How effective is conventional medicine?

This blog's primary purpose is to encourage patients, 

sick people, to examine closely how safe and effective their medical treatment is, and to consider safer alternatives.

When conventional medicine is investigated in this way, the most disturbing finding is that it is an inherently dangerous form of medical treatment. So it is perhaps not surprising that it is the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is the focus, and not their effectiveness.

Doctors always admit that their treatment always comes with risks (although these are usually heavily discounted). But these risks, we are told, are far outweighed by their benefits (although these benefits are usually heavily exaggerated). And (we are told) all conventional medical treatments are based on evidence, on science. In other words, they are assumed to be, and have been proven to be effective. So how true is this claim?

In 2012 the British Medical Journal's 'Clinical Evidence' website attempted to give us an answer to this question.

               "We want to identify treatments that work and for which the benefits outweigh the harms, especially treatments that may be underused. We also wish to highlight treatments that do not work or for which harms outweigh benefits. For the research community, our intention is to highlight gaps in the evidence – where there are no good RCTs or no RCTs that look at groups of people or at important patient outcomes."

A laudable objective indeed, and Clinical Evidence went to considerable lengths to find the evidence. About 3000 treatments were selected that had been evaluated in research for analysis, and divided them into categories for their effectiveness. This is the resulting graph.

• So just 11% of conventional medical treatments were considered to be 'beneficial'.
• Another 24% were 'likely to be beneficial'.
• Another 7% traded off benefits and harms'.

(And I suspect that these figures may be based on an optimism that conventional medicine is invariably guilty of)

However, the rest of the treatments, 58%, were "unlikely to be beneficial" - or worse.

When the study was first published it came as a shock to the conventional medical establishment. They did nothing about it, of course, and have done nothing about it during the years since it was published. The problem is that if conventional medicine did not have these 'ineffective' treatments to offer patients their cupboard would be almost completely bare.

So conventional medicine did what it always does. They ignored the evidence. They carried on regardless, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps no-one would realise.

So when patients go to see their doctor, or visit their local hospital, they should realise that the treatment they are offered is more likely to be ineffective than effective.

Indeed, the only thing that can be certain is that the treatment given, ineffective as most of it might be, will still have the dangerous side effects and adverse reactions likely to harm rather than improve our health!

So next time you see your doctor, ask him how effective his/her treatment is, which of the above categories it falls into. (S)he will not know because the 3000 treatments, and the categories into which they were placed, remains unknown.

CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE AND RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Will it be effective?

Will it be harmful?

Will it kill you?

No-one really knows, and certainly no-one will tell you!

Ignoring Homeopathy. Another way to avoid breaking up the pharmaceutical monopoly of health care in Britain?

Patients love homeopathy - when they are allowed access to it!

In April 2018 I wrote a blog outlining the fact that patient loved homeopathy. I referred to a considerable number of studies from Britain and around the world that demonstrated it. One of these studies was the evaluation of the complementary and alternative medicines pilot project undertaken in Northern Ireland, published in May 2008.

You might like to know what has happened to this report. Absolutely nothing! It is gathering dust on the shelves of the Department of Health in London. Why? It came to the wrong conclusions, it reported that people actually liked homeopathy, and other natural medical therapies. So let's go down memory lane and find out what the people of Northern Ireland were allowed to discover.

The pilot study determined that alternative and complementary (that is, natural) therapies offered significant health benefits for patients. It also found that it made significant savings in health costs. And that of all the therapies used in the project homeopathy did the best of all!

You might think that patient satisfaction, and reducing NHS costs would have been attracting to the NHS, and the Department of Health. But far from it....

If was a disastrous conclusion. Health benefits to patients? Reduce spending on drugs and other conventional medical treatments? The pharmaceutical industry would certainly not have liked this, and they must have lobbied government intensely to ensure that the report went no further! No doubt they would be forced to move all their factories to eastern Europe - or something similar.

Several other natural therapies were involved in the pilot - including acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, reflexology, aromatherapy and massage. But it was patients who received homeopathic treatment that had the greatest improvement, 79%, followed closely by acupuncture, 77%, then chiropractic or osteopathy, both 56%.

The report must have been an existential threat for the pharmaceutical industry, and indeed the entire conventional medical establishment!

Moreover, these were not just a few isolated treatments, involving a handful of minor illnesses. Doctors in Northern Ireland had referred patients to the pilot project who had not responded to conventional medical treatment. The drugs had just did not helped over the years. In other words they were TEETH patients (Tried Everything Else Try Homeopath). The report listed all the following illness and diseases that were treated in the pilot. 

• Arthritis
• Joint, back and neck pain
• Fibromyalgia
• Myalgic encephalitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)
• Stress related problems
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Depression
• Insomnia
• Anger and aggressiveness
• Headaches and migraines
• Shaking and trembling
• Chest infections
• High blood pressure
• Obesity
• Psoriasis

Perhaps many doctors had referred these patients because they thought natural medicine would be unable to help them. After all this is what doctors had been taught. This is what they have been telling us for years (and continue to tell us). This is the assumption that the mainstream media never questions.

So perhaps the doctors thought - let them have a go at these incurable patients, we have tried, and nothing works for them. Then people will see that natural therapies have nothing to offer either.

So the conventional medical establishment must have been surprised and disappointed when patients began to report improved health, and a feeling of enhanced well-being. The pilot study produced a high level of positive patient outcomes, for instance...

• Over 80% of patients reported an improvement in their symptoms and physical health
• 67% recorded and improvement in their general wellbeing
• 55% reduced their use of painkillers

Indeed most patients reported improvements in some symptoms that conventional medicine always finds to be the most intractable, including...

• Relief of long-term or chronic illness
• Reduced pain
• Improved mobility
• More energy
• Better emotional stability
• Reduced health concerns
• Less time off work
• Patients returning to work

What a surprise that must have been to the Department of Health! What a threat to the arrogant domination of the conventional medical place-men who work there! But what could they do? Argue against the findings of the study? Announce that the patients were misinformed? Or worse, agree to increase NHS funding of natural therapies?

No, by far the best response was to ignore it, to file it away on some shelf to gather dust, and hope that no-one would refer to it again. And this is just what the Department of Health did in 2008. When your prejudice is under threat, ignore the evidence. When your science proves to be wrong, don't acknowledge the truth. It is a strategy that medical science always uses.

Since then successive Chief Medical Officers have had nothing but venom to say about homeopathy. Dame Sally Davis called homeopathy 'rubbish' in 2013. In spite of this, in 2014, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, asked her to commission expert reviews on three homeopathic remedy studies. In response Dame Sally dismissed homeopathy as a waste of time and money. Her response.....

               "I am perpetually surprised that homeopathy is available on the NHS"

So in 2018 the Department of Health has seen fit to take further steps to reduce spending a homeopathy. Never mind patient choice, or patient outcomes. Never mind about inconvenient evidence. Homeopathy is rubbish. That's what the conventional medical establishment thinks, that is what they say, and anything that runs contrary to that - just ignore it.

AND IT DOES SEEM TO WORK!

AND WE SHOULD REMEMBER THIS WHEN NEXT WE ARE TOLD THAT 

CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE IS 'SCIENCE-BASED'.

Robert F Kennedy. A politician prepared to speak the truth about vaccines.

Politicians are supposed to lead, to inform us about what is happening in our world, to warn us of potential or existing dangers, and to present the possibilities that exists for the future.

Yet as far as health is concerned this does happen. There is no health debate. There are few politicians willing to challenge the dominant assumption - that the pharmaceutical industry is winning the war against disease - that drugs and vaccines are entirely safe - and that natural medicines do not work, and should not be available within national health services.

There is one exception - Robert F Kennedy, Jr. He recently made a speech in Albany, New York, USA that brilliantly and concisely encapsulated the arguments against vaccines, arguments our doctors, and the mainstream media refuse to discuss, and which are increasingly being censored now on the social media.

You can watch the speech at this link (but do so before You Tube gets around to censoring it) or you can read the speech below. You will recognise the arguments. I have been making them on this blog for the last 10 years, although there is much additional and more detail information that will amaze you.

     "Thank you for coming on such a rainy day.  The pharmacist walked by and I don’t blame him for being angry because this is the biggest threat to their business plan.  The vaccine industry when I was a boy was $270 million dollars.  I got three vaccines and was fully compliant.  Today it is a $50 billion dollar industry and 20% of pharmaceutical revenues.

     "But that’s at the front end.

     "At the back end are all the chronic diseases that the FDA says they think are associated with vaccines.  A hundred and fifty diseases are now listed on the product inserts.  The reason they’re listed on the product inserts is because the FDA has made the determination that these injuries are more likely caused by a vaccine.

     "This is the chronic disease epidemic.

     "I have six kids.  I had eleven brothers and sisters.  I had over fifty cousins.  I didn’t know a single person with a peanut allergy.  Why do all my kids have food allergies?  Because they were born after 1989.

     "If you were born prior to 1989, your chance of having a chronic disease, according to HHS (Health and Human Services) is 12.8%.  If you are born after 1989, your chance of having a chronic disease is 54%.  And the FDA has said to the vaccine companies, you need to take a look at these diseases.

     "And what are these diseases?

     "They’re the neuro-developmental diseases, ADD, ADHD, language delays, speech delays, tics, Tourette Syndrome, ASD, and autism.  The auto-immune disorders, Guillan-Barre, multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis.  The anyphylactic diseases, food allergies, rhinitis, asthma, and eczema.  All of these exploded in 1989.

     "Congress ordered the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to find out which year this disease epidemic started.  And EPA did that study.  They said it started in 1989.  There are a lot of culprits.  Many new things.  We have cell-phones.  We have PFOA (perfluorooctanic acid).  We have ultra-sound.  We have glyphosate.  We have many other things.  Our kids are swimming in a toxic soup.

     "We’re not saying all of those illnesses came from vaccines.  But there is no intervention that is so exquisite and precisely timed as what happened when we went in 1989 and changed that vaccine schedule and raised the levels of aluminum and mercury, tripled and quintupled them.  We went from the 3 vaccines that I had, to the 72 my kids had, and to the 75 that kids are going to get next year.  And there are 273 new vaccines in the pipeline.

     "I went in and met with Adam Schiff.  I’ve been a democrat all my life.  What’s happening in the democratic party disturbs me greatly.  But I was astonished when one of the leading democrats in our country, Adam Schiff, went to the internet titans, to Facebook, to Google, which has a $668 million dollar partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, the biggest vaccine maker in the world.  They make drugs and mine your personal data so they can sell you more drugs.  Schiff went to Pintrest, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, all of them, and told them they need to start censoring information and complaints about a pharmaceutical product.

     "I said to Adam Schiff, “You know these are greedy companies.  You know they’re homicidal.”  Any democrat will tell you that.  The four companies that produce all 72 vaccines that are mandated for American children, every one of them is a convicted felon.  Since 2009, those four companies collectively have paid $35 billion dollars in criminal penalties and damages and fines for defrauding regulators, for falsifying science, for bribing doctors, for lying to the public, and for killing lots and lots of people.

     "Vioxx, a drug made by Merck, they knew it would cause heart attacks.  They sold it as a headache pill.  They didn’t tell people, you won’t have a headache, but you might have a heart attack.  Of course, if they had, not too many people would have bought it.

     "So, they decided to keep it a secret.  They killed a hundred and twenty thousand people minimum, probably five hundred thousand people.  So I said to Adam Schiff, “What kind of cognitive dissonance does it require, to believe that this company, which is lying and cheating and killing with every other pharmaceutical product it makes, has found Jesus when it comes to vaccines?”  Everybody knows you can’t sue a vaccine company.  That’s why we had this gold rush explosion of vaccines beginning in 1989.

     "They have no incentive to make their product safe, other than their moral scruples, of which we know they have none.

     "What most people don’t know is that vaccine companies have an even more important exemption.

     "They are exempt from safety testing their products.  It is the only medical product.  The reason is that it’s an artifact of the CDC’s legacy as the public health service, which was a quasi-military agency.  The CDC took it over in the late 1970s.  That’s why people at the CDC often have military rank, like the Surgeon General.  The vaccine program was initiated as a national security defense against biological attack.  Because of that they wanted to make sure we could get vaccines out to the public very quickly if Russia sent anthrax over here.  They wanted to remove all the regulatory impediments that would prevent the quick deployment of that product.

     "So, they said, if we call it a medicine, all medicines have to be safety-tested under the law, double-blind placebo, and follow-up for five years.  They said, we can’t do that.  We’re going to call them something different.  We’re going to call them “biologics.”  And we’re going to make it so they don’t have to be tested at all.

     "And when the industry exploded in 1989, they took advantage of this loophole when they brought all of these new products to market.  Not one of the 72 vaccines on the schedule mandated for our children, have been tested with a placebo.

     "That means that nobody can scientifically tell you what the risk profile of that product is.  Nobody can tell you that product is going to save more lives than it will take.  There is no scientific basis whatsoever.  How can we as a society, a government, a democratic party, be mandating products for our children when we cannot tell what the risk is of that product?

     "Now, all of the vaccines on the schedule, and all medical products, are required to list whatever safety testing they do.  Not one of these has ever used a placebo. But some of them do safety testing anyway, like the polio vaccine, for maybe 48 hours.

     "The hepatitis B vaccine that is given to every child in this country on the day it’s born, they observe for 5 days.  That means if a child dies on day 6, it never happened.  If a child has a seizure on day 6, it never happened.  If the baby gets food allergies and is diagnosed three years later, or autism or an auto-immune disease, it never happened.  That way they can say it’s safe.

     "The weird thing is that there was one vaccine, the MMR vaccine, that all of this hoopla is about, it’s the only vaccine that has no safety testing listed on the insert.  And for many years, Del [Bigtree] and I have been saying, “that’s weird.”  Do any exist?  What happened?  So we sued HHS.  We said, “where is it?”

     "Three weeks ago they gave us the safety testing.  There were 800 kids.  Normally you have 20,000 kids or subjects in one of these.  There were 800 kids in 8 different categories.  For a drug they are going to give to billions of people.  The testing lasted only 42 days.

     "But 50% of the kids who were involved in that study had gastro-intestinal illnesses, serious ones, some of them for the full 42 days.  50% had respiratory illnesses, some of them for 42 days.  This is a product that is worse, according to its own record, than the illness it’s pretending to prevent.

     "Maybe there are people here who are anti-vaxx.  I am not anti-vaxx.  I just want safe vaccines.  And I want robust science.  And I want transparency in government.  And I want independent regulators who are not owned by pharma.

     "At the FDA, which is supposed to protect us against these products, receives 75% of its budget from the industry.  The World Health Organization (WHO) receives 50% of its budget from pharma.  The CDC is a pharmaceutical company.  It has about $5 billion dollars a year that it buys and sells vaccines.  And individuals within HHS who worked on those vaccines at taxpayer expense, if they worked on them, they’re allowed to get royalty payments.

     "Every vial of Gardasil that’s sold, there are people within HHS, high-level individuals, who are collecting $150,000 a year in royalties. And HHS and NIH own part of that patent and are collecting money every year.  These are not regulatory agencies.  They are appendages of the industry.

     "They don’t want to hear about this.  The reason they call you and me anti-vaxx is it’s a way of shutting us up.  So they don’t have to debate these very serious issues about vaccine safety.  So they don’t have to debate the science.

     "And they’ve bought off the press.  They put $25 billion dollars a year into advertising.  We’re the only nation in the world, other than New Zealand, that allows pharmaceutical advertising on television.  And they’ve been able to buy the press in this country.  They’re not only selling ads for their drugs, but they’re also dictating content.

     "Now they’re telling us they’re going to censor Facebook because they want to get rid of misinformation about vaccines.  We’re just talking about science.  We’re giving them peer-review.  You’ll never hear peer-review from a vaccine proponent.  What you’ll hear are appeals to authority. What does that mean?  It means that vaccines are safe because CDC or WHO says they’re safe.

     "But do you know who the ultimate authority is?  It’s the Institute of Medicine.  That is why Congress named the Institute of Medicine to be the ultimate authority on vaccine safety.  And do you know what the Institute of Medicine says?  It says there are 150 diseases that they think are caused by vaccines, and the CDC has been directed to study them.  They said that in 1994.  CDC refused.  They said it again in 1998.  CDC refused. They said it again in 2011.  They say it every year.

     "The Institute of Medicine says we have no idea whether these vaccines are causing this huge chronic disease epidemic.  That is the ultimate authority.  Not WHO.  Not CDC.  And the only way they can deal with these arguments is by shutting us up.

     "The vaccine misinformation is not coming from us, it’s coming from them.  How many of you have heard the networks report that 80,000 people died of flu last year?  You know what CDC’s data said? And CDC told the networks that number.  I don’t blame them, but the press is supposed to check.  My father told me, people in power lie.  And you’re supposed to check on it.  You know what CDC’s own data said? 2300 people died of flu, not 80,000.

     "How many of you have heard that the death rate for measles is 1 in 1,000?  CDC told them that.  CDC’s own data says that it’s 1 in 10,000 people and 1 in 500,000 Americans.  That’s what CDC’s data says.  But that’s not what you’ll hear from the networks.

     "Any of you who watched NBC the other night saw Lester Holt.  All of the news shows have become advertisements and they’re all part of this orchestrated frenzy that we’re terrified of measles.  And we’ve got to get this vaccine and we’ve got to pass this mandate.  Lester Holt is sponsored by Merck, which makes the vaccine.  Lester Holt showed a frightening picture on his show of a baby that was afflicted by these terrible measles bumps.  It turns out it was fake.  He had to fake it.  He’s never apologized.  NBC never apologized.  That is misinformation.

     "And Lester Holt is sitting there saying we’ve got to shut down this misinformation about vaccines while he is the primary promoter of that information.

     "This industry has been able to disable all of the institutions of our democracy that stand between a greedy corporation and a vulnerable child.  As Del pointed out, they are the biggest lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  There are more lobbyists than Congressmen and Senators combined.  They give double the amount of oil and gas.  They give four times what defense and aerospace give.

     "They own Congress.  That’s why Congress will not subpoena Bill Thompson, the chief scientist at CDC who says they’ve been lying to us for all these years.  They’ve been destroying data.  And they won’t call him in and question him.

     "They have been able to disable the regulatory agencies through capture.  Those agencies are now sock-puppets for the industries they’re supposed to regulate.  They’ve been able to neutralize the lawyers by making it illegal to sue a vaccine company.  The lawyers and the courts are gone.

     "They’ve been able to neutralize the press, all press scrutiny.  Now, they’re neutralizing the internet.  They’re shutting us down so we cannot speak.  So that nobody has to listen to the truth.  So that nobody has to read the peer-reviewed science.  So nobody has to listen to the questions.

     "The last thing standing between the corporation and that little baby is the mom and the dad.  And this greedy industry cannot stand that mother who is going to stop her little baby from being vaccinated.  From buying their product and then being hooked for the rest of their lives on Adderal, Epi-Pens, Ritalin, the anti-seizure medications, and the Prozac they get at the back end of this insane industry.

     "And what do the democrats say?  Well, there is no such thing as vaccine injury.  It’s all an illusion and these women are hysterical.  And they’re so easily deluded.  But these women know what happened to their child.

     "I would say it’s time for the Democratic party to start listening to women.  And what happened to the central, fundamental plank of the democratic party?  My body, my choice!

     "And why is our party advocating censorship?

     "And why is our party in bed with one of the dirtiest industries in the history of mankind?

     "We need to take our children back.  We need to take our country back.  We need to take our democracy back.  Thank you.

• No, thank you Robert F Kennedy! 
• Thank you for being a politician prepared to tell us the truth about vaccines.
• Thank you for exposing the power and control of the pharmaceutical companies.

When will the conventional medical establishment provide some answers to the questions he has raised instead of trying to censor criticism, and force pharmaceutical drugs and vaccine  on us?

The Under-Reporting of Drug Side Effects. Doctors say they are 'rare' but only between 10% & 1% of adverse reactions are ever reported. So they are not as 'rare' as we are told.

The conventional medical establishment routinely ignores the harm caused to patients by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

A study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, (2006; 296: 1086-93), found that although prescribing doctors should report side effects and adverse reactions experienced by their patients many do not do so. In fact, the actual rate of reporting was found to be alarmingly low, about 10 times below the optimum level set by the World Health Organization. The study reported on procedures amongst doctors in Portugal, where 26 adverse reactions were reported per 1 million population, whereas WHO say that this should be closer to 300 report per million people.

The researchers said that this under-reporting was not restricted to Portugal, and that the USA, Canada, Italy, Sweden and the UK, also have very low reporting rates.

Commenting on this study, the magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You said that if the WHO targets were reached, the whole drug industry would 'grind to a halt'. In the Guardian, on 12th May 2006, Sarah Bosely wrote that the BMA had said the Yellow Card scheme (the UK system of reporting drug side effects) was not being used enough. The article quoted BMA figures that found at least 250,000 people went to hospital each year because of the damaging side-effects of medication, and that about 5,000 people die as a result. The BMA urged doctors to be 'more vigilant', and to report any and every suspected side-effects their patients experience. They said that only an estimated 10% of adverse drug reactions were reported through the "yellow card" scheme to the MHRA, and a BMA spokesperson commented:

          "Doctors have a professional duty to report all adverse drug reactions, especially if children or the elderly are involved. Unfortunately too many health professionals are confused about reporting procedures. Doctors must make sure they report any suspected [adverse drug reactions] and at the same time increase awareness among their patients about the reporting process."

Another BMA spokesman said that not all side-effects could be picked up in clinical trials before drugs are licensed and prescribed which meant that greater vigilance was needed by doctors, pharmacists and nurses. In the same article the MHRA (Britain's drug regulator urged healthcare professionals to use the yellow card scheme, stating:

          "There is no need to prove that the medicine caused the adverse reaction, just the suspicion is good enough." 

The article concludes by saying that it has long been known that doctors do not report all the suspected side-effects their patients tell them about, and that 10 years earlier (1996?) the BMA had issued similar guidance to doctors, but with little effect. Sadly, in the decade and more that has passed since this was written, nothing has changed!

So what does this under-reporting of drug side effects mean, in practical terms?

It means that if only 10% of known adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs and vaccine are reported they are all 10 times more dangerous than conventional medicine accepts or admits!

It means that there has been a circular argument going on for over 20 years, and no doubt much longer. The side effects of drugs are under-reported by doctors - which means in turn that the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are not fully appreciated. This, in turn, means that drugs are being prescribed on the basis that they are safer than they are.

Yet the under-reporting of drug side effects may be worse than this, perhaps as low as 1%, particularly (but not exclusively) with regard to vaccine damage. This 1% figure comes from USA government reports. In 1986 the USA government relieved vaccine manufacturers of all liability for vaccine injury. They created the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in 1990 which was supposed to collect and analyse the adverse effects of vaccines. The system has has been criticised every since. To address the weaknesses, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gave Harvard Medical School $1 million dollars to track VAERS reporting, and create an automated reporting system overhaul the VAERS reporting system. It successfully transformed the system from a 'passive' to an 'active' one.

The report showed that vaccine injury reports through VAERS were less than 1% of the actual number, that whilst the CDC showed only about 30,000 adverse events in the USA annually, the Harvard study showed about 35,570 adverse events - just in the population of Massachusetts. It calculated that there was an adverse event in 2.6% of vaccinations - hardly the 'rare' event that we are told about by doctors. So, with typical honesty, the CDC buried the study!

               “Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.”

It is clear from this that whatever the conventional medical establishment tells us about the safety of vaccines, and pharmaceutical drugs generally, they are not telling us the whole truth. If only 1% of drug and vaccine damage is being reported it means that they are 100 times more dangerous than they admit.

Yet there is another issue - are doctors prepared to tell us the truth when it is they who have prescribed harmful and dangerous drugs to their patients.

In an Observer article, published on 20th January 2008, Dennis Campbell reported that Steve Walker, chief executive of the NHS Litigation Authority, said that doctors must own up to the mistakes they make in order to reduce compensation claims that were totalling £613 million annually at that time. He called for "a new culture of honesty and openness". We are no to this now then we were in 2008!

Cambell continued. Negligence lawyers said the main reason victims take legal action is to obtain more information, so what doctors had to do was simple, to report any error or mistake, more than this, doctors should feel under an obligation to tell patients, to apologise and explain.

          "The explanation bit is really important to many, many claimants. It doesn't matter if it heads off a claim or encourages a claim, people as human beings and patients are entitled to this and they should be getting it. Some patients are dissatisfied by not getting this information already. Some patients and patients' relatives feel short-changed by the system. They believe there's a lack of honesty, of frankness and of candour."

Walker wanted doctors to 'sympathise with the patient or the patient's relatives' and to 'express sorrow or regret' at any death or injury that followed 'substandard care' with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

          "I feel ..... very strongly that people are entitled to know when something has gone wrong; entitled to an apology if something has gone wrong; entitled to an explanation of what went wrong and why, in words that they will understand; and entitled to the opportunity to ask questions about what happened and why," 

This kind of transparency is not a feature of the conventional medical establishment. Since 2008 medical negligence cases have dramatically increased. This is usually explained within the context of doctors, or some other medical staff, making a mistake or an error. This ignores the fact that every pharmaceutical drug and vaccine used by conventional doctors are inherently dangerous! Defending dangerous drugs and vaccines by blaming the resulting problems on the doctors who prescribe them is fundamentally wrong. The blame needs to be placed within a medical system that supports and encourages their use, and then denies the existance of problems until those problems can no longer be denied!

The article first appeared in my E-Book, "DIE's: the disease-inducing-effects of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines". This e-book shows that it is the dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines being prescribed, and their side effects, that are causing sickness and diseases at unprecedented levels. And that within the conventional medical establishment there is little honesty about the harm that is routinely caused by these drugs and vaccines.

Many people have read this book and found it hard to believe how common illnesses and diseases, many now at epidemic proportions, some never known before the present era, are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. There surprise is understandable.

No-one has ever told them before!

Why does the NHS cost so much? Why is it always in need of more money? Why are we sicker than ever before? When will the NHS start making us better?

The cost of the UK's NHS has become a constant problem. Expenditure is spiralling out of control. Every year there is an NHS crisis - it cannot cope with patient demand. So each year more money is ploughed it. But regardless of how much additional is spent on the NHS it continues to be in crisis.

Nor is this just a British problem, it is a problem throughout the world, in every country where pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines dominate health services. It is, in other words, a problem throughout the world.

The Department of Health has released statistics about public spending on the NHS from 1948 (its inaugural year) to 2016 under 'Freedom of Information' laws. I have reproduced these statistics below.

One of the key principles of the NHS in 1948 was that it should provide "the best medicine available to everyone". There was an expectation that whilst this would be an expensive service in the early years (those following a crippling World War) health expenditure would soon reach a plateau, and that thereafter costs would gradually reduce.

This was not an unreasonable assumption. It was expected that there would be a back-log of ill-health and sickness to deal with, but if the NHS provided the "best medicine available for everyone" this would soon ensure that sick people got better, and once well they would be a reducing charge on the NHS.

The figures provided by the Department of Health shows that this optimism has never materialised.

The annual figures, and related graphs, are reproduced below. They show how the cost of the NHS has risen dramatically, astronomically year by year. The figures demonstrates that the NHS has failed. And the reason for its failure has been that it has chosen to invest all its resources into one kind of medicine, conventional medicine, dominated as it is by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. These not only fail to make us better, but they are making us sicker. And the sicker we have become the more demand is placed on NHS services, and the more demands made for additional money. It has become a vicious, spiralling circle

These statistics do not lie. My E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" seeks to explain this failure in detail, and why it is that most people continue to demand more money for the NHS. The figures show that we are throwing more good money after bad. They should be read keeping in mind the epidemic rise of chronic disease during these same years.

MEDICAL HORROR. Is the end of the world nigh? THE DREADED MUMPS RETURNS! Or are there more serious illnesses to be concerned about?

"Mumps and measles cases in England prompt vaccine call" 

according to James Gallagher, BBC's health and science correspondent

Public Health England have announced "a significant increase in mumps cases" and allied to "continuing outbreaks of measles in England" they have called for people to ensure they are immunised. Even one person missing their vaccinations was "too many" we are told. So how serious is this medical horror story?

               "There were 795 cases of mumps in the first three months of 2019, compared with 1,031 in the whole of 2018."

Something to panic about indeed! I was going to work out the percentage of the population 795 cases represents - but really I can't be bothered. Divide 745 by the population of England and multiply by 100 and you will have it. Infinitesimal.

I have written before about how serious mumps is, as a disease. The blog compares what the NHS said about it in 1982, and then again in 1995. In 15 years the seriousness of mumps had increased. Why? Could it be that people will vaccinate - if they can be sufficiently scared into believing how serious the illness is?

So why is Public Health England panicking about 795 cases of mumps? Clearly, as always, it wants to sell us more vaccines, and the mainstream media is the best place for free,subliminal advertising.

But is it also to deflect our attention from many more serious epidemics of disease?

Chronic diseases for which they have little or no effective treatment?

Diseases that are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines?

I have taken the following information from my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", and specifically from chapter 9, 'Epidemics of Chronic Disease'. (Why we are sicker now than we ever have been). Each section describes a disease now running at epidemic levels, and provides statistics about each epidemic.

Although the information is removed from this blog, in the book I described how (i) conventional medicine says that the cause of both the disease and the epidemic is 'unknown' or 'uncertain' (more of this can be found on my "Why Homeopathy? website, and (ii) how both the disease and the epidemic are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines (more this this can be found on my "DIE's, the disease-inducing-effects of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines" website.

The statistics show just why this recent 'epidemic' of mumps is laughable, but perhaps explains what the conventional medical establishment is trying to do - distracting attention from

• diseases that are more important
• diseases for which conventional medicine has no explanation
• and diseases that are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines

Epidemics of Chronic Disease

Just as homeopathy, and other traditional medical therapies would have predicted, there are now many chronic diseases that have reached epidemic proportions. The rise has been particularly obvious during the last 70-80 years, running in exact parallel to the increased use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. This is happening throughout the world, particularly in countries where conventional medicine is dominant. Yet the conventional medical establishment has no adequate or reasonable explanation for this, and invariably deny that they are responsible for the epidemics, even when pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to cause the disease!

Allergy

Allergy UK says on its website that the rates of allergy are increasing throughout the world “affecting up to 30-35% of people at some stage in their lives”. It says that this increase was initially seen in countries such as the UK, Europe and USA, but can now be found in all countries undergoing industrial development. It goes on to state that the pattern of allergy is also changing, that initially the increase was in asthma and hay fever, but more recent studies have confirmed a significant increase in the incidence of food allergies, particular amongst children. In the UK they estimated that up to 50% of children are diagnosed with an allergic condition.

Allergy UK said that 1 in 4 people in Britain has suffered from an allergy at some time in their life, that this figure is increasing by about 5% a year, and that almost half of allergy sufferers are children. They referred to a study conducted for the National Asthma Campaign that found asthma and wheezing in children under 5 years had almost doubled since 1990.

Alzheimer's Disease (Dementia)      

It is almost exactly 100 years ago that neurologist, Alois Alzheimer, first described this disease. His patient was a woman who developed dementia in her 50s and she died in 1906. Now Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, and it is estimated that 24 million people around the world suffer it. By 2040 it has been projected that there will affect some 81 million, with much of the incidence being in the 'developed' world (that is, the part of the world that consumes most pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines)!

In 2015, the UK's Alzheimer’s Society provided these statistics on the disease in Britain.

• By 2015 there will be 850,000 people with dementia in the UK (note, in the first edition of this book, published in 2008, the estimate was 750,000).

• There are 40,000 younger people with dementia in the UK.

• There are 25,000 people with dementia from black and minority ethnic groups.

• There will be 1 million people with dementia in the UK by 2025.

• Two thirds of people with dementia are women.

• The proportion of people with dementia doubles for every five-year age group.

• One in six people aged 80 and over have dementia.

• 60,000 deaths a year are directly attributable to dementia.

• The financial cost of dementia to the UK is £26 billion per annum.

• 80% of people living in care homes have a form of dementia or severe memory problems.

• Only 44% of people with dementia in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive a diagnosis

Arthritis

When writing the first edition of this book in 2008, the Arthritis Research Campaign were trying to find out how big the problem was as there was “a paucity of specific and accurate data on the different types of arthritis.” So they commissioned two studies, one from MORI, and one from their Epidemiology Unit in Manchester, They concluded that

          “….. arthritis represents a much more serious, significant and widespread problem than was previously thought. It also showed that almost twice as many people believe they have arthritis than report their condition to their GP. In our MORI poll,13 million people say they are currently affected by arthritis and joint pain. Yet according to the report by the Epidemiology Unit, this figure is nearer 7 million.”

The Arthritis Research Campaign were talking about huge numbers at this time, and charted how the numbers were increasing. They said that the number of people visiting their doctors for arthritis and related conditions rose by about 13% between 1981 and 1991. They said nearly 9 million visit their doctor every year for arthritis and related conditions. At the heavier end of the problem, 3,242 deaths in the UK were directly attributed to arthritis and related conditions (Office for National Statistics. Review of the Registrar General on deaths by cause, sex and age, in England and Wales, 2000).

Yet in 2015 these figures were even bigger. They now estimate that more than 10 million adults in the UK visit their doctor with arthritis or a related condition. This is a 10% increase in 7 years! And it is now thought that more than a third of the UK population aged 50 and above suffers from arthritis related pain.

Asthma

When writing the first edition of this book, it was estimated that 1 in 13 people in Britain, and throughout the world, suffered from it, that 180,000 die from asthma, and that children were suffering from it most. In 2015, Asthma UK provided the following facts about asthma.

          • Three people die every single day because of asthma.

          • 5.4 million people in the UK are currently receiving treatment for asthma: 1.1 million children (1 in 11) and 4.3 million adults (1 in 12).

          • Asthma prevalence is thought to have plateaued since the late 1990s, although the UK still has some of the highest rates in Europe.

          • There were 1,167 deaths from asthma in the UK in 2011 (18 of these were children aged 14 and under).

          • One in 11 children now has asthma and it is the most common long-term medical condition.

          • There were 25,073 emergency hospital admissions for children in the UK in 2011-2012 - an average of 69 per day.

          • The NHS spends around £1 billion a year treating and caring for people with asthma.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) 

The first time this condition was described was in 1943 by the Austrian-American psychiatrist, Leo Kanner. In 2015, the National Autistic Society’s website said that in Britain, there are around 700,000 autistic people, more that 1:100 of the population.

In the USA the epidemic of ADHD appears to be worse. The CDC website suggests that there 5.9 million children, aged between 3-17 years, diagnosed, that is, 9.5% of this population. In boys alone that percentage rises to 13.5%. The number of children with ADHD have been increasing alarmingly since 1943. ADHD children are highly impulsive, they can speak and act without thinking what they are saying or doing. They often talk excessively, find it difficult to listen, or to conduct meaningful two-way conversations. They are restless, continually over-active, gaining their attention is difficult, and concentration can seem impossible. This behaviour is not the same as children behaving 'badly'. It has many distinctive features.

          • It is more extreme, more challenging than normal. 

          • The children are less responsive to normal parenting discipline. 

          • They behave the same at home, at school, and in other people's houses. 

          • They are usually untidy, disorganised and forgetful. 

          • With age their restlessness can lead to feelings of frustration, making their problems worse.

Autism (ASD)

Autism is a disability that affects the way that the child communicates and relates to other people. Autistic children have impaired social interactions, communication and imagination. Autism is not a single disease but a 'spectrum' of conditions, referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. As well as describing classical, or low-functioning autism, it also includes 'high-functioning' conditions such as Asperger's Syndrome.

Autism has seen a staggering increase throughout the 'developed' world in recent decades. In 2008, when the first edition of this book was written, the Autism Society of America said it was the fastest growing developmental disability in children, with a growth rate of between 10-17% per year. It stated that during the 1990’s, whilst the population of the USA grew by 13%, disabilities increased by 16%, and Autism by a massive 172%. 

Vaccine Impact has calculated that in 2016 1 in 36 (2.76%) children aged 3-17 were diagnosed with ASD, compared to 1 in 10,000 children in the 1970's.

The Autism Society of America’s website now estimates that in 2015 about 1% of the world population has ASD. But the situation in the USA has worsened considerably.

          • The prevalence in the USA is estimated at 1 in 68 births.

          • More than 3.5 million Americans live with an autism spectrum disorder.

          • The prevalence of autism in USA children increased by 119.4% from 2000 (1 in 150) to 2010 (1 in 68), and that autism was now is the fastest-growing developmental disability.

          • The prevalence has increased by 6-15% each year from 2002 to 2010.

          • It outlines the costs to society of this disease epidemic, and they are considerable.

In Britain there has been a similar rise in autism. The National Autistic Society in 2008 stated that ASD had more than doubled during the previous 10 years. It estimated that about 588,000 people had autism, with boys being four times more likely to develop autism than girls. In 2015 the National Autistic Society’s website calculated that around 700,000 people have ASD in Britain. This is an increase of 112,000 in 8 years!

Cancer

There is evidence of cancer in human populations from the very earliest times, including Egyptian papyri that described breast cancer dating back to 3000-1500BC. It has been studied during every period of history. There is an ongoing debate about how cancer rates have grown. Many people have looked for evidence from ancient times, found little evidence, and argued that cancer is a ‘modern’ disease. Conventional medicine does not accept this, but the prodigious growth of cancer during the 20th century is far less easily repudiated. So instead it argues that the cause of the cancer epidemic is concerned with diet, smoking, an ageing population, and similar.

All forms of cancer are now at epidemic proportions. It was estimated (Cancer Research UK) that in 2012, worldwide, there were about 14.1 million new cases of cancer recorded, that the most common cancers, accounting for about 4 in 10 of all cancers, were lung, female breast, bowel and prostate cancer, that an estimated 8.2 million people died from cancer, and that nearly half these deaths were caused by lung, liver, stomach and bowel cancer.

Cancer was once considered to be a disease of old age, but this is no longer the case. It has been estimated that the main disease-related cause of death in USA children aged between 1 and 14 years old is cancer, second only to accidents amongst all causes of childhood mortality. Leukemia and malignancies of the central nervous system are the most common types of childhood cancers.

Cardiovascular (Heart) Disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disease has been the leading cause of death throughout the western world for both men and women for decades. This is not a new epidemic, it is an old one. And it wold appear that the increased availability of conventional medical drugs over the last 70 to 80 years has done little to improve the situation. CVD is a term that includes heart disease, stroke, heart failure, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, and other conditions. 

Figures from the British Heart Foundation outlined the enormity of the problem in Britain in 2015.

          * CVD causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK, about 155,000 per year - an average of 425 people each day, or one every three minutes.

          * Around 41,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from CVD each year.

          * There are an estimated 7 million people living with cardiovascular disease in the UK. 

          * The UK cost of premature death, lost productivity, hospital treatment and prescriptions relating to CVD is estimated at £19 billion each year.

          * BNF state that coronary heart disease (CHD) is the single biggest killer in Britain, and the leading cause of death throughout the world. They go on to say that in the UK more than 1 in 7 men and nearly 1 in 10 women die from CHD, that CHD is responsible for nearly 70,000 deaths in the UK each year, an average of 190 people each day, or one death every eight minutes, most by a heart attack (myocardial infarction), that over 22,000 people under the age of 75 in the UK die from CHD each year, that CHD kills more than twice as many women as breast cancer, and that 2.3 million people are living with CHD in the UK - over 1.4 million men and 850,000 women.

Heart Failure. BHF say that there is an estimated 550,000 people in Britain are living with heart failure.

Stroke. BHF says that stroke causes nearly 40,000 deaths in the UK each year, and that an estimated 1.3 million people living in Britain have survived a stroke, almost half of them under the age of 75.

Atrial Fibrillation. Over 1 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, and there are “hundreds of thousands more living with undiagnosed AF”.

Congenital Heart Defects. It is estimated that 1 in 180 babies are now diagnosed with a congenital heart defect, that’s an average of 12 per day in Britain.

Chronic Fatigue (CFS) or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) 

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) is a disease characterised by persistent and extreme fatigue, muscle and joint pain, headaches, flu-like symptoms, sore throat, swollen glands, concentration and short-term memory problems, sleep difficulties, digestive disturbances, dizziness, poor temperature control, and increased sensitivity to light and sound. CFS/ME is a 'new' disease.

Before 2002, when the the condition was eventually recognised by the conventional medical establishment, the condition was dismissed by conventional doctors as 'Yuppie' flu. Many sufferers had a hard time convincing doctors that there was anything wrong with them! 

Such has been its epidemic rise, by 2007, NICE reported that CFS/ME was “a relatively common illness”! Indeed, the number of people now suffering from the condition has grown enormously. ‘Action for ME’, a British charity that provides support for sufferers, says that CFS/ME now effects over 240,000 people in Britain, including 25,000 children in England alone. It says that the illness can last for years, that the exact cause is unknown, and that 25% of people with CFS/ME are either house-bound, or bed-bound, and unable to look after themselves. 

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

COPD has many names, including; Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease, Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, Chronic Airflow Limitation, and Chronic Airflow Obstruction. COPD was once known by more familiar names, notably chronic bronchitis, emphysema, bronchiectasis, and asthma  COPD is defined as "a disorder that is characterised by reduced maximal expiratory flow and slow forced emptying of the lungs; features that do not change markedly over several months".

In the first edition of this book, written in 2006, it was already the 5th biggest killer in the UK, and killed more people than breast, prostate or bowel cancer. It was described as "one of the commonest respiratory conditions of adults in the developed world", and one that it "poses an enormous burden to society both in terms of direct cost to healthcare services and indirect costs to society through loss of productivity". The following statistics were taken from the Priory.Com website.

          * COPD was the fourth commonest cause of death in middle aged to elderly men in the western world.

          * It was estimated that in the UK 18% of males, 14% of females aged 40-68 years, developed features of COPD, and that 3 million people were affected, causing 30,000 deaths annually.

          * In the USA, 13.6% of males and 11.8% of females aged 65-74 years are thought to have COPD.

At the same time statistics produced by the American Lung Association showed that 15 million Americans suffer from COPD and it claimed the lives of 87,000 Americans in 1992. The COPD Foundation website shows how COPD, then at epidemic levels, has continued to rise. 

               "COPD affects an estimated 30 million individuals in the USA....The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates that 12 million adults have COPD and another 12 million are undiagnosed  or developing COPD. The World Health Organisation estimated 210 million individuals worldwide have COPD and total deaths were expected to increase more than 30% in the next 10 years".

Diabetes

Diabetes is a serious disease that can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and limb amputation following nerve damage, and many other diseases. In the early 20th century, the discovery of insulin treatment was hailed as a significant breakthrough, one that was instrumental in raising the positive profile of conventional medicine, and the belief that the application of ‘science’ to medicine would eventually make the world a healthier place.

The problem with insulin, like so many conventional medical treatments, is that it a short-term ‘mechanical’ fix. The body does not produce insulin for itself (or it is unable to use the insulin it does produce) so insulin is introduced artificially. Whilst not criticising the importance of such 'mechanical' fixes in medicine it is wrong to present them as 'cures'. Insulin does not cure diabetes, just as it does not deal with the cause of the disease - the body's failure to produce insulin, or to use the insulin that it produces.

Moreover there has been an epidemic of diabetes in the latter half of the 20th century. Diabetes UK provided these figure in 2015.

         • The estimated diabetes prevalence for adults aged 20 to 79 worldwide in 2014 was 387 million, and expected to affect 592 million people by 2035. 

         • The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimated that in 2013 five countries had more than 10 million people with diabetes.

         • It is estimated that more than one in 16 people in the UK has diabetes.

         • There are 3.9 million people living with diabetes in the UK.

         • Around 700 people a day are diagnosed with diabetes, the equivalent of one person every two minutes.

         • Since 1996, the number of people with diabetes in the UK has more than doubled from 1.4 million to 3.3 million.

         • There are 3.3 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK (2014). By 2025, this is estimated to rise to 5 million people.

         • It is estimated that there are around 590,000 people in the UK who have diabetes but have not been diagnosed.

         • This gives a UK average prevalence of 6.2% in adults.

As for the future, researchers from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA) have estimated that 1 in 3 men in the USA will develop diabetes, and the risk is only slightly lower for women. They took a random population born in the year 2000 and predicted that 32.8% of men and 38.3% of women would develop diabetes in their lifetimes (Prevalence of diabetes: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2003; 290: 1884-90).

Irritable Bowel (IBS), Crohns Disease, Ulcerative Colitis

Serious new illnesses are developing that affect our stomach. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a painful and distressing condition that is becoming increasingly common. It is estimated that it now affects about one-third of the population in some way, at some time, depending on how it is defined or measured. The symptoms of IBS may include abdominal pain and spasm, diarrhoea, constipation, and can take more serious forms, such as Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis.

It has been estimated that 9 million people suffer from IBS in the UK, and that 64,061 people died of the disease in 2002. But reliable figures for IBS, and related conditions such as Crohns Disease and ulcerative colitis are difficult to ascertain. The Right Diagnosis website seeks to provide estimated numbers, country by country, but much depends on diagnosis, and reporting of the disease.

Mental Health

If pharmaceutical drugs seek to ‘force’ the body into compliance, and if the body resists in such a way that new disease is created, then one of the body's principle organs, the brain, might be expected to suffer most. It is, after all, the most sensitive, and in many ways, the most vulnerable of human organs. And this is, indeed, what we find. The statistics for depression, suicide, and related mental health conditions, have risen alarmingly, and in particular, there has been a marked rise during the later half of the 20th, and early 21st century. And it is rising, particularly with younger people, with corresponding demands for more medical treatment.

Mental health illnesses are all ill-defined, and so difficult to diagnose with any certainty. And causation is equally difficult to ascertain, such if the complexities and stresses of life. Yet the claim that life today is more stressful that in previous decades, or that it gets more stressful as time goes on, is difficult a argue.

Malaria

The World Health Organisation estimates (WHO) that about 3.2 billion people, nearly half  the world's population, are at risk of malaria. In 2015, they say that there was about 214 million malaria cases, and an estimated 438 000 malaria deaths.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. MS causes many neurological symptoms, including  vision loss, vertigo, weakness, numbness, fatigue, muscle stiffness or spasticity, and bladder or bowel dysfunction. Onset may be sudden, or a gradual decline in function. 

MS is a relatively new disease. According to the Multiple Sclerosis Trust it was first recognised as a condition in the middle of the 19th century. 

“Prior to this time, there are reports of a few instances of what may have been MS, although the variety of symptoms, the range of other possible causes and the incompleteness of records make these impossible to confirm.”

According to the Multiple Sclerosis Society MS is now the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults, with around 100,000 people in Britain suffering from the condition. When I wrote the first edition of this book, in 2008, they said that 85,000 people in the UK had MS. So it continues to grow rapidly.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society states that more than 2.3 million people are affected by MS worldwide. But as the USA's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not require physicians to report new cases, and because symptoms can be completely invisible, the prevalence of MS in the USA can only be estimated. However, in 2008 they said that there are approximately 400,000 people with MS, and that about 200 people were diagnosed with the condition every week.

Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a disease of the skeletal system when the bones lose density, become brittle and become prone to fracture. It is the major cause of bone fractures in older people, particularly post-menopausal women. It is a real epidemic. The International Osteoporosis Foundation has provided the following facts about the incidence and impact of this disease.

• Osteoporosis affects an estimated 75 million people in Europe, USA and Japan

• 30-50% of women and 15-30% of men will suffer a fracture related to osteoporosis in their lifetime.

• Nearly 75% of hip, spine and distal forearm fractures occur among patients 65 years old or over.

• By 2050, the worldwide incidence of hip fracture in men is projected to increase by 310% and 240% in women.

• In white women, the lifetime risk of hip fracture is 1 in 6, compared with a 1 in 9 risk of a diagnosis of breast cancer.

• Approximately 1.6 million hip fractures occur worldwide each year, by 2050 this number could reach between 4.5 million and 6.3 million.

Superbugs and Superviruses

A superbug is described as a strain of bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotic treatment. Actually this is just half the story. Superbugs have emerged because of, as a result of antibiotic treatment. Bacteria have become resistant to the use of antibiotics because of the use and overuse of this drug. They are the most obvious, and an undeniable creation of conventional medicine!

Superbugs come in several forms. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is probably the most well known, but there is also Clostridium Difficile (CDIFF or C. difficile), Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Drug-Resistant Streptococcus Pneumoniae, Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, Drug-Resistant Non-Typhoidal Salmonella.

According to a BBC article (December 2014), these superbugs are currently implicated in killing 700,000 people each year, but that by 2050 drug resistant infections will kill an extra 10 million people a year worldwide, more than currently die from cancer.

Syphilis

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, has been a major killer disease throughout Europe since the earliest times, and particular from medieval times. By the middle of the 20th century, conventional medicine was claiming that the disease had been 'conquered', and the disease continues to be touted as one of its great medical triumphs. 

However, in recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of syphilis cases throughout the world, whilst the antibiotic drugs that were claimed to be the 'cure' for syphilis are no longer able to cope with the disease adequately. Yet whilst conventional medicine’s apparent ‘success’ in eradicating Syphilis was loudly heralded, its more recent return has met with a deafening silence! Certainly there has been little explanation about why pharmaceutical drugs are no longer effective, and no apology has been forthcoming for making inflated and unfounded claims about their effectiveness.

Tuberculosis (TB) 

Tuberculosis is one of the most deadly infectious diseases. TB is caused by a bacterial infection, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, that is spread through the air when infected people cough or sneeze. The disease affects mainly the lungs although it can infect any part of the body, including the bones and the nervous system. Again, conventional medical treatment of TB was supposed to be another of its greatest achievements. Certainly by the 1960's it was loudly proclaimed that the disease had been 'conquered' by antibiotic drugs, their greatest 'weapon' against such infectious diseases. 

Yet it is becoming clear that the war waged on bacteria by antibiotic drugs is being lost, decisively. Bacteria is now resisting the assault, and new 'drug-resistant' strains of TB, and other diseases, have now being discovered. Antibiotics are becoming almost entirely ineffective. The belief that TB had been eradicated began to disappear when these new drug-resistant strains began to emerge in the 1980's. But it is more recent events, largely since 2006, that have indicated that conventional pharmaceutical drugs no longer work. These statistics from the TB Facts organise demonstrate this.

• In 2014 1.5 million people died of TB.

• TB now annually causes more deaths worldwide than HIV.

• However, people who have both TB and HIV when they die, are internationally classified as having died from HIV.

• There were an estimated 9.6 million new cases of TB in 2014.

• There were an estimated 3.2 million cases and 480,000 TB deaths among women.

• There were also an estimated 1.0 million cases of TB in children and 140,000 deaths.

SO WE SHOULD ALL TO BE AFRAID, 

VERY AFRAID INDEED

OF THESE OUTBREAKS OF MUMPS!