Avian flu, a new epidemic. What can conventional medicine do?

There is another epidemic of bird flu ravaging Europe, found in 14 countries, and it has now reached England. It has been found on a farm in Lincolnshire, and confirmed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). They say that more than 5,000 turkeys at the farm have been diagnosed with the H5N8 strain of avian flu. Last week, Defra instructed owners to keep their birds indoors for 30 days to protect them from this highly-infectious strain of flu.

Urgent measures are being taken. There are investigations beginning to establish the source of the outbreak. Farmers have received their instructions to protect their flocks, and been put on alert. A six mile surveillance area has been established, and bio-security measures have been stepped up. The public has been reassured that the danger to them is limited, and that poultry supplies should not be affected. Similar actions are being taken in Scotland. Sheila Voas, Scotland;s Chief Veterinary Officer has said"

               "The Scottish government declared this zone as a precaution against disease, although we knew that there was always a risk of the virus arriving in the UK with migratory wild birds. The fact that H5N8 has been detected in housed turkeys highlights the importance of biosecurity. We know that H5N8 is circulating in wild birds, and simply moving your birds indoors may not be enough to protect them if your biosecurity is not sufficient. Businesses should also review their contingency plans in case of an outbreak."

So there is great concern. But what happens to the infected birds? What happens to the livelihood of poultry farmers? Does conventional medicine have any treatment for avian flu?

Apparently not. It would seem that many of the birds died of the flu, and the rest of the flock are due to be culled! Conventional vets have nothing more to offer!

And they call this medicine! Flu can certainly be a serious disease, and for birds, especially those kept indoors, in cramped and unnatural conditions, it can most certainly be a killer. But culling a flock because of an outbreak of flu? Is there nothing better than conventional medicine can offer?

If not, perhaps they should take some advice from homeopathy. I have written about the treatment of influenza on my 'Why Homeopathy?' website, which compares conventional and homeopathic treatments of flu. Homeopathy is a simple and straight forward method, and easily adapted to birds, even large flocks of birds, both in the prevention and treatment of flu.

My preferred remedy is Oscillococcinum, a brand name for a remedy more commonly known as Anas Barb. For any farmer interested, these are available from any homeopathic pharmacy. I use these remedies regularly every Autumn and Winter for myself and my family. The remedy Influenzinum-Bacillinum is an alternative. They can be given to birds via their water supply.

In fact, I think I will now pop outside and pop a couple of Oscillococcinum tablets into my two bird baths!

I would not like to think that conventional vets will cull my lovely robins, blackbirds, blue tits, et al, because they were sneezing!

Big Pharma profits at our expense

No, I am no repeating myself. Pulse, the GP magazine, has today (19 December 2016) revealed yet another case of Big Pharma profiteering. I won't spend too much time on it! It has become such a regular occurrence, and the last time I blogged about it was just 3 days ago!

This time, Actavis UK hiked the price of a ‘lifesaving’ hydrocortisone drug by over 12,000%, according to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on 18th December 2016.  The drug, which I believed is called Zenoxone, used to treat eczema, dermatitis and insect bite reactions, cost 70p in April 2008, and £88 by March 2016.

Pulse also tried to estimate the cost to NHS which spent £522,000 a year on hydrocortisone tablets in 2008, £70 million by 2016.

Teva, another drug company that acquired Actavis in August 2016, said that it "intended to ‘defend’ themselves". Drug companies are good at denial. They deny that they are profiteering. The deny that their drugs cause harm to patients.

Meanwhile, the CMA has to be careful. Once again they have challenged the pharmaceutical industry, and must fear that they will trigger legal action from an excessively wealthy industry. So their findings, they say, are only ‘provisional’, and ‘no conclusion' should be drawn yet. Is one possible conclusion that the pharmaceutical industry is riven with fraud and corruption!

I have looked to see if there is any reaction from the NHS. What monitoring of drug prices do the NHS have in place to protect themselves (and the taxpayer) from this kind of situation? What is their response to being fleeced by drug companies? After all, the customer for these drugs is the NHS, who decide whether for pay for them, and how much taxpayer's money to pay for them.

It would be nice to think that the NHS had something to say!

The Treatment of Sepsis or Septicemia by Homeopathy

The Daily Mail has recently run a campaign in Britain about the treatment of Sepsis and Septicemia. Septicemia is an infection of the blood, sometimes called bacteremia or blood poisoning, and if it is left untreated it can progress to sepsis. Septicemia happens when a bacterial infection somewhere in the body, such as  the lungs or the skin, enters the bloodstream. This is dangerous because the bacteria and their toxins can be carried through the bloodstream to your entire body.

The Mail campaign was called ‘End the Sepsis Scandal’. It began in January 2016 after a young boy called William died in 2014 "after a catalogue of errors, misdiagnoses and missed opportunities by doctors and NHS helpline staff". The Mail estimated that 44,000 lives each year are lost to sepsis "yet few people have even heard of the condition". Quite rightly, the Mail has claimed a victory for following the NHS decision to run a major campaign "to raise awareness of sepsis across the NHS".

However, one thing the Mail campaign, and Jeremy Hunt's awareness campaign will not achieve is an understanding of how Sepsis, and Septicemia, can be treated homeopathically.

Conventional medicine usually says that anyone was suspects that they have septicemia or sepsis should see a doctor right away, and that as Septicemia or Sepsis can quickly become life-threatening it should be treated in hospital. This is good advice. However, homeopathy can provide a quicker response that can be accessed whilst trying to see a doctor, or get into hospital.

There are several homeopathic remedies that can treat Septicemia or Sepsis, based on the symptoms the individual is suffering. Some of these can be found on this Hpathy website. However, it might not be wise, and there may not be time to spend time trying to link accurately the individual with specific remedy symptoms. It is certainly better to get to hospital quickly! Yet there is one homeopathic remedy that I have always had to hand, to take immediately as a first aid treatment whilst on the way to hospital. Pyrogen.

Pyrogen is a remedy prepared from decomposed lean beef allowed to stand in the sun for two weeks and then potentized so that it is safe to take. Remember that homeopathy works by 'treating like with like'. The remedy can act quickly to relieve most of the common, if not all, the symptoms of sepsis. If available it could have saved many of those 44,000 lives. It is readily available from any homeopathic pharmacy.

All doctors surgeries, all ambulance services, all hospital accident and emergency units, should have this remedy, but they are unlikely to have it. If the NHS were really keen to reduce deaths through Sepsis, and were sufficiently open minded about treatment options, it would be sensible for them to include homeopathy in their advice to patients. But it is almost certain that conventional medicine, which dominates the NHS, will not have any homeopathic remedy, or access to a homeopath, so every family should have some Pyrogen to hand!

And there is another reason for using homeopathy. Conventional medicine treats septicaemia and sepsis almost entire with antibiotic drugs, and as resistance to these antibiotics increases they are becoming increasingly ineffective with more and more patients. And, as with most cases of infectious disease, homeopathy is an alternative. And actually a safer and more effective alternative too.

Now, a word of warning! This blog will be attacked by the Medical Fundamentalists, the Homeopathy Deniers (it usually is)! To them, this blog will constitute 'dangerous' advice because, in their opinion, homeopathy does not work, and there is no evidence that it works. This is their mantra, and they never deviate from it! Of course it is not true! Homeopaths have been treating septicemia for over 200 years. And the following RCT study is evidence for this.

Frass M, Linkesch, M, Banjya, S, et al. Adjunctive homeopathic treatment in patients with severe sepsis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in an intensive care unit. Homeopathy 2005:94;75–80.

The study, a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted at the University of Vienna hospital, concluded that "our data suggest that homeopathic treatment may be a useful additional therapeutic measure with a long-term benefit for severely septic patients admitted to the intensive care unit. A constraint to wider application of this method is the limited number of trained homeopaths".

Conventional medicine is failing in the treatment of many illnesses and diseases. It needs help, yet is usually adamant in refusing it. This is why patients, and families, should themselves make sure that they have access to safe and effective alternative treatment with serious diseases like this.

Doxycycline. More Fraud by the Pharmaceutical Industry?

Six more drug companies have been accused of price fixing, and civil law suits have been filed in 20 USA states. Criminal changers are being brought against former executives at one of the accused firms. BBC News reported reported today (16th December 2016) that Heritage Pharmaceuticals were the 'principle architect' of the price fixing fraud. One state Attorney General said that the lawsuit was just 'the tip of the iceberg'.

Well, we should perhaps already realise this. It was just last week that I wrote about a similar situation, see 'Drug Profiteering and Phenytoin. A nasty little epilepsy drug, at a nasty big price!' And just a year ago I wrote this blog, 'Daraprim. A 'for-profit' drug in a monopoly industry' on another similar situation.

Pharmaceutical drug companies appear to be engaged in fraudulent price fixing on a regular basis. National health services are being overcharged by enormous amounts. As far as this situation is concerned, one Democrat Senator has claimed that the price of doxycycline, the antibiotic drug involved, rose in the USA from $20 to $1,849 in seven months.

In contrast, the mainstream media does not appear to ask the real questions. If they are prepared to commit fraud at this level, what else are they prepared to do?

• Are they prepared to lie about the outcome of drug tests?
• Are they prepared to claim that dangerous drugs are safe?
• Are they prepared to claim that ineffective drugs are more effective than they are?
• Are they prepared to underplay the damage their drugs and vaccines do to patients?

Regular readers of this blog will know the answer to all these questions is YES! Readers of the mainstream media will probably says 'SURELY NOT'!

So what about this antibiotic drug, doxycycline? As usual, the known side effects are massive, many of them serious. They can be seen on the Drugs.com website in full, but they include abdominal or stomach tenderness, cramping, bloating, cough, decreased appetite, severe diarrhea, difficulty swallowing, dizziness, fast heartbeat, fever, headache, hives, itching, puffiness or swelling of the eyelids or around the eyes, face, lips, or tongue, inflammation of the joints, joint or muscle pain, nausea and vomiting, severe stomach pain, sore throat, mouth sores, swelling of the feet or lower legs, swollen lymph glands, tightness in the chest, unusual tiredness or weakness, unusual weight loss, and much, much more.

So let us be clear about this fraud.

• We are regularly being massively overcharged for drugs. 
• And we are being massively overcharged by drugs that are harmful to human health, without being told that they are harmful to human health

The focus appears to be on the former. The mainstream media, as usual, show considerable concern for the profitability of the drug companies, and what damage this court case might do to them. BBC News reports that the shares on one company has plunged 22% on the news! Thankfully (sic) the company said that the probe and legal proceedings would "not have a material impact on its future earnings". Well, that's alright then!

Yet the real concern about this, and so many similar situations, is that doctors are prescribing drugs that are harming our health, and that the drug companies are prepared to continue selling drugs that are known to be dangerous.

Cuba and the medical treatment of infectious diseases

The death of Fidel Castro 25th November 2016 brought mixed reviews in the mainstream media. The Cuban leader from 1959 to 2008 was criticised for many things, but even his most severe critics acknowledged that his rule had brought two significant benefits to the Cuban people - education and health. However, what his 'health' achievements were went largely unmentioned. So what was he able to achieve in this poor country? And why was there little mention of his specific achievements?

One of his later achievements was the treatment of infectious disease in Cuba. It started in 2007 with the treatment of Leptospirosis, which is endemic in Cuba. It is associated with the hurricane and high rainfall seasons from October to December when the infection is spread via infected water. Rodent urine also carries the disease. Prior to 2007 Cuba had been importing conventional vaccines, which were expensive, and largely ineffective. Owing to a particularly virulent outbreak of leptospirosis, and unable to produce enough vaccine, the Finlay Institute in Cuba decided to try homeopathic immunisation. The result were spectacular. The statistics can be found on this Hpathy webpage. Not only was the treatment successful, it was also treatment that Cuba could afford for the entire population.

Homeopaths like myself were delighted, once this became known, many skeptics would see that homeopathy was a successful medical therapy. Of course that did not happen. Medical Journals refused to publish the study done by the Findley Institute. The mainstream media did not cover the 'good news' story. And the skeptics, who believe themselves to be scientists, continued to skeptical. One made this statement.

               “Presumably then, if homeoprophylaxis for Leptospirosis was so successful and saved so many lives, the Cuban health authorities will have been boldly rolling it out all over Cuba for the last five years?”

Scientists view what is happening in the world and then seek to explain it, and benefit from the knowledge gained. And this is what happened in Cuba, where the Ministry of Health continued using homeopathy for leptospiros. Indeed, during the ensuing years it was given to the entire Cuban population (about 11 million). The results have been remarkable. As Christopher Johnson stated in the BMJ Journal on 26th November 2012, in response to the above criticism,

               "In fact, this is precisely what has been done, with remarkable effect: leptospirosis is now nearly eradicated - so much so that the homeopathic prophylaxis is no longer routinely needed."

And, as Johnson pointed out, this happened within 4 years of homeopathic treatment beginning, whilst in comparison, 10 years and more of conventional vaccine treatment never brought any such success.

The result is that Cuba is now using homeopathic prophylaxis and treatment for many other infectious diseases, including dengue fever, ‘swine’ flu, hepatitis A and conjunctivitis. And they have all been equally successful.

So what now skeptics? Well, actually readers, you will not be surprised if I tell you they are not looking. They are not commenting. Remember, their dislike of homeopathy is all about their support for so-called 'scientific' medicine. What's that? It's the medicine that came up with the vaccine used in Cuba prior to 2007, expensive, and useless!

And have you heard about this story in the mainstream media? No, as usual our media is quiet. It too is not looking. It is refusing to look. Rather than discuss 'good news' about the homeopathic treatment of infectious disease it chooses to ignore it. Instead it prefers to highlight the benefits of vaccination, and conventional medicine generally.

So, if this is the first time you have heard about this, please pass it on to your friends and relations. It is, probably, the only way they will ever find out about it!

Hospitals. They don't want us to know how lethal drugs are!

Rather than focusing on finding proper answers for bereaved families, NHS hospitals are ’covering up’ failings in how conventional medicine investigates the death of patients.

A CQC review of how hospitals probe deaths, ordered by the health secretary after complaints against Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, found not a single hospital is doing this properly. The review, which looked at 12 NHS trusts, also found that grieving relatives were treated without kindness, respect or honesty.

Families said they were left with the impression that the NHS spent more time on cover ups than on saving lives, the report said. Professor Sir Mike Richards, chief inspector of hospitals, said: 

               "Families and carers are not always properly involved in the investigations process or treated with the respect they deserve."

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has produced what The Telegraph (13 December 2016) says is a "landmark report" in which the NHS stands accused of 'covering up' failings behind patient deaths. The report warned that not a single hospital is properly probing deaths which warrant investigation, and that too many families who sought the truth about the deaths of their loved ones were given a “toxic drip feed” of information in their search for justice. The Telegraph article goes on to outline the CQC's findings, which I will not deal with her, except that there conclusion was as follows:

               "They said they were left with the impression that the NHS spent more time on cover ups than on saving lives."

The concern of the CQC was that families were not treated with care and respect, and that if proper investigations were not conducted no learning would take place, and future fatalities would not be prevented. These are, of course, serious matters. The Telegraph report this comment by Professor Dame Sue Bailey, Chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

               "This landmark review reveals in stark detail what many in healthcare have suspected for a long time. Put simply, we have consistently failed and continue to fail too many of the families of those who die whilst in our care.”

My concern is rather different. We must remember that we are dealing with a medical system whose drugs and vaccines are known to cause serious illness, disease and death. The conventional medical establishment, over the decades, has consistently underplayed the seriousness of the so-called 'side effects' of its treatment. For instance it is generally recognised that only about 10% of drug and vaccine side effects are ever reported, which means, in effect, that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are at least 10 times more dangerous than we are told by doctors. What this report has found is that when death does happen, the health authorities are not willing, or able, or sufficiently open, or prepared to be honest, to investigate them properly.

Why? Yes, as the report says, it is a cover up! Yes, it might be as Sue Bailey suggests, that healthcare has suspected this for a long time! But is there something more?

Perhaps doctors are not willing to look too deeply into some deaths because of what it might uncover about the lethal 'side effects' of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and their role in prescribing them.

The CQC review was ordered after a scandal at Southern Health trust, when it was found that hundreds of unexplained deaths had never been probed. That was only uncovered after a long campaign by Dr Sara Ryan, whose teenage son Connor Sparrowhawk, died in the bath following an epileptic seizure in 2013. Were drugs involved in this case? Was this the reason that the conventional medical authorities were reluctant to investigate? Was this why the family found that information about the events leading up to the death were only released bit by bit, after a battle?

Anticonvulsant drugs are known to cause suicide, attempted suicide, and violent death. Was this young man taking anticonvulsants? I don't know. However, this study, one of many that have investigated this particular 'side effect', concluded that

               "... this exploratory analysis suggests that the use of (the anti epilepsy drugs studied) may be associated with an increased risk of suicidal acts or violent deaths."

I have been aware for some time that when doctors write death certificates they rarely mention that the person who has died was taking pharmaceutical drugs, even when those drugs were known to cause the reason given for death. My previous blog, "Iatrogenic Death - are doctors now the biggest cause of death?" mentions two such cases. One was a woman who fell, and died from a brain haemorrhage, who was taking Warfarin. Another was a woman who died from Alzheimers Disease, who had annual flu vaccinations, and regularly took PPI drugs - both associated with dementia. I have written about this latter case in my blog "Alzheimers Disease and the Flu Vaccine".

The result is that neither of these deaths were associated with the drugs and vaccines they were taking. How many times does this happen? We are probably talking about millions of deaths, every year, throughout the world, that were officially attributed to diseases that were themselves caused by pharmaceutical drugs.

Conventional medicine, dominated as it is by pharmaceutical drugs, appears to find openness and transparency extremely difficult. Perhaps from their professional point of view this is understandable. Honesty would only demonstrate conclusively how lethal conventional medicine is. But it is certainly not understandable, nor acceptable, from a patient point of view.

Drug Profiteering and Phenytoin. A nasty little epilepsy drug, at a nasty big price!

Imagine you popped off to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread. Your favourite loaf cost £1.50 last time, but today you discovered it cost nearly £4,000! Driving away you decide to fill your car with petrol at £1.10 per litre, but this discover that the cost is now nearly £3,000 per litre.

This kind of inflation is possible. But only if you are buying pharmaceutical drugs! Big Pharma knows no restraints when it comes to profiteering. It is used to a profit ratio of over 20% when most other industries are happy with 5-10%.

This particular story has been well publicised. The drug company Pfizer has been fined a record £84.2m by Britain's competition regulator for increasing the price of their anti-epilepsy drug, phenytoin sodium, by 2,600%! The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that the US company "deliberately exploited" the British public, who of course pay for the NHS. It also fined the drugs distributor, Flynn Pharma, £5.2m. Of course, such massive fines are merely back-pocket cash for the drug companies, or as one company director said some years ago, they are an accepted part of their business costs!

And of course this is confirmed by the figures. The amount the NHS was charged for the drug went up from £2.83m to £67.50m in 2012, before being reduced to £54 in May 2014. This increased the cost to the NHS from £2m to £50m in 2012 and 2013, a profit of £96 million for these two years alone. By my calculation, that is a profit, even after the fine is paid!

So what exactly is this drug, Phenytoin? It is an anticonvulsant drug taken by about 48,000 patients in Britain to control seizures, or epilepsy. What is not so well known about the drug, and certainly not mentioned (as usual) by the mainstream media, is that it is a particularly dangerous drug, with particularly nasty side effects. Drug. com provides this summary information (go to the website for more detailed information).

          "Commonly reported side effects of phenytoin include: congenital anomalies. Other side effects include: hepatic necrosis, ataxia, confusion, constipation, depression, dizziness, drowsiness, fatigue, hypertrichosis, mental status changes, myasthenia, nervousness, numbness, tremor, tremor of hands, vertigo, excitement, irritability, mood changes, and restlessness."

     So the pharmaceutical industry wants us to pay nasty big prices for this nasty little drug!

So is it unusual for drug companies to behave in this way, charging excessive amounts for their drugs? Well not really. Last year a USA drug company was caught in a similar scam, involving Turing Pharmaceuticals, and the drug Daraprim. The price of this drug was raised overnight by over 5,000%. I will let the reader work out the increase on a loaf of bread, or a litre of petrol!

A spokesman for the CMA’s investigation is quoted as saying this about the increased charge for Phenytoin.

          "The companies deliberately exploited the opportunity offered by de-branding to hike up the price for a drug which is relied upon by many thousands of patients. These extraordinary price rises have cost the NHS and the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds."

So do the drug companies think they have done anything wrong? It appears not! Pfizer said they were making a loss on the drug before the 're-branding', and that the price set by Flynn was actually 25-40% lower than the cost of an equivalent tablet from another supplier. They felt that the CMA's findings were wrong. Flynn Pharma complained that the CMA has taken more than three and a half years to reach their decision which was based "on a wholly flawed understanding of the UK pharmaceutical market".

So both companies will appeal, and seek to overturn the CMA's findings in court. Perhaps the bread companies, and the petroleum companies should take note.

No time to write more. Sorry. I'm off to buy a loaf of bread, and fill my car with petrol before they put the price up!

Dementia, Alzheimers. Hopes raised, hopes dashed.

Solanezumab was to be a great breakthrough drug, the first to effectively treat the growing scourge of dementia, and in particular, Alzheimer's disease. Of course it has proven to be no such thing. But the history of the drug demonstrates the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry, the willingness of medical charities, patient support groups, and the mainstream media to sing, loudly and in tune, with the drug companies hymn sheet. It also demonstrates how patients are misinformed about the nature of their disease (dementia, et al), how they have their hopes raised about 'great scientific advances' in medical treatment, only to have them totally dashed.

It also demonstrates the need for a new approach to dealing with the many epidemics of disease we have been facing over the last half century and more. There is hope, but it does not exist in a packet of pharmaceutical drugs!

The rise of dementia, and in particular Alzheimer's disease, has been staggering. The Alzheimer's Society published a major study on the social and economic impact of dementia in the UK in February 2007, and again in November 2014. They provided the most detailed information about the prevalence and impact of dementia in the UK. The 2014 findings showed that 1 in 79 of the entire UK population, and 1 in 14 of the population aged over 65 years, has dementia. They estimated that there would be 850,000 people with dementia in the UK in 2015 (In 2007 report the estimate was 700,000). The total number of people with dementia in the UK was forecasted to increase to over 1 million by 2025, and over 2 million by 2051.

Britain’s Office for National Statistics reports that dementia and Alzheimer’s disease has now replaced heart diseases as the leading cause of death in England and Wales, accounting for 11.6% of all deaths registered in 2015. Similar figures can be found for the rise of Alzheimer's disease in most other western countries. The projected number of people expected to be suffering with Alzheimer’s by 2050 is 100 million worldwide.

The disease was first described in 1906 by Dr. Alois Alzheimer. Even so, after 110 years, conventional medicine still does not know why we are facing such an epidemic. For instance, when talking about the causes of Alzheimer's disease the NHS Choices website (the voice of conventional medicine in Britain) can describe what happens to the brain, but states that "It's not known exactly what causes this process to begin." As far as treatment for dementia is concerned they state simply that "there's currently no cure for Alzheimer's disease."

This is why hopes and expectations were raised when the drug company, Eli Lili, announced that they were developing a drug called Solanezumab. It was patented in 2002. Millions of dollars were spent on developing it, based on potential sales should the drug prove to be effective and safe. The hype that followed seemed to indicate confidence in the drug, certainly according to the mainstream media, which as usual was prepared to publicise the optimism, and raise the hope of sufferers and their carers. BBC News, as usual, led the way.

           "The first details of how a drug could slow the pace of brain decline for patients with early stage Alzheimer's disease have emerged. Data from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly suggests its solanezumab drug can cut the rate of the dementia's progression by about a third.... A new trial is due to report next year and should provide definitive evidence. The death of brain cells in Alzheimer's is currently unstoppable. Solanezumab may be able to keep them alive.... solanezumab attacks the deformed proteins, called amyloid, that build up in the brain during Alzheimer's. It is thought the formation of sticky plaques of amyloid between nerve cells leads to damage and eventually brain cell death."

This kind of pharmaceutical hype is usually meekly parroted by the mainstream media. Our news media, largely funded by pharmaceutical advertising, even the BBC which is not funded in this way, can alway be counted on to promote any new pharmaceutical drug! Health charities and patient support groups do exactly the same. Solanezumab was promoted by the Alzheimers Society, which is also largely funded by donations from Big Pharma companies. The drug worked. And, the hype emphasised, it had no side effects. Another wonder drug was about to come to our aid! Yet what, exactly, were they getting excited about. According to Wikipedia, not very much!

          "Solanezumab was tested in two phase 3 clinical trials ..... oth were randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled. Patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease received either placebo or ... solanezumab infusions every 4 weeks over 18 months. A total of 1012 patients participated in (one trial, the second) enrolled another 1040 patients. Both studies were not able to show a difference in cognition and memory between the treated and the placebo group. (My emphasis).  However, a subgroup analysis of only patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease showed less worsening of cognition in patients receiving solanezumab compared to placebo, which means the progression of the disease was slowed down. There was no effect on disease progression in patients with moderate symptoms."

This does not sound much to get excited about! Nor does it appear to justify raising the hopes and expectations of dementia sufferers throughout the world. But the hype was all good advertising, entirely free, for the drug companies. Through it they could demonstrate that medical science was winning the battle against disease! And it encourages thousands of people to run, walk, cycle, swim, and generally to achieve great things, all in the name of some medical charity, to help fund this kind of research.

Yet all pharmaceutical drugs usually work on these small, marginal, limited benefits, suitably hyped of course! And on this basis a third trial into solanezumab was financed.

          "Since the first two ... trials show a positive effect in patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease, Lilly launched another phase 3 trial ... Patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease received ... solanezumab every 4 weeks for 80 weeks.... This trial failed to show positive results, despite the high expectations."

The BBC, via this article by Fergus Walsh, a particularly enthusiastic promoter of pharmaceutical drugs, were apologetic.

          "A major trial of a drug to treat mild dementia due to Alzheimer's disease has ended in failure.
Patients on solanezumab did not show any slowing in cognitive decline compared to those treated with a placebo, or dummy drug. The results of the trial were much anticipated after promising data was released last year. The phase 3 trial ..... involved more than 2,000 patients with Alzheimer's disease. The drug targeted the build up of amyloid protein, which forms sticky plaques in the brain of patients with Alzheimer's. It is thought the formation of these plaques between nerve cells, known as neurons, leads to damage and eventually brain cell death."

The Alzheimer's Society, likewise, expressed their disappointment, and commented that 'promising therapies' do sometimes fail at this stage "but this is particularly disheartening given that a similar treatment, Bapinezeumab, also recently fell at the last hurdle". It continued with its message of hope, urging us on, consoling us with the thought that there are 150 times more clinical trials focusing on treating people in the late stages of cancer than Alzheimer's disease.

          "Further investment in trials is urgently needed to identify effective therapies to improve the lives of the 800,000 people in the UK currently living with dementia."

It is the usual story. The birth, childhood, adulthood, old age, and death of new pharmaceutical drugs that I have described elsewhere. Except, perhaps, that this drug was still-born, and so we are still waiting, or perhaps will never discover, its full disease inducing side effects!

What has not been said, because it is never openly admitted by the conventional medical establishment, is that one major cause of dementia, and the explosion of Alzheimer's disease in particular, has been pharmaceutical drugs taken by patients for other medical reasons. The evidence is there, in plenty, for anyone to see. Many drugs and vaccines cause dementia, not just a few. Any vaccine that contains mercury (thimerosal) or aluminium (most do), the flu jab, in particular, antidepressants drugs, antipsychotic drugs, Benzodiazepine and other sleeping drugs, anticholinergic drugs, antihistamine drugs, proton pump drugs, and Statin drugs.

So one way we can avoid dementia, and so discard the need to develop dementia drugs, is to stop taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that cause it, and instead look for a safer, more effective medical therapy, such as homeopathy. And for those who are already suffering from the condition, the Natural Health website article, 'Muteness on B vitamins and lifestyle after Pharma's Alzheimer's flop'  suggests a simple a straightforward treatment. It is based on diet, in particular vitamin B, exercise, and other lifestyle factors. For anyone with early dementia, or their carers, this treatment is readily available, and I recommend you read the article, and follow the regimen involved.

Medical fundamentalists, who hate any other kind of medical treatment other than pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, will ridicule such advice. To which the simple response is - tell me what conventional, drug-based medicine has to offer as an alternative. The response will be a deafening silence! The trouble is there is no cost to patients, and therefore no profit for the pharmaceutical companies, in such a treatment!