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Monday, 14 May 2012

Books Openly Critical of Conventional Medicine

There are a growing number of books that are critical of ConMed.
No-one needs to imagine that the news and views expressed in this blog about the dangers and ineffectiveness of conventional medicine is a subject that has not been widely discussed, and intensively investigated.

It is just that no such investigation has been by those who we rely upon (mistakenly) for information on matters of health - the Government, the NHS, and the Conventional Medical Establishment. Nor does our mainstream Media, for its own reasons, get involved in these matters, thereby letting us all down.

Here are just a few of these texts - the one's I have read.

The Failure of Conventional Medicine (free to read E-Book)
Steve Scrutton
The e-book asks the questions - why do we spend so much on the NHS and face so much illness and disease. The answer is in the title - the failure of conventional medicine.
http://s-scrutton.co.uk/Failure_ConMed/Introduction.html

Anatomy of an Epidemic. Magic bullets, Psychiartic Drgs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Robert Whittaker
This book 'investigates a medical mystery': Why has the number of adults and children disabled by mental illness skyrocketed over the past fifty years? The answer is, of course, ConMed drugs! http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Anatomy%20of%20an%20Epidemic.html

Pharmageddon
David Healy
Pharmageddon has been defined as "the prospect of a world in which medicines and medicine produce more ill-health than health, and when medical progress does more harm than good". We see the need to investigate and explore that risk and to identify the factors and features that describe it.

Dirty Medicine: The Handbook
Martin J Walker
This is Martin Walker’s 20 year follow up to his book Dirty Medicine: Science, big business and the assault on natural health care. He gives a full and detailed picture of the vested interests, their personalities, organisations and ideas that have shaped the present attack on alternatives in the field of health. "With alternative medicine under attack on all fronts, The Handbook gives us the knowledge with which to defend ourselves and fight back.

Silenced Witness: the parents story. The denial of vaccine damage by Government, Corporations and the Media. 
A book written by parents.

Prescription for Injury: the politics of Pharmaceutical Manufacture, Regulation and Prescription.
Colin Downes-Granger
This book examines the history of Benzodiazepine drugs, and the long-term damage done to patients, including the experience of the author himself.

Sacred Spark
Lisa K. Sykes
"Sacred Spark is the compelling true story of a child affected by mercury-poisoning and his minister-mother's decade-long battle to restore the light in his eyes". 
HRT: Licensed to Kill and Maim
Martin J Walker
A critique of Hormone Replacement Therapy

 A Shot in the Dark: why the DPT vaccination may be hazardous to your child's health
Harris L Coulter, Barbara Loe Fisher 
Although published in 1991, the DPT vaccination is still universally used in this country
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter.html

 Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality: the medical assault on the American brain
Harris L Coulter (published in 1990)
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/coulter5.html

 It Makes You Sick: The politics of the NHS
Colin Thunhurst
Pluto Press 1982

 The Health Scandal: your health in crisis
Vernon Coleman
Mandarin (1988)

 Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis: the expropriation of health
Ivan Illich
Pelican (1976)
Yes, it goes back this far! Illich introduced the concept of Iatrogenic disease - doctor-caused disease.

If you know of a book you would like me to publish in this list, please let me know.

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The Health Debate (5). An epidemic rise in chronic diseases

The mainstream media reports regularly on two general health matters. 

  • First, they tell us about new and wonderful 'medical breakthroughs', about new 'wonder drugs' being developed by the pharmaceutical industry. We are led to believe that these new treatments will eventually conquer disease, forever! These news stories usually imply that we are all beholden to conventional medicine: we are all healthier and living longer because of its amazing success conventional medicine is have in treating illness and disease.
  • Second, the media will tell us about a variety of chronic diseases, how numbers are rising, how they are reaching, or have reached, epidemic levels. And that we need to spend more on conventional medicine in order to reverse this.

So how can these two matters be matched up? Why are we spending more on health than ever before, yet suffering more chronic disease too?

 Clearly the two stories cannot be told at the same time, so this should give rise to another topic for 'the Health Debate'. But unfortunately it never does. There are some key questions that the media should be asking - but aren't

  • What is causing this rise in chronic disease? 
  • Why is conventional medicine, despite its many claims about efficacy, unable to deal with this rise in chronic disease? 
  • And most important, is conventional medical treatment, in all its forms, contributing to this rise in chronic disease?

Certainly the increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, especially during the last 60 years (following the inauguration of the NHS), and the epidemic rise in chronic diseases, have run parallel to each other. Unfortunately, this rarely seems to register within the mainstream media journalism. Here, for example, are just some of the possible connections between increased medication, and increased disease (there are many more, some highlighted in this blog over the last few years).

 * In a previous blog in the series, the connection between HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and breast cancer was made, and the declining rate of this cancer since 2002 when prescriptions for HRT declined after it was found to cause breast and cervical cancer.

 * The prodigious rise in the use of Statin drugs over the last few years is another example. Statins have only recently been associated with both diabetes, and prostate cancer - so are Statins one cause of the epidemic of both diseases? The media has spent enough time in recent years allowing conventional medical spokesmen tell us how 'safe' these drugs are, and how we should all be taking them! They could perhaps spare a little time asking why we are being told this, when it is palpably untrue. The media seems to be rarely interested in drug or vaccine damage.

 * The link between vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine, and the Autism epidemic is increasingly well documented, but this is vehemently denied by the conventional medical establishment. The media stands full square with the pharmaceutical companies, to the extent that they will not allow any discussion on the link. They absolutely refuse to discuss it.

 * The link between incidents of extreme violence, including the many mass killings in recent years, have been associated with people who are on antidepressant drugs. Yet with each incident, the association between violence and these drugs remain studiously unasked.

 * The huge rise in dementia, including the earlier incidence of the disease (children and middle aged people are now contracting it) is routinely discounted by the mainstream media. It is content with conventional medicine's explanation - it is the result of people living longer'! Yet the number of pharmaceutical drugs that cause 'confusion' and 'memory loss' is legion, but the media is content to ignore this.

There are many, many more such examples of pharmaceutical drugs causing disease. Certainly they are not just simple, unimportant 'side-effects'. And what is clear is that the mainstream media are either not aware of this (and so not doing their job properly), or they are aware but not interested in investigating, and informing us about the connection.

 If the media bothered to ask just a few simple questions, it might prove to be illuminating, certainly if they were asked seriously and persistently by journalists who understood the health debate, and realised that it was important for their listeners, viewers and readers to know!
  • Does giving patients pharmaceutical drugs, that cause disease, not leading directly to disease becoming increasingly common? If patients take one drug for one condition, and then have to take another for a condition caused by the first, is it not making us sicker, more dependent on medical services?
  • Why is conventional medicine unable to deal effectively with these epidemics of chronic disease?
  • To what extent are the adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs responsible for the rising incidence of these chronic diseases?
  • And, perhaps most important, are there other alternative medical therapies, that are safer, more effective, and less costly, that can deal with chronic disease? Therapies that do not cause illness and disease in the first place?
Conventional medical drugs and vaccines are not the only reason for the phenomenal increase in chronic disease. But they are, without doubt, a very significant cause. The media's neglect of this issue has meant that most sick people don't realise that their health may have been compromised by the drugs and vaccines their doctors have prescribed to make them well! It means that every patient who goes to his/her doctor does so without full knowledge of the possible consequences.

 In other words, patients are unable to give their 'informed consent' to conventional medical treatment because the the information has been denied to them - by conventional medicine, alongside the willing connivance of the mainstream media.

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Thursday, 10 May 2012

The Health Debate (4). The cost-effectiveness of Big Pharma drugs

The cost of Conventional Medical treatment is exorbitant, and always has been. Given the ineffectiveness and inherent dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, the issue of cost-effectiveness should now be considered. We have a National Health Service (NHS) that has cost us in excess of £110 billion in recent years. From its inauguration in 1947, costs have risen prodigiously year-by-year - usually amidst claims that the service is 'under-funded'. The same can be said for most national health services throughout the world.

 We also have the situation where the numbers of people suffering from chronic diseases, such as arthritis, diabetes, cancers of all types, autism, dementia, depression and other mental health conditions, and disease linked to heart, kidneys and liver, have all increased, exponentially.

 We now suffer chronic disease at epidemic levels. Why? Why is it not discussed in the mainstream media - except to suggest that not sufficient public money is being spent on health?

 If we then consider the known, and admitted side-effects, adverse reactions, and the disease-inducing effects (DIEs) of pharmaceutical drugs, the link between increased expenditure on conventional medicine, which is largely drug based, and increasing health care, costs becomes clear.

 This crucial feature of the 'health debate' is rarely discussed by the mainstream media. Nor is the cost and performance of conventional medicine ever compared with other medical therapies, like homeopathy.

 Why is this? And what kind of questions should the media be asking - if it had any intention of entering into "the Health Debate"? Perhaps these are just of few of them!
  • Why does the media fail to ask searching questions about why pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are so excessively expensive?
  • Why does the media not focus on both side of the 'cost-effectiveness' question when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs?
  • Why does the media fail to ask questions about the link between increasing NHS spending on pharmaceutical drugs, and the rising levels of chronic disease?
  • Why has the media not conducted comparative studies on the cost-effectiveness of conventional medicine, Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?
  • Why are does the media not question the NHS abut why its resources are spent almost totally on one medical discipline, conventional, drug-based medicine? Why does it not ask the NHS why it does not spend more money on Homeopathy, and other CAM therapies?
  • Why, despite massive annual increases in NHS spending since 1948, are conventional medical services continually overstretched, and so often quite unable to cope with the rising demands of ill-health and disease?
When HRT (hormone replacement therapy) was found to cause breast cancer in 2002 (it was known to do so many years before that), prescriptions for the drug (once said to be a wonder drug, and entirely safe) reduced massively. There followed, over the next few years, a major reduction in breast cancer cases in Britain. The mainstream media has barely mentioned this (and more recently has allowed conventional medicine to claim that this reduction in breast cancer was part of its successful campaign against the disease! 


What this all means is that conventional medicine is not only expensive, in its own right, but it is expensive because it creates more illness, requiring more treatment for the new diseases! 

  • The pharmaceutical companies have developed a marvellous business structure! 
  • Their drugs treat disease; cause iatrogenic disease; and so profit again when they try to treat the new diseases!
The cost of some pharmaceutical drugs is also quite amazing, but rarely questioned by the mainstream media. Several years ago there was a debate about the drug Herceptin, and whether it should be available, free of charge, on the NHS. Herceptin was said at the time to cost some £30,000 per person per year, and was designed to treat women with breast cancer. Many of these women, of course, would have been those who developed breast cancer as a result of taking HRT! The media failed to point out (i) that the campaign for Herceptin was funded by the drug manufacturer; or (ii) that the drug was known to cause heart problems, and death. And so it continues....

For the drug companies it is a profitable business. 

For many patients it is a personal disaster.

For the NHS and the British taxpayer the NHS has become a spiralling, out of control, and bottomless pit.


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Wednesday, 9 May 2012

Informed Consent - the Dark Heart of Conventional Medicine

"Doctors are deliberately withholding information about the dangers of some routine screening and clinical procedures - often because they fear patients would then refuse treatment".
So begins a Special Report on 'Informed Consent' in the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY), May 2012. The report discusses the inadequacy of information patients are given about their treatment, and raises the important question:
Are patients giving their true, informed consent to medical treatment?

          "Although it happens every day in surgeries and hospitals, the failure to inform is against the law and a breach of human rights legislation - which gives the patient the absolute right of autonomy over his or her body. It also leaves the doctor open to a legal challenge of negligence, assault and battering, and possibly even manslaughter if the drug or procedure goes wrong"

 Given the dangers of Conventional Medical treatments, not least through Big Pharma vaccines and drugs, this is important, if not vital information that every citizen should know. After all, if there is a danger to the patient arising from any medical treatment, patients have the right to know, and to say "NO" if they wish to do so.
 
The report goes over all the reasons doctors give their patients for NOT telling us this information, all of which are entirely illegitimate, insisting that patients have the right to know, and that if they don't know, they cannot make an 'informed choice' about having, or not having the treatment. The information being withheld from us is legion, and the report mentions just a few of these:

     * CT Scans cause cancer through radiation in 1 in 270 people screened by them.
    * 5.7% if patients undergoing surgery for ulcerative colitis will die.
    * Bronchoscopy (when a tube is threaded down the nose) results in a death with every 2,500 procedures.

 As the report states, not many patients know this kind of negative information about pharmaceutical drugs, largely because doctors are reluctant to give the information to their patients.

          "Even after the Vioxx drug scandal had become public - eventually, tyne manufacturer agreed to pay out $4.85 billion to the families of around 50,000 people who died while taking the painkiller - doctors were still asking, 'What should we tell our patients?'"

 The answer is probably simple! The truth! But as the report describes in detail, medical paternalism is rife within the Conventional Medicine Establishment (it is so very different in homeopathy and other alternative medical therapies). The result is that patients are rarely told about the dangers of the treatment they are prescribed by doctors. The report suggests that patients should ask the following questions before agreeing to take any prescription drugs:
  1. How long has the drug been on the market (if less than 2 years ask for an 'older generation' drug)?
  2. Can you confirm I am not taking part in a drug trial?
  3. Is the drug suitable for my age/gender/condition?
  4.  Are you using this drug 'off-label' or for the condition for which it was originally licensed?
  5.  Are there any special warning or 'black-box' alerts for this drug?
  6.  Can you explain to me the known side-effects and the likelihood of me suffering them?
  7.  Has the drug been tested among people similar to my own age/gender?
  8.  Do you know if the drug has been banned from use in other countries? (Note, many drugs prescribed in this country have been banned in other countries)
  9.  Have you given this drug to other patients? If so, have they reported any adverse reactions?
  10.  Is the dose you are recommending within the guidelines of the manufacturer for my age/ gender/ condition?
  11.  Do you know if the new drug will react with other drugs I am currently taking?
  12.  If I start to suffer from health problems when I take the drug, I shall stop immediately, and come to see you again. Do you agree this is the best course of action?
However, the report goes on to question how many of these questions the average doctor is actually able to answer. In other words, it questions how well informed doctors are about the drugs they prescribe to us, and how reliant they are on inadequate and partial Big Pharma information.

 The report goes on to consider, in some detail, what informed consent should consist off, and asks another set of questions, with the guidance - don't give your 'informed consent' to treatment or procedures without the answers to each of the questions. One of these questions is:

            "Are there alternatives of which you are aware that could also be considered?"

 The report states that it is highly unlikely that most doctors will recommend the patient to try homeopathy  or any other form of natural medical therapy! The reason for this, of course, is that most doctors will not be qualified to pass any judgement on these questions. Indeed, many of them are known to consider homeopathy to be akin to witchcraft!

 * Even 'alternative' advice on diet and nutrition may be a stretch too far for the doctor. Medical students in the US receive around 19 hours of education about nutrition during their five-year medical training".

 As the report says, informed consent for the patient infers that the doctor is 'informed' and able to pass on the required information.

          "Informed consent infers that the doctor is informed ... not only is this far from the truth, it is also untrue even for specialists".

 So an informed doctor, capable of answering important questions for you, is certainly not something that can, or should be automatically assumed! Certainly, the vast majority of doctors are informed only about conventional (pharmaceutical) medical practice. And even within this single medical discipline, they appear to work mainly on the information provided to them by the pharmaceutical industry, and other commercial medical interests. 
 
Little wonder, then, that many doctors have a limited knowledge about the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, and other treatments and procedures!
However, the problem of getting informed consent is probably even more difficult than the report suggests. 
 
  • National medical services, like the NHS in the UK, have become virtual pharmaceutical monopolies, and so equally unlikely to provide patients with the kind of information they require to make an informed decision about medical treatment. 
  • Successive governments have failed to challenge the conventional medical establishment, and appear more interested in funding and supporting it than asking serious questions about its efficacy and safety. 
  •  And the mainstream media is entirely supine in matters relating to health, parroting the 'good' news of 'medical breakthroughs' that are expected tomorrow - but ignoring the conventional medical disasters of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
So no-one appears to be able or willing to provide patients with the information they require for informed consent. The questions are not being asked, the investigations are not being carried out, that will lead to a greater understanding and awareness of the problems associated with medical health treatments being routinely offered to us today.

 I would encourage everyone to read WDDTY on a regular basis. It is a magazine which is full of information about conventional medical treatment, and about alternatives to it. And it really does include material that 'doctors don't tell you', so it can lead to you, at least, becoming more aware of health issues, and therefore capable of making an informed choice.

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The Health Debate (3). The safety of Pharmaceutical drugs

Many consumers of the mainstream media, in all its many forms, believe that if there was a problem with pharmaceutical drugs, or with the conventional medical treatment we are offered by doctors, or if there was an important health issue we should know about, the mainstream media would tell us. 

Unfortunately, in matters of health, this is just not so.

The dangers posed to our health by pharmaceutical drugs has such a long and continuous history it should now be a matter of common knowledge to us all. The fact that most people are not aware of this is testimony to the abject failure of our media to tell the truth about conventional medical treatment, and the failure of the media to enter "the health debate".

If the media was doing its job they would be asking many questions about the safety of pharmaceutical drugs, and they would be seeking to inform is readers, listeners and viewers, about the safety of conventional medical treatment generally. They would be asking questions like these:
  • Is conventional medicine telling us the full story about the dangers of the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines currently being prescribed to us by our doctors? And if not, why not?
  • Why is the public not told earlier by the media of the potential seriousness problems about pharmaceutical drugs? Information about drug dangers is usually well known many years before the media reports it! Why does the mainstream media leave it to internet magazines like 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY) and 'Natural News', to publish this information? Why do they not question why harmful drugs are prescribed many years before eventually being withdrawn or banned? Why does mainstream media fail to report it?
  • Why is the mainstream media failing to ask questions about the dangers to patients of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines currently being prescribed by the conventional medical establishment? Why do they not investigate, and tell the public about these dangers? When drugs and vaccines are known to be dangerous, why are conventional doctors not questioned about this, and what patients can do to protect themselves?
    • Why does the media not investigate the relationship between the alarming rise of chronic disease and the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to be a significant cause of such diseases? Why does the media not ask questions about whether, and to what extent, conventional medicine is the cause of these diseases? Why does the media fail to investigate links between these modern disease epidemics and known drug and vaccine side effects?
    • Why does the media fail to ask questions about alternative medical therapies, such as homeopathy, what these therapies can offer patient, examine whether they are safer for patients?
    • Indeed, why does the mainstream media consistently seek to criticise, undermine and attack natural medical therapies - usually in line with the arguments used by the conventional medical establishment?
    Drugs are regularly withdrawn from the market, because they have been found to be dangerous. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media. 

     Drug companies are consistently found guilty in US courts, and heavily fined, as a result of their drugs being unsafe and dangerous. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media.

     Drug companies, in recent years, have regularly been associated with corrupt or illegal practices in the testing, promotion and selling of their drugs. Yet rarely is this reported in the mainstream media.

     The failure of the mainstream media to report on these matters is a failure to operate in the best interests of its paying customers, who are, of course, also patients and consumers of conventional medical treatment. The media seems completely unconcerned about the damage being done to its readers, listeners and viewers by conventional medicine! Indeed, they appear to be more interested in reporting 'positive' news about conventional medicine, and ignoring news that is 'negative' to its vested interests. 

     It is perhaps time that the media begins to ask itself the question: in whose interests, are they working when reporting on matters of health!



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    Tuesday, 8 May 2012

    The Health Debate (2). The effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs.

    So what are the elements of the health debate that the mainstream media is refusing to consider, and almost entirely ignoring? What are the questions an open, honest and 'free' media should be asking, and informing us?

    Drug Effectiveness
    • Why are there so many ‘good news’ stories regularly coming from the conventional medical establishment? And why is the Media happy merely to slavishly report these pharmaceutical news releases without serious question. Indeed, why does the media continually fail to question how realistic, or how honest conventional medicine's claims are for these new drugs and treatments?
    • What is known about the effectiveness of existing pharmaceutical drugs being prescribed to us by doctors, in ever-increasing amounts? Why is research that raises questions about drug effectiveness routinely ignored by the media?
    • Are claims for the efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs reflected in actual patient outcomes? And if such treatments are as effective as the media is happy to report, why are levels of chronic disease continuing to increase to epidemic levels?
    • Why have so many pharmaceutical drugs eventually been found to be ineffective, often after being prescribed for many years, and usually at great expense? Why is the ineffectiveness of drugs never reported?
    • Why does the media fail to ask questions about medical science, drug testing procedures, and the statutory process of drug regulation, which regularly fail to discover that pharmaceutical drugs are ineffective, or have limited effectiveness?
    • Why is the media content to report pharmaceutical propaganda about new 'medical breakthroughs' and the promise effective new drugs - which will happen in 5, 10, or even 15 years time? And why does the media fail to ask about what happened to the medical breakthroughs that were announced 5, 10 and 15 years previously?
    • Why, if pharmaceutical drugs are so successful in treating illness and disease, has there been epidemic increases in a wide variety of serious illness and chronic disease (including Arthritis, Heart, Liver and Kidney disease, Alzheimers, Autism, Depression, Diabetes, mental health, et al) during the past 60-70 years?
    • Why does the media not report when conventional medical drugs and treatments are failing? Indeed, why does the media fail to tell us about the failure of conventional medical treatments when they are found to be ineffective, or are withdrawn?
    • Why is the media hostile to other medical therapies? If conventional medicine is unable to deal with illness and disease effectively, why does it not ask what alternative therapies, such as homeopathy, can offer patients? Why is it not honestly looking into how effective these alternative treatments are by examining patient outcomes, and comparing these with conventional drug treatment?
    These issues are regularly raised in this blog, and indeed, elsewhere on the internet, and in magazines such as 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'. 

     However, they are rarely, if ever raised within the mainstream media

    The third part of this series will focus on the safety of pharmaceutical drugs, and other forms of conventional medical treatment. Whilst the effectiveness of treatment is crucial, the safety of treatment is equally important. Ineffective treatment raises hopes, and wastes out time. It also costs the country vast sums of money. But if medical treatment is also unsafe, it it causes illness and disease, if it can actually lead to death, then this is even more serious, and the failure of the Media to tell us, more shameful. Part Three will be published soon.

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