Fergus Walsh is officially the BBC's Medical Editor, but he has been its medical correspondent since 2004. It would appear that his main job, either on behalf of the BBC, or the pharmaceutical industry, is to provide propaganda for new 'breakthrough' drugs and vaccines that will 'transform' or 'revolutionise' the treatment of a particular illness or disease. Here are just a few or Walsh's published pieces, of which there must now be many hundreds!
Newborns to get rapid genetic disease diagnosis (2022)
BioNTech: could Covid vaccine technology crack cancer? (2022).
Alzheimer's drug hailed as 'breakthrough'. (2022).
Take-at-home treatment for spinal muscular atrophy (2021).
How breakthrough coronavirus drug dexamethasone was found (2020).
Coronavirus: encouraging results in vaccines trials (2020).
Gene therapy first to 'halt' most common cause of blindness (2019).
Breakthrough treatment for MS patient (2016).
Gene editing technique could transform future (2016)
Windpipe Transplant Breakthrough (2008)
You will see that all these pieces, and so many, many more over the past two decades, have a similar format. *It's a terrible disease. *The drug/vaccine is a revolutionary breakthrough in treatment. *Medical science confirms the drug works, and will be successful. *The treatment is not available now, but will be in one/two/three years time. *The drugs adverse reactions are usually not mentioned.
Walsh's promotion of these drugs/vaccines is entirely free for the drug industry, by a broadcaster that should not advertise! Another problem with Walsh's optimism about pharmaceutical drugs is
that it raises the hopes of patients, only to dash them again when ultimately they are prescribed, and prove to be useless in practice, or
worse than useful because of their adverse reactions.
This does not matter because Walsh's pieces also have another characteristic. They are never followed up. The 'good news' story is about the future. It is never about today. And tomorrow never seems to happen!
Walsh has been very successful in promoting pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. He was certainly instrumental in promoting the Covid-19 vaccines, not least the AstraZeneca vaccine. He has been less successful in telling us about the outcomes of the drugs he had promoted. For example, to my knowledge he has never told anyone that the AstraZeneca vaccine has been either banned in some countries, or universally abandoned around the world, as in Britain - largely because of the adverse reactions it has caused - reactions that he has never mentioned, and continues to ignore.
So is there any evidence for these successful breakthrough treatments? Can the ongoing travails of the NHS provide us with firm evidence that illness and disease is being reduced, that patients are getting any benefit from these treatments? Or are most of them (like the AstraZeneca vaccine) been abandoned, because they have proven to be either largely ineffective, or just too dangerous.Conventional medicine throughout the world, and particularly within the NHS, is now dominated by pharmaceutical treatments. No matter how successful Fergus Walsh has been in promoting them, on behalf of the drug industry conventional medicine continues to be stubbornly unable to prevent or treat serious illness and disease. Most chronic diseases are now running a record, epidemic levels - and rising.
Notwithstanding, Walsh continues to come out with these pieces of 'good news' on a regular basis, even at this time when the failure of pharmaceutical medicine is becoming increasingly apparent. His optimism about drugs may not benefit patients but they most certainly benefit the pharmaceutical industry.
It might be accurate to say that Walsh is one of their most successful salesmen.
For more information about the harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs, and the failure of conventional medicine, go to these links.
Iatrogenic Disease. The Disease Inducing Effects of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines.