Lariam, or Mefloquine, or any one of the different names the conventional medical establishment has chosen to call it, has (at last) been recognised as being dangerous. It has taken a long time! The drug was developed by the USA army in the 1970's, and marketed from the mid-1980's. So it has taken over 30 years to come to this conclusion. Except, of course, that even now it is only the conclusion of the UK parliamentary defence committee - the Ministry of Defence still insists that it is a useful drug "as a last resort", the NHS remain silent, and the drug companies, predictably, continue to sell the drug to anyone foolish enough, or sufficiently ill-informed to know about its dangers. So the saga will no doubt continue for many more years to come.
Malaria is a dangerous and potentially fatal disease. Yet the prevention and treatment of Malaria does not require the use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs like Lariam. I wrote about this in my blog "The Prevention and Treatment of Malaria with Homeopathy" in November 2012, pointing out the grave dangers of anti-malarial drugs, and the safety of homeopathy. I added a postscript to this blog in August 2013 after FDA Drug Safety Communication announced that the antimalarial drug, mefloquine hydrochloride is now known to cause "serious psychiatric and nerve side-effects" which can last for months, even years.
Yet Lariam continues to survive. It has become yet another drug that proves an important point about the pharmaceutical industry, that they produce only two types of drug:
Malaria is a dangerous and potentially fatal disease. Yet the prevention and treatment of Malaria does not require the use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs like Lariam. I wrote about this in my blog "The Prevention and Treatment of Malaria with Homeopathy" in November 2012, pointing out the grave dangers of anti-malarial drugs, and the safety of homeopathy. I added a postscript to this blog in August 2013 after FDA Drug Safety Communication announced that the antimalarial drug, mefloquine hydrochloride is now known to cause "serious psychiatric and nerve side-effects" which can last for months, even years.
Yet Lariam continues to survive. It has become yet another drug that proves an important point about the pharmaceutical industry, that they produce only two types of drug:
- those drugs that are known and accepted to be dangerous, and have consequently been withdrawn or banned.
- drugs that a waiting to be withdrawn or banned because the conventional medical establishment is not prepared to recognise their dangers to patients.
The 'public service' broadcaster, BBC News, has picked up on this story, most unusually for a company that routinely perpetuates a slavishly supportive of the pharmaceutical industry, and the conventional medical 'wisdom'. It is not long ago, January 2011, that Kirsty Wark, presenting the BBC 'Newsnight' programme, attacked homeopathy for daring to say that it could prevent and treat malaria, and for diverting patients away from what she called 'real medicine'. This 'real medicine', of course, included the use of Lariam!
This is the problem for patients, anyone seeking conventional medical assistance. They are not being told the truth about pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. The prescription of these drug multiplies, whilst the dangers of doing so are hidden.
- Drug companies continue to market and profit from them.
- Doctors continue to prescribe them, and tell us they are safe, because they have nothing else to offer us.
- The NHS is dominated the the conventional medical establishment, committed to pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and unable to admit that they are harming patients.
- Governments and politicians look to the pharmaceutical companies for what they consider to be important commercial investment, and employment, and the financing of their political campaigns.
- The mainstream media is beholden to the pharmaceutical companies for their advertising, and the boards of both industries are cross-fertilised, and inter-dependent on each other.
- The BBC, particularly its health and science correspondents, have been infiltrated by proponents of organisation such as 'Sense about Science'.
What this means is that there is little examination, little investigation into what the conventional medical establishment is doing, and why it is doing it, and the harmful consequences on patients of what they are doing. So patients remain misinformed, if not totally ignorant about the damage pharmaceutical drugs can have on their health.
Note that this new development did not arise from investigative journalism, from the government, the NHS, the conventional medical establishment, or the drugs companies. It came from a Defence Committee, concerned about the safety of their soldiers.
Soldiers have been reporting the serious side-effects of anti-malarial drugs, including Lariam, for decades. But, of course, this is considered to be only 'circumstantial', or 'anacdotal' evidence. It is not 'scientific'. And the medical profession is keen to tell us that there is no 'science' to support the claims that these drugs, that any pharmaceutical drug or vaccine, are dangerous.
We live in a world where medicine does not listen to patient experience, they listen to the scientists who undertake their RCT studies, in the pay of the pharmaceutical companies.
So whilst this development is being treated as a news story today (24th May 2016), it is really history that we are being told about. There is nothing new about what is being revealed about Lariam, or anti-malarial drugs generally, or pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines as a whole. The real story about 'real medicine' is that it is dangerous, it is harming patients, and because of this, it is failing.
Why, when we have been spending more and more every year on conventional health treatment are we getting sicker? Why are we facing epidemic levels of physical and mental illness? Why are national health services around the world unable to cope within the huge budgets they are given year by year? It is the use of dangerous drugs, like Lariam, that is the real explanation.