Health issues and Politics. The General Election in Britain. December 2019.

All signs suggest that there will be a British General Election before the end of the year. It will focus mainly on Brexit issues, but like all elections in the UK since the end of the second world war, and the inauguration of the NHS, health will play a central role. This blog will focus on these health issues, how important political parties consider them to be, and the role it plays in the result of the election.

This is the first blog, others will follow as the issues emerge in the coming weeks. The basis of the blog will be to explain and extend my explanation of the importance of health in British elections which I wrote in my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", and specifically the chapter, "The Politics of Health Provision". It will examine certain statements I made in that chapter.

• Health is good - so spending on health is good.
• The NHS spends money on conventional medicine - so it must be best.
• Traditional medicine is ignored - so it cannot be any good

I predict, (in advance) that these (and other) false assumptions will underlie the basis of the political debate to come, and that the inevitable result will be that Britain decides to spend still more money on a medical system whose failure is spiralling out of control.

6th August 2019

Ever since Boris Johnson became prime minister an election looked a distinct possibility, the only way he might be able to guide his party through its disastrous progress towards Brexit. At the weekend political pundits have seen the first clear signs that this is Johnson's intention, or at least his expectation. And what did these 'clear signs' consist of?

Still more spending pledges on the NHS, involving £850 million for 20 new building and infrastructure projects for NHS in England. This will fund new wards, intensive care units and diagnostic centres, and an extra £1 billion to improve and maintain existing buildings. This new spending commitment will mean that the NHS has now been given an extra £7 billion in the financial year 2019 to 2020.

The response of the Labour, the official opposition party, has been predictable, and twofold.

• It is not enough, the NHS needs more money
• Is this actually 'new' money - basically a technical issue about whether this is a real increase in NHS resourcing.

So the bidding process has started, and we can certainly expect further bids to be made during the course of the campaign.

Meanwhile, the NHS continues to play its predictable role. They are grateful for the government's increased spending commitments, but they are not sufficient. They need more.

• there are 100,000 vacant posts within the NHS, and it is struggling to cope with the growing demand for health services.
• NHS buildings and infrastructure requires £6 billion rather than £1 billion to deal with the problems they face.

The mainstream media, predictably, goes along with this. When journalists interview politicians questions are asked about why there is not more money for the NHS, pointing out the parlous state that the NHS is in. To confirm this journalists then interview NHS medical staff who predictably confirm that the NHS is in a parlous financial state, and are given the opportunity to outline the areas where more money is required.

So the problem with the NHS is that it is under-funded, under-resourced. There are no problems that the NHS could not resolve - if only political parties would agree to give them more (and more) money.

The debate has not gone further than this, and I confidently predict that the debate will go no further! The political parties will not question why pumping any more money into the NHS now will make it any more effective than the ever-increasing amounts of money money that has been pumped into it since 1948.

For my 'addendum' blog, written in December 2019, just before the election, go to this link.

OVARIAN CANCER. Conventional medicine claims that they have another wonder drug. Olaparib.

Yes, it's another new cure, another pharmaceutical drug that is going to be a "game-changer" according the BBC News, and the rest of the mainstream news media (eg the Telegraph, the Mail Online, the Sun, et al. All using exactly the same information (a pharmaceutical press release), with almost exactly the same wording.

This is, of course, a routine part of news coverage in the mainstream media, which cannot exist without the advertising revenues coming from the pharmaceutical industry. It's a unique, and deeply harmful partnership. The mainstream media does not sell cars, or washing machines, or anything else without payment. The drug industry this coverage entirely free.

This time the new treatment is for Ovarian Cancer, and the drug is called Olabparid

               "Drugs advisory body NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, said using olaparib at an earlier stage in treatment would bring the greatest benefit "and may have the potential to cure the disease. In the trial, nearly 60% of patients receiving the drug did not see the disease get any worse after three years, compared with just 27% of patients taking a dummy drug.
But NICE said it was not yet clear if patients using it were living any longer, because those taking part in the trial had not been followed up for long enough."

Olaparib is made by AstraZeneca. It is "a pioneering type of cancer drug called a PARP inhibitor, which works by targeting an inherited genetic fault, causing cancer cells to die". In the BBC article, and the mainstream press, they did not bother to mention side effects - just that Olaparib was a wonder cure, a game-changer, with the potential "to cure the disease".

So let's see what happens over the next few years. Will olaparib prove as good as its manufacturer claims? Or wil it become yet another drug that is too dangerous to prescribe, withdrawn by the manufacture, or banned by the drug regulator. Only time will tell.

However, the prospect for the latter scenario appears to be excellent! Olaparid is NOT a new drug, it is an old drug that will now be used at an earlier stage of the cancer. So its side effects are already published in the conventional medical literature. The mainstream media could have had a look - but it decided not to do so.

The Drugs.com website reports that common side effects of olaparib include upper respiratory tract infection, anaemia, decreased hemoglobin, increased mcv, increased serum creatinine, nasopharyngitis, nausea, pharyngitis, vomiting, cough, and dyspnea.

Yet this is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Doctors are told, for example, that Olaparid can cause cancer (acute myeloid leukemia), the it affects the blood in a variety of ways, causes phargitis, pulmonary embolism, pneumonitis, lots of gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, peripheral oedema, arthragia, myalgia, back pain, hypertension, venous thrombosis, dermatitis, eczema, pruritus, peripheral neurophy, and perhaps not surprisingly, anxiety, depression and insomnia.

All these serious side effects from an allegedly 'break-through' drug.

Predictably, none of these serious 'side effects' were mentioned by the BBC, or any of the other articles on the same subject. It would seem that we are supposed to rejoice the (allegedly) good news, whilst ignoring (or not be told about) the bad news.

So along with the many other 'wonder' drugs that I have featured on this blog through recent years, let's wait to see what the situation is regarding Olaparib in a few years time.

Women don't need to menstruate!

According to this article, published in the Guardian newspaper in July 2019, menstruation is something that women don't need. It contains several conventional medical doctors who provide their reasons for stopping it. Pharmaceutical drugs can, after all, do so - so conventional medicine is now telling us that periods have no health benefit - and women can be encouraged to stop them altogether.

I am not a woman. So I will leave this debate to be carried on elsewhere, with those who know far more about menstruation than I do!

But I am a supporter of natural medicine, and all natural therapies are clear - we should not be interfering with the natural processes of the body - and we do so at a cost.

So many of my homeopathic colleagues, both male and female, are aghast. Conventional medicine, as with its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, thinks that it can second-guess our bodies, about what is best for us. Don't worry about the body carrying out this function routinely. Doctors are now clever enough to be able to stop menstruation, so why not just go ahead. Just like taking all the drugs and vaccines they prescribe for us - it is entirely safe. Except, of course, they are not.

The Guardian calls it 'radical'. I think most people, including most women, would call it foolish. But as a mere male I will not comment further. Except perhaps to say that when he created the world, God must have got things seriously wrong when it came to the human body.

What a blessing that we have doctors who can now improve on nature!

I can't help thinking, though, that this is a response by conventional medicine to the epidemic rise in menstrual problems that we have witnessed over the last 70-100 years. Much of this epidemic is probably caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, like the contraceptive pill, and PFT. And conventional medicine is not very good at treating menstrual problems. So perhaps the best advice conventional doctors can come up with is to stop menstruation altogether!

Yet perhaps the most sensible advice is to wait and see. This routine monthly function may be entirely unnecessary, as our doctors say..... but in a few years time might we be observing an even bigger increase in diseases like breast, womb, and ovarian cancer? Or endometriosis?

Conventional medicine is adept at interfering with nature, with all their 'anti-', '-blocker', '-inhibitor' and '-antagonist' drugs. All of them change the way our bodies would normally function, all of them cause serious illness and disease through their side effects. And we have long been told that we can do without gall bladders, tonsils, and other minor organs. Yet it is true that it is only years after taking the drug, or losing an organ, or even putting a stop to monthly menstruation, that the real problems will begin to emerge. With conventional medicine, it has always been thus.

So I will put this subject away for a time, and return to it when the consequences of stopping menstrual bleeding permanently becomes clear, as I fear it will. And I would suggest caution too, that young women think very carefully about going along with this, most likely conventional medicine's latest nonsense.

So watch this space!

Building a Safer Health System? But is conventional medicine able to do it?

Conventional medicine is dangerous medicine. The magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You" reported (July 2019) that medical blunders were killing more than 11,000 patients every year - thought to be a conservative figure "with other deaths hidden by conspiracy of silence. It said that NHS officials wanted to reverse this trend "by introducing new measures that encourage all hospital staff to spot risk and errors earlier, and before there's a death".

The Daily Telegraph described what was happening in rather more detail. There was 'a blame culture', but a new strategy, contained in an 82 page document, aimed to save the lives of up to 1,000 patients every year. My rough calculation seems to indicate that this would still leave 10,000 death every year - directly caused by a medical system that doctors insist is 'safe'.

All we ever hear from doctors, politicians, governments and the mainstream media is that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are safe, that they are not one of the main causes of the multiple chronic disease epidemics we are currently experiencing. Doctors may casually admit to a few simple, unimportant drug 'side effects' - but they do not admit that they are causing patient harm, including at least 11,000 death.

Challenging this public image of safety is easy. When doctors say that their drugs and vaccines are safe they just have to be asked for the patient information leaflets that accompany each of them. The harm that they cause is published in their own medical literature. The so-called 'side effects' of these drugs are described in these documents but this will not change public protestations that drugs and vaccines are 'safe'.

Contrasting what doctors are prepared to tell us, and what their medical literature says, is educational! 

Yet the safety of conventional medicine is discussed widely amongst doctors, although these discussions are not supposed to involve you or me! The same issues were being discussed over two decades ago. In November 1999, the Institute of Medicine in the USA published a paper, "To err is human. Building a Safer Health System". This is what it said.

               "Health care in the United States is not as safe as it should be - and can be. At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented, according to estimates from two major studies. Even using the lower estimate, preventable medical errors in hospitals exceed attributable deaths to such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS."

The paper also admitted that these medical failures were costly.

               "Beyond their cost in human lives, preventable medical errors exact other significant tolls. They have been estimated to result in total costs (in­cluding the expense of additional care necessitated by the errors, lost income and household productivity, and disability) of between $17 billion and $29 billion per year in hospitals nationwide."

Remember these are 1999 figures! The paper went on to recognise that human errors, which were then described as 'an epidemic', would also lead to a lack of public confidence.

               "Errors also are costly in terms of loss of trust in the health care system by patients and diminished satisfaction by both patients and health professionals. Patients who experience a long hospi­tal stay or disability as a result of errors pay with physical and psychological discomfort. Health professionals pay with loss of morale and frustration at not being able to provide the best care possible. Society bears the cost of er­rors as well, in terms of lost worker productivity, reduced school attendance by children, and lower levels of population health status. "

Now, 20 years on, in July 2019, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has published new research, and published a paper entitled "Prevalence, severity, and nature of preventable patient harm across medical care settings: systematic review and meta-analysis". The Alliance for Natural Health has looked at this document, and concluded this.

               "Approximately 1 in 20 patients suffer preventable medical harm .....  Worryingly the study also reveals 1 in 8 cases led to severe harm or death. Analysing data from 70 observational studies, including over 337,000 patients living in developed countries, researchers found nearly a quarter of the cases were directly related to problems with medication or other medical treatments. A related editorial commented on the serious concerns raised regarding the extent of medical harm in health systems, drawing attention to the level of harm that is “totally preventable”. These findings underline the urgent need to change the health systems we rely on to move away from managing disease and all its associated issues to address disease - many of which are wholly preventable.

So during the 20 years between the two reports conventional medicine has failed to make itself any safer, and has not resolved the issue - that it routinely causes patient harm, that this costs considerable sums of money, and each time it increases public dissatisfaction with conventional medicine.

On the basis of these internal discussions, on these two reports, it is not possible for conventional medicine to claim that its medicine is safe, and does cause patient harm.

• Doctors can (and do) claim that these are merely 'errors', or medical 'mistakes'. In truth these are mistakes being made within a system of medicine that is inherently unsafe.
• They can (and do) underestimate the size of the problem because they limit their definition of 'limited patient harm'. In truth the incidence of harm is likely to be very much higher.
• They can (and the two reports do) claim that they can improve the performance of conventional medicine in the future.

But what is clear is that in the last 20 years there has been no progress in making conventional medicine safer - in other words, the epidemics of patient harm, proclaimed in 1999, continues -  unabated.

The two reports are public documents, but it is not really the intention of the conventional medical establishment that they should be read by the public, by the patients who are being damaged and killed. Doctors want us to continue believing what they tell us, that conventional medicine is safe. The reports are intended for the conventional medical establishment, or at least those members of it that recognise, or care about the fact, that their system of medicine harms patients, whilst at the same time, in public, claiming that there medicine is safe.

It remains to be seen whether, in the next 20 years, the conventional medical establishment will be allowed privately to discuss the patient harm it causes, whilst in public pretending that their treatments are safe. But it will almost certainly try!

FLU VACCINES. Are they as safe as doctors tell us? Official medical literature tells us we are not being told the truth

Whatever the vaccine, the conventional medical establishment insist that they are safe. Anyone who says that they are not safe is dismissed, and attacked as an 'Anti-Vaxxer. So by writing this blog I will no doubt be denounced as an anti-vaxxer. It will be discounted as 'misinformation', or 'fake news'.

The World Health Organisation has claimed that 'vaccine hesitancy' (as they call it) represents one of the ten greatest threats to global health in 2019.  Indeed, 'vaccine hesitancy' (the reluctance and/or refusal of people to be vaccinated) ranks alongside (i) air pollution and climate change, (ii) non-communicable diseases, (iii) global influenza pandemic, (iv) fragile and vulnerable settings, (v) antimicrobial resistance, (vi) Ebola and other high-threat pathogens, (vii) weak primary health care, (viii) dengue, and (ix) HIV as one of the greatest threats to global health.

• So I will give you a guarantee about this blog! Nothing that is written will come from any source other than one that is not firmly placed within the conventional medicine, who support vaccination unreservedly, and only use information that comes from an 'official' source within the conventional medical establishment.
• My argument is simple. Those people who are 'hesitant' about vaccinating themselves, or their children, are acting upon information that conventional doctors are, or should be, fully aware, but which they deny at every possible occasion.
• One side effect even surprised me. DEATH. Even I had no idea that the influenza vaccine is known to kill people. 

THE PUBLIC POSITION OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

First, then, what are we being told about vaccines by doctors? What is the official story? What are patients meant to believe about vaccines? In particular, what are we allowed to know about the influenza vaccines? This is what the UK's NHS website tells us.

               "How safe is the flu vaccine? The flu vaccines used in the national programme have a good safety record."

               "How effective is the flu vaccine? Flu vaccine is the best protection we have against an unpredictable virus that can cause unpleasant illness in children and severe illness and death among at-risk groups, including older people, pregnant women and those with an underlying medical health condition. Studies have shown that the flu vaccine will help prevent you getting the flu. It won't stop all flu viruses and the level of protection may vary, so it's not a 100% guarantee that you'll be flu-free, but if you do get flu after vaccination it's likely to be milder and shorter-lived than it would otherwise have been. There is also evidence to suggest that the flu vaccine can reduce your risk of having a stroke. Over time, protection from the injected flu vaccine gradually decreases and flu strains often change. So new flu vaccines are produced each year, which is why people advised to have the flu vaccine need it every year too.

On another page, the NHS does make one further admission - that the flu vaccine can cause serious allergic reactions, although this is immediately discounted as 'rare'.

               "Serious allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) to flu vaccines are very rare. Healthcare staff giving vaccinations are fully trained to deal with anaphylaxis and, with prompt treatment, individuals make a quick and complete recovery."

It is on the basis of these bland reassurances about the safety of the influenza vaccine (usually minus any mention about anaphylaxis) that people decide to be vaccinated. These safety messages are routinely repeated by representatives of the conventional medical establishment - throughout the world. This is the message conventional medicine wants us to hear, and to comply with. If we don't it is 'vaccine hesitancy' - a threat to global health. So apart from these bland assurances, what other information can be found about the flu vaccine?

INFORMATION THAT IS NOT WIDELY PUBLICISED

HealthLine

This website is one of the biggest "destination sites for health and wellness information'. It is an integral part of the conventional medical establishment. This is what it says about the flu vaccine. It's basic message is initially reassuring, reflecting the general message provided by the NHS, but it does go on to admit that there are other side effects not mentioned by the NHS, and that it has a failure rate of at least 40%. This is what it says.

               "About the flu shot. Every year, people protect themselves from influenza, or the flu, by getting the flu vaccine. This vaccine, which typically comes as a shot or nasal spray, can reduce your chances of getting the flu by as much as 60 percent. Most side effects from the flu shot are typically mild. However, in rare cases, they can be severe. Before you get your flu shot, you may want to know what to expect.

               "A mercury-based preservative called thimerosal is used in some multidose vials of the flu vaccine. It’s used to prevent bacteria and other germs from growing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), thimerosal use in vaccines is safe and causes few side effects. If you’re concerned about thimerosal, you can ask for a vaccine that doesn’t contain it. This CDC tableTrusted Source lists currently available flu vaccines and whether they contain thimerosal.

So what are the most common side effects according to HealthLine? These are said to be reactions at the injection site, headache and other aches and pains, dizziness and fainting, and fever. The more serious side effects are summarised as follows:

• high fever
• severe allergic reactions
• Gillian Barre syndrome

The Fluarix Quadrivalent 2018-2019 Vaccine
Yet when we delve deeper into the side effects of the influenza vaccine we can find more serious concerns, all within the official literature of the conventional medical establishment. One source of this information are the "Patient Information Leaflet's" that come with every vaccine. No one should be expected to agree to having any vaccine without reading these. But usually they are not shown to patients.

The vaccine that was widely used for 2018-2019 was the Fluarix Quadrivalent, and details from the patient information leaflets about the side effects of this vaccine can be found on this Rxlist.com website. This provides us with the following side effects, with the warning that 'this is not a complete list of side effects, and others might occur'.

• low fever, chills,
• mild fussiness or crying;
• redness, bruising, pain, swelling, or a lump where the vaccine was injected;
• headache, tired feeling; 
• joint or muscle pain.
• a light-headed feeling, like you might pass out;
• severe weakness or unusual feeling in your arms and legs (may occur 2 to 4 weeks after you receive the vaccine);
• high fever;
• seizure (convulsions);
•  or unusual bleeding.

On another page of this website, yet more side effects are mentioned.

• Cough
• difficulty with swallowing
• dizziness
• fast heartbeat
• hives, itching, or skin rash,
• puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, face, lips, or tongue
• tightness in the chest
• unusual tiredness or weakness
• Difficulty with moving
• muscle aching or cramping
• muscle pains or stiffness
• nausea
• swollen joints
• chills

Yet more side effects are then listed 'for healthcare professionals'. I will reproduce this is full, not least because of the seriousness of the side effects described, side effects that presumably should not be known by patients.

General

The most common adverse events were local reactions, myalgia, and headache.

Local

* Very common (10% or more)

Tenderness (89%), erythema/redness (76.4%), pain (73.8%), induration (58.4%), swelling (56.8%), injection-site pruritus (46.9%), itching (28%), bruising (18%), injection-site ecchymosis (14.9%), mass (11%)

* Common (1% to 10%): 

Reaction, hemorrhage

* Postmarketing reports

Cellulitis, injection site inflammation, injection site sterile abscess

Other

* Very common (10% or more)

Crying abnormal (41.2%), malaise (38%), fever (16%)

* Common (1% to 10%)

Chest tightness

Rare (less than 0.1%)

Death (my emphasis).

* Postmarketing reports

Hot flashes/flushes

Musculoskeletal

* Very common (10% or more)

Myalgia (40%)

* Common (1% to 10%)

Chills/shivering, back pain

* Postmarketing reports

Muscle weakness, arthritis, arthralgia, myasthenia

Nervous system

* Very common (10% or more)

Headache (40%), drowsiness (37.7%), lethargy (14%)

* Common (1% to 10%)

Migraine

* Postmarketing reports

Neuralgia, paresthesia, convulsions (including febrile seizures), encephalopathy, neuritis or neuropathy, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, abnormal gait, dizziness, hypoesthesia, hypokinesia, tremor, somnolence, syncope, facial or cranial nerve paralysis, encephalopathy, limb paralysis, confusion, paralysis (including Bell's Palsy), vertigo, exacerbation of symptoms of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy (Leigh syndrome), meningitis, eosinophilic meningitis, vaccine-associated encephalitis

Respiratory

* Very common (10% or more)

Runny nose/nasal congestion (58%), cough (15%), upper respiratory tract infection (13%)

* Common (1% to 10%)

Sore throat, cough, oropharyngeal pain, rhinorrhea, wheezing, pharyngolaryngeal pain, nasopharyngitis

* Postmarketing reports

Rhinitis, laryngitis, dyspnea, dysphonia, bronchospasm, throat tightness, pharyngitis, epistaxis[Ref]

Gastrointestinal

* Very common (10% or more)

Vomiting (15%), nausea (14.9%) diarrhea (13%)

* Postmarketing reports

Dysphagia, abdominal pain, swelling of the mouth, throat, and/or tongue

Metabolic

* Very common (10% or more)

Loss of appetite (33.3%), decreased appetite (21%)[Ref]

Psychiatric

* Very common (10% or more)

Irritability (54%)

* Postmarketing reports

Insomnia

Hypersensitivity

* Postmarketing reports

Allergic reactions including anaphylactic shock, serum sickness, and death; Stevens-Johnson syndrome

Immunologic

* Common (1% to 10%)

Infection, influenza-like illness

* Postmarketing reports

Cellulitis

Dermatologic

* Common (1% to 10%)

Facial swelling

* Postmarketing reports

Pruritus, urticaria, rash, angioedema, sweating, flushing, pallor, rash, erythema multiforme[Ref]

Ocular

* Common (1% to 10%)

Reddened eyes

Postmarketing reports

Eye pain, photophobia, conjunctivitis, eye irritation, eye swelling, eyelid swelling, ocular hyperemia

Hematologic

* Postmarketing reports

Transient thrombocytopenia, lymphadenopathy

Cardiovascular

* Frequency not reported

Pleuropericarditis with effusions

* Postmarketing reports

Tachycardia, pericarditis, vasculitis, vasodilation/flushing

Renal

* Postmarketing reports

Vasculitis with transient renal involvement

Genitourinary

* Common (1% to 10%)

Dysmenorr

What seems clear about this official information on the flu vaccine is that (i) doctors are being informed about side effects that patients are not being told about (INCLUDING DEATH!), and (ii) only a tiny number of these side effects are mentioned on the NHS website.

• So we are not being fully informed about the side effects of the influenza vaccine; indeed, patients have so little information they are quite unable to make an 'informed' choice.
• If doctors have access to this information (and they do) then when they say that the influenza vaccine is 'safe', as they do routinely, is clearly a lie.

Elsewhere, I have described the conventional medical establishment as dishonest, corrupt and fraudulent. The failure of doctors to be honest and open about the serious side effects of vaccination is yet another example of this. We are not being told the truth. They telling us lies. Moreover, they must know that they are telling lies.

But conventional medicine is not content with telling lies. They then proceed to attack those who are seeking and telling the truth. Why do they do this? Because medicine based on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines is failing. And after the failure of so many drugs doctors cannot afford now to admit that vaccination is also largely ineffective, and unsafe, even though they are perfectly aware that this is so.

So the reason for 'vaccine hesitancy' is not ignorance, it is knowledge. 

It is not a threat to global health, it is a matter of self-defence.

Malaria. A 'terrifying prospect' of a parasite in SE Asia that is now resistant to drugs, and spreading rapidly

Malaria is in the news again. Apparently malarial parasites that have become resistant to key pharmaceutical drugs have spread rapidly in South East Asia, according to researchers from the UK and Thailand. The parasites have moved from Cambodia to Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, and first-choice drugs are no longer working. The researchers say that their findings raise a "terrifying prospect" that this drug-resistent parasite could spread to the African continent.

This is yet another example of the failure of conventional medicine.

It is the BBC, yet again, who are promoting this story. Their health journalists have a fascination with the disease, often shamelessly promoting the pharmaceutical drugs that are used to treat malaria. As recently as July 2018 the BBC was promoting the drug Tafenoquine as "a phenomenal achievement". Presumably the malaria parasite did not agree with this assessment!

Only a few years earlier, in October 2013, the BBC were extolling the virtues of a new vaccine for malaria. This vaccine was presented to us then as the answer to the problem of malaria. Now? Not a mention. One must ask what has happened to this wonder drug.

And  I still remember the disgracefully biased BBC Newsnight programme, broadcast on 4th January 2011, in which KirstyWark described conventional pharmaceutical drug treatment for Malaria as 'proper medicine' (which of course meant that homeopathy was not 'proper medicine'), and carried out a deeply hostile interview with a homeopath, her message, "How dare homeopathy claim that it can treat malaria?"

Malaria was the subject of one of the most popular, and most revisited pages on this blog; It was written in November 2012, entitled "The Prevention and Treatment of Malaria with Homeopathy". The reason for its popularity is, no doubt, that people are looking for safer and more effective treatment for malaria than Kirsty's 'proper medicine' can now deliver. Certainly the failure of conventional medicine to treat malaria is bad news for those people living in areas where the disease is rife, or to people who visit those areas. For them malaria is really a 'terrifying prospect'.

The good news is that homeopathy continues to work in preventing and treating malaria. There is no resistance to it. It is doing so in small schemes operating in various parts of Africa and elsewhere. The success of these schemes, tiny as they are, continues to be reassuring. When conventional medicine says that "there is no effective treatment" for malaria it really should be saying that there is no effective conventional treatment for malaria with pharmaceutical drugs (and vaccines too)!

So for anyone looking for a treatment for malaria have a look at homeopathy. First, have a look at my "Why Homeopathy?" website. Then book an appointment with a local homeopath.

Yet a work of caution. After Kirsty Wark's 'sting' on homeopathy in 2011 any homeopath you contact may seem to be rather cautious, and unforthcoming. You will need to assure him/her that you are a genuine patient, who has a genuine need for treatment for malaria.

Puberty Blocking Drugs, Gender Dysphoria, Transgender Treatment - and the safety of conventional medicine

The BBC's Newsnight programme has raised the issue of the safety of 'Puberty Blocking Drugs', and an article (22nd July 2019) on the BBC's website, has outlined and discussed the issue. The BBC are to be congratulated! They do not usually criticise the conventional medical establishment, or even raise any of the delicate issues that are being debated within the NHS. But on this occasions it has done so.

Yet unfortunately the BBC's coverage raises as many questions as it resolves, indeed many more important questions could and should have been raised. So here is an outline of the situation they describe, interspersed by some of the additional questions that were not asked.

The NHS has two youth gender clinics in England, in London and Leeds, both run by the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. They have recently lowered the age that puberty blocking drugs can be offered to children, from aged 16 to 11. A study, not yet published, has apparently shown that some children who have taken the drugs "reported an increase in thoughts of suicide and self-harm".

The clinics response was that the data was from a "small sample" and so no "meaningful conclusion" could be drawn from it. The study has been criticised by 'experts' on clinical trials, saying that it is hard to tell if the reported effects were due to the puberty blockers or something else.

• So there is evidence of harm - but that evidence is discounted. As I have said, many times on this blog, and elsewhere, conventional medicine is the only industry that is allowed to market a product, and ignore the safety implications. The 'precautionary principle' does not apply to matters of health. And doctors are routinely allowed to to break their own Hippocratic oath - "First, do no harm". 

Following the BBC programme the Health Research Authority, the body tasked to ensure medical studies are ethical and transparent, has said it will now investigate the claims contained within the programme.

• The question that could have been asked, but wasn't, it why it was necessary for a BBC programme to initiate such an investigation?

One treatment on offer to children with gender dysphoria are puberty blocking drugs. They work on the brain to block the release of oestrogen, in girls, and testosterone, in boys, the sex hormones that increase during puberty. They suppress the development of sex characteristics such as periods, breasts and voice-breaking.

Before 2011, puberty blocking drugs would only be given to children aged 16 plus. But with the increase of gender clinics around the world the drugs were being bought for UK children going overseas. So the age was reduced, and a medical study was approved through which younger children could be given to access these drugs.

• What this clearly indicates is that the prescription of the drugs came first, and medical safety testing comes later. Why? Again, I emphasise that no car, no washing machine, no other product that might cause harm to users, would be allowed to get away with this. The most notable feature about conventional medicine's safety environment is its almost complete absence!

The BBC went on to confirm this when it said that "in acknowledging the weak evidence for the drugs, the research team, made up of GIDS's and University College Hospitals staff, set out to 'evaluate the psychological, social and physical effects' of the blockers on a carefully selected group of young people." So what are these risks? The articles mention the 'patient information sheet' which mentioned potential adverse effects on bone strength, the development of sexual organs, body shape or final adult height.

But then Newsnight found that certain information about the adverse reactions to these puberty blocking drugs had not been included. It said that previous research had suggested all young people who took the blockers went on to take cross-sex hormones, the next stage towards fully transitioning to the opposite gender. "But patients and parents were not told this in the information sheet."

               "I don't see that the parents and their children could really have given informed consent given the lack of information that was provided," Michael Biggs, associate professor of sociology at Oxford University, was quoted as saying. "They were not given the information they needed in order to take this momentous life-changing step."

• But this is not just a matter of informed consent, it is also a matter of a drug company breaking the law. Drug companies are under a legal duty to disclose all the known side effects of their drugs and vaccines; but clearly they do not do so, and they are not questioned about why they have failed to do so.

Professor Biggs gave Newsnight a series of documents relating to the research study he had obtained via freedom of information requests, which were independently looked at.

               "Preliminary data for 30 of the 44 young people on the study was made available to the Tavistock's board in 2015. It showed that after a year on puberty blockers, there was a significant increase found in those answering the statement 'I deliberately try to hurt or kill myself'."

Interesting stuff, perhaps, but he did not need to go to all that trouble! Puberty blocking drugs are not new. They were once known as 'gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists'. Like all dangerous and harmful pharmaceutical drugs their purpose is to suppress, to inhibit, to block something that is happening naturally within the body.

• And so these drugs are already known to cause horrible adverse reactions, or side effects - and this has been known for many years. The Drugs.com website has outlined these side effects on one of these drugs, Lupron. I reproduce them below, but remember (i) most of them relate to adults, and children are more susceptible to side effects than adults: and (ii) side effects that are described as  "Less Common" or "Rare" are more a reflection on the fact that only between 1% and 10% of side effects are ever reported to drug regulatory authorities by doctors.

Less Common
    Fast or irregular heartbeat

Rare
    Bone, muscle, or joint pain
    fainting
    fast or irregular breathing
    numbness or tingling of the hands or feet
    puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes
    skin rash, hives, or itching
    sudden, severe decrease in blood pressure and collapse
    tightness in the chest
    troubled breathing

For males only (adults)
More Common
    Arm, back, or jaw pain
    bloody or cloudy urine
    blurred vision
    chest pain or discomfort
    difficult, burning, or painful urination
    difficulty with moving
    dizziness
    frequent urge to urinate
    headache
    increased urge to urinate during the night
    muscle pain or stiffness
    nausea
    nervousness
    pain in the joints
    pale skin
    pounding in the ears
    slow or fast heartbeat
    sweating
    troubled breathing with exertion
    unusual bleeding or bruising
    unusual tiredness or weakness
    waking to urinate at night

Rare
    Pain in the groin or legs (especially in the calves)

Incidence Not Known
    Altered mental status
    cardiovascular collapse
    double vision
    visual changes
    vomiting

For females only (adults)
Rare
    Anxiety
    deepening of voice
    increased hair growth
    mental depression
    mood changes

For children
Rare
    Body pain
    burning, itching, redness, or swelling at the injection site

For females only (children)—expected in first few weeks
Rare
    Vaginal bleeding (continuing)
    white vaginal discharge (continuing)

Drugs.com then outlines some more side that, they say,  require medical attention from a health care professional, that is, they are serious and have to be treated by a doctor.

For adults
More Common
    Sudden sweating and feelings of warmth (hot flashes)

Less Common
    Bleeding, bruising, burning, itching, pain, redness, or swelling at the injection site
    decreased interest in sexual intercourse
    swelling of the feet or lower legs
    swelling or increased tenderness of the breasts
    trouble sleeping
    weight gain

For females only (adults)
More Common
    Light, irregular vaginal bleeding
    stopping of menstrual periods

Less Common
    Burning, dryness, or itching of the vagina
    pelvic pain

For males only (adults)
More Common
    Back pain
    chills
    constipation
    cough
    diarrhea
    fever
    general feeling of discomfort or illness
    loss of appetite
    pain or discomfort at the injection site
    redness of the face, neck, arms, and occasionally, upper chest
    runny nose
    shivering
    sore throat
    unusual drowsiness, dullness, tiredness, weakness, or feeling of sluggishness

Less Common
    Decreased size of the testicles
    inability to have or keep an erection

Returning to the BBC's revelation, Professor Susan Bewley, who chairs Healthwatch, a charity for science and integrity in healthcare, was said to be "one of a number of doctors raising concerns about the lack of evidence in this area of medicine", and is reported as saying that seeing any change around suicidal thoughts "is very worrying".

• Worrying, but apparently not sufficiently worrying for conventional medicine to stop prescribing these dangerous drugs until this 'lack of evidence' is corrected!

The rest of the BBC article is made up of conventional health experts discounting these concerns, and presumably explaining why nothing whatsoever will be done. Indeed, in response to Newsnight sharing this evidence, Teresa Allen, chief executive of the HRA, said: "The information that Newsnight has brought to our attention has not been raised with us before. We will therefore investigate further, which may include a review of the original ethics opinion."

• No reason was given for the HRA not knowing about this before, no reason given for the HRA's belated need to initiate another investigation, no reason given for not suspending the prescription of the drug whilst the investigation was in progress.

The Newsnight's investigation said that there were growing concern over the way GIDS's is operating. For example an open letter from former GID's clinician, Dr Kirsty Entwistle, raised concerns over the way puberty blockers side effects were being presented to children as "fully reversible", when their long-term impact was unknown. She also said staff were unable to raise concerns without risking being branded as "transphobic".

• So the response of the medical establishment has been to accuse the critics of these drugs as being 'transphobic'. The problem does not concern the safety of pharmaceutical drugs. It is about the moral and ethical stance of doctors on the transgender issues.

Dr Entwistle went on to say that she, and countless colleagues, had tried to raise these concerns in all the forums available to use.

• Apparently no-one was interested, or presumably concerned - until the transmission of the BBC's Newsnight programme.

It is certainly a pity that the BBC does not undertake more investigations into the policies and practices of the conventional medical establishment, which dominates our NHS. If it was prepared to do so they would no doubt find many similar situations, and perhaps learn to ask more searching questions of a medical system that is doing so much harm to national health.

Perhaps the most crucial of all these questions was never asked. Why has the problem of Gender Dysphoria and Transgender been increasing so rapidly over recent years? My suggestion would be that this is another problem that is being generated by some of the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines we have seen fit to feed to our children during the last 70 years?