Antidepressant Drugs, Mental Health, and Chemical Castration

Was 2016 a watershed year for antidepressant drugs? Or should it have been? Is any defence for them now being available for prescription by the conventional medical establishment?

Or have doctors prescribed dangerous drugs for so long now they have got used to the idea of damaging their patients? After all, as I wrote in March 2016, the doctor's medicine cabinet is getting emptier by the day! Doctors are now working under considerable constraint when they want to prescribe blockbuster drugs like painkillers and antibiotics - as a result of the well known dangers of these drugs.

Yet antidepressants are now facing similar concerns about their safety, especially during the current epidemic of mental health.

The mental health charity, Mind, undertook a piece of research in 2012, surveying more than 1,000 patients who were taking antidepressant drugs. It revealed that over half of these people were not warned by doctors about the possible serious side effects, notably to their relationships, their work, and their social life. The study show that

• Over 60% of antidepressant users felt the medication had a negative effect on at least one aspect of their social life.
• 44% reported an effect on their sex life.
• 27% said it affected their work or study.
• 23% said it impacted on their social life.

Plenty there to get depressed about! Indeed, one of the most notable side effects of antidepressant drugs is depression! Anyway, the doctors magazine, Pulse, has recently covered this story again, and they quoted Dr John Read, professor of psychology at the University of East London.

     "People taking antidepressants need to be warned about these effects, which can be very upsetting, especially in people who are already experiencing depression."

So, five years after their research was published, Mind is calling for better support for people on antidepressant drugs, to help them cope with their potential impact, as well as better training for GPs and prescribing nurses. It is part of the charity's ‘Find the Words’ campaign. They say that mental heath care staff have insufficient training to cope with this important task, and that they have an incredibly difficult job to do, under enormous pressure. Pulse goes on,

               "The evidence that serious and long term ADRs resulting from SSRIs, SNRIs and other psychotropic drugs have been hidden from prescribers by both pharmaceutical companies and regulators continues to accumulate." (My emphasis).

In other words, doctors have been prescribing antidepressant drugs without knowing the full adverse reactions patients might experience! Pulse goes on to talk about the 'slight of hand' in pharmaceutical sponsored, ghost written clinical trials, which have "been categorised and documented".  Indeed, a comment made to Pulse from a hospital consultant makes an incredible admission!

               "... the "apparent lack of prescriber awareness of a damming and expanding ADR evidence base" (perhaps even a widespread denial) seems to contrast with the growing patient insight into such serious adverse experiences as Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction. (PSSD."  (My emphasis).

So doctors are claiming that they have not been made aware of the side effects of antidepressant drugs, even though I was blogging about their dangers over 5 years ago! The evidence about the harm antidepressant drugs cause has been around for a very long time, but as usual the conventional medical establishment,has met this evidence by ignoring and denying it.

Indeed, the situation has been more than just 'ignored' or 'denied'. Prescriptions for antidepressant drugs for children rose 54% between 2005 and 2012 in the UK. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in early 2016 that it was very concerned by the rise in use of antidepressants in children in particular, both in the UK and other countries which it said was ‘not justified’. Prescriptions had increased 60% in Denmark, 49% in Germany, 26% in the USA, and 17% in The Netherlands.

And the hospital consultant then raises another issue, specifically about SSRI antidepressants, that doctors are are using these drugs "as part of the Ministry of Justice's on-going program to roll out a voluntary chemical castration program for certain categories of convicted sex offenders".

               "Two types of medication are available to treat sex offenders. The first are known as SSRIs -commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. They help govern activities such as eating, sleeping and sexual activity".

So this is what we are being asked to believe by the conventional medical establishment.

• The nasty side effects of antidepressant drugs have been known about for many decades, but they have been ignored and denied, and doctors have not been told.
• The prescription of antidepressant drugs, with their nasty side effects, has grown exponentially, especially in the last 20 years, including young, vulnerable children and young people.
• Doctors, one part of the conventional medical establishment, who have prescribed these drugs, now claim in their defence that they were unaware of their nasty side effects.
• Conversely, other doctors, involved in the management of convicted sex offenders, themselves part of the same conventional medical establishment, DID know about the nasty side effects of antidepressant drugs. Indeed, they are knowingly and intentionally using them to produce one of the nasty side effects!

There is a stunning duplicity of the most serious kind, bordering on criminality, here. People with depression have been given antidepressant drugs by doctors who now claim they have not been made aware they can cause chemical castration. So innocent patients have not been told. Even if this was so it points to unacceptable professional incompetence, and gross negligence.

On the other hand, convicted sex offenders are given antidepressant drugs by doctors who are quite aware that they can cause chemical castration. I wonder if these patients are aware of the intention of their doctors? I wonder if the criminal justice system is aware of what they are doing?

Now, let's have a show of hands. 

Who trusts the conventional medical establishment?

Who wants to entrust their health to conventional doctors?

Vaccine Consent. Should I vaccinate, or should I just say 'No'? Or should I ask my doctor to take responsibility for their safety?

Many people continue to face the dilemma - should I vaccinate or should I just say 'No'.

On the one hand, conventional medicine tells us that vaccines are 'entirely safe' and harm no-one, governments and national health services around the world routinely offer vaccines to us, our doctors sit in front of us, confirming that vaccines are safe, and beneficial, and necessary, and the media complies entirely with the message.

On the other hand, people continue to hear about people who have apparently suffered from vaccines, babies following the plethora of childhood vaccinations, teenagers following the HPT (Gardasil) vaccine, and adults, especially after the flu vaccine. Perhaps it is their friends, or family, or work colleagues who tell them about this. Or someone raising money for a child who has suffered a disability after receiving a vaccination. We are told, of course, that the vaccine was not the cause, and anyway these stories are rarely carried on the mainstream media.

Then people hear about vaccine injury settlements, especially in the USA with their 'Vaccine Court'. The federal government has paid out over $3 billion in awards and legal fees for families and persons that have been affected by vaccine damage between the years of 1989 and 2015. In total, 3,937 cases have resulted in the awarding of financial compensation via the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). So if vaccines are entirely safe, why is so much money spent on compensation for vaccine injury? In addition, we hear that these hefty settlements are funded by government, not by the pharmaceutical industry, who have been given 'immunity'. Why is such an arrangement with drug companies necessary? And why is tax-payer money being used for this purpose, if vaccines are entirely safe, and harm no-one as we are told?

Indemnifying conventional medical staff is becoming a significant problem in Britain too, I have written about it several times before. Our doctors are saying that unless the government pays for their indemnity insurance, they may no longer be able to practice. Why is their indemnity insurance premiums rising  to such unaffordable levels? Is it because the drugs and vaccines they are giving to their patients are causing harm? Surely not!

So perhaps some people are even relieved when, throughout the world (Italy, France, Germany, the USA, Australia, et al), mandatory vaccination is being introduced. At least it takes choice away from us, we no longer have to face the dilemma. If we want to receive child benefit, or for our child to attend a nursery, or indeed school, the government will insist the children are fully vaccinated.

But hold on. If vaccines are entirely safe, if they do not harm anyone, if they bring with them so many benefits, why should the government need to make vaccination mandatory? Should it not rather be barricading the doors of surgeries, pharmacies and hospitals against the stampede for vaccines? Why is it necessary force us to do something that is so obviously good for us?

Yet it is easier to just go along with the flow, to vaccinate, and keep our fingers crossed that our doctors, and the conventional medical establishment, are right. It is uncomfortable to say 'No', especially when we are not experts in the subject. It is difficult to withstand the pressure to vaccinate. If I say 'No', will I really be undermining 'herd immunity'? Am I placing myself, or my child, at risk of dreadful killer diseases if I don't vaccinate. Is there really any sensible alternative?

Well yes, there is! Why don't we ask our doctors to take on the responsibility. After all, it is THEY who are putting us under pressure to take THEIR vaccines. If it was anything else we were buying, a car, a washing machine, a holiday, a meal, our weekly shop, we would expect some degree of responsibility to be taken by the seller.

So, how about agreeing to vaccinate IF our doctor confirms to us, in writing, that the vaccine we are  being offered is, indeed, 'entirely safe'. After all, it only what we are told, so that should not be difficult to do, not too much to ask. I have seen many such draft consent forms. This is one of them (I am not sure of the source). It appears to do the job. What do you think about it?

Vaccination Consent Form

Names of Vaccine: .....................

I hereby give my consent to my child ..... (name)..... being vaccinated with the above vaccine subject to the following conditions:

1. That the patient information booklet which has been supplied with the vaccine is fully accurate, both as to the safety and the efficacy of the above-mentioned vaccine.

2. That the person ..... (name of doctor or nurse).... performing the vaccination, the Health Authority, the manufacturers of the above mentioned vaccine, and the Department of Health will accept full joint and several responsibility for any injury caused to my child as a result of the above mentioned vaccine being administered.

3. That in the event of any such injury being caused, my child will receive full compensation, assessed in accordance with the normal principles of English Tort Law.

If these conditions are not acceptable, the vaccination should not take place.

....1st Parents signature......
....2nd Parents signature.....

Date:

The Australian Report (on homeopathy). A travesty of evidence and science!

I commented in my last blog that conventional medical doctors are often in denial. They tell us that their drugs and vaccines are safe, even though they might have some 'minor side' effects. They deny the effectiveness of homeopathy. Both are denials that causes so much patient harm.

Yet it is not just denial. The conventional medical establishment, led by the powerful pharmaceutical industry, is frequently found to be openly attacking any medical therapy that is an alternative to its dominance, its monopoly of national health services, anywhere in the world.

What is happening in Australia at present is not only illustrative of these attacks,but  it shows the depths to which Big Pharma is prepared to plummet, the lies it is prepared to tell, the facts it is prepared to cover up, and the medical science it is prepared to undermine and taint in doing so.

Particular thanks has to be given to the Homeopathy Research Institute (HRI) in uncovering the the true depth to which conventional medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry, is prepared to sink in order to attack homeopathy. So their article on 'The Australian Report' is the basis for much of this blog.

In March 2015, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) published an 'Information Paper' on homeopathy, often referred to as ‘The Australian Report’, which concluded:

               “…there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”.

This finding was sufficient to trigger headlines around the world, written by a compliant, pharma friendly media, that the NHMRC had found that homeopathy does not work for any condition.

This was not the first report to make such a claim, and with conventional medicine failing to cope with the epidemics of chronic disease around the world, and the pharmaceutical companies failing to come up with new drugs or vaccines that are either safe or effective, it is not likely be the last. 

What is significant about the Australian Report total disregard conventional medicine, and its apologists, has for the integrity of medical science. Following an extensive and detailed investigation, of the Report, the HRI was able to reveal "evidence of serious procedural and scientific misconduct in producing this report", and it was able to outline these key facts about the Australian Report.

• NHMRC did the homeopathy review twice, producing two reports, one in July 2012 and the one released to the public in March 2015.
• The existence of the first report has never been disclosed to the public. It was only discovered by AHA through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
• NHMRC say they rejected the first report because it was poor quality despite it being undertaken by a reputable scientist and author of NHMRC’s own guidelines on how to conduct evidence reviews.
• FOI requests have revealed that a member of NHMRC’s expert committee overseeing the review process, Professor Fred Mendelsohn, confirmed the first review to be high quality.  saying,  “I am impressed by the rigor, thoroughness and systematic approach given to this evaluation of the published reviews of efficacy and side effects of homeopathy [….] Overall, a lot of excellent work has gone into this review and the results are presented in a systematic, unbiased and convincing manner.” 
• NHMRC said the results of the report published in 2015 were based on a “rigorous assessment of over 1800 studies”. In fact results were based on only 176 studies.
• NHMRC used a method that has never been used in any other review, before or since. NHMRC decided that for trials to be ‘reliable’ they had to have at least 150 participants and reach an unusually high threshold for quality. This is despite the fact that NHMRC itself routinely conducts studies with less than 150 participants.
• These unprecedented and arbitrary rules meant the results of 171 of the trials were completely disregarded as being ‘unreliable’ leaving only 5 trials NHMRC considered to be ‘reliable’. As they assessed all 5 of these trials as negative, this explains how NHMRC could conclude that there was no ‘reliable’ evidence.
• Professor Peter Brooks, Chair of the NHMRC committee that conducted the 2015 review, initially failed to declare that he was a member of the anti-homeopathy lobby group ‘Friends of Science in Medicine’.
• In violation of NHMRC’s own guidelines there was not one homeopathy expert on the committee.

So, as a result, in August 2016, the HRI’s in-depth scientific analysis became part of a submission of complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, brought by Complementary Medicines Australia, the Australian Homoeopathic Association, and the Australian Traditional Medicine Society. This is what Rachel Roberts, Chief Executive of HRI said about the report, and the reason for the complaint.

               “NHMRC’s review is just bad science. Decision-makers and the scientific community rely on these kinds of reports and need to trust their accuracy. This is not about anyone’s personal opinion as to whether homeopathy works or not. It is about the importance of evidence being reported objectively, whatever it says, and the NHMRC did not do that.”

This is something that has rarely happened with so-called official reports on homeopathy.The full HRI analysis goes into some 60 pages, which cannot be shared whilst the complaint is ongoing, but the data provided details that demonstrated the spuriousness of the science used.

• Use of an inappropriate scientific method
• Failure to use standardised, accepted methods
• Failure to obtain sufficiently accurate data to perform a meaningful review
• Failure to conduct an effective preliminary and public consultation
• Significant post-hoc changes to the research protocol
• Impact of NHMRC’s unusual method on the review results
• Further evidence of bias and misreporting
• Poor reporting – lack of clarity, inconsistencies and errors
• Evidence that this was a case of deliberate bias, not scientific error.

So it would appear that most of these failings are not too different from the failings of the pharmaceutical industry when conducting its research into new pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines! Rachel Roberts is quoted as saying, in the HRI article.

               “The public has a right to know that there are high quality studies showing homeopathy works for some medical conditions, such as hay fever, sinusitis and diarrhoea in children – information that was lost only due to NHMRC’s mishandling of the evidence. If the evidence on conventional medicine was treated this way there would be an outcry - and rightly so. NHMRC’s job was to accurately summarise the body of evidence for homeopathy for the public, a task in which they categorically failed.”

So, I hear you ask, what happened to the first NHMRC report into homeopathy? NHMRC initially worked with an external contractor, from April 2012 to August 2012, in order to produce a review of the evidence on Homeopathy to inform the Australian public. It was called "A Systematic Review of the Evidence on the Effectiveness of Homeopathy" but was never made public. Moreover, NHMRC continue to refuse to release it, despite repeated Freedom of Information requests. What is known is that the contract with the first review team was terminated. It seems likely that they did not come up with the 'correct' result! The new external contractor, OptumInsight, was more 'successful', although it required over two years, from December 2012 to March 2015, to manipulate and overcome the evidence!

In criticising the accuracy of the Australia Report, HRI discovered that it was not alone. HRI states that FOI requests brought to light that two independent experts also raised concerns over the conclusions of the 2015 report, as part of its peer review process, prior to final publication. Apparently the Australasian Cochrane Centre commented that “...'no reliable evidence’ does not seem an accurate reflection of the body of evidence”. Similarly; a second expert felt “uncertain of the definitive nature of the Report’s conclusions”. 

Yet despite this, as the HRI states, NHMRC chose not to act on this feedback. They did not amend their conclusions. These experts, too, had failed to come to the 'right' conclusion, the conclusion required by NHMRC! They had failed to understand that this was not really a discussion document. A firm negative conclusions was required that proved the ineffectiveness of homeopathy, and nothing would be allowed to stand in the way of this - certainly not science!

The Australian Report was designed to provide a conclusive, but hopelessly unscientific summary of the findings of a review of systematic reviews. The HRI seeks to explain their mistake, that they confused ‘lack of evidence of effect’ with ‘evidence of a lack of effect’. They say that the Report’s conclusion, that there is ‘no reliable evidence’ that homeopathy works, was 'widely misunderstood', with people believing it meant that the NHMRC had found that homeopathy did not work, and that this misunderstanding triggered the widespread media coverage, "propagating the inaccurate story that the NHMRC found homeopathy to be no better than placebo for all the conditions." The HRI goes on to explain that the scientific analysis had revealed multiple examples of bias and misreporting, and that this explained how NHMRC arrived at such a definitive and negative position, at odds with the conclusions of the majority of other more academically rigorous systematic reviews and meta-analyses on homeopathy. It continued

               "Most crucially, NHMRC’s findings hinge primarily on their definition of reliable evidence: for a trial to be deemed ‘reliable’ it had to have at least 150 participants and a quality score of 5/5 on the Jadad scale (or equivalent on other scales). Trials that failed to meet either of these criteria were dismissed as being of ‘insufficient quality and/or size to warrant further consideration of their findings’. Setting such a high quality threshold is very unusual, but the N=150 minimum sample size criterion is arbitrary, without scientific justification, and unprecedented in evidence reviews."

               "Out of 176 individual studies the NHMRC included in the homeopathy review, only 5 trials met their definition of ‘reliable‘, none of which, according to their analysis, demonstrated effectiveness of homeopathy. This explains why NHMRC concluded there is ‘no reliable evidence’ that homeopathy is effective. For context it is worth remembering that if it was indeed the case that ‘no reliable evidence’ existed for homeopathy, it would put homeopathy in the same evidence category (“unknown effectiveness”) as 46% of conventional treatments used in the NHS, but in fact this conclusion is inaccurate."

It was magnanimous of HRI to try to explain what NHMRC may have done to get their conclusion so wrong! It is quite possible to come to a less favourable interpretation about what has happened, and what the Australian Report represents. It is this.

There was no 'confusion' in what they did, there was no 'mistake' made in the criteria selected. The report was written and published by a group of people, all within the conventional medical establishment, and what they did, what they said in the report, was what they fully intended to say, quite regardless of the evidence. It was a malignly crafted Report that was intended to be exactly what it was - another hostile, gratuitous attack on homeopathy. It purposely aimed to discredit a rival medical therapy, one that is seen increasingly to be a threat to the dominance of pharmaceutical interests.

Yet the HRI is correct in it final remark about the Australian Report, one it has arrived at as a result of many years of tireless scientific work. So I will give them the final say, and emphasise it.

               "Contrary to NHMRC’s findings, there are ‘good quality, well-designed studies with enough participants for a meaningful result‘ ... which show that certain homeopathic treatments are effective for certain conditions such as hay fever, sinusitis, upper respiratory tract infections, diarrhoea in children and lower back pain. The fact that the results of such studies were unjustifiably dismissed means that NHMRC have misled the public by misreporting the evidence for effectiveness of homeopathy."

I was well before my doctor prescribed drugs for me! And I am better now I have stopped taking them!

Phyllis (not her real name) is a good friend, older than us, she is now well into her 80's. Only a few months ago we commented on how well she was for her age. She told us that she had never had a serious illness in her life, except for glaucoma, for which she had regularly taken eye drops. She is a meticulous woman, tidy, organised and efficient. As a homeopath I always smiled; if she was ever ill I would think first of the remedy Arsenicum Album! Indeed, she also had another typical Arsenicum feature, she was anxious, she was a worrier, she worried about everything, especially her health. She would, perhaps, been a hypochondriac, except that she really did not have much to worry about on that score! Yet, this was nearly her undoing.

A few months ago she went to see her doctor. She had a pain in her arms, not really a pain she said, more a sensation really. The doctor agreed to do some tests. Then, as she was leaving, she mentioned her high blood pressure, and showed the doctor the figures she had taken with her home blood-pressure gadget. Typically Arsenicum! Not only did she have a blood pressure machine at home, she took readings regularly, and was sufficiently organised to have the readings with her when she went to visit the doctor!

This was how it all began. The doctor said the readings were high, and prescribed her a drug to lower it. Initially Phyllis said she did not want to take drugs. But the doctor asked if she would prefer to have a stroke, and this frightened her sufficiently to agree to take them.

I was immediately concerned, although Phyllis would never consult with a homeopath. She did not believe in that sort of thing! Earlier, in conversation, I had told my 'Arsenicum' friend that some people had higher blood pressure than others, that worrying about blood pressure was in itself a bad thing, and that she (and many other people) had probably lived with what conventional medicine believes to be 'high' blood pressure for most of her life!

When I heard that her doctor had given her Amiodipine, a calcium channel blocker used to treat high blood pressure (hypertension) to prevent stroke and heart attacks I commented that this was typical of the 'medicine by numbers' so often practised by conventional medicine, and that I doubted whether she needed it. Yet it is difficult to persuade an Arsenicum about anything that lies outside their own particular beliefs. So I warned her to be careful, to watch carefully for the well known side effects of the drug. These are many and varied. I told her what they were.

The next few months were difficult for all her friends. Initially she lost her appetite, she had a bad taste in her mouth, and her stomach was upset. So she returned to her doctor who prescribed Omeprozole, a proton pump inhibitor that decreases the amount of acid produced in the stomach.

I rolled my eyes, out loud! One drug leading to another drug to deal with the problems created by the first. I told her about the serious side effects proton inhibitor drugs were known to cause. They are many and varied! I told her what there were.

The situation became worse as the weeks progressed. She could not sleep, which of course she worried about. And eventually she became severely depressed. Actually, at times she became quite unbearable! She had always been eccentric, always very much her own person. Now, at times, she became intolerable, even her best friends despaired.

Phyllis returned to the doctor, who listened to what she said, and told her to stop taking the drugs. She did so, indeed she was happy to do so, and within a few days she soon returned to her normal self. Thank goodness! Or, perhaps, thank her doctor. Phyllis was fortunate, indeed, that she had a doctor who, rather than denying the link with pharmaceutical drugs, drew back from the multiple drug route that leads so often to serious ill-health and death. Phyllis would not have listened to anyone except for her doctor, who she trusted, implicitly.

Yet this is what happens to so many fit and health people. Although essentially well, they go to the doctor with a minor ailment, for which they are routinely prescribed a pharmaceutical drug. The side effects of the drug are experienced, in one way or another, and the association with the drug is either not recognised, or it is routinely denied. The conventional medical establishment is always in denial! So more pharmaceutical drugs are prescribed in order to deal with the side effects of other pharmaceutical drugs! Yet these new drugs also have serious side effects, and soon the patient is taking a cocktail of drugs, which proceed to cause a multitude of illnesses.

In a short time the patient becomes very unwell. For the patient this is seen as bad luck. For too many doctors it cannot be the drugs causing the problem, so it must be the natural consequence of old age!

If patients are ever to be safe, it is important that we all  begin to examine how our illnesses and diseases have been caused. It is rarely, if ever bad luck. It is often poor nutrition, and our diet generally. It is sometimes the result of our sedentary life style, and lack of exercise. It can be caused by many other lifestyle factors. It can certainly be caused by stress. Yet in this age of science and technology it is increasingly obvious that the petro-chemicals that now play an important part of our lives, and which pollute the environment we live in, are seriously implicated as a major cause of ill-health.

Foremost amongst these new technologies, which are known to cause sickness and disease, are pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. The more we have consumed them during the last 100 years, the more we have experienced epidemic levels of diseases, such as ADHD, allergy, dementia, arthritis, asthma, birth defects, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, a whole multitude of autoimmune diseases, and mental health disorders; and so many 'new' diseases, such as autism, Crohns, chronic fatigue, Parkinsons, and many others.

If we want to understand why we are unwell, why we are sick and suffer from disease, we need to appreciate the role that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines now play in creating ill-health and disease. It has become a major cause

For more specific information about how pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to cause illness and disease, go to this link, "The disease inducing effects of drugs and vaccines".

Indemnity. What happens when doctors harm patients? (3)

I have written about the issue of medical indemnity on several previous occasions (do a search on 'indemnity' on top right hand side of this page). It is a burning issue for conventional medicine, and the situation is moving on rapidly.

Indemnity insurance enables doctors to harm patients without facing the full financial consequences of doing so.  For the conventional medical establishment this is important; after all, they are dealing with dangerous drugs and vaccines every day. Doctors give them to patients on the basis that they are safe, in the full knowledge that they are not only unsafe, but cause diseases far worse than the conditions for which they are prescribed, and will actually kill a certain percentage.

So it is little wonder that patients get angry, and sue doctors for damages caused to their health by 'medicines' that were supposed to make them better.

As my previous blogs outline, doctors within the British NHS are finding indemnity insurance premiums to be too high for them to pay. Now, we are being told that doctors are in urgent talks with the government as indemnity costs are making general practice 'untenable'. This has been reported in the GP e-magazine, Pulse, on 31st July 2017. In this, the chair of the BMA GP Committee, Dr Richard Vautrey, has said that the increases in litigation costs for defence organisations this year were ‘significantly increased’.

There is, of course, only one reason for insurance payments to rise. There are more damaged patients suing more doctors who have given them dangerous drugs and vaccines!

The consequence, according to Dr Vautrey, is mass GP list closures. He told Pulse:

               "We need to ensure that every doctor ...... needs confidence that they’ve got the indemnity to be able to work. Whether in an out-of-hours setting, extended hours, in a practices doing locum sessions without the worry of indemnity costs. We’ve made it very clear to the Department of Health, even in the last few days, that this has to happen quickly. Because there is a real risk that medical defence organisations will be forced to put up their rates to a level that will make it untenable for many GPs to work, or to do the number of sessions that they were able to do."

Vautrey said that this was despite the fact that in recent months doctors had secured reimbursement for the inflationary rises in indemnity this year and last, but this will not cover for the latest increase.

What this means is that OUR government is using OUR money to support conventional doctors prescribing pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that harm US, and kill US - in ever-increasing numbers!

This is not the only indemnity arrangement. Indemnity is given by many governments directly to pharmaceutical companies to indemnify them against the harm they do to patients (their citizens), especially with regard to vaccine injury. In the USA, for instance, the federal government has given drug companies the right to harm patients by compensate damaged patients via the Vaccine Injury Court, totally paid for by the USA taxpayer! And this kind of cosy arrangement happens throughout most of the world.

It is a conspiracy against both patients, and taxpayers!

Who gains from this conspiracy? Certainly not patients, who suffer the harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and then pay for their injuries through the taxes they pay. Certainly not governments, who are being bled dry by medical insurance schemes throughout the world, dominated as they are by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that do not work, and cause us injury.

The profits of drug companies, however, are massively supported by government indemnity arrangements. They can develop dangerous drugs and vaccines without being overly concerned about the consequences to patients, and with the added assurance that their main salesmen (our doctors) will not suffer by prescribing dangerous 'medicines' to us.

Postscript
UK government makes a pledge to doctors. We will protect you from harming patients with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. 

Health. A surge of honesty in the mainstream media?

Is the mainstream media experiencing a surge of honesty when dealing with health issues, and particular about pharmaceutical drugs? Such is the dishonesty we have been subject to during the last 15-20 years such a thing may seem too good to be true. But in recent days, three matters have come to my notice.

A BBC Panarama programme called "A prescription for murder" was broadcast on 26th July 2017. Expecting little better from our so-called 'public broadcaster' I watched the programme with little expectation that they would do anything else than support the pharmaceutical line. But to my surprise it dealt with a serious problem seriously, and did not absolve SSRI antidepressant drugs from blame. The programme suggested that SSRI antidepressant drugs could cause violence, and that they were implicated in several mass shootings in America. The question had been seriously addressed and investigated, and there was some balance, even fairness, in the broadcast. Doctors from both sides of the argument were interviewed, and it seemed to be a genuine effort to delve into whether these pharmaceutical drugs did cause violence, and in particular whether they were implicated in the mass shooting at a Colorado cinema in July 2012.

It is a programme that the BBC, and the rest of the mainstream media, could and should have been producing and drawing attention to many years ago. I have written about it several times.

• January 2011. Violence and Drugs
• February 2011. Violence and Pharma Drugs
• February 2012. Failure of ConMed (12). Antidepressants

If the BBC had been prepared to be honest and critical at that time, the 2012 shooting they focused on might have been prevented, alongside many others that have happened subsequently!

Then there was the Mail Online article, MMR - The Truth, published on 27th July 2017, which not only re-examined the link between the MMR vaccine and Autism, a link denied by conventional medicine, and the mainstream media, for over 20 years, but the role of Dr Andrew Wakefield, whose position is rapidly being vindicated. So why is the Vaccine-Autism link suddenly being revived now. after two decades of denial and censorship?

Even the Natural News website is asking the same question when it observed that the 'Mainstream media is finally starting to cover stories about FOOD CURES working better than prescription drugs'. Why indeed? What are the reasons for this sudden surge of honesty in the mainstream media about the limited value, and the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs? Have news outlets suddenly forgotten who is paying for their bills? Or is this just a temporary aberration? And will they soon be brought back into line by the financial might of the pharmaceutical industry?

Maybe, but maybe not. In a recent blog I pointed out that the BBC, and the mainstream media generally, had a lot of questions to answer, "questions that will become increasingly important to people as the real harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs becomes more obvious, and conventional medicine becomes completely indefensible", and also suggested the consequences of the media continuing to deny the truth about what has been happening to our health. In particular, I asked the following,

• how many people have taken pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines because they have not been made aware of the dangers?
• how many people have taken conventional medication for illness for years in the belief that it would make them better - because no-one has ever questioned this assumption?
• how many people have suffered the side effects, adverse reactions, and really the illness and disease, that are being caused by pharmaceutical medicine?

I predicted that the failure to tell people about the serious harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs for 20 years and more might eventually rebound on the media.

               "how many of these people can rightly accuse the mainstream media that they are seriously ill, or that their friends and relatives have died, because the media has failed to question or investigate the dishonest and fraudulent practices of the pharmaceutical industry?"

Perhaps this is what is now happening. The media are beginning to recognise that conventional medicine, based on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, is no longer defensible, no longer credible, that media censorship will ultimately result in people holding them accountable for not doing what they should be doing - honestly informing people about health, how conventional medicine is failing, and how the pharmaceutical industry has been damaging our health for decades.

So the media is culpable. If, for example, the link between the MMR vaccine and Autism has been covered up for over 20 years, people will want to know why they have not been told the truth. They will certainly blame the drug companies, and the doctors who have prescribed disease-inducing drugs. But they will also, quite rightly, blame the mainstream media, for their silence, their support of the pharmaceutical industry, their censorship of health issues.

How many people would still be alive, and/or healthier today, were it not for conventional medicine, media silence, and the unquestioning faith we have given pharmaceutical drugs.

For the media, honesty about such matters now represents self-interest. Actually, it probably always has done so. But even a too late conversion is better than no conversion at all!

How the NHS owes Homeopathy - every day! A case of mucocele.

A homeopath-colleague has told me about a condition she has treated recently. Her son developed a Mucocele. This NHS website describes the condition as follows.

               "A salivary mucocele is a cyst that arises in connection with minor salivary glands. They are common and are usually superficial. Mucoceles mainly appear in the lip but can also occur in cheeks and the floor and roof of the mouth. They appear as a bluish/translucent swelling just under the lining of the mouth. They may have a history of bursting, collapsing then refilling which may be repeated."

The mucocele was diagnosed, and my colleague treated it, trying several different remedies, all without success. As the NHS website says, "if the mucocele is small and doesn't cause any problems it can be left alone with no surgical intervention", but in this case it was neither small or problem-free, so eventually the dentist referred the case on in order to have it removed surgically, which apparently is "the treatment of choice" in conventional medicine.

However, before the operation happened my colleague tried another remedy. It had an immediate effect. This is how she described it.

                "The next morning the Mucocele was a baggy sack, like it had drained from the inside. By the end of the week, his lip was looking normal, no swelling what so ever. He has cancelled his operation. All I can say is thank God it takes the NHS so long to offer help, it gave us time to get rid of a very ugly looking lip. It will be interesting to see what his dentist has to say about this on the next visit, as she was the person that referred him for an operation."

On the surface, this is a simple, straightforward event. A mucocele was diagnosed, and an operation was planned. But when a good homeopathic remedy was found for the condition it was quickly and effectively cured, and the operation cancelled.

Homeopathy is under attack by the NHS at the moment. They want to ban it because, as they have regularly stated during the last 10-15 years, 

               "NHS England’s view is that, at best, homeopathy is a placebo and a misuse of scarce NHS funds which could better be devoted to treatments that work."

This story is just one, small example, of how homeopathy DOES work. It is replicated day after day, with conditions more serious, and less serious than this one. So, first of all, the NHS (dominated as it is by the pharmaceutical industry) is wrong! Homeopathy is far more than placebo. If homeopathy was placebo the patient would have been cured with the first remedy, not the third or fourth one he was given!

Yet, more importantly, homeopathy worked to cure a nasty mucocele with a simple remedy, and so an operation was not required. How much money has the NHS saved because of that one simple remedy? How much is the NHS in debt to homeopathy?

I don't know the answer, but it will no doubt run into £1000's. My recent blog calculated that the NHS were complaining that they spend £115,000 on homeopathy each year. Not many mucocele operations have to be saved in order to repay that amount! And homeopaths are doing this every day with thousands of patients with hundred's of conditions.

Yet the situation is probably worse than this as far as patients are concerned. Predictably, the NHS will fail to ask other, more fundamental questions about this situation.

• Is the NHS aware how the cure happened, is it interested?

• Has the NHS bothered to ask how the cure was done, so that future patients can benefit similarly, without the need for an expensive and intrusive operation?

• Has the NHS offered its thanks and congratulations to homeopathy for the cure?

• Or will the NHS continue to attack Homeopathy, saying it is little more than placebo, and continue to say that money spent on homeopathy is a waste of taxpayers money?

It is not just a lack of gratitude that causes this lack of NHS interest and insight. It is the vested interests of the pharmaceutical industry, and an NHS that is almost entirely dominated by pharma drugs and vaccines, and a conventional medical establishment protecting its vested interests. They are unable to admit that homeopathy is safer, more effective, and above all, less expensive than conventional medicine.