Partygate and Beergate. The stupidity of enforcing autocratic laws and Covid-19 rules and the prosecution of those who created and defended the stupidity!

UK politics is dominated by a 'debate' about Covid-19 rules during lockdown. This constitutes nonsense, built on the foundations of more nonsense and complete incompetence.

Boris Johnson, as Prime Minister, constructed and imposed the Covid-19 lockdown rules on us all, reinforcing their importance in incessant daily press conferences. His government passed the deeply undemocratic legislation that enabled these autocratic rules to be legally drawn up. And he watched on as the police tried to enforce them.  

• He then broke his own rules, apparently on numerous occasions.  
• And then lied to Parliament about his law-breaking.
• Party Gate had emerged!
  

Sir Keir Starmer, as Leader of the Opposition, did not construct or impose the Covid-19 lockdown rules, but he regularly criticised the government for not imposing them more strictly for longer. He also fully supported the autocratic legislation that underpinned the rules. Then, as Party Gate emerged, he criticised Johnson for breaking the rules, but it is now being suggested that he too broke the rules.

I do not speak for either man, but I do castigate them both for their part in creating and supporting these crass, stupid, senseless, and ultimately useless rules in the first place. Beer Gate had emerged.

It has long been my opinion that stupid rules should be resisted and broken in order to demonstrate their stupidity. Yet this was not what either politician did. They supported the rules, emphasised their importance, and then broke them. As frontline politicians this was their second act of rank stupidity - stupidity built on the foundations of stupidity.

Both men are both equally responsible for the very predictable failure of very silly rules that were never going to be either an adequate or sensible response to the pandemic.

Yet it is important to remember that neither of these politicians was actually responsible for these autocratic laws, or the senseless Covid-19 rules. The policy of both the UK government and opposition was (we were regularly told) "informed/guided by the science". Pontius Pilates ruled 2000 years ago, and like him, Johnson and Starmer washed their hands of the responsibility: these were the rules put forward by SAGE, a collection of mainstream medical scientists whose opinions were sacrosanct and unchallengeable. It was the Conventional Medical Establishment (CME) that ruled!

This was why there was so little difference between government and opposition policies towards the pandemic, why neither Conservative, Labour or any other politician, came up with anything better, or even marginally more sensible. That is what happens within an autocracy - laws are enacted, rules are made - and no-one questions them (and anyone who does is pilloried for doing so). The problem was that from the very beginning conventional medicine admitted it had no treatment. It could only recommend social distancing, face masks, testing and tracking, lockdown, and the like. It was all they had to offer; but to hide their embarrassment they had to offer something, anything!  And then the debacle of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Stupidity and incompetence underlay two years of failed medical policies all the political parties pursued. It may be that Johnson and Starmer both realised that both the policies and the rules were stupid. But what they apparent did not recognise is that you cannot propose policies, and enforce rules, and then break them - however stupid and unreasonable they might be.

What we should be doing now is to ask all our politicians (in every country of the world):

• Why did you fail to question the medical science from whom you sought advice?
• Why did you so meekly support autocratic laws, and nonsensical rules?
• Why have you not recognised that conventional/pharmaceutical medicine is failing?
• Why have you not learnt that vaccines have never worked?
  

Will they ever realise that their total and abject reliance on conventional medical science is what is bankrupting our national health provision, and causing the epidemic levels of sickness and disease we are now experiencing?

 

Autism rate rises to 1 in 44 children in USA. And we are still told the cause is 'unknown'

At the end of 2021, the CDC announced that autism rates in the USA had risen to 1 in 44 children. They published an analysis of 2018 data from nearly a dozen USA states confirming that the autism rate for 8 year old children had risen from 1 in 54 in 2016, from 1 in 150 in 2000, whilst in the 1990's prevalence estimates ranged from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1,000. The autism rate is also high in France, 1 in 144, in Iceland, 1 in 139, and in Austria, 1 in 138. The study said this:

            “We found autism prevalence to be 3.6% in New Jersey overall, but higher in one region (5.4%) and in multiple areas approaching 7.0%. We identified significant variation in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevalence by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES) and school district size. Mapping prevalence in smaller, well-specified, regions may be useful to better understand the true scope of ASD, disparities in ASD detection and the factors impacting ASD prevalence estimation.”

In July 2020 I wrote a blog on the subject of autism, referring specifically to 157 research papers that supported the Vaccine-Autism link. I put a link to this webpage on my Facebook page, who quickly tagged this as "False rating on content shared by Safe Medicine Homeopathy' and that it's been reviewed by Science Feedback. Facebook also put an article against my blog entitled "How we know vaccines do not cause autism", and threatened to reduce the distribution of my page because 'misleading content', stating:

            "Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share misleading content will see their overall distribution reduced and their ability to monetise, advertise and register as a news Page removed. People will also be able to see if a Page has a history of sharing false news."

This is typical of Facebook, and social media generally. They have succumbed to the pressure from the Conventional Medical Establishment (CME) to censor anything and everything that speaks against their business interests - selling pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. The CME already controls the mainstream media, and now want to get social media under its control.

So autism is an epidemic, and year by year it is getting worse! And the CME is doing everything it can to deny that the drugs and vaccines listed here have anything to do with it, and to stop us getting to know.

So do the 157 research papers exist? 

Yes, they do; you can see them all outlined here for yourself if you click on the link, and then read each one of the studies for yourself.

The position of the CME is that there is no autism epidemic. Denial and censorship reign. J.B Handley outlines and demolishes their position in his blog, "There is no Autism epidemic - a pernicious rumour".

I too have dealt with it too, in my "Iatrogenic Disease" and "Why Homeopath?" e-books. This is what I said in the former.

 

"The conventional medical system are in denial about the cause of Autism. Indeed, it has worked very hard to hide from the public the cause of Autism. The NHS Choices website typifies this approach when it says:

               'The exact cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently unknown. It's a complex condition and may occur as a result of genetic predisposition (a natural tendency), environmental or unknown factors.'

It goes on to talk about inherited genes that make some children more vulnerable to ASD. It speaks about 'environmental triggers', such as premature birth, and exposure to alcohol in the womb. It says there is 'no conclusive evidence' linking either pollution or maternal infections in pregnancy to the condition. 

It does say that 'certain medications' are a possible trigger, and does mentions Sodium Valproate (a pharmaceutical drug used to treat epilepsy during pregnancy, and known to cause other birth defects).

Yet the NHS goes much further in its denial of the autism epidemic, and dismisses out of hand any connection between autism and childhood vaccinations. 

    'In the past, a number of things were linked to ASD, but extensive research has found no evidence to suggest that any of these contribute to the condition.' (My emphasis).

These 'past connections' include the MMR vaccine, and thimerosol, the mercury-based compound that is used as a preservative in many vaccines. Wikipedia, always a supporter of the conventional medical establishment, goes along with these denials.

    'Many causes of autism have been proposed, but understanding of the theory of causation of autism and the other autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is incomplete. Research indicates that genetic factors predominate. The heritability of autism, however, is complex, and it is typically unclear which genes are responsible. In rare cases, autism is strongly associated with agents that cause birth defects. Many other causes have been proposed, such as childhood immunizations, but numerous epidemiological studies have shown no scientific evidence supporting any link between vaccinations and autism.'

Most sources of information about autism follow this conventional medical line, and come up with similarly unsatisfactory explanations about the causes of autism. More than any other illness there is a complete denial that vaccines have played any part in causing the autism epidemic we have witnessed in recent decades, and which continues to grow.     

     'However, one of the leading conventional medical authorities, CDC (Centers for Disease Control) were forced to admit that there was no scientific proof that vaccines do not cause autism, conceding that reassurances to parents that childhood vaccines don't cause autism was not based on any scientific evidence."

 

Although this was written several years ago nothing has changed. It would appear that however serious the autism epidemic becomes, conventional medicine will continue to deny that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines might be the cause. The CME is in complete denial, and this has serious consequences for the children of the future, and the parents who are not being told about the possible/like association.

Complete denial is a position the CME adopts when other chronic diseases, like those mentioned here, becomes epidemic.

• We don't know what causes it, but it definitely isn't us! 

As long as the CME sticks to this stance it will continue to cause an increase in autism (not to mention other chronic diseases), AND it will remain incapable of developing any relevant response or treatment. 

So the Autism epidemic is likely only to get progressively worse!

Covid-19 Vaccines. Increased Illness and Death since their introduction. Misinformation? Cause for concern? Or a matter for the attention of conventional medical authorities?

The increase in illness and death since the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out has been widely publicised in the non-mainstream media in recent months.

Is it true?

The mainstream media, alongside governments and the conventional medical establishment either do not mention this, or dismiss such reports as "fake news" or "misinformation".

Yet is it misinformation? And is calling such reports 'misinformation' a sufficient response?

At the centre of this 'disinformation' campaign has been the Daily Expose, and here are just four links to some of their recent claims.

Covid-19 Vaccines increase risk of miscarriage by 1518%

Covid-19 Vaccines: study shows they have increased risk of stroke by 11361% 

Death rates are higher after mass vaccinations

Covid-19 increase risk of death by 4800%

Each article refers to data that has been taken from government and official medical sources, and the statistical analysis of this data has been undertaken by Daily Expose staff. It is not alone. There are many other such reports, coming from the Children's Health Defense, the White Rose, the Daily Sceptic, the Vaccine Reaction, and many others.

So is this all about statistics? - "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"?

I am not a statistician, and in all honesty statistics usually leave me cold. So what am I, indeed all of us, to believe? Several thoughts pass through my mind when I see these, and similar articles. 

• It could be disinformation, like governments, medical authorities, and the mainstream media tell us.
• It could be the application of an inaccurate or misguided statistical analysis. 
• Or it could be the truth. 

Yet to determine whether such reports are factor fiction, we would all need to have an advanced degree in statistics in order to examine the methodology that is being used! The only other alternative is to decide, like most other people do, that it would be simpler to dismiss these alarming reports as 'misinformation', to meekly accept what we are being told - and get on with it.

I don't believe we should do this. Instead, I recommend using certain other criteria to ascertain the truth.

First, we should "follow the money". Who gains from, what are the vested interests behind, both sides of this argument? 

• The 'misinformation' response is clearly in the interests of the conventional medical establishment, not least the drug companies, and those those who have been promoting, and benefiting from the promotion the mass vaccination campaigns. 
• It is more difficult to see how the Daily Expose benefits, financially or in any other way, from publishing this information. They are small, independent news organisation with a relatively small readerships. They are not large companies that generates large sums of money and income from such reports, their findings are not profitable.

So let's examine the 'disinformation' response in more detail. Why is it disinformation? Why should it be summarily dismissed? 

And it is when I ask these questions that I become sceptical of the 'misinformation responses  of the conventional medical establishment - it is not an argument - it is not backed up by an explanation - or by any discernable counter argument. Just dismissing something as 'disinformation' seems to be nothing more than an uncorroborated statement of denial.

When faced with evidence/allegations that the Covid-19 vaccines have caused serious harm to people there appears to be little (actually no) explanation or argument coming from either the pharmaceutical industry, the government, conventional medicine, or the mainstream media, about why the evidence is 'misinformation'. 

• Is the data being used incorrect or inaccurate?
• And if so, why?
  
• Is the statistical analysis being use to reach these conclusions flawed? 
• And if so, why?
  
• Or do we just have to believe that it is "misinformation" because we are told it is misinformation!

When something like a vaccine, or any other pharmaceutical drug, is subject to criticism or attack an appropriate response would be to counter this with information and evidence. Instead, we are greeted with a deafening silence; and if not silence, with a single-word dismissal.

Disinformation!

Singulair. How long does it take Pharmaceutical Medicine to identify and take action against a dangerous drug?

I have written this blog many times! Same words, same arguments, just another pharmaceutical drug! The story goes like this:

• a drug is approved by drug regulators as 'safe' and 'effective',
• thereafter it is prescribed to 1,000's of patients, who suffer harm because it is not safe,
• the drug regulators know but do nothing, they permit doctors to continue prescribing it,
• the patients are not told about the harm the drug causes, and more patients are harmed,
  
• only after many years, often many decades, is action taken against the drug to protect patients.

This story has be repeated time and time again during the past 70 years. The latest is the allergy/asthma drug, Singulair (montelukast) is not unique, just another drug in a long line of drugs to slowly progress to withdrawal, or a ban. Here are the facts.

Singulair was first approved 1998. The approval of any drug by any drug regulator (whose primary task is to protect patients) means that the regulators consider the drug to be both safe and effective.

Singulair obtained further approval as treatment for "exercise induced asthma" in 2008. So presumably drug regulators still considered the drug to be "safe" and "effective".

However, Singulair has been known to cause very serious adverse health reactions for a very long time, as outlined in this Drugs.com website. The 'side effects' listed here show just how dangerous this drug is - a drug that is still approved by drug regulators around the world.

Yet these adverse drug reactions, known for over 20 years now, have made little difference. As usual, dangerous drugs are allowed to be prescribed by the conventional medical establishment to patients even when they know perfectly that the drug is causing serious patient harm throughout the world.

It was not until March 2020 that the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added a 'black box' warning, the agency’s strongest label warning, for "serious mental health side effects".

This means that patients have been allowed by the conventional medical establishment to take Singulair for over 20 years before any serious attempt was made to inform patients of its dangers. During this time  many thousands of patients have been seriously harmed - most of them believing that the drug doctors had prescribed for them were be safe and effective.

And the situation continues. Singulair remains in use. Doctors were 'warned' by the Black Box, but the drug was neither withdrawn, or banned; doctors can still prescribe it.

So now lawsuits have been filed in USA.

            "... plaintiffs, including the parents of children who suffered psychiatric disorders after taking Singulair, are filing lawsuits that accuse Merck of designing a defective drug, negligence and failure to warn about the risk of mental problems."

As I have said many times before, the implications of this situation are important for us all to consider.

No-one can assume, at any time, that any prescribed pharmaceutical drug, or any vaccine, is safe.

I will no doubt be writing this blog again, many times in the future! Same words, same arguments, another pharmaceutical drug!

Conventional Medical Treatment. Why is there growing dissatisfaction amongst patients?

People have had a love affair with pharmaceutical medicine for many years. We have been led to believe it is the route to good health. The UK's NHS has been a much loved institution since it was first established in 1948, and conventional medicine continues to dominate health provision in health provision all over the world, with constant demands for more funding. 

Yet is public approval now beginning to falter?

The approval of conventional, or pharmaceutical medicine has survived despite escalating levels of chronic disease over the years, and now running at epidemic levels. It has survived despite thousands of pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines, presented initially as 'entirely safe', and 'game changers' in the treatment of this, or that illness, being 'banned' or 'withdrawn' when they were found to cause patient harm. When the drug did not make patients better, regardless of being put on these unsafe drugs for their entire lifetime, pharmaceutical medicine has continued to remain popular.

Yet will conventional medicine survive after its abject failure to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic? Will more people start to realise that our love of affair with conventional medicine has been misplaced, that pharmaceutical medicine is of limited value, and a demonstrable record of failure? 

We have been told since 2020 that government policies on Covid-19 (in most countries of the world) have been based the best 'medical science' available. Yet an increasing number of people can now see that these policies, the policies advocated by conventional medicine, have been a disaster.

• The Virus: the Covid-19 virus was probably engineered in a research laboratory in Wuhan, China, and although this was initially denied, the suggestion is now more widely accepted, and evidence is accumulating.
• Masks: there has never been any science to support the wearing of masks as a protection against Covid-19; yet despite actually being told this in the early days of the pandemic, they were subsequently made compulsory.
• Lockdown: the failure of lockdown policies is demonstrable, as are its negative outcomes - on mental health, on child development and education, on jobs and livelihoods, on the economy, on personal liberty, and much else. Now (after more than two years) these failures are now being discussed.
• The Vaccines: the vaccines have clearly not worked, in the way we were told they would work. They have neither stopped the vaccinated contracting the virus, nor prevented the transmission of the virus. Moreover, the Covid-19 vaccines have caused more serious harm, and death to patients, than any other vaccine in the history of vaccinations.
  

Throughout the Covid-19 saga we have been urged to "save the NHS", as if the pandemic was a greater threat to the institution, and to the pharmaceutical drugs to which it is committed, than to patients! Actually, it probably was! In Britain we were urged to stand on the street, night after night, to applaud NHS staff, alongside rainbow and 'thank-you' signs to illustrate the reason for the applause. 

Now, there is a growing understanding that the fear and panic over the virus was largely induced by conventional medicine (with the unstinting support of government and the mainstream media), that the harm caused by the virus was grossly exaggerated, and that the Covid-19 virus has proven to be no more of a threat to us than any other seasonal influenza outbreak.

The applause often reminded me of the Soviet-styled clapping of political leaders, the engineered worship of a powerful (but a failing and increasingly absurd) political elite.

To an extent the applause was understandable. My issue is not with NHS staff, it is with the medicine to which the NHS is now totally committed. The staff were on the front life, they were responsible for for looking after very sick and dying patients, and the manufactured panic did seem genuine enough to most people at the time.

Yet there are now signs that confidence in conventional medicine is might now be changing. Public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to the lowest levels for over 25 years. So what has caused the change?

The King's Fund has recently published "Public satisfaction with the NHS and social care in 2021: results from the British Social Attitudes survey". This has shown that overall satisfaction with the NHS fell to 36%, which they described as "an unprecedented 17 percentage point decrease on 2020". This was the lowest level of satisfaction recorded since 1997, when satisfaction was just 34%. More people (41%) were dissatisfied with the NHS than satisfied, and this dissatisfaction was spanned all ages, income groups, sexes and supporters of different political parties.

The reason for dissatisfaction with the NHS did not identify the failure of the medical system.The main reason people gave for being dissatisfied were waiting times for seeing a doctor, and for hospital appointments (65%), staff shortages (46%) and the long-held view that government did not spend enough on the NHS (40%). I suspect that more fundamental but unvoiced concerns have emerged over recent years.

I have heard much cynicism from erstwhile supporters of the NHS about the way Covid-19 was dealt with. There has certainly been a gap between (i) what we were told and (ii) what actually happened. For instance, when the vaccines were about to be introduced, in December 2020, we were told that they would save us, and return us back to normal life by February. Remember? The first single injection would improve the situation. Then we were asked to have a second dose. Then a booster. Then a second booster. And now we are being told that we will need to have boosters every 6 months for the foreseeable future, according to one UK government health agency.

With each injection, take up rates reduced. Fewer people were prepared to take more. This was probably because people realised the the Covid-19 vaccines were causing serious harm to patients. What other reason could there be? Even one manufacturer, Pfizer, knew about the harm their vaccine might cause. The public have not been told about this, by government, by doctors, or by the mainstream media. But when someone is damaged they think twice before getting a second, a third, and a fourth vaccine.

So there is little wonder that people are having increasing doubts about how 'scientific' conventional medicine is, and whether doctors and the NHS can be trusted. A rash of recent articles has outlined the new scepticism. The BMJ recently published an article entitled "The illusion of evidence-based medicine". The Daily Expose published an article entitled "Modern Medicine - a castle built on sand". CHD has published at article entitled "How politics corruption evidence-based medicine". And the Vaccine Reaction has published an article entitled "Trust in CDC waning".

Even the Spectator is moving into these more critical areas. The 'inescapable' conclusion of their article "The NHS is failing" is that when you compare the NHS to other similar health services in similar countries around the world the it does not merit our devotion.

            "While MPs compete to shout the loudest in their support of the UK’s health services (‘save our NHS!’), the British public has fallen out of love with it. More people are now dissatisfied with the NHS than are happy with it. This is true across all ages, income groups, sexes and voters of different political parties. Support for the NHS is now at the lowest level for a quarter of a century."

The Spectator article is written by Tim Knox, former director of the Centre for Policy Studies. He compared the NHS with the health provision in 19 other countries so it is basically a comparison of health service outcomes in other wealthy countries, all of which have a health service which is dominated by conventional/pharmaceutical medicine. It indicates that the NHS compares badly. So, for example, life expectancy in the UK is 17th out of these 19 comparable nations. 

            "Our cancer survival rates are shockingly low. We are the worst for strokes and heart attacks. We are one from bottom for preventing treatable diseases. We are third from bottom for infant mortality."

The article concludes that our health system is less successful than that of other nations, that in all comparisons used, the UK comes bottom of the league tables four times (more than any other country) and is in the bottom 3 nations for 8 out of the 16 measures.

Knox's article also makes the another important point, that the amount of money spent on conventional medicine makes little difference to patient outcomes. He looked at the American insurance based model as a possible alternative for the NHS, but found that although the USA spends considerably more money on conventional medicine than any other nation, patient outcomes were even worse.

            "If there is one country that clearly has a worse system than the UK, it is America. Extraordinarily low life expectancy, vast costs and often poor treatment means that it would be a crazy model to imitate. But that doesn’t mean we should discount an insurance model altogether. Plenty of European and western countries are able to effectively use such a model without the massive health failures we see in the US."

So criticism and dissatisfaction of conventional medical provision may be growing, but not to the point that the underlying cause of the failure of NHS medicine has been identified. 

The NHS is NOT failing because it is failing to use its resources as well as other comparable countries. Or because the insurance system, or some other type of organisational structure might be better that a tax-payer funded NHS service. There is a continued reluctance to identify what really underlies patient dissatisfaction - that the failure is the result of the pharmaceutical medical system that dominates the health service provided by the NHS, and health provision in most other countries.

Yet if patient dissatisfaction is increasing so rapidly it is difficult to see how the NHS can recover from a growing cynicism. Chronic disease, of all types, is on a steep rising trajectory. We are getting sicker, and conventional medicine is not making us better. Indeed, adverse drug reactions are making us more sick year by year. And for several decades now conventional medicine has failed to come up with any new treatments that are likely to overcome the ever-increasing levels of sickness and disease.

With waiting lists now at their highest ever levels, over 6 million people; and with projections that this could get far worse (as many as 14 million people suggested here) the cynicism is unlikely to improve.

Even the mainstream media is feeling obliged to publish details of this growing dissatisfaction with the NHS. What this means is that it will not be long before more and more people realise that it is conventional or pharmaceutical medicine that is failing. It is not funding, or the organisational structure, or the efficient use of resources. Then the rising dissatisfaction will be redirected, and is likely to increase even more. 

In the next few years we are heading rapidly towards medical chaos and breakdown.

 

Postscript May 2022. 

Patient satisfactions with doctors hits record low as face-to-face consultations become the exception.

Pharmaceutical Medicine - a Faustian Deal?

Is Conventional (or Pharmaceutical medicine) a Faustian bargain? The legend of Doctor Faustus arises from German folk law, Faust making an agreement to surrender his soul to an evil spirit (The Devil, Satan or Mephistopheles) in exchange for otherwise unattainable knowledge, and magical powers, that provided him with access to all the world’s pleasures. In the bargain Faust recognises the evil of the bargainer but goes along with the deal anyway. Faustian bargains always end in tragedy because what is surrendered (the soul, or good health and well-being) is ultimately far more valuable than what has been obtained (worldly pleasures, or short-term health benefits).

Pharmaceutical drug treatment provides minor, short-term health benefits; but the cumulative adverse drug reactions usually leads to the patient having to take more and more, or stronger (more toxic) drugs in order to cope with the side effects of previous treatments. I have written about two such patient who entered, unknowingly, into such a deal.

• Ronald, a patient getting to the end of a long journey through pain and painkilling drugs, ending up in chronic pain, and Tramadol.
  

• Janet, a patient getting to the end of the long journey through pain and painkilling drugs, ending up in chronic pain, Amitriptyline - and dementia. 

Both Ronald and Janet can be seen to have traded their long-term health and well-being in exchange for some temporary relief from pain, leading to chronic health outcomes. One drug leads to another drug which leads to another. They all cause 'side effects' more serious than the original condition. The Faustian deal was not a good, long-term deal for either of them. There are so many other similar examples. Any one of us can find them amongst our own family, friends, and acquaintances.

Conventional medicine offers these Faustian packages all the time. When anyone enters a doctor's surgery, or a hospital, and accepts a pharmaceutical drug the deal is made. 

• The patient is usually told that the drug, or drugs, are 'safe', and he/she is too often feeling too ill to check; or they implicitly trust their doctor. 
• For his/her part the doctor is usually less than transparent. They are aware of the limited, short-term benefits of the drugs they prescribe, as well as the serious longer-term adverse reactions they can cause; but this knowledge is usually not shared.

In all these Faustian medical deals, the doctors are fully aware of the nature and possible consequences of the deal, but the patient is not, and rarely associates their declining health with the drugs they are taking.

There have been two main outcomes:

1. It is the reason for the staggering increase in chronic disease, particularly since the 1950's, when we began our love affair (our Faustian deal) with pharmaceutical drugs, and began to believe without question the propaganda of the drug companies, whose message to us continues to be that their drugs were winning the war against illness and disease. Any cursory examination into our health, and the rise and rise of chronic disease during the last 70 years, demonstrates clearly that this is not so. 
2. Faustian health packages are also the fundamental reason for the ongoing crisis in national health services around the world, including the UK's NHS. The last 70 years has seen an astronomical increase in pharmaceutical drug taking, Faustian deals that ensured that patients like Ronald and Janet got sicker, in need of increasing amounts of medical intervention. The current NHS crisis, both in funding, waiting lists and staff morale, is being blamed on the Covid-19 pandemic. My blog, during the last 12 years, has clearly shown that the current crisis is an ongoing crisis that has been worsening over the years.

Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic can be seen as yet another Faustian deal - a manufactured virus, an exaggerated crisis, the adoption of panic public health measure (masks, lockdown, et al) - responses that not only failed but actually made matters worse. Then, of course, there was the long wait for vaccines that were supposed to save us, but did not work - they neither prevented the virus, or stopped its transmission. And their side effects have yet to be recognised by the conventional medical establishment, for obvious reasons.

The devil, once again, refused to reveal what the Covid-19 package was doing to Doctor Faustus! And Satan continues to do his best to ensure that he does not find out!

So when you are offered a Faustian medical deal, please make sure you refuse it! 

Instead, discover what good diet, exercise, and safe natural medical therapies can do for you instead.

Sodium Valproate. The demise of another pharmaceutical drug. 20,000 damaged children? A tragedy worse than Thalidomide?

Pharmaceutical drugs are known to be dangerous. Sometimes even doctors are forced to admit this. There are even times when even the mighty Conventional Medical Establishment can no longer defend the harm their drugs and vaccines do to patients. For the antiepileptic drug, sodium valpoate, this  time appears to be rapidly happening.

Please Note: sodium valproate comes to patients under many different names - rarely sodium valproate. It is vaariously called Absenor, Convulex, Depakene, Depakine, Depalept, Deprakine, Dyzantil, Encorate, Epilim, Epivil, Episenta, Stavzor, Valcote, Valpakine, Orgiril, and no doubt many more (just to confuse us patients! What on earth do these names mean? Why do pharmaceutical companies need so many?)

On Sunday 17th April 2022, the Sunday Times headline blew a whistle (a whistle they use so rarely) on this drug (I will ask "Why?" later). Its front page headline stated "Drug Scandal that damaged 20,000 babies: epilepsy pills are still being given to pregnant women in a travesty that recalls thalidomide". Its editorial announced that "20,000 babies damaged - and still the scandal continues". The main article began:

            " Health experts knew in 1973 that the epilepsy medication sodium valproate posed a risk to unborn children - but mothers-to-be were not told. Almost 50 years and 20,000 disabled children later, it is still being prescribed to pregnant women. Now some are saying 'this scandal is worse than Thalidomide".

Worse than Thalidomide? I have written about the Thalidomide scandal before, briefly outlining the events on this link. It was a tragedy that led to the introduction of our current system of pharmaceutical drug regulation, now used around the world, and intended to ensure that such event would "never happen again". Clearly it has failed. Moreover, as this story shows, the new system of regulation was already failing at the very time it was being set up!

And the problem is almost certainly bigger than the Sunday Times says. If it is thought that 20,000 babies have been damaged that number could be multiplied by 10, even perhaps 100 times, given that regulatory reporting systems are notoriously bad at picking up cases. And, as the Sunday Times outlines, the harm caused by sodium valproate has been going on now for nearly 50 years now - and yet the drug is still being prescribed by doctors, and little of no action has been taken to protect patients from it.

WHAT THE SUNDAY TIMES ARTICLE TELLS US

Very few people read the Sunday Times. Its articles are not openly available on the internet, and few people now buy newspapers. So here are some quotations from the article.

        "Sodium valproate, which was given to women with epilepsy for decades without proper warning, has caused autism, learning difficulties, and physical deformities in up to 20,000 babies in Britain".

        "... despite... a 2020 report that criticised the failure over four decades to tell women of the dangers, doctors are still not properly warning women of the risks......."

        "An investigation by the Sunday Times has found that the drug is being handed out to women in plain packets with the information leaflets missing, or with stickers over the warning". (My emphasis).

The article tells us that the problem of birth defects caused by the drug was discussed as early as 1972 and 1973, when "the manufacturers, Sanofi, told the committee that there were signs in animal tests that valproate could potentially be teratogenic - harmful to foetuses" but the committee "concluded that the use of anti-seizure drugs ... was indeed liable to produce abnormalities" but that "the risk appears to be low, and not sufficient to justify stopping the use" of the drug.

        "They specified that warnings should be provided to doctors, but not on package inserts, so that there would be no danger of patients themselves seeing it". (My emphasis).

The Sunday Times article goes on to outline the subsequent history of the harm caused by the drug over the last 50 years, and the regular warnings that have arisen over time. These range from reports in the Journal of Paediatrics in 1980, the British Medical journal in 1983, debates in the House of Commons, reviews in the Lancet, et al.  

Each time, little or nothing was done to warn or protect patients - indeed the opposite.

            "The CSM (Committee on the Safety of Medicine) finally acted on the concerns, asking Sanofi to write to all GPs and hospital doctors with a new warning sheet, setting out the sodium valproate could lead to birth defects. However, the committee still stopped short of requiring doctors to tell women about the risks, with the danger of spina bifida not being including on patient safety leaflets until 1994. And still no detailed research into the effects of the drug was commissioned".

Warning after warning followed. A study in 2009 confirmed that the use of the drug in pregnancy could damage children's IQ. Yet it was only in 2010 that patient information sheets referred to the risk to cognitive development, including autism.  

So it is quite impossible that the dangers of Sodium valproate could have remained unknown to any doctor, or anyone connected with the conventional medical establishment. 

But nothing has ever been done, pregnants women are still being prescribed the drug. The thalidomide scandal was supposed to lead to new drug regulation procedures whose primary objective was to protect patients. Yet no action was taken to protect patients from sodium valproate at the time, and for the next 50 years! Drug regulation does not work to protect patients. The system has been taken over, consumed by the drug companies it is supposed to be regulating.

After many years, during which time government, the conventional medical establishment, the NHS, and doctors did not act, patients tried to take action themselves. A lawsuit was brought up against Sanofi; but this collapsed before the trial when legal aid was withdrawn. The government has a vested interest in not wanting such a trial to go forward, so they took action that ensured that patients could not obtain redress!

There comes a time when the CSM realises that it can no longer protect a dangerous pharmaceutical drug, even when this has been its priority for many decades. 

In 2018, Jeremy Hunt, UK's Health Secretary, although refusing to set up a compensation scheme for the families, set up another enquiry. The Cumberlege Report was published two years later, in July 2020. It concluded that the government had an ethical responsibility to provide financial help to families harmed by sodium valproate, to cover the costs of care, and detailed how a 'disjointed, siloed, unresponsive and defensive healthcare system had, for over two decades, failed to fully appreciate or act on the harmful effects of sodium valproate; but (as the Sunday Times article said) the government continue to refuse to compensate the families.

So still nothing has happened. Patients are still not being told of the dangers by doctors; they are still not getting information leaflets with their drugs; and it would seem that even the warnings given on drug boxes are being obscured (intentionally?) by pharmacists. Clearly, we are not supposed to know!

WHAT THE SUNDAY TIMES ARTICLE DOES NOT TELL US

So why has the Sunday Times suddenly decided to publish this information on sodium valproate? The mainstream media does not usually criticise its main source of income - the advertising budgets of the pharmaceutical companies! Perhaps they did so for the same reason Jeremy Hunt agreed to set up the 2018 enquiry - the evidence of patient harm has become so serious it could no longer be ignored!

1. Is Sodium Valproate safe?

The Sunday Times have not been entirely disloyal to its paymasters! Several times the article tells us that sodium valproate is a safe drug, other than for pregnant women, of course.

SODIUM VALPROATE IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT A SAFE DRUG!

The horrendous adverse drug reactions caused by sodium valporate are well known to the CME, and is part of their medical literature that everyone can see for themselves. So if anyone believes that this is a safe drug they should go to, for example, the Drugs.com website to read for themselves just how serious its so-called 'side effects' can be - even for people who are not pregnant! This is a very, very long list of very serious adverse drug reactions.

2. Is this really a one-off medical scandal?

Yet there are other issues that have not been tackled by the Sunday Times article, questions that should have been, but were not asked. Sodium valproate is the tip of a very deep iceberg. The mainstream media always likes to present these problems as 'isolated', one-off indiscretions, that are not being repeated anywhere else within pharmaceutical medicine.

Sodium valproate is not an isolated case, there many other drugs in the same situation as sodium valproate. These are drugs that are usually described by doctors as being "entirely safe", but in effect they are drugs waiting to be banned because of the patient harm they are already known to cause. And just as it has taken 50 years to ascertain that sodium valproate is dangerous, the same applies to almost any pharmaceutical drug anyone would like to mention.

And the conventional medical profession has been dishonest, for so long, about this drug, how many other drugs are being 'protected' by doctors, and the CME generally?

3. Patient Choice and Informed Consent.

The experience of women who have taken sodium valproate, as described in the Sunday Times article, clearly shows that a decision was taken NOT to inform them about possible adverse drug reactions. It might alarm them, and the paternalist CME wanted to protect them from such fear! Or perhaps they wanted to use this drug, however dangerous it was known to be, because it was all that they had to offer.

Doctors know best. All patients are expected to do is what they are told to do by the medical experts. Take the 'safe' pills - and take your chances. The danger of being given complete information is that patients might decide for themselves, they might make an"informed choice" and say "No". Patient choice is not good for the business of selling drugs. And it patients refuse, they will then discover that conventional medicine has nothing else to offer.

4. The CME, NHS, honesty and transparency

The NHS is not a transparent organisation, it is not even an honest one! It has sold out totally to pharmaceutical medicine, and conventional medicine has much to hide. We saw it recently over maternity care. Sodium valproate has demonstrated, yet again, that the NHS has clearly been involved in deliberate obfuscation, cover-up, and lies. It is clear that the CME has made a number of calculated decisions over the last 50 years:

• not to tell women about the dangers of the drug;
• doctors asked to tell pregnant women about the dangers, have failed to do so; 
• drugs packaged in plain boxes, without information leaflets;
• and if there are warnings on a box they have been (intentionally/deliberately ??) covered up with labels.

5. Bankrupting the NHS
It is the use of dangerous, patient harming drugs that is leading to the bankrupting of the NHS, and the growing awareness of the failure of conventional, or pharmaceutical medicine around the world. Sodium valproate demonstrates this as well as any other pharmaceutical drug.

• There is an illness, in this case epilepsy.
• Patients are given a drug to treat for the illness.
• There are serious adverse drug reactions (in this case, at least 20,000 children are damaged, with most requiring medical, social and economic support for the rest of their lives).

This is not a one-off problem affecting just one drug. Most illnesses/diseases can be, and often are caused by pharmaceutical drugs.

Epilepsy itself can be caused by amphetamines and other stimulant drugs, by antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, by antibiotics and painkillers, by many vaccines, and many other pharmaceutical drugs.

This is why we are sicker now, as a nation, then we have ever been before, why chronic disease, in all its many forms, is now a unprecedented epidemic levels, and rising. 

AND THIS IS THE REAL LESSON OF SODIUM VALPROATE!