Homeopathy can reverse cancer. It is much more than placebo!

This article has been taken from the magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You" (WDDTY), and was published on 26th  February 2018. They asked for it to be disseminated as widely as possible - and reproducing it here is my contribution to this.

It is, indeed, important information that every cancer patient should know.

Conventional medical treatment is dreadful - chemotherapy, radiotherapy and invasive surgery - and it is important for everyone to be aware that these are not the only treatment available - that homeopathic treatment is more effective, considerably safer, and far kinder.

Doctors call it ’nonsense on stilts’; professors of medicine have been bullying government and health authorities to stop offering it on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and yet studies paid for by the US government are showing that homeopathy could be our best defence against cancer. Several homeopathic remedies are as effective as powerful chemotherapy, according to clinical trials, and thousands of cancer cases are being reversed by homeopathy alone.

The extraordinary success of homeopathy remedies which are diluted hundreds of times against the most dreaded of diseases is being demonstrated every day at several homeopathic clinics in Kolkata (Calcutta) in India.

In one review of the work at the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, 21,888 patients with malignant tumours were treated only with homeopathy; they had neither chemotherapy nor radiotherapy between 1990 and 2005. Clinical reports reveal that the tumours completely regressed in 19 per cent or 4158 of cases, and stabilized or improved in a further 21 per cent (4596) of patients. Those whose tumours had stabilized were followed for between two and 10 years afterwards to monitor the improvement (Banerji, 2008).

This suggests that homeopathic remedies on their own are reversing, or certainly stabilizing, 40 per cent of all cancers, a success rate that matches the best results for conventional medicine, and without the debilitating effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The foundation’s homeopathic therapy, ’the Banerji Protocol’, has been independently tested under laboratory conditions, and two of the remedies used, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, were found to be as effective against breast cancer cells as the chemotherapy drug Taxol (Int J Oncol, 2010; 36: 395403).

All of the remedies used at the foundation are available in shops, and Ruta 6 is one of several regularly prescribed. The Protocol refers to the foundations use of high-technology screening equipment and the mix of remedies two practices that are contrary to Classical Homeopathy, which attempts to prescribe one precise remedy that fits with an individual’s mind/body profile.

Another clinic in Kolkata, the Advanced Homeopathic Healthcare Centre, claims similar levels of success with its cancer patients and, although well documented, they have not been subjected to the same level of scientific validation as the Prasanta Banerji Foundation.

Getting noticed

The work at the Banerji Foundation first came to the attention of the West in 1995 when Dr Prasanta Banerji and his son, Dr Pratip Banerji, presented a study at the 5th International Conference of Anticancer Research of 16 cases of brain tumour that had regressed, using only homeopathic remedies. At the time, they had been testing homeopathic remedies on cancer patients since 1992 at their Foundation, and they say they now treat around 120 cancer patients every day.

Dr Sen Pathak, professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston, approached the Banerjis and, together, they set up a trial to test two homeopathic remedies, Ruta 6 and Calcarea Phosphorica 3X, on 15 patients with brain tumours. Six of the seven patients with gliomas, a type of brain cancer, had complete regression.In an accompanying in vitro laboratory study, scientists noticed that the remedies induced death-signalling pathways in the cancer cells (Int J Oncol, 2003; 23: 97582).

The result is astonishing. Gliomas are considered to be incurable; of 10,000 people diagnosed with malignant gliomas each year in the US alone, only around half are alive a year later, and just 25 per cent two years later (The Washington Post, 20 May 2008).

The scientists at MDACC were so impressed by the results that they started to offer homeopathic remedies as part of their range of cancer treatments.

In 1999, the US governments National Cancer Institute (NCI) independently evaluated the Banerji Protocol on 10 patients with different kinds of cancers. In four cases of lung and oesophageal cancer, the NCI researchers confirmed that there had been partial responses to the homeopathic remedies. None of the patients had received any previous conventional cancer treatment.

The NCI concluded that there was sufficient evidence of efficacy to support further research into the protocol, an historic decision as it marked the first time that any official health institute in the US had worked with an alternative therapy for cancer treatment (Oncol Rep, 2008; 20: 6974).

 

In the laboratory

To understand the mechanism of the homeopathic remedies on cancer cells, eight scientists from MDACC tested four remedies, Carcinosin 30C, Conium Maculatum 3C, Phytolacca Decandra 200C and Thuja Occidentalis 30C on two human breast-cancer cell lines. Around 5000 cells were exposed to the remedies and to a placebo, the solvent without the active ingredients of the remedies, for periods of between one and four days. The experiment was repeated three times.

Two of the remedies, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, achieved up to an 80 per cent response, indicating that they caused apoptosis, or cell death. By comparison, the placebo solvent achieved only a 30 per cent reduction, suggesting that the effect was more than twice that of the placebo.

Also, the effect was strongest with the greater dilution which, in the contrary world of homeopathic medicine, means more powerful and for longer periods of exposure.

The remedies triggered an apoptotic cascade that interfered with the cancer cells normal growth cycle and, yet, the surrounding healthy cells were untouched, the researchers found. In other words, they targeted only the cancer cells, whereas chemo-therapy drugs attack all growing cells. And, say the researchers, the effects of Carcinosin and Phytolacca were as powerful as Taxol (paclitaxel), the most commonly prescribed chemother-apy drug for breast cancer (Int J Oncol, 2010; 36: 395403).

Rooting for Ruta

Although Carcinosin and Phytolacca fared well in the laboratory, many of the Foundations patients are taking the Ruta 6 remedy and with extraordinary success, according to one survey of 127 American patients with brain tumours, half of whom were at grade IV, the end-stage before death.

The tumours had completely disappeared, according to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, in 18 of the 127 patients who were taking only Ruta and no conventional treatment. Another nine patients had significant tumour regression. The tumours were stable in around half of all patients scanned, but had grown in around 27 patients. Overall, around 79 per cent of the brain-tumour patients surveyed saw either great or some benefit from Ruta.

In an earlier study by the Foundation among patients who were taking Ruta alongside conventional chemotherapy for brain tumours, 72 per cent derived some or great benefit from Ruta and chemotherapy combined, suggesting that Ruta on its own is more effective than, or certainly as effective as, the drug, and without its debilitating side-effects (http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Ruta6).

In a separate study of brain-tumour cases, 148 patients with malignant gliomas and 144 with meningiomas treated at the Foundation between 1996 and 2001, the 91 patients who had been treated exclusively with Ruta and Calc Phos had an average survival time of 92 months, whereas 11 patients who had been treated conventionally, and used homeopathy as a supplement, survived for 20 months. In addition, 7 per cent of the homeopathy-only patients had a complete cure, 60 per cent were improved, 22 per cent were stable with the cancer neither improving nor worsening and 11 per cent saw their cancer worsen, or die (Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, www.pbhrfindia.org).

The other clinic

There is a second homeopathic clinic in Kolkata that is, confusingly, also run by two P. Banerjis, Parimal and his son Paramesh. The clinic, the Advanced Homeopathic Health-care Centre, has not attracted the same interest from the West; although its claims appear to be equally as impressive, they have not been independently verified.

Parameshs grandfather, Dr Pareshnath Banerji, opened a homeopathic clinic in India in 1918, and his work was continued by his son, Parimal, who adapted Classical Homeopathy into the new approach he calls Advanced Homeopathy.

With this method, he uses homeopathic remedies in the way a conventional doctor would use drugs, by treating one presenting symptom at a time; a cancer patient with pain would be treated for the pain first, for example. Parimal claims the approach is scientific, based on around 14 million cases dealt with through past generations of his family, with results that can be replicated by any trained practitioner.

The claims that the Banerjis make for Advanced Homeopathy are extraordinary. They say that 95 per cent of their patients do not need surgery, not even for major diseases, including cancer. Although the Centre has not undertaken any clinical trials, its case studies draw an impressive picture.

• A 65-year-old woman with advanced pancreatic cancer, whose tumour was too large to be removed and who refused all other conventional treatment, was alive two years after starting Advanced Homeopathy.
• A 35-year-old man had a malignant nasal polyp so large that it completely filled the left nostril. Initially, he had the polyp surgically removed, but it grew back each time. However, since 2007, he has not had any surgery but, instead, has relied exclusively on Advanced Homeopathy, and the tumour has not grown back.
• A 14-year-old boy had advanced glioma so severe that it was pushing against the eyeball. His only treatment was Advanced Homeopathy, says the Centre and, within a year, all of his symptoms had disappeared; the boy had gone from a comatose state to running around and playing.
• A 24-year-old man with a brain tumour that had spread to his spinal cordwhich could not be treated conventionally because of the risk of permanent paralysiswas treated with Advanced Homeopathy. According to MRI scans, the tumour stopped growing, and the patient was able to carry on with his life, free of symptoms.

Other Research

Outside of India, research into the effects of homeopathy on cancer is very limited, primarily because it is seen as being no better than a placebo and, so, is an unethical treatment. Because of this, most studies in the West have reviewed homeopathy as a palliative therapy to help patients cope with the rigours of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

In one study, 100 women with breast cancer completed a one-hour consultation with a homeopath who was asked to help with any three symptoms chosen by the women that were the result of conventional treatment. The 67 patients who completed the homeopathic treatment and the two follow-ups all reported significant improvements in their hot flashes, fatigue, anxiety and depression, although the remedies did not ease pain (Palliative Med, 2002; 16: 22733).

In another study of women with breast cancer, the homeopathic remedy Verum was tested against placebo for treating hot flashes after taking the drug tamoxifen. In this experiment, 26 women were given Verum, 30 took Verum and a placebo, and 27 were given just a placebo. Both the combination- and single-remedy groups reported improvement in symptoms compared with those in the placebo group (J Altern Complement Med, 2005; 11: 217).

Homeopathy also helped ease some of the effects of radiotherapy in a group of 32 women with breast cancer. Hyperpigmentation or darkening of the skin after radiotherapy was reduced in the homeopathic group compared with 29 controls who did not receive homeopathy, and their overall side-effects were also reduced (Br Homeopath J, 2000; 89: 812).

The homeopathic remedy Traumeel, for skin and muscular problems, has been successfully tested in several trials. In one, it was given to 15 patients (aged three to 25 years), who had undergone stem-cell transplants for their cancer, to treat stomatitis (mouth ulcers). Compared with a placebo, which was given to 15 other patients, Traumeel may reduce significantly the severity and duration of stomatitis (Cancer, 2001; 92: 68490). In a second study, Traumeel was tested on 20 patients with various cancers, again for treating stomatitis. It reduced the duration of symptoms to just six days, compared with 13 days in the placebo group (Biomed Ther, 1998; 16: 2615).

Individualized homeopathic remedies helped a group of 45 women who had been treated for breast cancer. Homeopathy was prescribed to treat symptoms following oestrogen withdrawal; the severity of hot flashes and other symptoms, except for joint pain, decreased, while their general quality of life and well-being scores increased (Homeopathy, 2003; 92: 1314). Another group of 20 women recovering from breast-cancer treatment, including tamoxifen, also reported improvement in the severity and frequency of their hot flashes (Homeopathy, 2002; 91: 759).

The black hole

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently joined the chorus in the West that maintains that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo effect. Responding to a Voice of Young Science Network campaign, which is calling for a ban on the promotion of homeopathy in developing countries, the WHO stated that homeopathy is not a cure for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis or malaria.

Welcoming the WHO statement, Dr Robert Hagan, a member of the Voice of Young Science Network, commented: We need governments around the world to recognize the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses (BBC News, 20 August 2009).

Yet, homeopathy is doing just that in India. In that culture, homeopathy is accepted as a genuine medical therapy, and is governed by laws that ensure that homeopaths are properly trained and registered.

It is perplexing why good medical studies, which are supported by the US government and by leading American academics, are not being recognized, let alone discussed, in the West. Surely, cancer is so serious a threat that every avenue needs to be explored with an open mind, and not left to the drug and academic cabals? Conventional medicine does not offer any genuinely effective solutions and, yet, blocks anything that might, especially something as impossible and nonsensical to their science as homeopathy.

Bryan Hubbard

Factfile A: Homeopathy in India

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India, described homeopathy as a refined method of treating patients economically and non-violently. Government must encourage and patronize it in our country.

And so they did. In 1960, the Maharashtra Actalso known as the Bombay Actset up a court of examiners, concerned with the teaching of homeopathy and the creation of new colleges to do so, and a board of homeopathy, which regulated and licensed practitioners.

Nine years later, a new act was passed that created a central council to govern homeopathy and Ayurveda, Indias traditional medical system. In 1973, the Homeopathy Central Council Act was passed, which standardized homeopathic education and allowed homeopaths to practice in different states throughout the country.

The legislation formalized a rich tradition of homeopathy in India that began in 1839, when Romanian doctor John Martin Honigberger successfully treated the Maharaja of the Punjab for paralysis of the vocal cords. Honigberger had been taught homeopathy by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, its creator, and became convinced of its efficacy when he treated himself for malaria. After treating the Maharaja, Honigberger moved to Calcutta, where he was known as the cholera doctor because of his successful treatment of the disease using homeopathic remedies.

In 1867, Dr Salzar from Vienna began teaching homeopathy in India, and two of his students went on to create the first homeopathic college in India in 1878.

However, the British rulers were not sympathetic to homeopathy, and it began to flourish in India only after the country achieved independence in 1947.

Factfile B: Not just water

Scientists and doctors say homeopathy is a nonsense because of the high dilution of the active ingredient. Most remedies are diluted beyond Avogadros number, which is the final concentration at which molecules of the original substance can still exist.

Any homeopathic remedy with a potency of 12Cin other words, 1200 dilutionsor greater is beyond the Avogadro number, suggesting that only water is left. This means that any effect of homeopathy must be due to the placebo, or feel-good, factor, say sceptics.

But homeopathy turns conventional science and medicine on its head: it contends that greater dilutions have greater potency and, so, the more dilutions, the more powerful the remedy.

Conventional science doesn't have a model to explain how homeopathy works and, yet, a meta-analysis of 75 studies concluded that 67 of them demonstrated an effect well beyond that of placebo (Complement Ther Med, 2007; 15: 12838). The effects have also been seen using highly sophisticated measuring technology, such as:

• calorimetry, which measures the amount of heat given off by a sample (J Therm Anal Calorim, 2004; 75: 81536); 
• spectroscopy, which measures how a substance absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation (Homeopathy, 2007; 96: 17582); and
• thermoluminescence, which measures the amount of light produced by a sample when heated (Physica A, 2003; 323: 6774). 
• Succussionor vigorous agitationis as important as very high dilutions in creating the remedies. One study even measured the effectiveness of two highly diluted therapies, one succussed and one not, and found a difference between the two (Biochim Biophys Acta, 2003; 1621: 25360).

Factfile C: The new science of water

Undaunted by the public ridicule of his compatriot Jacques Benveniste and his theory that water has a memory, Nobel prize-winning virologist Luc Montagnier has confirmed that water does indeed retain frequencies, even at levels of dilutions as used in homeopathy.

Montagnier, who was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of a link between HIV and AIDS, has found that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria could emit low-frequency radio waves. These waves influence the molecules around them, turning them into organized structures. In turn, these organized molecules also emit waves.

Confirming what homeopaths have said for several centuries, Montagnier has discovered that these information-emitting waves remain in water even after it has been diluted, often to levels regularly prescribed in homeopathy (Interdiscip Sci, 2009; 1: 8190).

Montagniers discoveries mirror those of French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who spent the last 15 years of his life investigating water and its ability to remember substances, even after it had been diluted many times.

However, after having had his original paper published in the prestigious Nature journal (Nature, 1988; 333: 8168), Benveniste was visited at his laboratory by the journals editor John Maddox and quackbusting magician James Randi.

They said that Benveniste was unable to replicate the findings that inspired his original paper, effectively accusing him of being a quack and, thus, ruining his reputation.

Factfile D: Homeopathy and the NHS

The UKs National Health Service (NHS) spends around 100 billion a year, and 4 million of it on homeopathy, mainly by funding the UKs four homeopathic hospitals.

Even though the expenditure is negligible, doctors continue to call for its complete abolition in the NHS. Groups of doctors have pressed primary care trusts (PCTs) to stop offering homeopathy to local patients, while the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors trade union, has called on the UK government to ban it outright.

The BMA meeting, where one doctor described homeopathy as ’nonsense on stilts’, also called on the government to place all homeopathic remedies in pharmacies under a special Placebo section (Mail Online, 2 July 2010; www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1290861/Homeopathy-remedies-labelled-placebos-banned-NHS-say-leading-doctors.html).

WDDTY Vol. 22, 12. March 2012

Health issues and Politics. The General Election in Britain (1). 2019.

All signs suggest that there will be a British General Election before the end of the year. It will focus mainly on Brexit issues, but like all elections in the UK since the end of the second world war, and the inauguration of the NHS, health will play a central role. This blog will focus on these health issues, how important political parties consider them to be, and the role it plays in the result of the election.

This is the first blog, others will follow as the issues emerge in the coming weeks. The basis of the blog will be to explain and extend my explanation of the importance of health in British elections which I wrote in my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", and specifically the chapter, "The Politics of Health Provision". It will examine certain statements I made in that chapter.

• Health is good - so spending on health is good.
• The NHS spends money on conventional medicine - so it must be best.
• Traditional medicine is ignored - so it cannot be any good

I predict, (in advance) that these (and other) false assumptions will underlie the basis of the political debate to come, and that the inevitable result will be that Britain decides to spend still more money on a medical system whose failure is spiralling out of control.

6th August 2019

Ever since Boris Johnson became prime minister an election looked a distinct possibility, the only way he might be able to guide his party through its disastrous progress towards Brexit. At the weekend political pundits have seen the first clear signs that this is Johnson's intention, or at least his expectation. And what did these 'clear signs' consist of?

Still more spending pledges on the NHS, involving £850 million for 20 new building and infrastructure projects for NHS in England. This will fund new wards, intensive care units and diagnostic centres, and an extra £1 billion to improve and maintain existing buildings. This new spending commitment will mean that the NHS has now been given an extra £7 billion in the financial year 2019 to 2020.

The response of the Labour, the official opposition party, has been predictable, and twofold.

• It is not enough, the NHS needs more money
• Is this actually 'new' money - basically a technical issue about whether this is a real increase in NHS resourcing.

So the bidding process has started, and we can certainly expect further bids to be made during the course of the campaign.

Meanwhile, the NHS continues to play its predictable role. They are grateful for the government's increased spending commitments, but they are not sufficient. They need more.

• there are 100,000 vacant posts within the NHS, and it is struggling to cope with the growing demand for health services.
• NHS buildings and infrastructure requires £6 billion rather than £1 billion to deal with the problems they face.

The mainstream media, predictably, goes along with this. When journalists interview politicians questions are asked about why there is not more money for the NHS, pointing out the parlous state that the NHS is in. To confirm this journalists then interview NHS medical staff who predictably confirm that the NHS is in a parlous financial state, and are given the opportunity to outline the areas where more money is required.

So the problem with the NHS is that it is under-funded, under-resourced. There are no problems that the NHS could not resolve - if only political parties would agree to give them more (and more) money.

The debate has not gone further than this, and I confidently predict that the debate will go no further! The political parties will not question why pumping any more money into the NHS now will make it any more effective than the ever-increasing amounts of money money that has been pumped into it since 1948.

To read my subsequent posts, follow this blog (look to the column on the right of this text), and get notification when new blogs are published

OVARIAN CANCER. Conventional medicine claims that they have another wonder drug. Olaparib.

Yes, it's another new cure, another pharmaceutical drug that is going to be a "game-changer" according the BBC News, and the rest of the mainstream news media (eg the Telegraph, the Mail Online, the Sun, et al. All using exactly the same information (a pharmaceutical press release), with almost exactly the same wording.

This is, of course, a routine part of news coverage in the mainstream media, which cannot exist without the advertising revenues coming from the pharmaceutical industry. It's a unique, and deeply harmful partnership. The mainstream media does not sell cars, or washing machines, or anything else without payment. The drug industry this coverage entirely free.

This time the new treatment is for Ovarian Cancer, and the drug is called Olabparid

               "Drugs advisory body NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, said using olaparib at an earlier stage in treatment would bring the greatest benefit "and may have the potential to cure the disease. In the trial, nearly 60% of patients receiving the drug did not see the disease get any worse after three years, compared with just 27% of patients taking a dummy drug.
But NICE said it was not yet clear if patients using it were living any longer, because those taking part in the trial had not been followed up for long enough."

Olaparib is made by AstraZeneca. It is "a pioneering type of cancer drug called a PARP inhibitor, which works by targeting an inherited genetic fault, causing cancer cells to die". In the BBC article, and the mainstream press, they did not bother to mention side effects - just that Olaparib was a wonder cure, a game-changer, with the potential "to cure the disease".

So let's see what happens over the next few years. Will olaparib prove as good as its manufacturer claims? Or wil it become yet another drug that is too dangerous to prescribe, withdrawn by the manufacture, or banned by the drug regulator. Only time will tell.

However, the prospect for the latter scenario appears to be excellent! Olaparid is NOT a new drug, it is an old drug that will now be used at an earlier stage of the cancer. So its side effects are already published in the conventional medical literature. The mainstream media could have had a look - but it decided not to do so.

The Drugs.com website reports that common side effects of olaparib include upper respiratory tract infection, anaemia, decreased hemoglobin, increased mcv, increased serum creatinine, nasopharyngitis, nausea, pharyngitis, vomiting, cough, and dyspnea.

Yet this is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Doctors are told, for example, that Olaparid can cause cancer (acute myeloid leukemia), the it affects the blood in a variety of ways, causes phargitis, pulmonary embolism, pneumonitis, lots of gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, peripheral oedema, arthragia, myalgia, back pain, hypertension, venous thrombosis, dermatitis, eczema, pruritus, peripheral neurophy, and perhaps not surprisingly, anxiety, depression and insomnia.

All these serious side effects from an allegedly 'break-through' drug.

Predictably, none of these serious 'side effects' were mentioned by the BBC, or any of the other articles on the same subject. It would seem that we are supposed to rejoice the (allegedly) good news, whilst ignoring (or not be told about) the bad news.

So along with the many other 'wonder' drugs that I have featured on this blog through recent years, let's wait to see what the situation is regarding Olaparib in a few years time.

Women don't need to menstruate!

According to this article, published in the Guardian newspaper in July 2019, menstruation is something that women don't need. It contains several conventional medical doctors who provide their reasons for stopping it. Pharmaceutical drugs can, after all, do so - so conventional medicine is now telling us that periods have no health benefit - and women can be encouraged to stop them altogether.

I am not a woman. So I will leave this debate to be carried on elsewhere, with those who know far more about menstruation than I do!

But I am a supporter of natural medicine, and all natural therapies are clear - we should not be interfering with the natural processes of the body - and we do so at a cost.

So many of my homeopathic colleagues, both male and female, are aghast. Conventional medicine, as with its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, thinks that it can second-guess our bodies, about what is best for us. Don't worry about the body carrying out this function routinely. Doctors are now clever enough to be able to stop menstruation, so why not just go ahead. Just like taking all the drugs and vaccines they prescribe for us - it is entirely safe. Except, of course, they are not.

The Guardian calls it 'radical'. I think most people, including most women, would call it foolish. But as a mere male I will not comment further. Except perhaps to say that when he created the world, God must have got things seriously wrong when it came to the human body.

What a blessing that we have doctors who can now improve on nature!

I can't help thinking, though, that this is a response by conventional medicine to the epidemic rise in menstrual problems that we have witnessed over the last 70-100 years. Much of this epidemic is probably caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, like the contraceptive pill, and PFT. And conventional medicine is not very good at treating menstrual problems. So perhaps the best advice conventional doctors can come up with is to stop menstruation altogether!

Yet perhaps the most sensible advice is to wait and see. This routine monthly function may be entirely unnecessary, as our doctors say..... but in a few years time might we be observing an even bigger increase in diseases like breast, womb, and ovarian cancer? Or endometriosis?

Conventional medicine is adept at interfering with nature, with all their 'anti-', '-blocker', '-inhibitor' and '-antagonist' drugs. All of them change the way our bodies would normally function, all of them cause serious illness and disease through their side effects. And we have long been told that we can do without gall bladders, tonsils, and other minor organs. Yet it is true that it is only years after taking the drug, or losing an organ, or even putting a stop to monthly menstruation, that the real problems will begin to emerge. With conventional medicine, it has always been thus.

So I will put this subject away for a time, and return to it when the consequences of stopping menstrual bleeding permanently becomes clear, as I fear it will. And I would suggest caution too, that young women think very carefully about going along with this, most likely conventional medicine's latest nonsense.

So watch this space!

Building a Safer Health System? But is conventional medicine able to do it?

Conventional medicine is dangerous medicine. The magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You" reported (July 2019) that medical blunders were killing more than 11,000 patients every year - thought to be a conservative figure "with other deaths hidden by conspiracy of silence. It said that NHS officials wanted to reverse this trend "by introducing new measures that encourage all hospital staff to spot risk and errors earlier, and before there's a death".

The Daily Telegraph described what was happening in rather more detail. There was 'a blame culture', but a new strategy, contained in an 82 page document, aimed to save the lives of up to 1,000 patients every year. My rough calculation seems to indicate that this would still leave 10,000 death every year - directly caused by a medical system that doctors insist is 'safe'.

All we ever hear from doctors, politicians, governments and the mainstream media is that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are safe, that they are not one of the main causes of the multiple chronic disease epidemics we are currently experiencing. Doctors may casually admit to a few simple, unimportant drug 'side effects' - but they do not admit that they are causing patient harm, including at least 11,000 death.

Challenging this public image of safety is easy. When doctors say that their drugs and vaccines are safe they just have to be asked for the patient information leaflets that accompany each of them. The harm that they cause is published in their own medical literature. The so-called 'side effects' of these drugs are described in these documents but this will not change public protestations that drugs and vaccines are 'safe'.

Contrasting what doctors are prepared to tell us, and what their medical literature says, is educational! 

Yet the safety of conventional medicine is discussed widely amongst doctors, although these discussions are not supposed to involve you or me! The same issues were being discussed over two decades ago. In November 1999, the Institute of Medicine in the USA published a paper, "To err is human. Building a Safer Health System". This is what it said.

               "Health care in the United States is not as safe as it should be - and can be. At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented, according to estimates from two major studies. Even using the lower estimate, preventable medical errors in hospitals exceed attributable deaths to such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS."

The paper also admitted that these medical failures were costly.

               "Beyond their cost in human lives, preventable medical errors exact other significant tolls. They have been estimated to result in total costs (in­cluding the expense of additional care necessitated by the errors, lost income and household productivity, and disability) of between $17 billion and $29 billion per year in hospitals nationwide."

Remember these are 1999 figures! The paper went on to recognise that human errors, which were then described as 'an epidemic', would also lead to a lack of public confidence.

               "Errors also are costly in terms of loss of trust in the health care system by patients and diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals. Patients who experience a long hospi­tal stay or disability as a result of errors pay with physical and psychological discomfort. Health professionals pay with loss of morale and frustration at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the cost of er­rors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status. "

Now, 20 years on, in July 2019, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has published new research, and published a paper entitled "Prevalence, severity, and nature of preventable patient harm across medical care settings: systematic review and meta-analysis". The Alliance for Natural Health has looked at this document, and concluded this.

               "Approximately 1 in 20 patients suffer preventable medical harm .....  Worryingly the study also reveals 1 in 8 cases led to severe harm or death. Analysing data from 70 observational studies, including over 337,000 patients living in developed countries, researchers found nearly a quarter of the cases were directly related to problems with medication or other medical treatments. A related editorial commented on the serious concerns raised regarding the extent of medical harm in health systems, drawing attention to the level of harm that is “totally preventable”. These findings underline the urgent need to change the health systems we rely on to move away from managing disease and all its associated issues to address disease - many of which are wholly preventable.

So during the 20 years between the two reports conventional medicine has failed to make itself any safer, and has not resolved the issue - that it routinely causes patient harm, that this costs considerable sums of money, and each time it increases public dissatisfaction with conventional medicine.

On the basis of these internal discussions, on these two reports, it is not possible for conventional medicine to claim that its medicine is safe, and does cause patient harm.

• Doctors can (and do) claim that these are merely 'errors', or medical 'mistakes'. In truth these are mistakes being made within a system of medicine that is inherently unsafe.
• They can (and do) underestimate the size of the problem because they limit their definition of 'limited patient harm'. In truth the incidence of harm is likely to be very much higher.
• They can (and the two reports do) claim that they can improve the performance of conventional medicine in the future.

But what is clear is that in the last 20 years there has been no progress in making conventional medicine safer - in other words, the epidemics of patient harm, proclaimed in 1999, continues -  unabated.

The two reports are public documents, but it is not really the intention of the conventional medical establishment that they should be read by the public, by the patients who are being damaged and killed. Doctors want us to continue believing what they tell us, that conventional medicine is safe. The reports are intended for the conventional medical establishment, or at least those members of it that recognise, or care about the fact, that their system of medicine harms patients, whilst at the same time, in public, claiming that there medicine is safe.

It remains to be seen whether, in the next 20 years, the conventional medical establishment will be allowed privately to discuss the patient harm it causes, whilst in public pretending that their treatments are safe. But it will almost certainly try!