Search This Blog

Wednesday 5 August 2015

Health Monopoly means patients suffer, and even die

Where there is effective competition, in any sphere of life, customers or consumers are usually given choice. They can see what is available to them, and decide which product most meets their needs and requirements.
  • For instance, if we were to visit a car showroom today to purchase a car, and were told that they could not sell us one with windows, or a roof, we would take ourselves to another showroom. 
  • If the salesman told us that all their cars could only be started by a turning handle, operated from the front of the car, we might want to look at other options.
  • If we were shown a car that could only travel at 30mph, or that only achieved 5 miles per gallon of petrol, we might decide to look for more effective and economical vehicles.
Indeed, such a showroom, such a car manufacturer, would soon find themselves out of business, as most of their prospective customers would want something that worked a little better.

These might sound like strange and excessive scenarios, perhaps as there are many car manufacturers, each seeking to respond to consumer requirements.

Yet, in the provision of health services, there is no such competition. Visit your doctor, or your local hospital, and you will be offered conventional medical treatment, most of which is based on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. If you want some other form of medical therapy you will not only be in the wrong place, no-one at the surgery, or the hospital, will bother to tell you about alternatives.

If conventional medicine was offering something that was safe and effective this might not represent a problem. We would be ill, receive the treatment, and get better. But this is seldom the deal offered to us by our doctors.

Arthritis. 
NHS Choices tells us that "osteoarthritis cannot be cured, but treatment can ease your symptoms and prevent them from affecting your everyday life”. The main conventional treatment for 'easing the symptoms' of arthritis are painkilling drugs. Yet these painkilling drugs are dangerous. And doctors know they are dangerous! But will they direct you to an alternative medical therapy, like homeopathy, which can cure arthritis safely and effective?

They will not. One has to suppose they prefer their patients to suffer - even when they admit that they have no cure.

Fibromyalgia (Chronic Fatigue)
This condition can be a very painful, but once again, NHS Choices confirms that: “there is no (conventional) cure for fibromyalgia, but treatment can ease some of your symptoms and improve quality of life”. So patients might be sent to specialists, such as rheumatologies, neurologists or psychologists, who will use painkillers and other drugs, but not to alternative practitioners who can actually treat the disease successfully.

Again, the NHS admits that conventional medicine has nothing to offer, but they refuse to refer patients on for more effective or safer treatment.

And there are many other diseases that conventional medicine has no safe or effective treatment. Indeed, in writing my new ebook, "Why Homeopathy?", which compares conventional medicine with homeopathy in the treatment of a variety of illnesses, I have been surprised at the number of times the conventional medical establishment freely and openly admits it has no effective treatment.

So a car with no windows, with no starter motor, and offering only a dreadful motoring experience is not either strange or excessive. It is what routinely happens which sick people visit conventional medical practitioners. There are many other diseases that conventional medicine admits it cannot treat, yet refuses to refer patients on to those who can.

Moreover, conventional medical practitioners also know, and admit, that their drugs cause side effects, and that these side effects can themselves be serious illness and diseases, including liver, kidney and heart disease, diabetes, confusion (dementia) and much else.

The analogy here might be that the car salesman cannot guarantee that travellers will not be poisoned by exhaust fumes, or crash randomly into obsticles at any time!

Death
Nor is the prospect of death an obstacle to the conventional medical establishment. The monopoly they hold within the NHS is to precious to put at risk by suggesting that there may be other treatments that might help patients.

I remember some years ago listening to news story about the man in Dundee who contracted Rabies from a bat. He was treated in hospital, presumably using conventional medical treatment. It was reported that 'there was no cure' for this condition, but they were making him as comfortable as possible.

I wrote to the Department of Health asking whether anyone within the health service in Dundee had bothered to see whether there was any traditional therapy for the condition, and in particular, whether they had contacted a homeopath in the area. I pointed out that Homeopathy treats 'like with like' using substances in high dilution/potency, and that the remedy 'Lyssinum' was made from the saliva of a rabid dog. I said that if asked, any homeopath could have tried this remedy, or indeed several others used by homeopaths for the treatment of this disease, to try to save this man's life.

The response I received was that was a matter of patient confidentiality, and the could not give me the information I required. The man’s death was announced a few days later.

Homeopathy is regularly used to treat rabies in eastern Europe, and elsewhere. The only assumption that can be drawn from this situation is that when people have illnesses that conventional medicine cannot cure, no effort is made by conventional medical practitioners to check whether alternative  medical therapies  might help – even when, as in this case, death was the outcome.

There are many other medical conditions (dementia, Ebola, et al) that lead to death, for which there is no conventional treatment. Whilst the conventional medical establishment will often conduct vastly expensive research into new drug or vaccine development, a simple referral to a homeopath, or indeed research into alternative treatments, is never suggested.

The NHS, and indeed many national health services throughout the world, are monopoly suppliers of conventional drug/vaccine medicine. Regretfully, they are more interested in protecting their monopoly than offering patients a real choice of medical therapy - even when they have nothing safe, or effective to offer us.