eating, how I was eating it, and because I never took the time to allow my body to relax and recover from the stress I was putting it through.

What my homeopath said made sense. The remedy would help, the ulcers would probably heal, but in the longer-term it was important that I should help myself by changing my lifestyle.

I began to understand the concept of 'susceptibility' and 'pre-disposition' to disease. It explained much, for instance, that whilst medieval plagues killed many thousands of people, not everyone died, many survived. They were not susceptible. Yet sickness and disease was increasing to epidemic proportions all around me. Not everyone was affected, but it was not a question of good or bad luck, people became ill for a reason, just as other people remained well.

It was an amazing moment. The clarity of this new understanding, and the new insights it gave me into health, was empowering. I began to see through the 'battleground' that conventional medicine had created with its toxic drugs and vaccines, their war against the body, and the bacteria and viruses that normally live peacefully alongside us. I began to question the desperate attacks on childhood diseases, the invasive vaccinations, the aggressive drugs that 'fought' this, and 'destroyed' that.

Conventional medicine seemed to believe that it could 'balance' the human body better with its drugs and vaccines than our own internal self-healing mechanisms! What arrogance was this? Did the doctors really know best? Did their drugs and vaccines really provide us with the miraculous answer to disease? So my personal experience helped me recognise the arrogance of the conventional medical establishment.

Through homeopathy I was able to understand the body's relationship with the world in which it lived, microbes and all! I could see how, in contrast to  conventional medicine, homeopathy sought to enhance the body's ability to maintain and regain good health by living peaceably alongside them. It taught me to trust the amazing ability of the human body to protect itself from harm, and to heal itself from whatever dis-ease it suffered.

I began to understand how the medical warfare that conventional medicine engaged in with the human body, to get it to comply with the 'norms' they had of it, was not only doomed to failure - it was both unnecessary and positively harmful to our health. So not only did I reject pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, I began to understand why they were so obviously wrong, harmful, so self-evidently counter-productive to health. I began to examine what was happening to the health of people within my family, amongst my friends and work colleagues, and I did so not through the eyes of conventional medicine, but through my new understanding. Those who were taking drugs, or being vaccinated, seem to be sicker than those who did not take them.

For instance,when I managed a group of residential homes, I saw older people taking a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs, and not getting better, but progressively more sick. Worse, older residents on some pharmaceutical drugs seemed to lose their interest and involvement in life, in the world around them. So many of them lost not only their physical health, but their mind too. They became forgetful, confused, then demented. And then they died.

Of course, doctors put all this down to old age. Conventional medicine always does when it fails to treat disease successfully. But I was convinced that the pharmaceutical drugs they were taking were playing an important part in their decline and death.

So my world changed. What had seemed normal and acceptable was no longer so. What I had been told was effective was clearly not effective. What I thought was safe was not safe. It was happening all around me. Sick people, given pharmaceutical drugs to make them better, became sicker. And my alternative ideas on health, and ill-health, seemed to fit and explain much better than conventional medicine what was happening to our health. I was beginning to make sense of the world.

So, in a nutshell, this experience is the basis of this blog. We need to ask questions of our doctors (and our homeopaths) and see who seems to be interpreting the world, and what is happening to our health, more accurately. And who had treatments that actually worked!