Why are we so sick the "broken" NHS can no longer cope?

The British NHS is in crisis. Levels of sickness and disease are now so high this government organisation, funded to the extent of over £180 billion annually, cannot cope with demand. The parlous state of the NHS was described in some detail in my last blog, "The NHS Crisis: Another Installment?", using the recent Darzi report as evidence. Since the general election in July this year the new Secretary of State for Health has described the NHS, very simply and succinctly, as "broken". 

However, there is one question that the Darzi report, the NHS, and the conventional medical establishment generally, has never asked - so as a result it is never answered.

"Just why are we so sick now?" 

Actually the Conventional Medical Establishment is fully aware of both the question, and the answer; that one important cause of illness and disease is Conventional Medicine itself. The answer is in plain sight. It is in the conventional medical literature. My question here is: why is this obvious answer to NHS problems never admitted, never discussed, never mentioned?

After all, the NHS is a huge operation; so why has it been 'broken'? The Kings Fund outlines just how big the NHS has become:

• In 2022/23, the Department for Health and Social Care spent £182 billion. This money is used to fund a wide range of health and care services, including GP services, the ambulance service, mental health services, community and hospital services, all commissioned by the NHS, as well as public health services that are commissioned by local authorities. It also funds some social care services mainly through local authorities.
•  In 2022, Britain spent 11.3% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health, and this was just above the average for comparable countries. So it is not under-funded, as is so often claimed.

So given this huge annual expenditure, it is surely right to ask what is causing these unprecedented levels of sickness with which the NHS cannot cope? There are several routine answers put forward to explain this.

    1. An Ageing Population. And the assumption that an ageing population, as it gets older, also get sicker. As I have written before this is an assumption that should not be made.

    2. New Medical Treatments are getting progressively more expensive. This is undoubtedly so; whilst the NHS is bankrupt, the pharmaceutical industry is getting progressively richer, as is the medical supply industry which surround it.

    3. Poor Diet and Nutrition. This is also an important element in the nation's health; however, it is an element about which the NHS is usually relatively quiet, both in promoting a more healthy diet, and using nutrition to assist in the treatment of illness.

    4. Tobacco and Smoking. Despite the reduction is smoking, especially over the last 50 years, this is still routinely cited as a reason for our 'out of control' levels of sickness.

    5. Plus a variety of "Nonsense" reasons (about which I will shortly be writing another blog, but they point to absurd reasons that just cannot explain the levels of sickness that we are now experiencing).

To demonstrate my point I am going to use this recent article on Dementia from Medscape, which states that dementia is "highly preventable". How? The article mentions a number of factors, including illnesses like type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension, high LDL cholesterol, certain forms of cancer; and it focuses on behavioural 'risk factors' such as a lack of physical activity, cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and obesity. The article also mentions cognitive engagement and isolation, and the specific risks of social isolation, which are exacerbated by untreated hearing or vision loss, and low educational attainment. It also mentions traumatic brain injury from an accident, or from contact sports, and environmental risks like poor air quality.

So, as in so many conventional medical explanations of ill-health, it is the patient who is primarily at fault! And medicine sees it's role in helping the individual to modify their behaviour. The 'solution', we are told, is to "inform our patients about these risk factors and what can be done in terms of behaviour modification, increased screening, and treatment for these conditions". This, it says, can go a long way "in helping our patients reduce their risk for dementia".

Yet the conventional medical profession must know that it is, itself, responsible: that it is the cause, and probably a major cause, of unprecedented levels of sickness and disease. Surely they have read their own literature? Yet iatrogenic illness and disease is rarely mentioned by doctors, by the NHS, by Medical Science, by the Conventional Medical Establishment, by our government, or by the mainstream media. So why the silence?

The evidence implicating NHS treatment can be found in the medical literature. It's in the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that accompany ever prescribed drug and vaccine, they list (at least some) of the 'side effects' and adverse reactions that drugs/vaccines are known to cause. Iatrogenic disease has been known about since (at least) the early 1950's.

The symptoms of Dementia are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs. The Medscape website itself published an article, back in 2000, entitled "Definition of Drug-Induced Cognitive Impairment in the Elderly", which states the following"

        "Numerous drugs have been identified in ..... as causing a multitude of psychiatric symptoms, including hallucinations, fearfulness, insomnia, paranoia, depression, delusions, bizarre behaviour, agitation, anxiety, panic attacks, manic symptoms, hypomania, depersonalisation, psychosis, schizophrenic relapse, aggressiveness, nightmares, vivid dreams, excitement, disinhibition, rage, hostility, mutism, hyper-sexuality, suicidality, crying, hyperactivity, euphoria, dysphoria, lethargy, seizures, Tourette-like syndrome, obsessiveness, fear of imminent death, illusions, emotional lability, sensory distortions, impulsivity, and irritability, which can impact on mental capacity. Further, there are a number of medications that may be linked to causing cognitive impairment by inducing delirium, confusion, disorientation, memory loss, amnesia, stupor, coma, or encephalopathy."

In their most recent article, cited above, there is absolutely no mention that one cause of the dementia epidemic might be iatrogenic! And that consequently one solution to the unprecedented levels of sickness that has 'broken' the NHS might be to stop giving people drugs and vaccines that are actually causing unprecedented levels of illness and disease.

This is worrying because doctors should be aware that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines they prescribed every day cause the symptoms of dementia, like confusion, disorientation, memory loss, amnesia, and many others. They include the mercury and aluminium that are the ingredients of many vaccines, including the flu vaccine; and amalgam tooth fillings; antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs; statins' sleeping pills and benzodiazepines; anticholinergic drugs; antihistamines, proton-pump inhibitors, and many more.

When you then begin to ask why the conventional medical establishment does not mention this in these 'medical' articles, the omission becomes not just surprising, but deeply worrying. Was it an error? Was it forgetfulness? Or was the omission intentional? Was the author not allowed to mention iatrogenic causes? Was censorship involved? Or is the pharmaceutical industry just so powerful within conventional medicine that the truth is not allowed to surface?

If we then widen the problem to other serious illnesses and diseases, we come to similar conclusions. These unprecedented, and ever-growing levels of sickness and disease, are in part (at least) caused by conventional medical treatment.

 Allergy is known to be caused by painkillers, sleeping pills, antibiotics, anticonvulsant drugs, insulin, immuno-suppressant drugs, vaccines - and more.

Arthritis is known to be caused by painkillers, corticosteroid drugs, antibiotics, HRT; and the toxicity of most if not all pharmaceutical drugs might be implicated.

Diabetes is known to be caused by statins, beta-blockers, antihypertensive drugs, antibiotics, antidepressants and antipsychotics, steroids (including inhalers), proton-pump inhibitors, vaccines, and many more.

Epilepsy is known to be caused by antidepressants, antipsychotics, antibiotics, painkillers, asthma drugs, vaccines, and many more.

Indeed, think of any chronic disease, for which the NHS has a long waiting list for treatment, and you will find pharmaceutical drugs known to cause it. My E-Book, Iatrogenic Disease, outlines the drugs that are known to cause about over 70 different illnesses and diseases. Most of these links between prescribed drugs and illness is acknowledged on the PILs, but the size of the iatrogenic problem goes far beyond what is admitted. Often the pharmaceutical industry will go to enormous lengths of ignore and deny links between drugs and illness, and regularly have to be forced to list them on PILs.

Autism, for instance, is almost certainly caused by vaccines, notably the MMR and DPT vaccines. But this has been robustly and vigorously denied. But even if this link is dismissed,  autism is also known to be caused by paracetamol, by antidepressants, asthma drugs, and sodium valproate. Yet if you go to the NHS website and you will find that it states that the cause of Autism remains "unknown" - the only thing it does know is that it is NOT caused by vaccines!

Yet if the conventional medical establishment is in denial, and refuses to consider the iatrogenic causes of sickness, how can it hope to resolve the demands patients are making on NHS services? An effective response would be to stop prescribing the drugs that are causing the illness! But then, what else has conventional medicine got to offer? Is it easier to blame the patient's life-style? Is it too embarrassing for doctors to admit that they have caused the sickness of the patient sitting in front of them?

Or does the NHS just need more money, to spend on more of the same pharmaceutical-based treatment? This is what we have been told for the last 70+ years. Medical science would cure us - if only it had more money! 

What too few people realise is that pharmaceutical medicine is not making us well, that it is making us sick. So sick, in fact, that the NHS is 'broken' - it can no longer cope!

 

NHS Crisis (Autumn 2024). Another Installment?

I have written a series of blogs on "the NHS Crisis", the first one in May 2011, some 13 years ago, and here is yet another update. However, this time it has been written for me - courtesy of an official Government Report, "Independent Investigation of the NHS in England, which does not write off the problem as a little local difficulty that will be solved by pouring more money into a failed institution!

The report was published after a 9-week review of the NHS by Lord Darzi, an independent peer, and former cancer surgeon, initiated by the election of a new Labour government in July 2024. It has been widely reported in the mainstream media, and paints a stark picture, far beyond the usual problems with long and growing waiting lists and delays in response, diagnosis and treatment throughout the entire NHS organisation. The report states that:

• Accident and Emergency services are in "an awful state":, with long waits estimated to be causing an additional 14,000 extra deaths (annually).
•  The health of the nation has deteriorated, and has brought in "a surge in long-term mental health conditions".
• Rising levels of illness risk economic prosperity, with 2.8 million people now unable to work because of poor health.
• Britain has higher cancer mortality rates than other countries.
• Although hospital staff have increased since the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of appointments and procedures have not risen because "patients no longer flow through hospitals as the should".
• The NHS has been starved of capital investment, leading to "crumbling buildings", mental health patients in "Victoria-era cells infested with vermin" and "parts of the NHS operating in decrepit portacabins".
  

My series of blogs (use this link to see my last one, in March 2024, which gives links to all of them) have charted the rise and rise of the NHS Crisis as it has developed through the last 13 years, highlighting (i) the nature of the crisis at the time of writing, (ii) predicting that the crisis would get progressively worse, and would NOT be resolved by pouring more money into it, and (iii) that no-one has yet had the wit to work out the underlying reason for this ongoing NHS Crisis! 

Does the Darzi report, and the new government's initial response, address the issues I have raised? That's look at each one.

(i) Hitherto, the serious nature of the NHS Crisis has always been heavily discounted. It could be resolved by another management re-organisation, or (more usually) by putting in additional resources, by bringing in private investment: the problem was primarily one of under-investment. Now, we are told, the crisis will take 10 years to resolve, and no further money will be spent "without reform".

(ii) So the Darzi report has (at last) overturned the idea that the interminable saga of NHS Crises can be resolved by pouring more money into it. And for the first time in the 76 year history of the NHS, a British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting, have openly admitted this. So my prediction has come true.

• Keir Starmer has said that although the NHS is in a critical condition, there will be no additional money "without reform". It must, he says, "reform or die". But what reform? Another structural management reform? There have been plenty of these, and none of them have prevented the NHS crisis spiralling, year by year.
  
• Wes Streeting has spoken about the three 'big shifts' that were needed. (a) a move from hospital to community care. (b) a move from analogue to digital technology "to empower patients and give them control over their healthcare". (c) moving from a treatment model to a preventative model. These are 'shifts' that have little or nothing to do with what I argue, that it is the treatment that the NHS offers its patients that is at the root of the problem.
  

 (iii) So the fundamental reason for the ongoing NHS Crisis has still not been identified! Why, for instance, are "patients no longer flowing through hospitals as the should"? Is the medical treatment they receive not working? The question is not even asked. And why is there "a surge in long-term mental health conditions". What is causing this surge? Again, the question is not asked, leave alone given a response. So how will these proposals get 2.8 million patients back to work - if there is to be no change to the medical treatment they receive? The misguided and thoughtless assumption that pharmaceutical medicine is treating illness and disease successfully remains firmly in place!

So what, indeed, is causing the unprecedented/epidemic levels of chronic diseases, like ADHD, Allergy, Arthritis, Autism, Dementia, Diabetes, Epilepsy, Heart/Lung/Kidney/Liver disease, Mental Health, and so many more? It has little to do with hospital care or community care, with digital technology, and moving to a 'preventative' model. In pharmaceutical medicine, prevention seems to mean giving drugs like Statins, and vaccines, earlier - whilst people are still well!

If the NHS continues to provide patients with a diet o pharmaceutical drugs, which have limited and marginal effectiveness as treatment, there is little hope that it will ever be able to reduce the number of sick patients, and the amount of sickness they present.

If the NHS continues to provide patients with pharmaceutical drugs which cause serious adverse reactions, and disease in patients, there is every possibility that the number of sick people, and the seriousness of their health deficits, will continue to increase - as they have done for the last 76 years.

So the Darzi report, and the government response to it, is positive in the limited sense that the seriousness of the problem has at last been recognised, and the futility of throwing more money in the bottomless pit of the NHS acknowledged. 

But without identifying the fundamental problem, the control that the NHS has gratuitously given to pharmaceutical medicine, and its almost total reliance on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, the solution has again been missed again.

When the NHS was established it was based on two important principles. First, that treatment should be free at the point of use. And second, that the best medical treatment should be offered to patients. I agree with both these principles, but the second has been badly neglected. 

What was not envisaged in 1948 was that the pharmaceutical industry would achieve a virtual monopoly in the treatment options offered to patients by the NHS. The only change that has taken place regarding patient treatment has been the removal of Natural Medical Therapies, including homeopathy.

Pharmaceutical drugs are not making us better. Indeed they are making us sicker. But they now have a monopoly within the NHS. Visit a doctor, go to a hospital, and you will almost inevitably receive pharmaceutical medicine. 

That is the fundamental basis of the NHS crisis.

Tess, Homeopathy, and Back Leg Weakness

Tess is my Labrador. She is 15 years old, a good age; and until recently she has been fit and well. She has never see a vet. She was treated homeopathically for all the canine ailments and did not have any vaccinations. She has been well exercised, well fed, and has become a much loved and treasured family pet.

Suddenly, a few of months ago, she lost control of her rear legs. She would collapse, and have difficult standing again. When she did walk she was limping, appeared lame, and had a slow, unstable gait.

I tried her with several homeopathic remedies, but she quickly got worse. She became lethargic, sleeping most of the time, and not engaging with anyone. She was eating (she is a Labrador)! But she was reluctant to go for a walk. One evening she was particularly bad, and I decided that this might be the end. I was not going to allow her to suffer more.

However, I decided to do a web search to see if anyone else had written about an elderly dog who had lost control of her hind legs, and how they could be treated with homeopathy. There were several websites, and all of them suggested the remedies that I had already tried. However, one discussion outlined how none of these remedies worked; and the homeopath, perhaps rather despairingly, had said, "Well, if none of those remedies have worked, you might try Calc Phos".

So I decided, as a last resort, to try Tess with Calc Phos. I looked up the remedy in the Materia Medica (which homeopaths use to link symptoms of illness with known remedy symptoms) and did not feel that the remedy was particularly relevant to her. But there was nothing else that came to mind.

Calc Phos worked wonders within a couple of days. It is several months on now, and there has been no trip to the vet! She remains an elderly Labrador. She does not walk quickly, or very far now. She still has difficulty walking on shiny flat floors in the house. But she is as well as anyone could expect of a 15 year old dog - and she is still enjoying life.

The remedy will not work for every dog with rear leg weakness, but it is a remedy that is certainly worth trying. I am so glad I stumbled upon it - it is what happens, sometimes, with homeopathy!

Vaccines: What does giving 'Informed Consent' entail?

In medicine, it appears to be generally agreed that 'Informed Consent' is important before any patient gives consent for medical treatment. However, it is clearly not universally agreed as during the last few years, during the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Conventional Medical Establishment has been party to, and supportive of, enforced or mandatory vaccination. And pharmaceutical medicine has a reputation for providing patients with "the good news" whilst remaining silent about "the bad news".

So what does giving 'Informed Consent' actually mean? Simply it is that every patient should be fully aware of both the benefits, and the risks of the proposed treatment. When pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are involved, the expected/potential benefits are always made clear. However, the risks are not; usually most conventional medical treatment is routinely described as "safe and effective".

What follows was originally posted on X by Jessica Rojas: https://twitter.com/catsscareme2021: and it is reposted here with her permission (she merely requests that you consider following her on her X (or Twitter) account. It focuses on America (although the situation is similar here in Britain and elsewhere), and focuses on the USA vaccine schedule (although similar questions can be asked regarding most conventional medical treatments).

Read it carefully - and note the complexity of the information you need before you can truly give your 'informed consent' to treatment. It is information that is not usually provided to patients prior to treatment.

   "If you are a parent who follows the CDCs VACCINE schedule, here are some facts you need to know and understand to make an informed decision.

1. I understand that the pharmaceutical company who made this vaccine has NO liability.

2. I understand that I pay a $0.75 Federal Excise Tax per vaccine, used to pay vaccine injured families through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) created by the government.

3. I understand that this vaccine contains neurotoxins such as aluminum that far exceeds “safe levels” deemed by the EPA.

4. I understand that this vaccine contains carcinogenic ingredients.

5. I understand that this vaccine was made from aborted fetal cell lines, animal and bug cells.

6. I understand that getting this vaccine does not ensure that I will be protected from the disease.

7. I understand that my child could get the very illness they was vaccinated for.

8. I understand that my child could be a carrier of the illnesses/he was vaccinated for and spread it (“shedding”) for up to six weeks.

9. I understand that my doctor may get monetarily rewarded for having a high percentage of his/her patients who are fully vaccinated.

10. I understand that if my child is injured by a vaccine, my doctor would have to spend an exorbitant amount of hours filling out paper work in order to report it to VAERS (the only way to officially report a vaccine injury).

11. I understand that my doctor has no incentive to fill out paperwork for a vaccine injury.

12. I understand that vaccine injury is under-reported.

13. I understand that vaccine mandates (like SB277) literally hand over new customers to pharmaceutical companies.

14. I understand that pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to make their product better.

15. I understand that pharmaceutical companies spend up to 4x more on advertising than they do on research.

16. I understand that corporate media gets 70% of their advertising revenue from pharmaceutical companies.

17. I understand that corporate media does not want to lose revenue, certainly not 70% of it.

18. I understand that when pharmaceutical companies conduct a study (on their own product) it is in their best interest to have a favorable outcome.

19. I understand that this vaccine schedule has never been tested on children collectively and ACIP assumes it's safe as long as different limbs are used for injection.

20. I understand that this vaccine could cause injury or death, and my child could be one of them.

21. My doctor has informed me on all the risks and side effects and has reviewed the vaccine insert with me.

22. I understand that if my child dies from this vaccine I will be awarded no more than $250,000 and most cases are never heard.

23. I understand that not one vaccine has gone through a saline placebo, double-blind study.

24. I am making an informed choice to vaccinate my child.

So if you have all this information prior to agreeing too, and receiving any medical treatment, you will be able to make a fully informed choice. Otherwise, think again! Good luck!

 

Homeopathy for Older People

People often link old age with illness. To be old is to be ill.  The two go together.  How often have people been told – “you must accept that when you get to your age”.  The ‘that’ can be almost anything!  The ‘your age’ can be anything over 30!  The medical profession is often the worst offender. 

There is a story about a man who went to see his doctor because he had arthritis in his right knee. The doctor noted that he was 92 and suggested that he should accept some pain at his age.  However, the man reminded him he had another knee, the same age, which had not pain.  Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but it is an excellent point that he made.

Homeopathy considers that an illness is an illness regardless of age.  If it is treatable at 6 it is treatable at 60.  If it is treatable at 19 it is treatable at 90.  Often, age is used as an excuse for doing nothing, for fobbing people off, for laziness, or for having nothing more useful to offer.  It results from ageism, a means of discriminating against older people, undervaluing them, and not treating them on equal terms with younger people.

Of course, it is not quite as easy or straightforward as this.  Age increases our susceptibility to illness.  Ageing may mean that we may have ‘abused’ our body for longer, and it is now less able to cope – bad diet, too much stress, too much alcohol, and a host of other factors do take their toll in time.  If this is the cause of illness a change of lifestyle, and taking more care of the body, is as useful as homeopathy.

Homeopathy can treat all illnesses and disease. It can even help people to cope with the feelings of loneliness that so often affect older people. In doing so it works quite differently to conventional medicine. It works alongside the body, helping to support it in performing its normal functions, its natural ability to maintain itself.  

Conventional drugs tend to be grouped together until titles beginning with “anti-“ – anti-biotics, anti-histamines, etc; or it works to suppress or kill pain.  In other words it seeks to change the normal working of the body, to force it to do something it would not do itself.  The body usually struggles against this; so it overcomes pain killers, and bacteria becomes resistant to anti-biotics.  Ailments that are suppressed return, often in a more serious or more painful form. This often leads to an increasing dependence on drugs.

        “About half of all senior patients take several prescribed… drugs simultaneously, and frequently over prolonged periods.  Many conditions mistakenly considered new diseases are, in fact, unrecognised drug interactions.  Doctors then prescribe yet more drugs to solve the new problems, which only makes matters worse… The greatest overuse of medicine is among the institutionalised elderly.  The average nursing home patient received eight different drugs a day”.
What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You (April 2002)

Homeopathy is an alternative to conventional treatment.  It does not produce miracles but it can make people feel better when they have long believed that their illness is untreatable, or their pain an inevitable part of old age.  It is often more complicated treating older people, especially if there has been a long history of illness, drug taking, and operations.  This makes treatment a longer process, and often one that can only ameliorate pain and illness.  But this is often all that older people expect.  And the advantage of homeopathy is simply stated - it will not make matters worse.

Antidepressant Drugs. Record Prescriptions, but only 1 in 6 will have withdrawal symptoms!

The Lancet Psychiatry journal published a study on 5th June 2024. It found that only one in six people who stop taking antidepressants will experience withdrawal symptoms. The GP magazine, Pulse, thought that this was a good outcome.

            "This is a much lower proportion than other studies have suggested, with previous estimates that over half of patients experience symptoms".

The research found that one in three patients reported at least one withdrawal symptom such as dizziness, headache or nausea. But as 1 in 6 patients experienced the same when they stopped taking a placebo drug, it suggested that ‘approximately half of all symptoms experienced … might be due to negative expectations (the "nocebo effect”) or non-specific symptoms which may occur at any time in the general population’.

So the report concluded that about 15%, of patients experienced one or more withdrawal symptoms as a direct result of stopping antidepressants, with around 3% experiencing ‘severe symptoms’.

Pulse said that this was the first ‘meta-analysis’ on the incidence of antidepressant discontinuation symptoms, analysing 79 randomised trials, which included data from over 21,000 patients, of which 72% were women. 

So, conventional medicine now believes that the 'withdrawal symptoms' were not as bad as was previously thought, certainly after the 'nocebo effect' was used to eliminate about 50% of reported symptoms. But never mind, let's accept this, and apply it to the number of people who are taking antidepressant drugs.

According to the BMJ in 2019, the NHS prescribed a record number of antidepressants in 2018, and that the number of prescriptions for antidepressants in England had almost doubled during the previous decade.

            "Data from NHS Digital show that 70.9 million prescriptions for antidepressants were given out in 2018, compared with 36 million in 2008".

• Therefore, in 2008, 6 million people in England alone suffered from antidepressant withdrawal symptoms; and over 1 million experienced 'severe symptoms'.
• In 2018, nearly 12 million (11,816,333) people suffered from antidepressant withdrawal symptoms, with over 2 million experiencing 'severe symptoms'.

So this is presumably acceptable then? At least it seems to be acceptable to the Conventional Medical Establishment which seems quite willing to continue prescribing an ever-increasing numbers of these drugs.

The Pulse article also told us that the number of people suffering withdrawal symptoms was steadily increasing, year-on-year; and since then we have been told that as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic the number of people who are taking antidepressant drugs (around the world) has risen even more rapidly,  by 25%.

Perhaps I should calculate a new more up-to-date figure, but these numbers are almost meaningless once we realise that each single person within that total number are individuals, someone who is suffering as a direct result of taking pharmaceutical drugs. If the medical fraternity is pleased about this we can rest assured that the 12 million +++ patients are certainly not pleased.

There is a solution at hand, but it is a solution that will likely be ignored. In 2010 Dana Ullman (a leading homeopath) published article in Huffington Post, "Homeopathy. A Healthier Way to Treat Depression" in which he compared the safety and effectiveness of homeopathy alongside the dangers of pharmaceutical drug treatment. It surely is a must read for anyone with mental health problems!

In this same article Ullmann refers to a study that showed antidepressant drugs were ineffective, essentially useless. This is a direct quote from that article.

            "In early 2010, major media reported on a significant review of research testing antidepressant medications. What is unique about this review of research is that the researchers evaluated studies that were submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), though the researchers discovered that many studies submitted to the FDA were unpublished (they found that the unpublished research consistently showed negative results of antidepressants)".

            "This meta-analysis of antidepressant medications found only modest benefits over placebo treatment in published research, but when unpublished trial data is included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance".

So the 12 million +++ have suffered the serious side effects of antidepressant drugs, including links to suicide and violence, plus the (now discounted) withdrawal symptoms that result - all for nothing!

This is exactly what patients get from conventional medicine: a lot of problems, adverse reactions: but not many positive outcomes!

A new 'double selective' Antibiotic? Is this good news? Or a belated recognition of the patient harm caused by the 'old' antibiotics?

Most people, if asked to identify a pharmaceutical drug that was "safe and effective", would point to antibiotics. So is this announcement more good news for antibiotic drugs?

            "A new antibiotic uses a never-before-seen mechanism to deliver a direct hit on tough-to-treat infections while leaving beneficial microbes alone. The strategy could lead to a new class of antibiotics that attack dangerous bacteria in a powerful new way, overcoming current drug resistance while sparing the gut microbiome".

This is how it is presented in this Medscape article, New-Era Double Selective Antibiotic Spares Microbiome. But hold on, what is this about "sparing the gut microbiome"? What is the gut microbiome?

           " The gut microbiome refers to all the microorganisms living in the digestive system. The microbiome is individual to each person and is important to digestive health as well as to overall health. Studies of the gut microbiome are ongoing, but it’s becoming clear that certain types of bacteria, yeast, and other fungi are more or less beneficial for overall health. People may be able to affect their microbiome with diet and other lifestyle factors".

So it certainly does seem important to 'spare' the microorganisms of the gut microbiome. But wait, does that mean that all previous antibiotic drugs attacked it, harmed it? Rather than being 'good news' is this an admission that hitherto antibiotics have actually harmed something that was "important to digestive health as well as to overall health"?

Over 9 years ago, in 2015, I wrote a blog, "Antibiotics. Not as safe as we have been told?", which outlined just how harmful antibiotics drugs were to our health, outlining some of the known/accepted, and the suspected adverse reactions to antibiotics. 

• The blog touched on the fact that conventional medicine was aware of the harm antibiotics caused, as early as 1953 (4 years after their introduction).
• It talked about antibacterial resistance.
• It outlined how antibiotics were particularly harmful to the health of children.
• And antibiotics were discussed as the possible or known causes of a variety of diseases, such as obesity, irritable bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, liver disease, diabetes, asthma and eczema, heart disease, mental health, and HIV/Aids.
• All these diseases have risen to epidemic levels during the last 70 years, no doubt in large part to antibiotic drugs that have compromised our gut microbiome.
  
• And I asked this important question - did the conventional medical establishment know about the patient harm that was being caused by antibiotic drugs?
  

Clearly they did, and the development of this new 'double selective' antibiotic is proof of this. Why else would it have been developed, presumably at massive cost?

Yet during the last 9 years, the list of iatrogenic diseases now known to be/thought to be caused by antibiotic drugs have increased to many that seem to have little or no connection with the gut, like Parkinson's Disease. 

Suddenly, conventional medicine seems to have realised that killing microbes is not a path to health! Hence the new drug. As usual it is hailed as a breakthrough - but the 'bad' news underlying the 'good' news is being ignored, or censored - presumably for 'commercial' reasons!

The new 'double selective' antibiotics may, or may not be safer and more effective than the 'old' antibiotics (that is, those that are prescribed, and still being taken in huge quantities today). But we can be sure that if conventional medicine continues to operate with the secrecy, and lack of transparency, we have witnessed for the last 70 years, we will probably not be aware of this for yet another 70 years!

Natural medical therapies have known about the harm caused by antibiotics for a very long time. They do not believe in the 'germ' theory of illness. They do not set out to attack or kill anything! And this is why natural medicine focuses instead on supporting and strengthening our immune system - in the knowledge that it is our natural immunity that best protects us all from illness and disease.