The effectiveness of conventional medicine is suffering another blow. Today, 31st January 2017, most mainstream media sources have carried the story that malaria is becoming drug resistant. The main drugs, used in combination, to treat patients in the UK failed for four patients who had the tropical disease on returning to Britain. Although they worked, initially, all four were readmitted to hospital when the disease returned. They had to be treated with the antimalarial drug combination of artemether and lumefantrine.
The treatment of malaria has become a highly publicised issue in recent years, not least because the conventional medical establishment (and their friends in the organisation 'Sense about Science') objected to homeopathy treating the condition. It needed, they said in the words of Kirsty Wark, to be treated with 'proper' medicine! Well, it looks as though 'proper medicine is failing. I wrote about the homeopathic prevention and treatment of malaria in 2012
There appears to be no panic within conventional medical circles at the moment. The news release clearly says that conventional medicine has lots of other alternative drug treatment. Yet if this entirely true? Wikipedia talks about resistance to antimalerial drugs (all of them, not just this combination) and comments, simply, straightforwardly, that "Antimalarial resistance is common". So are we facing yet another group of pharmaceutical drugs that are becoming useless?
Yet in addition, all antimalerial drugs come with the most dreadful side effects. This particular combination, however, is apparently the treatment of choice. So let's examine the side effects of this 'treatment of choice' (taken from the Drugs.com website)
The treatment of malaria has become a highly publicised issue in recent years, not least because the conventional medical establishment (and their friends in the organisation 'Sense about Science') objected to homeopathy treating the condition. It needed, they said in the words of Kirsty Wark, to be treated with 'proper' medicine! Well, it looks as though 'proper medicine is failing. I wrote about the homeopathic prevention and treatment of malaria in 2012
There appears to be no panic within conventional medical circles at the moment. The news release clearly says that conventional medicine has lots of other alternative drug treatment. Yet if this entirely true? Wikipedia talks about resistance to antimalerial drugs (all of them, not just this combination) and comments, simply, straightforwardly, that "Antimalarial resistance is common". So are we facing yet another group of pharmaceutical drugs that are becoming useless?
Yet in addition, all antimalerial drugs come with the most dreadful side effects. This particular combination, however, is apparently the treatment of choice. So let's examine the side effects of this 'treatment of choice' (taken from the Drugs.com website)
- Abdominal or stomach pain
- chills
- cough
- fast, irregular, pounding, or racing heartbeat or pulse
- fever
- headache
- muscle aches
- pale skin
- right upper abdominal or stomach pain and fullness
- sore throat
- stuffy or runny nose
- troubled breathing with exertion
- unusual bleeding or bruising
- unusual tiredness or weakness
- Accumulation of pus
- acid or sour stomach
- belching
- black, tarry stools
- bladder pain
- blood in the urine
- bloody or cloudy urine
- body aches or pain
- change in hearing
- chest pain
- cloudy urine
- convulsions
- cough producing mucus
- decreased urine
- diarrhea
- difficult, burning, or painful urination
- difficulty with breathing
- difficulty with swallowing
- dizziness
- dry mouth
- ear congestion
- ear drainage
- earache or pain in the ear
- frequent urge to urinate
- general feeling of discomfort or illness
- heartburn
- increased thirst
- indigestion
- joint pain
- loss of appetite
- loss of voice
- lower back or side pain
- mood changes
- muscle pain or cramps
- nasal congestion
- nausea or vomiting
- noisy breathing
- numbness or tingling in the hands, feet, or lips
- red rash with watery, yellow-colored, or pus filled blisters
- shivering
- shortness of breath
- sneezing
- sores, ulcers, or white spots on the lips or in the mouth
- stomach discomfort, upset, or pain
- sweating
- swollen glands
- swollen, red, tender area of infection
- thick yellow to honey-colored crusts
- tightness in the chest
- troubled with sleeping
- Incidence not known:
- Large, hive-like swelling on the face, eyelids, lips, tongue, throat, hands, legs, feet, or sex organs
This is not good news for those people living in over 100 countries in Africa, Asia and Central America, or the 14 million people affected with malaria, or and 438,000 who died from it in 2015. Or, indeed, the 1,500 travellers who are diagnosed with it every year.
So the conventional medical treatment of malaria appears not only to be failing because of resistance. It is not, as Kirsty Wark would have had us believe in her notorious Newsnight programme in January 2012, "proper medicine". It is dangerous and failed medicine!
And Homeopathy, the medicine that Kirsty Wark, and the BBC attacked so vehemently, is still being used, throughout the world, still as safely and effectively as before. This should not come as a surprise. Homeopathy has been treating malaria for over 200 years, with no 'resistance' to the remedies that have been used during all that time.