Surgical Operations. Miracle? Or Medical Failure

Although I speak much about 'the failure of conventional medicine' most people continue to point towards surgical operations as a 'success' that proves conventional medicine is not failing. However, this is not so. Or it is so only as long as we want to ignore what has usually proceeded the necessity of surgery. What follows was originally published in a chapter of my e-book on the failure of conventional medicine.

     "Surgical operations will always be a necessary part of any modern and effective health service. Great strides have been taken during the last 150 years in surgical skills. Operations are not necessarily ‘dangerous procedures’, and many are necessary, life-saving procedures. 

     However, the demand for surgery, and the amount of surgery actually undertaken, is far greater than it needs to be. This is allied to a medical system that is incapable of treating illness and diseases safely and effectively. Conventional drugs and vaccines are largely ineffective, they do not cure illness, and in addition they exacerbate it, they cause harm to patients. Conventional medicine is doing this on a regular and consistent basis. The outcome is that medical conditions actually get worse, until patients require more invasive, surgical intervention.

Organ Replacement

     The human body comes with a fully-equipped, fully-operational and integrated set of organs that have been carefully honed to support life, and to maintain good health. This changes when patients develop some form of organ disease. If a patient then seeks conventional medicine treatment they will initially receive some form of pharmaceutical medication. Indeed, organ failure and disease is often the direct result of pharmaceutical drug treatment. It is the drugs and vaccines doctors prescribed that causes it. Even common pharmaceutical drugs, such as painkillers and indigestion tablets, sold without a doctor’s prescription, can damage our organs, and they do so more often than we are told!

     When conventional drug treatment fails, if the organ continues to deteriorate, or when its function is significantly reduced, the condition can become life threatening. When this happens, conventional medicine will turn to surgery for a remedy. It will eventually seek to replace the diseased organ with another, taken from a donor. The number of organ replacement operations, and the number of organs that can be replaced, has increased rapidly over the last 50 years, as surgical techniques and procedures have made them viable.

     The surgeons who do these operations are without doubt brilliant technicians. Yet it should be forgotten that they are used only after pharmaceutical drug treatment has failed to treat the organ successfully, and/or has exacerbated organ failure.

Immunosuppressive drugs

     After the operation there is another problem. In order to stop the body rejecting the new organ, the patient has to take more drugs, and take them for the remainder of their lives in order that the new organ is not rejected by the body. These immosuppressive drugs can also have serious disease inducing effects. Their primary objective is interfere with the body’s immune system, which would otherwise reject the new organ. 

     This interference with the body's immune system leads to the body being unable to do its proper job, to protect itself from a multitude of threats it faces on a daily basis in its environment. So replacing an organ makes us more susceptible to a variety of autoimmune diseases, many now running at epidemic levels, for the rest of our lives.

Limb Replacement

     Limb replacement surgery has become commonplace. Indeed it is now often described as ’routine’ surgery. Limb replacement is required for people who have usually suffered some form of arthritic pain for a considerable amount of time. Conventional medicine has no effective treatment for arthritis and related diseases. Painkillers are used to temporarily reduce the pain, but the underlying condition remains. 

     Yet painkillers, especially when used over a long period of time, come with serious long-term health consequences. They cause harm to the body, they add to the toxicity the body has to cope with, and they create new diseases. But most of all, they do not deal with the arthritis, which gets progressively worse. More powerful painkillers are required, adding more toxicity, and so cause even more harm. One feature of painkillers is that they can actually worsen the condition that is causing the pain, so that ultimately the pain, and the deterioration of the joint, or joints, is actually made worse by the ‘treatment’ conventional medicine has offered! Eventually, the pain levels become unbearable, and surgery becomes the only, or the last resort. The natural limb is removed, and an artificial one replaces it. There are four main problems or issues arising from limb replacement procedure.

    1.   The fitting of this new limb may not be completely successful, and ‘complications’, such as blood loss, infection, wound breakdown, reactions to anaesthetic, and many other unforeseen consequences can happen from the surgery itself.

    2.    Drugs may have to be used, for example, such as Heparin to avoid deep-vein-thrombosis, for several weeks following the operation. Older people are particularly at risk of complications, and the side effects of the drugs used to reduce this. And of course limb replacement is often done for older people!

    3.   The new limb may not function properly, or the implanted device can fail, because of faulty design or manufacture, or it may not perform in the way it was designed.

    4.   As with organ transplantation, immunosuppressive drugs have to be taken following surgery, and antibiotic drug to deal with issues of infection following the operation. The side effects of any drug may be problematical because of a weakened state following the operation.

     Yet this is often not the end of the sequence. Conventional medicine rarely addresses the cause of the original condition that has damaged the limbs. The result is that many patients find that a single limb replacement leads to the same pain developing in other limbs, not previously affected. So after time, another limb is affected, again drugs fail to deal with it, and another limb becomes so painful that it, too, has to be surgically replaced. 

Surgical Replacement represents Medical Failure

     Undoubtedly, many patients benefit from limb and organ replacement surgery, through both the reduction of pain, improved energy and greater mobility. And without doubt they are brilliant technical achievements. But they are not achievements that ultimately improve our health in the longer term. We are all better off with our original limbs and organs, and maintaining them is the best option for every patient.

If the patient had been given safe and effective medical treatment, capable of dealing with the original condition, the need for a limb and organ replacement would not have arisen. So what the surgical replacement of limbs and organs represents is medical failure, not medical success. 

Antibiotic Apocalypse. Conventional Medicine needs Homeopathy

Professor Dame Sally Davis hates homeopathy, and she is NHS England's chief medical officer in the Department of Health. This is certainly not unusual, but it is a misfortunate - for her, her department, the NHS, and every patient who relies on pharmaceutical drugs for their health care.

Professor Dame Sally Davis has been talking about antibiotics again, and she is concerned. Antibiotics 'may be lost', she says, through overuse, and she is urging global leaders to tackle the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. She is giving this message to a meeting in Berlin of health officials from around the world. It is, she says, a "call to action" to tackle the problem.

This is not a new warning, medical experts have told us that conventional medicine's 'wonder' drug is being used too much, and that 25,000 people die across Europe each year because of drug-resistant infections. This morning, Professor Dame Sally Davies said that she was "really worried" that without effective antibiotic drugs, common medical procedures such as caesarean sections, cancer treatments and limb replacements could become too risky.

Professor Dame Sally Davis is right of course, and I have blogged about the problems of antibacterial resistance several times.

               In June 2015, I first heard her use the term 'antibiotic apocalypse', and wrote "Antibiotic Apocalypse. The BBC fails again to address the issue", suggesting that whilst she was right, the BBC (and the mainstream media) were asking her the wrong questions. Today, she has repeated the message, and the BBC asked the same questions.

               Later that year, in November 2015, I wrote another blog, when it was suggested I was discounting the serious situation we would be in if Antibiotic drugs failed. This was entitled "Antibiotic resistance. A problem only for conventional medicine?" Antibiotic was not a problem for homeopathy, or anyone who relies on homeopathic treatment. in the treatment of infectious illnesses.

               In May 2016, I blogged about "The Failure of Antibiotic Drugs" in which I outlined the harm that antibiotic drugs caused to patients, something never admitted by Professor Dame Sally Davis, or by conventional doctors throughout the world.

However, this morning I took particular note about her comments that antibiotic failure would jeopardise the future of certain surgical operations. Professor Dame Sally Davis is correct, of course. I could point out that many of these operations might be entirely unnecessary if the NHS embraced homeopathy, and other alternative therapies, as they would be more successful in preventing the need for many such operations, rather than pharmaceutical drugs which are often the reason they become  necesssary! But on this occasion let's focus on another issue.

How can alternative medicine help with surgery - notably the pain, and the danger of infection, created by operations? How can Acupuncture help with the pain? How can Homeopathy help with the infections?

I wondered whether Professor Dame Sally Davis had looked into this possibility, and set up meetings with their professional bodies. Probably not, as she hates homeopathy! Unfortunate. So what has happened during the two-and-a-half years since she last used the term 'Antibiotic Apocalypse'? From what she said this morning, not a lot, except that doctors were now prescribing 4.3% fewer antibiotics. Is this enough? No, she said. Apart from that, Professor Dame Sally Davis said she has been urging drug companies to come up with new antibiotics. Why are they not doing so? There is insufficient profit in it for them, not least because doctors were being urged to use less of them. The drug companies, of course, want them to use more of them!

Indeed, far from seeking to resolve an 'apocalyptic' problem by working co-operatively with alternative therapies, the department she advices is now seeking to ban the use of homeopathy within the NHS. The drowning woman, it would seem, has cut the cord to one ship that might just save her, and the conventional medical establishment, from a severe embarrassment. Perhaps Professor Dame Sally Davis saw that the ship was crewed by homeopaths, acupuncturists, and other therapists she despises so much.

Well, there are still lots of good homeopaths around who have been treating infectious diseases, safely and effectively, without antibiotics for decades. I am sure that they would not withdraw the offer of help, I don't suppose any of them will pull in the cord away whilst she splashes around in the water, with no-where to go but the direction in which conventional medicine is heading - downwards.

However, I am more concerned with patients, especially if they are getting fearful. To them I say, at the same time, that homeopaths and other alternative therapists, will be there for them too, to treat their infectious disease. And I repeat the message - antimicrobial resistance is not a problem for homeopathy But we have no surgeons, and if surgeons need help, they will need to talk to us, as soon as possible, because the crisis hits.

Surgery? How Homeopathy can help

Having surgery, whether dental or otherwise, can be a stressful, painful and restless time for all those involved. It may be essential surgery. It might be surgery made necessary by the failure of pharmaceutical drugs and/or their side effects. Surgical treatment is often accompanied by anxiety and anticipation as well as shock and injury, which can feel as painful as the operation itself. 

This list below illustrates several homeopathic remedies which can be very helpful in alleviating the discomfort experienced, whether physical or emotional.

They can be used alongside, and in accordance with any conventional medicine which you have been prescribed. 

Arnica - this is the first choice of remedy for shock and bruising. Take Arnica 30C immediately after surgery, and then whenever you feel necessary. If you are particularly scared of the treatment, then take the remedy before the surgery as well.

Calendula - this is specific for open cuts and wounds and is used externally by applying as a cream or diluted tincture to the area around the incision. Please note, Calendula heals rapidly and can seal dirt into the wound so ensure the wound is clean before applying 

Hypericum - this remedy is predominantly used if you have injuries to the nerves, when the pain shoots along the nerve tracks. Hypericum is often used instead of Arnica, or if Arnica does not work, after operations to areas such as the nose, fingers, toes, eyes, ears or gums

Phosphorous - this remedy will stop excessive bleeding after an operation, such as a tooth extraction. In addition, it can help alleviate the post-anaesthetic“spaced-out” feeling

Staphysagria - consider using this when you feel that the operation has invaded your private space, such as rough dentistry or childbirth involving an episiotomy or forceps delivery. In addition, Staphysagria is also useful when the pain or scars are slow to heal

(Homeopathy for Common Ailments by Robin Hayfield)

This article first appeared in the ARH Newsletter, "Homeopathy Healthy Medicine"