Search This Blog

Monday, 26 October 2026

The Inadequacy and Failure of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs), Drug Package Inserts, to keep us safe

PILs are meant to protect patients from harm, to provide us with information about ‘side effects’, adverse reactions of pharmaceutical drugs. The UK’s drug regulator has admitted they do not do so.

Pharmaceutical medicine works within the confines of a code of ethical conduct that (should) recognise the possible dangers of drugs and vaccines, and thereby seek to protect patients from harm.

One central concept is that if pharmaceutical medicine can cause serious patient harm, patients should at least be informed about that possibility, not least to enable them to make an ‘informed’ choice about whether or not to take the drugs/vaccines/treatment.

  1. That is why we have Drug Regulatory bodies - to ensure that we are all informed about the potential dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

  2. That is why drug companies are obliged to test their vaccines and drugs for both (i) safety and (ii) efficacy - and to put this information on PILs.

  3. That is why doctors have a reporting system (Yellow Card system in UK) that obliges doctors to report any adverse drug effects suffered by their patients to the drug regulator.

  4. And that is why all vaccines and drugs prescribed to patients are accompanied by a PIL, or Package Insert, to inform patients about the potential harm each drug are known to cause.

The problem is that (i) Drug Regulators are now controlled and staffed by people with close links to the Pharmaceutical industry, whose main concern seems to be the best interests of the industry rather than the safety of patients. Another problem is that (ii) Big Pharma companies are the main funders of the ‘medical science’, and have demonstrably corrupted the ‘science’ that is supposed to underlay conventional medicine. And further, (iii) most adverse drug reactions are not routinely fed to drug regulators, those that are reported are increasingly ignored, and so many adverse drug reactions do not make their way on to PILs'.

These long-standing ‘faults’ in drug regulation, all meant to protect patients from harm, have been discussed on this forum many times. But hitherto I have paid less attention to the inadequacies of PILs.

The medical journal, MIMS reported in October 2026 that the UK’s drug regulator, the MHRA, is to undertake a major review “to improve communication of key risks associated with antidepressants, including suicide and sexual dysfunction..…” The article says that this action follows a major review that recognised most patients are NOT being sufficiently warned about the adverse reactions to antidepressant drugs. 

“The review came after patients and families raised concerns regarding the adequacy of existing PILs in communicating antidepressant risks”

What this means, in effect, is that antidepressant drugs, prescribed by thousands of doctors to millions of patients for over 70 years (antidepressant drugs were developed in the 1950’s) have not been accompanied by PILs that adequately warn about the risks of taking them! So, it says, doctors must now to impart this to their patients.

“Clinicians are advised to discuss the risks of suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and the potential for persistent sexual dysfunction with patients when starting or changing an antidepressant dose, or at their next review. They should also advise patients to seek urgent medical attention if they experience new or worsening suicidal thoughts, particularly early in treatment or following dose changes.”

After 70 years this is seriously belated advice! Both suicide and sexual dysfunction resulting from antidepressant use has been in PILs for decades! And these are just two serious side effects that have been known about antidepressant use for decades. The Drugs.com website, for instance, reports many more serious side effects, including drowsiness and fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, and weight gain and much more. So it should be asked:

  • How many depressed people have committed suicide (and self harm) not because of their depression but because of the drugs they were taking to ‘treat’ their depression?

  • How many people with problems during sexual activity, such as lack of libido, arousal, orgasm, pain, should now be blaming pharmaceutivcal drugs rather than personal inadequacy? (And perhaps the relationship between antidepressant drugs and gender dysphoria should be more closely investigated,  something I have already written about, here.

  • Gastrointestinal problems and weight gain are also growing health problems. How many patients have these problems because they have been taking antidepressants, without realising that they are well-known adverse reaction? And how many patients now taking the new, much lauded weight-loss injection drugs are doing so as a result of the havoc that has been caused by taking another pharmaceutical drug?

Violence is another known ‘side effect’ of taking antidepressant drugs. This is also in conventional medical literature. The question is, to what extent has this serious social issue, that has increased enormously in recent years, the result of taking antidepressant drugs? Dare I say that social violence has grown “in line with the increased consumption of antidepressant drugs”? And that there are many other pharma drugs that are known to cause violence. I have read many cogent, well researched articles suggesting that most mass shootings in the USA were carried out by people with ‘mental health’ problems, and who were taking antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs. I have no evidence to suggest that this is any different in the UK!

All this indicates that PILs do not, and have not worked. It is not just about antidepressants and sexual dysfunction/suicide. Most patients, taking most drugs, remain oblivious to the possibility of drug harm. The information contained in PILs have just not reached patients.

So what measures are the MHRA bringing about, what are the “new safeguards to strengthen antidepressant safety information”? They are breathtakingly simple. But unfortunately there is no explanation about how they will be more “visible” to patients than they have been hitherto.

“A new boxed warning in the PILs aims to highlight information on suicidal thoughts and behaviours and signpost patients to sources of help. The term post SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is being added to the PILs of antidepressants associated with a risk of sexual dysfunction which may persist after treatment discontinuation, including certain SSRIs, SNRIs and tricyclic antidepressants.

“A new patient card, to be included in or on medication packaging, will reinforce key safety messages and help patients and carers understand how and when to seek further support. It will initially be available electronically, and may be given to the patient by dispensers as an interim measure ahead of cards becoming available. Hard copies are expected to be credit card-sized and easy to carry.”

Yes, but the crucial question is this. How will patients be any more likely to see these new methods of communication, especially if there is no-one who is going to draw their attention to them.

“An ancillary safety leaflet is being developed in collaboration with other healthcare system partners to provide more detailed information on the benefits and risks of antidepressants, as well as alternative treatment options. It is intended for use during the first consultation for new patients or at the next consultation for existing patients, and is expected to become available in 2027.

Yes, but will doctors avail themselves of the opportunity to do this during the first, or next consultation? They could/should do so now but rarely do!. So will they be any more likely to do so under this new jurisdiction?

Finally, MIMS quotes Dr Alison Cave, MHRA Chief Safety Officer, as saying that “these measures will help ensure patients, carers and healthcare professionals can have more informed conversations about the benefits and risks associated with antidepressant medicines, and better support people throughout their treatment’.

Unfortunately she does not say how this will happen! She fails to address the historical unwillingness of the Conventional Medical Establishment to inform patients about serious adverse drug reactions. From pharmaceutical companies, to medical science, to medical journals, to doctors and nurses, dismissive mantras, and throw away comments, are commonplace. “They are well tolerated” patients are routinely told. They are meant to reassure. They are meant to persuade patients to take the drugs. They are not honest!

I, for one, will certainly NOT be ‘tolerating’ any vaccine or drug.

And I patiently await the time when the Conventional Medical Establishment demonstrates that it is prepared to be honest and transparent with their patients about the serious adverse drug effects their medications can, and do cause.


Friday, 23 October 2026

The Medicalisation of Maternity Care.

Friday, 16 October 2026

Brain Cancer and Young People. The failure of the Conventional Medical Establishment to ask the most fundamental question. Why the sudden increase?

Tuesday, 6 October 2026

Cancer before 50: why is it rising?

The  BBC Panorama programme with this title was broadcast, on 5th October 2026. It failed to answer this question by making one very important omission.

Back in April 2026 I wrote an article on Cancer, “Why are more younger people getting this ‘old age’ disease?”. I asked why media programmes dealing with the cause of illness and diseases (not least cancer) remain seemingly blind to the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause cancer - as a ‘side effect’. After all, it is in the medical literature for everyone to see, it is in the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come with every packet of drugs, every vial of vaccine.

Yesterday a BBC Panorama documentary asked the question, “Cancer before 50: why is it rising?” The programme can be seen on BBC i-Player. Please watch it (30 minutes) to confirm that I am correct - pharmaceutical drugs were not mentioned, not once, as a ‘possible’ cause of cancer.

Apparently the programme raised the question because NHS data showed that rates of bowel, breast and other cancers are rising among younger generations.

Remember that when the NHS was inaugurated in 1948, nearly 80 years ago, cancer was a dreaded disease; but not a common one. And remember too that it was then considered a disease of older age.

So why are ever younger people getting cancer?  The Panorama programme featured several patients who were facing the much-feared diagnosis, and it proceeded to investigate some of the factors that might be driving the increase. In doing so it dealt with diet, ultra-processed food, to changing diets, to chemicals that are now found in everyday products, and mentioned obesity and much else. Panorama claimed that it would:

     “… examine the latest scientific research into possible causes and asks whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”.

Yet if the BBC deliberately chooses to ignore the role of pharmaceutical drugs, a known cause of cancer as a ‘side effect’, it should be asked whether they themselves are “doing enough to protect public health”?

Perhaps they, too, are failing to inform the public about an important link to the rising cancer epidemic. If I am correct, cancer was an uncommon disease before the drug-fest of the NHS was started? An it was primarily a disease of old age.

So what was the situation in 1948? There is a document on the internet, ‘Public Health in 1948: remarkable statistics’ report’ that can be seen here. It was a document published by the Ministry of Health that examined health and mortality outcomes between the inception of the NHS on 5th July 1948 and March 1949

     “The mortality rates of 1948 were compared with those of 1938 (the last full year of peace before the outbreak of the Second World War and the year which had the lowest pre-war death rates of any year before the war). The report found that there had been a significant reduction in death rates. It suggested that mortality rates had fallen by 20%.

So the UK population was healthier in 1948 than it was in 1938. But unfortunately when I tried to read further I was forbidden access to the report! (Check it out)!

So I went to a report by the Nuffield Trust entitled “Death through the decades”. This looked at, and compared the causes of death in the 70 years from 1948 to 2016. It starts positively by looking at deaths from heart disease and stroke, and (as is usual) attributes this to pharmaceutical medical care:

     “We can see positive developments particularly clearly in deaths from heart disease and strokes, both of which have fallen by 40% since 1948, even as the population has grown. This probably reflects advances at every level of medicine. Statins and other drugs have improved prevention, new immediate interventions to break down blood clots have been developed, and there is better care after people experience an attack”.

Of course, it could also be the result of a multitude of social, work-related and environmental changes too But then it moves on to deal with cancer deaths (alongside dementia death too).

     “On the other hand, cancer claimed nearly twice as many deaths in 2016 as in 1948. Dementia is somewhat difficult to classify due to the widespread practice in 1948 of simply logging “senility” as a cause of death. But even if we add together “senility” and dementia, deaths from these causes have quadrupled”.

The report says that these are not merely increases in the proportion, but in the total number of deaths.

So whilst Nuffield claims responsibility for improvements in health for conventional medicine , the report does not explain responsibility for failures. This trend continues to this day, right up to yesterday’s Panorama programme.

The question I raise is an important one. Why is a vital question is being ignored, not just by the BBC but by all mainstream media; not just by the media but by most of the conventional medical profession; and by Government too?

Moreover, where are the public to find someone prepared to ask the question, “have pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines played a role in the rise and rise of cancer, as well as the creeping involvement of younger people in its devastating consequences?”

If the question is not asked there will never be an answer. What is more, failing to ask the question (in a programme that tasked itself to “examines the latest scientific research into possible causes and ask whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”) was not an unintentional omission. It is always a deliberate and regular omission, a intentional failure to ask questions pointed questions about the role of pharmaceutical medicine in the creation of modern illness and disease.

Medical science provides us with important clues to this link in its admission that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause ‘side effects’. Side effects - what an innocuous phrase! Yet there appears to be a unwritten, unspoken societal decision to ignore this association between pharmaceutical drugs and serious illness and disease.

Why? Just how powerful are the drug companies? Does anyone dare challenge them? Will we ever know if the question is never asked?

So are we patients supposed just to go on taking the pills, and the shots, without being aware of what the consequences might be? Are we instead destined to believe that we should blame illness and disease entirely as the consequences of other, non-medical things?

 

Friday, 25 September 2026

Is Alzheimer's Disease, and Dementia generally, Iatrogenic - caused by Doctors?

I have been suggesting that Dementia is linked to increased drug taking in the last 80+ years for nearly twenty years. This is my blog from 2013. As with all iatrogenic (doctor-induced) disease, the conventional medical establishment has always vehemently denied and discounted it. Their drugs and vaccines are (of course) “safe and effective”, and medicine is committed to “first, do no harm”. And it’s very survival depends on people believing this.

This is a difficult position for conventional medicine to maintain, given that the ‘side effects’ (adverse reactions) to their drugs and vaccines have to be published - although this is limited to the ‘side effects’ that are proven and admitted by the pharmaceutical industry.

Yet some honesty seems to be creeping into what conventional medicine is prepared to accept about the patient harm that it causes. I recently read this Medscape article, “Is Alzheimer’s Disease transmissable. Inside the evidence for ‘Iatrogenic’ AD”. Medscape is, of course, very much part of the conventional medical establishment, which does not normally admit such as thing.

          “But a small and growing body of evidence suggests that, in rare circumstances, amyloid-beta pathology associated with AD - and possible AD itself - may be transmitted from one person to another through certain medical procedures including childhood injections of cadaver-derived growth hormone (c-hGH), dura mater grafts, and renewed neurosurgical instruments”

And the article goes on to ask “what evidence supports the existence of iatrogenic AD” and details the evidence that supports the link with cadaver-derived growth hormone (c-hGH), dura mater grafts, renewed neurosurgical instruments, and also blood transfusions. Two questions emerge from this. 

  • First, this article was published a couple of weeks ago, and refers to information that has been known for much longer. Why is such information not made available publicly (short of subscribing to small specialist journals like Medscape)? 

  • And secondly, more importantly, why does the Conventional Medical Establishment not look into their published evidence that clearly shows that most pharmaceutical drugs, including many of the most widely prescribed, are known to cause the symptoms of dementia?

I have listed many of these prescription drugs that can be linked with Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia my e-book, here, “Iatrogenic Disease. The “Disease Inducing Effects” (DIE’s) of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines”.



The evidence, their own evidence, links pharma drugs with dementia is far more convincing way - the only way that goes close to explaining the 80 year old dementia epidemic. Yet link between pharmaceutical ‘side effects’ and all serious illnesses and diseases, including dementia - but is rarely discussed in conventional medical literature - perhaps for obvious reasons.

So if the Conventional Medical Establishment feels unable openly and transparently to investigate the link between pharmaceutical drugs and dementia, we ‘ordinary’ folk should certainly be doing so. After all, if the medical profession is failing to do so, it is in our own interests to protect ourselves from the dreadful outcome of prescription drug taking.

 


Monday, 1 June 2026

Paraquat. When something is found to be harmful and banned Big Industry continues to sell it.

Does profit speak louder than our personal safety, or the environment we live in?

The USA state of Vermont has banned the use of the pesticide, paraquat. In America this has been announced as a triumph - apparently it is the first state to do so. But reading the article here in England I wondered - surely paraquat has been banned for some time?

It was! Paraquat has been banned in England since 2007 over concerns about neurotoxicity and health risks - particularly the association with Parkinson’s disease. However, more research informed me that although banned for use in England, it is still produced in the UK for export to other countries where it remains legal.

Am I surprised? No, and no-one should be surprised. It is common practice in most industries, not least the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. 

  • Discovering and demonstrating that a chemical, or a drug, is harmful is one thing - and to do so takes a lot of time, effort and expense. 

  • Convincing the government, or the mainstream media, leave alone the industry, is quite another - it can (and often does) take many decades to do so. 

  • And then getting the industry to stop producing the banned product adds another level to the problem - profit invariably takes precedence over public and environmental safety.

So paraquat has been produced in the UK since 2007, by Syngenta, and this production is only being stopped this month - June 2026 - 19 years later. Moreover, the decision was not taken because of government regulation but “reflects competitive pressures and ongoing legal challenges related to health risks associated with paraquat, particularly its links to Parkinson’s disease”.

However, my AI source was able to reassure me that paraquat would continue to be produced elsewhere, indeed “that over 750 companies produce paraquat worldwide”. 

So what price that Parkinson’s Disease will continue to be a scourge to the world’s population?

“The cessation of production in the UK does not eliminate paraquat from the market, as it remains legal and widely used in other countries, including the United States”.

Similarly many thousands of pharmaceutical drugs have been quietly withdrawn or banned over the last 80+ years plus. I have listed just some of them here. But this does not mean that these dangerous drugs are banned everywhere as a result. If they can be sold anywhere, in sufficient quantity to make a profit, the pharmaceutical industry will sell them. Companies will protest - “the safety of our products is our primary concern” - but time after time this is proven to be untrue.

Surely the most infamous of all banned pharmaceutical drugs, Thalidomide, is not being sold now?

“Yes, thalidomide is still prescribed to patients, particularly for treating certain cancers like multiple myeloma and some skin disorders. However, it is strictly regulated due to its history of causing severe birth defects”.

Is anyone reassured?



Wednesday, 20 May 2026

Weight Loss Drugs: start taking one drug and end up taking many, many more!

Pharmaceutical medicine has a wonderfully sophisticated and successful policy of ensuring their drugs don't work effectively so we need more drugs to deal with their ineffectiveness

Many millions of patients, throughout the world, have been encouraged recently to start taking GLP-1 weight loss drugs (Ozempic, Wgovy, Mounjaro, et al). The promotion of these drugs has, as usual, been superb. So the drug companies who make them have made fortunes. The problem for patients, as always, is that they were largely unaware of their possible adverse reactions.

When GLP-1 weight-loss drugs were introduced it was already known that they caused serious side effects, so much so that they were recommended to be taken under strict supervision for no more than two years. The main problem with these restrictions was that even if people did stop taking them, they were known, quickly, to put the weight back on.

So now patients will be glad to know (sic) that the drug companies have come up with a solution. This Medscape article informs us that there is now a new ‘follow-up’ drug, Orforglipron.

          “Patients who lost significant weight … were able to maintain much of that loss after switching to once daily oral orforglipron”.

And, ever eager to help the pharmaceutical industry, the mainstream media has been quick to popularise the message. The BBC’s response can be seen here: “Daily pill to help keep weight off after stopping obesity jabs”. It is not untypical of many other similar articles.

          “Trials found that patients given the tablet, called orforglipron, every day for a year avoided regaining much of the weight they had lost - a known risk when coming off GLP-1 injections …. More research is needed to find out how long someone might need to stay on treatment - it might even be life-long, say experts”. (My emphasis).

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine, external. It was funded by the drug manufacturer Eli Lilly, who also make the GLP-1 jab, Mounjaro (the one used by the UK’s NHS). And as with all pharma funded research it should not be too surprising that it came out in favour of the product, and to the drug industry generally.

So people who may have thought that they only had to take one drug for a maximum of two years have now discovered that they should take another one - for the rest of their lives.

Nowhere in the mainstream media’s promotion of Orforglipron were its side effects adequately mentioned, certainly not to the extent that it enables patients, and potential patients, to make an ‘informed’ choice about whether they should take them. Neither the BBC or Medscape article mentions more than “nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea” as potential side effects.

Yet the side effect of Orforglipron are already well known, and published in conventional medical literature, outlined here in this Drugs.com webpage.

  • Common side effects of orforglipron are given as nausea, stomach (abdominal) pain, heartburn, constipation, headache, gas, diarrhoea, bloating, hair loss, vomiting, tiredness, indigestion, and belching.

  • Serious side effects are given as inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis), severe stomach problems, dehydration leading to kidney problems, low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), dizziness or light-headedness, blurred vision, anxiety, irritability, mood changes, sweating, slurred speech, hunger, confusion or drowsiness, shakiness, weakness, headache, fast heartbeat, feeling jittery, serious allergic reactions, changes in vision, gall-bladder problems,

In addition there is also a Box Warning (that is, the strongest safety-related warning that is issued by the FDA) for “the increased risk of thyroid C-Cell tumors”.

So this is quite a long list of serious side effects that have been ignored by both Medscape, the BBC, the mainstream media generally. And, of course, by the entire conventional medical establishment. And conventional medicine are now promoting a drug that has to be taken for life - plus further drugs to ‘treat’ any of the side effects that develop during the course of their lives.

Patients are being badly (dishonestly?) misinformed!