ANTIBIOTIC DRUGS ARE FAILING. Drug companies know this, but they are cutting research on replacing them. So is Natural Medicine the only answer to the Antibiotic Apocalypse?

This blog is taken from the website of the Alliance for Natural Health, an excellent publication, and an excellently concise article on the failure of antibiotics, the antibiotic apocalypse that is predicted, and how natural medicine is stepping up to fill the void..

Big Pharma cuts research as antibiotics fail

The question is not if antibiotics fail, it’s when. 

Worse, there is no new breed of drugs to replace them. 

Compared to other potential blockbuster drugs there is relatively little money to be made from antibiotics, which is why Pharma is looking to significantly reduce or stop investment to find replacements or alternatives. 

Many people believe that they can’t heal from certain infections without taking a course of antibiotics and have come to expect to be given a prescription from their doctors. It’s this over- and misappropriate use of antibiotics that has led to the current situation where antimicrobial resistance is threatening our health again. 

Antibiotics are now failing, even the big guns held in reserve to combat the toughest of bacterial infections. In recognition of the warnings that by 2050, antimicrobial resistance is going to be responsible for the loss of around 10 million people a year, a new initiative has been launched. 

Aimed at overcoming antimicrobial resistance using natural medicine, environmentally responsible botanical company, Pukka Herbs, and The College of Medicine have come together to launch a new initiative.

This demonstrates two important differences between conventional, drug-based medicine, and natural medicines, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, osteopathy, et al.

1. The pharmaceutical is more interested in profit than finding safe and effective treatments for patients.
2. Natural medicine, which works with, and alongside, are not failing; and as a result they are the future for anyone looking for health care.

Head Injuries. Another medical breakthrough. "A cheap drug could save thousands of live each year'.

Medical science has announced another important breakthrough, this time concerning head injury, courtesy of BBC News!

They are a regular feature of the news we are fed every day on the mainstream news media. The surprise is that with so many medical breakthroughs we should be witnessing such large levels of illness, levels that place so much pressure on medical services that cannot cope. So what is this new medical breakthrough?

               "A cheap and widely available drug could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year worldwide if it was routinely given to people brought into hospital with head injuries, UK doctors say. Tranexamic acid helps stop bleeding in and around the brain when blood vessels have been torn.
A large international study in The Lancet now suggests it improves patient survival rates if given early enough. It cannot undo damage but can stop smaller bleeds becoming worse." 

So Tranexamic acid is the new wonder drug! It is not a new drug. It has been around since 1960, so it has a 60 year old history. And what does this history show us? Tranexamic acid has a long list of serious side effects. These are the ones outlined by one website.

Pale skin, trouble breathing with exertion, unusual bleeding or bruising, unusual tiredness or weakness, anxiety, change in vision, chest pain or tightness, confusion, cough, difficulty with swallowing, dizziness or light-headedness, fainting, fast heartbeat, numbness in hands, pain, redness, or swelling in the arm or leg, puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, face, lips, or tongue, skin rash, hives and itching, abdominal or stomach pain, discomfort, or tenderness, chills or fever, difficulty with moving, headache, severe and throbbing, joint and back pain, muscle aching or cramping, muscle pains or stiffness, stuffy or runny nose, diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting

So if Tranexamic acid is as effective in dealing head injury as claimed (and most conventional medical claims are rarely delivered in practice), the medical system will have more patients with all these additional symptoms walking through the door, placing more pressure on an already pressurised conventional medical system.

Each new medical breakthrough rarely materialises, and usually brings with it additional health challenges that further stretches the conventional medical system.

Another major source of news in Britain at the moment concerns the upcoming General Election, with all the main political parties seeking to outbid each other in providing the NHS with more money - lots more money. We are told, every day, that the medical system is overloaded and underfunded.

It is medical breakthroughs like this one that ensures that conventional medicine is always over-stretched, always unable to cope with 'rising demand' for health services.

Rarely is the questions asked

• why are health services unable to cope with demand?
• why are health services not reducing demand?
• will even more money enable health services to cope?

We continue to invest in health services that just doesn't work, whose 'breakthroughs' are not breakthroughs at all, but lead only to increased sickness, and increased pressure on resources.

Conventional medicine is failing,

and it is time we recognised it.

Pharmaceutical drugs withdrawn because they contained cancer-causing ingredients! When will we recognise that pharmaceutical drugs are a significant cause of the cancer epidemic?

As if pharmaceutical drugs were not sufficiently dangerous in themselves, what is now becoming clear is that there these same drugs are being withdrawn because of the way they are being manufactured.

Many drugs are now made in chemical plants in China and India, where safety controls are less rigorous and effective. Drugs that are 'out-of-patent' are made in these countries for one simple reason. To reduce the cost of production.

But in successfully reducing their costs (and increasing their profitability) the pharmaceutical companies are increasing levels of patient harm. WDDTY have recently announced that more than 50 prescription drugs have been contaminated with cancer causing chemicals.

               "The prescription drug you're taking could contain high levels of a carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent. Most drugs are manufactured in China and India, where there are no safety controls, and America's drug regulators, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has recalled more than 50 drugs so far because of their health risks".

Conventional medicine has never placed protecting patients from harm very high on their list of priorities. If it had most of the drugs and vaccines doctors are currently prescribing would have been banned already - because of their inherent dangers.

Yet if the serious side effects of pharmaceutical drugs were not bad enough, now patient safety is threatened by the way these drugs are manufactured.

Some frequently prescribed drugs are involved in the 50 drugs the FDA has recalled. One is the blood pressure drug, valsartan (marketed as Diovan). It was found to have lethal levels of a cancer-causing chemical. Two other drugs withdrawn were irbesartan and losartan.

Moreover, WDDTY added that most pharmaceutical drugs manufactured in India and China are not being tested for contaminants, that the FDA checks only 1% of pharmaceutical drugs used in the USA - this according to an investigation undertaken by Bloomberg Business Week. In Europe the situation is unlikely to be any different.

Yet there is another consideration arising from this revelation.

These drugs, and undoubtedly many others, will have been prescribed to patients who subsequently develop cancer. So cancer rates will rise, just as they have been rising during the last 70-100 years. Yet what will the explanation be for this trend? Indeed, what is the explanation for the current epidemic levels of cancer?

Many explanations may offered by conventional medicine. But certainly pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines will not be amongst them. If there is a further increase in cancer rates caused by these drugs, conventional medicine may continue to strive to find a cure, with the usual lack of success. But identifying their drugs as a cause will not be mentioned, by anyone, anywhere, at any time. That by stopping taking pharmaceutical drugs might remove a major cause of cancer will never be mentioned. After all, it makes no business sense!

Many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to cause cancer. I have listed some of them here. And these drugs cause cancer even when they are manufactured properly, without cancer-causing ingredients, in India, China, or anywhere else. Doctors know this. Conventional medicine knows this. Governments know this. One major cure for cancer is within our reach, but kept out of our reach.

AVOID CANCER

STOP TAKING PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS/VACCINES

BREAST CANCER. Why is it that conventional medicine does not understand that HRT is a significant cause of this? Who protects patients from harmful drugs?

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) causes breast cancer!

• Conventional medicine has known this for a long time, but they continue to prescribe these drugs to female patients.

Medical science has known this for a long time. In July 2002, research indicated that HRT can increase the risk of breast cancer (and heart disease too), and the test results were so alarming they were immediately halted. Many thousands of women came off the drug as a result, at least 50% of those who had been taken them.

Then, in 2003. the University of Texas recorded a 7% drop in breast cancer rates, and a 12% drop in women aged 50 to 69. This was reported in USA Today, 14 December 2006; and New York Times, 15 December 2006). And according to a BBC News report, 15th December 2006, UK researches also measured a drop in breast cancer cases. Professor Valerie Beral, director of Cancer Research UK's Cancer Epidemiology Unit, was reported as saying that there had also been a drop in breast cancer incidence in women aged 50-64 between 2003 and 2004.

So medical science discovers that HRT causes breast cancer. Then it discovers that rates of breast cancer reduces when less HRT is prescribed.

So why is it that the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY) have had to tell us that 'HRT causes 1 in 20 breast cancers'? (2nd October 2019). Surely our doctors already know this. They should have known it from 2002, and even earlier. Apparently it was using a Lancet article as the source of this information (The Lancet, 2019; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)31709-X). 

               "HRT is twice as risky as doctors feared...."

Why?

               "The risk is greatest .....if it's taken for five years, say researchers from Oxford University. They estimate that one in 20 cases of breast cancer in the UK are caused by the drug..."

Why?

               "And women need to know the risks persist for 10 years afterwards... they don't disappear the moment they stop taking HRT, which has  been the common perception."

Why?

               "HRT prescribing  has been steadily rising over the last 10 years or so, with some studies downplaying health risks...."

Why?

               ".....but the Oxford researchers say it is vital to turn back the dial to the early 1990's when the dangerous of the drug were first discovered".

The answer to all these "why's" is that medical science has little or no influence

• on the pharmaceutical industry (which controls most medical science)
• on the conventional medical establishment (which is supposed to be evidence led)
• or on doctors (who are supposed to be 'science led').

I have recently blogged on the current crisis with Opiate drugs, which have caused serious disease, withdrawal symptoms, and death for many - yet doctors to prescribe more of these drugs, year on year.

It is clear that medical science has little or no influence over conventional medicine, or the drug prescribing practices of our doctors.

The MIMS article, dated 4th September 2019, tacitly confirms this when it states that MHRA, Britain's drug regulator has asked doctors to "discuss (this) new (sic) information on breast cancer risk with women at their next routine appointment. Is this really a sufficient or adequate response to a drug doctors have known to cause breast cancer for over 30 years? Drug regulation is supposed to protect patients from dangerous drugs. Is a chat, some time in the future, a sufficient response to women in danger of contracting breast cancer? There is, it is stated, "no need for urgent action".

Isn't there? Just how dangerous does a drug have to be to our health before doctors are obliged to take urgent action? How dangerous does a drug have to be now before it is banned?

But "women who use, or are planning to use, HRT, should be aware of these 'new' (sic) findings when considering their HRT."

These are NOT new findings. This is NOT news. It is history that is regurgitated every few years, a piece of information that will probably never acted upon, soon forgotten, and brought up again in a few years time. So if women don't know this by now it is because their doctors have not told them, or they have downplayed the information. I have written about this subject, many times, during the last 10 years.

• Tamoxifen. Another cause of breast cancer? (September 2010)  
• The Menopause and Homeopathy (September 2013) 
• Menopause. HRT or Homeopathy? (February 2015) 
• HRT. Reporting the DIEs *Disease Inducing Effects' of Pharma Drugs (February 2015) 
• Menopause Issues and NICE guidelines? HRT might cause cancer, heart problems and dementia, but what the hell, women should take it anyway!(November 2015) 
• HRT treatment causes cancer. Old news, but new news! (August 2016) 
• Breast Cancer. And its links to Pharmaceutical Drugs (December 2017) 
• Breast Cancer. New predictive tool will be another 'game changer'! Or does it miss the most obvious cause of breast cancer? (January 2019)

The only possible conclusion is that both medical science and drug regulation are mere charades. Neither safeguard patients, you and me, from drug harm. Conventional medicine does not pay attention to its findings and directives - when they are negative - or when it has no alternative to the drugs that have been found to harm us.

I suspect that I will be writing about this again, when conventional medicine discovers yet again that breast cancer is caused by HRT!

CONTROLLING BLOOD PRESSURE. The dangers of blood pressure drugs, and the creation of illness

Conventional medicine is obsessed with blood pressure, especially high blood pressure. It is, doctors tell us, connected to heart disease, so they go to great lengths to ensure that our blood pressure falls within some narrow pre-determined parameter.

It is 'medicine by numbers'. The patient may not feel ill, and may have no symptoms of illness. But doctors know best, and antihypertensive drugs are, they tell us, essential for our health.

So what happens next? The patient takes the drug prescribed by his/her doctor - and he/she does get ill! Really ill!

Blood Pressure Drugs - cause dangerous intestinal problem
The journal Circulation (2019: 140: 270-9) have published research undertaken at Imperial College, London, which found the calcium-channel blocking drugs, antihypertensives, increases the risk of diverticulitis, a disease that affects about 65% of people over 85, and can be life threatening. The researchers suspected that the drugs interfered with the ability of intestinal muscles to push food through the gut.

Of course, antihypertensive drugs were already known to cause many more side effects...

• Diuretics are known to cause dry mouth, weakness, diarrhea, hypotension, nausea, headache and stomach upset.
•  ACE inhibitors are known to cause diarrhea, headache, joint pain, fever and chills, troubled breathing and jaundice.
• Beta blockers are known to cause fatigue, dizziness and weakness.
• Calcium channel blockers are known to cause weight gain, swelling in the lower legs, feet, or ankles, constipation, tiredness, irregular heartbeat, coughing, problems with breathing or swallowing, nausea or stomach discomfort, and numbness or tingling in the feet or hands.

So, given that the patient did not feel ill when first given these drugs, it might be expected that he/she will feel ill after taking them. Moreover, the new evidence that calcium channel blockers causes diverticulitis, has only been discovered many decades after they were first prescribed! There may be many more side effects that doctors don't know about.

So, does this mean that doctors will apply more constraint in prescribing antihypertensive drugs in future? On the basis of "First, do no harm"? Will they be more circumspect in giving patients, who do not feel, and probably not ill, these drugs?

Absolutely not! 

The Lancet reported on 7th September 2019 that the latest UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance, published on 28th August, has recommended that antihypertensive drugs should now be offered to people younger than 80 years with blood pressure reaching of 140/90 mm Hg and above, and a 10% or greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease within the next 10 years. The Lancet concludes that

               "This reduces the 2011 NICE guidelines of a cardiovascular risk level of 20% or more."

In other words, with one stroke of a pen, conventional medicine has significantly increased the number of people who will now be expected to be prescribed antihypertensive drugs. Medicine by numbers, that is, giving drugs to patients who feel well, has been increased.

• So will this increase the number of patients who will develop diverticulitis, and the other known side effects of these drugs?

Yes, of course it will. This is what conventional medicine does - all the time - with all its prescriptions! Doctors prescribe drugs to well people knowing they have side effects that will cause illness. Then they will treat the new illness with more drugs to treat the side effects; and then even more drugs to treat the side effects of each new drug.

This is how conventional medicine creates illness, how they make us sick, why we never get well, why our health gets progressively worse, why chronic disease is now running at unprecedented, epidemic levels.

Learn more about how conventional medicine creates illness and disease by clicking on this link.

ENDOMETRIOSIS. Another unexplained epidemic of a disease with no known cause? Or just another disease caused by conventional medicine with no treatment?

Endometriosis is another disease that is currently running at unprecedented epidemic levels. The website of Endometriosis UK states that 1 in 10 women in Britain now suffer from the condition, that it has become the second most common gynaecological complaint, that 10% of women, worldwide, now have endometriosis (about 176 million women in total), that the condition is the cause of 30%-50% of all infertility, and that it costs the UK economy about £8.2 billion in treatment, loss of work, and other healthcare costs.

Moreover, Endometriosis UK says that it can take up to 7.5 years from the onset of symptoms for women to get a diagnosis, and also that its cause continues to be 'unknown', and that 'there is no definite cure'. To regular readers and followers of this blog this will NOT come as a surprise - a serious disease, frequently dismissed by doctors as a 'woman's problem', its origins unknown (which is always suspicious), and no treatment (which is common with conventional medicine).

The symptoms of endometriosis can be easily outlined:

• Pain caused by extreme menstrual cramps in the abdomen, lower back and pelvis
• Excessively heavy and abnormal menstrual flow
• Pain whilst urinating or defecating, especially during the monthly period, often with bloody stools and urine
• Gastrointestinal problems like diarrhea and constipation
• Nausea and vomiting
• Discomfort caused by sexual intercourse
•  Infertility
  

But this symptom description fails to get close to describing the pain and distress that many women with endometriosis have to endure.

Today (7th October 2019) the BBC have highlighted the suffering and plight of many women in an article, 'Endometriosis. Thousands share devastating impact of condition'. More than 13,500 women took part in BBC research that reveal the devasting effective of endometriosis.

               "Half said they had had suicidal through, and many said they rely on highly addictive painkillers. Most also said endometriosis ... had badly affected their education, career and relationships."

As a result of this research, MP's are now to launch an inquiry into women's experiences of endometriosis. 

Yet just as this BBC research failed to asked the most pertinent question, it is equally unlikely that an MP's inquiry will ask them either.

• What is the cause of endometriosis, and why is does the cause remain unknown?
• Why do doctors routinely dismiss endometriosis, and take so long to diagnose it?
• Why does conventional medicine have no effective treatment for the condition which has become more common during the last 70 years beyond 'highly addictive painkillers'?

The answers to these questions are too sensitive for the conventional medical establishment to deal with properly. For so many reasons they cannot afford to take part in any discussion, or allow any insight into the subject. Why?

• When a disease has reached epidemic levels, and still continues to increase, the cause can usually be found in the 'side effects' of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. I have written about this many times before. Female hormones have been the subject of considerable interference by conventional medicine, not least with the contraceptive pill and hormone replacement therapy (HRT). So is it any wonder that endometriosis has become such a major problem for conventional medicine?
• The reticence of doctors to acknowledge the existence of endometriosis perhaps owes much to some kind of inner (but unacknowledged) guilt that the drugs they have prescribed in the past might have caused the problem. In addition, doctors are also aware that whatever the condition is, however it is diagnosed, they have no effective treatment to offer to their patient anyway.
• So doctors have nothing to offer - except for 'highly addictive painkillers'. In my recent blog (about opioid painkillers) there is a widespread understanding that doctors prescribe, and over-prescribe these drugs, which lead to addiction and death, because they have nothing better to offer.

Conventional medicine likes to present an image of competence to its patients, of a profession that is overcoming illness and disease. Yet everywhere it is failing, and not just with endodemetriosis. All chronic diseases that are now running at epidemic levels, including allergy, arthritis, autism, ADHD, cancer, COPD, dementia, diabetes, et al; there is a familiar story:

• no known cause
• no effective treatment

So patients continue to suffer, and are allowed to continue suffering. They are diseases which (we are told by our doctors) are 'untreatable'.

• BUT THEY ARE ALL TREATABLE! 
• ENDOMETRIOSIS IS TREATABLE - BUT NOT WITH CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE, OR BY CONVENTIONAL DOCTORS.

Homeopathy has been blessed by a whole series of exceptional female homeopaths, particularly over the last century, who have recognised that menstrual and menopausal problems, and endometriosis too, are serious issues for women, and they have not dismissed them as 'untreatable' as so many conventional (male) doctors have done. They have developed the use of a range of homeopathic remedies that are now known to tackle these 'female' problems - both safely and effectively. 

Yet beware. Women will not hear this from the NHS, from their doctors, from their MP's, or from the BBC - they will have to discover this for themselves!

Women who suffer from endometriosis can start here to compare homeopathic and conventional treatment for endometriosis.

So it is not necessary to continue suffering the excruciating pain of endometriosis. Indeed, getting rid of that pain is as close as a consultation, or perhaps a series of consultations, with a homeopath, whose task will be to match you up with one of the remedies mentioned in the above article. It's not always a simple or straightforward task, but it is one that homeopaths are doing every day with women whose lives have been devastated with endometriosis for years.

THE OPIOID SCANDAL. The drug that is killing millions. And what are our doctors doing about it? They increase prescriptions!

The Opioid Scandal has been running now for many years. These dreadful pharmaceutical drugs are addictive. And they have been killing millions of patients throughout the world.

• If any other industry was causing this type of devastation, for so many years, action would have been taken years ago.

So what is the conventional medical establishment doing in response to these awful drugs?

DOCTORS ARE PRESCRIBING MORE OF THEM - YEAR ON YEAR!

A study has found that English doctors have been using an ever-increasing amount of opioid drugs, gabapentin, pregabalin and oxycodone, during the last five years (2013-2018) - quite regardless of the burgeoning crisis, and the epidemic levels of addiction and death caused by them.

Indeed, a Public Health England review found that about 1 in 4 adults are now being prescribed addictive medicines.

And in case English doctors were not aware of what they were doing, the research was outlined to them in their own E-magazine, Pulse, on 18th November 2019. So what was the conclusion of this research?

               "The experience of the prescription drug misuse epidemic in the US should serve as an early warning to England’s NHS and prompt action to better understand the underlying explanations for the increases in prescribing, and the variation in prescribing rates between GPs and between CCGs."

• So there is no advice to doctors to stop prescribing them.
• There is no move to ban these drugs - because of the harm they are causing.

Instead, there is some sympathy for the doctors.

               "... the study highlighted that GPs are limited with options for chronic pain treatment.'

This is an admission that conventional medicine not only uses dangerous pharmaceutical drugs - but that it HAS TO prescribe these drugs - BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO USE. Doctors have to use them - they have no better or safer alternatives. As the GP magazine Pulse admits in its article, when it comes to addictive painkillers, doctors "are between a rock and a hard place'.

And so doctors will continue to be allowed to prescribe them. Imagine any other industry that was causing harm, and allowed to continue causing harm! We have nothing better to offer you than this, we know it will harm you, but we are prepared to give it to you! It is quite an amazing situation.

• the Hippocratic principle "first, do no harm" is jettisoned
• there is an admission that the 'precautionary principle' has no place in conventional medicine

And the mainstream media, as usual, remains quiet. It is not interested in patient harm, in the deaths being caused by conventional medicine. We are not being told about the full enormity of this situation. All the media does is to regularly and routinely tell about new medical breakthroughs, that will change our experience of this, or that disease.

And so what is happening? Political parties, in the lead up to a General Election, are desperately trying to out-bid each other in promises to spend more and more on the NHS = conventional medicine = more pharmaceutical drugs = more pain relief = more opioid drugs!

And this is a vote winner! The promises of increased expenditure on conventional medicine is wanted, demanded by the public - largely because they not not know or fully understand the harm that it is doing to them. Doctors don't tell them. The NHS doesn't tell them. Political parties don't tell them. Governments don't tell them. The media doesn't tell them.

So patients are left in almost total ignorance, accepting the drugs and vaccines given to them by doctors as they don't believe doctors would knowingly or willing harm them. But they are.

The study itself says this

               "Prescription drugs can cause iatrogenic harm in the form of misuse, dependence, and poisonings. In the US, the opioid crisis is a serious public health problem and was driven in part by increasing opioid prescriptions. In the UK, rates of opioid ..... use are known to be increasing, with a corresponding increase in reports of related harms, such as mortality and morbidity. It is necessary to investigate these trends further, and whether deprivation is driving increased rates at a GP practice population and CCG level."

Surely more than investigation is required! Action needs to be taken, and if 'first do no harm' is genuinely taken seriously by the conventional medical establishment these pharmaceutical drugs should be BANNED forthwith.

And instead, the NHS should start looking towards natural medical therapies, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, acupuncture, eta al, to step into the breach that has been caused by the monopoly it has given to conventional medicine over the last 70+ years.