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Thursday 28 December 2017

Diphtheria - a nasty disease, particularly dangerous when it is treated with conventional medicine

There is an outbreak of Diphtheria in Bangladesh affecting the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. Diphtheria is a highly contagious disease that affects the nose and throat, and can lead to breathing difficulties, heart failure, paralysis and death. It is reported that as many as 160 new cases of the disease are being reported every day, and that it has already killed at least 27 people.

The mainstream media is today reporting that a team of more than 40 doctors and nurses from the British NHS are travelling to Bangladesh to help tackle an outbreak following a request from the World Health Organization. Apparently they will spend six weeks there (BBC News).

Not much is heard about Diphtheria in the wealthier, more advanced nations of the world. It is a disease of poverty, poor diet, and squalor. In the 19th century, following the social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, it was a major killer disease, with regular epidemics breaking out in Britain, Europe and the USA. This would be why it is now a problem amongst the Rohingya refugees. It was public health measures that saw its decline, first gradually, and then rapidly as living standards rose.

Then came vaccination - the DPT vaccine and its many variants - followed by a successful propaganda campaign claiming that it had been the vaccine had eradicated the disease. Conventional medicine did the same with other 'killer' diseases, including Measles, Influenza, Mumps and many others. Presumably this is why the British government is reported saying that the deployment of the medical team was "another proud moment for the NHS".

Yet the decline in diphtheria had nothing to do with vaccines, or conventional medicine.

In the 19th century, homeopathy was always more effective in dealing with disease epidemics. Jayney Goddard gave many examples of this in her lecture, "Homeopathy in Epidemics and Pandemics" presented to the inaugural 'Scientific Research in Homeopathy' conference. She covered many large scale epidemics around the world that all demonstrated that mortality rates were considerable higher with conventional medical treatment than with homeopathic treatment. She mentions, in particular, a diphtheria epidemic in the USA from 1862 to 1864.

               "In the records of three years of Diphtheria in Broome County, NY from 1862 to 1864, there was a report of an 83.6% mortality rate among the allopaths and a 16.4% mortality rate among the homeopaths".

Goddard observed that diphtheria was difficult to treat as the disease rarely had the same symptoms, and that as a result practitioners needed to be able to quickly prescribe on an individual basis. She said that homeopathy was better suited to do so, which is why it was more successful in the 19th century, and this continues to be the case.

In comparison, conventional medicine has just one treatment - antibiotics - and growing resistance to these drugs means that they are rapidly coming to the end of their useful life. Conversely homeopathy has a full repertoire of remedies known to treat diphtheria more successfully, preventing death, and aiding quicker recovery.

With 27 deaths in Bangladesh already, it might have been appropriate for the British NHS to include homeopaths within the team. But conventional medicine does not want to compare the outcomes of different treatments for any disease. It has experienced a long history of unflattering comparisons and does not wish to submit itself to more! Instead it prefers to exist within the virtual monopoly it has now, even if that means that more patients are likely to die as a result.




Tuesday 26 December 2017

AUTISM: Recovering Health With Homeopathic Detox - CEASE Therapy

Ananda More, Homeopath, is featured in a 5 minute YouTube video entitled "AUTISM: Recover Health With Homeopathic Detox CEASE Therapy", produced by Larry Cook. In it she explains how homeopathic CEASE Therapy can detoxify and recover autistic children, and/or help improve their quality of life. It is an excellent video, well worth watching. And it is a must-watch video for any parent with an autistic child, lying anywhere on the autistic spectrum.

Yet can homeopathy really help people who suffer from autism? 

This is the important question that has been raised in the many of the responses to the video. Conventional medicine cannot be any clearer about the answer, with NHS Choices stating categorically that:

               "There's no 'cure' for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but there are a range of specialist interventions that aim to improve communication skills and help with educational and social development."

Ananda's video clearly makes the point that there is a way forward to recovery through homeopathy. CEASE Therapy is a detoxification programme, originally developed for those with autism but now being used to help anyone who requires a safe and effective detox. CEASE does not just assist autistic people to cope with the condition (which is all conventional medicine offers) but can lead to full recovery. The first response to the video came from Sawsan Ali, who said that she had a 5 year old child, and wondered whether it was too late for a 100% recovery. Larry Cook responded to say that it could, but not to delay.

Victoria Firefly responded. In considering her response it should be understood that conventional medicine has a serious problem with so many of it's treatments for so many serious illnesses and disease. They are not only largely ineffective, but potentially harmful too. This is one of the main conclusions I have reached in writing my e-book "Why Homeopathy?", and in particular, the chapter comparing the conventional and homeopathic treatment of autism.

So conventional medicine has employed a number of 'denialists' whose task it is to 'deny' that homeopathy is an effective medical therapy, and to assert that conventional medicine is the best, if not the only medical treatment around. This is how Victoria Firefly answer Sawson's question.

               "Homeopathy cannot cure Autism. There is, unfortunately, no cure for Autism. There are however, many treatment options for those who fall on the Autism spectrum. The very best treatment that you can provide for your child from as early on as possible, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and making sure that your child is involved in as much social activity with other non-Autistic children as appropriately possible. Nutrition is also a major key in the treatment of Autism, as there are multiple known agitators in a lot of the foods that children typically love, such as artificial flavoring and dyes, sugar alcohols, bleached flours, etc. and many children with Autism/Aspergers also have Gluten sensitivity or intolerance and/or Lactose Intolerance."

               "My point is that not only is Homeopathy not going to be successful in curing Autism in anybody, but it may also do actual physical and/or mental harm, as well as stop you from doing any of the many treatments that have been proven to actually work at improving the health and sociability of those with Autism Spectrum Disorder."

The denialism contained in Victoria Firefly's statement is typical. It is just a blank, unsupported statement that homeopathy does not work, cannot work, and that it can cause harm by preventing patients from using "treatments that have been proven to actually work". Let's examine these assertions.

  • Victoria Firefly outlines some of the treatments mentioned by NHS Choices, but she does not say how having homeopathic treatment alongside them prevents involvement in, and use of any of these activities.
  • Her bald statement that "homeopathy cannot cure autism" is made without offering any evidence to support it. She has clearly not spoken to anyone who have been successfully treated with CEASE therapy, or the more traditional homeopathic treatment for autism. So what right does she have to deny the experience of those people who have been successfully treated? Where is the evidence for her assertion?
  • Moreover, there has been at least two 'scientific' studies made into the use of homeopathy with autistic children, both pointing a successful treatment, which she either does not know about, or denies and refuses to mention (summarised here).
Victoria Firefly (presumably not a real name, it is strange how most denialists do not write under their real name) then responded to my positive response to Sawson Ali's treatment.


               "Steve, this is a lie and you know it. Homeopathy has never cured anyone of disease. Homeopathy is *Not* the same thing as alternative medicine. Homeopathic "Medicines" are simply diluted substances that contain little or no traces of their original source. Homeopathy has done exponentially more harm than good to those it claims to "treat". 

So again, Victoria Firefly is using sweeping unsupported statements for which she offers no evidence. Homeopathy has been in existence for over 220 years, and during all that time it has been successfully treating every illness and disease known to mankind! In order to make such claims she has to deny not only my experience, but the experience of homeopathy patients throughout the ages, and throughout the world. To then go on to claim that homeopathy is not alternative medicine is breath-taking in its arrogance, and makes a nonsense of everything else she says.

Homeopathy is the most used medical system in the world today, the strongest and most popular alternative to conventional, drug based medicine.

Moreover, Victoria Firefly's statement that homeopathy "has done more harm than good" is not only unsupported by evidence, it is based on an assumption - that conventional medicine is so effective people might put themselves in danger by opting out of it. Yet conventional medicine admits openly that it has no treatment for autism! So what exactly would patients be missing out on? Homeopathic treatment does not exclude the use of diet, cognitive therapy, or any of the other treatments she mentions. Indeed, it would encourage them all, as long as they did not involve the use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Then Victoria Firefly loses the plot completely. First she brings up an action recently taken by the conventional medical establishment against homeopathy.

               "Just recently the US launched major reform on the classification of Homeopathic Medicines after several infant deaths were linked to a homeopathic Teething treatment that contained diluted amounts of Belladonna, which is a known toxic substance."

There have been no deaths caused by homeopathic medicines! Homeopathic remedies cannot cause death, as Victoria Firefly has already admitted when she said that "homeopathic medicines are simply diluted substances that contain little or no traces of their original source." Perhaps she just forgot she said this, or was just falling into the usual denialist double blind, namely

  • homeopathy is ineffective because remedies are so diluted they have no active ingredient.
  • homeopathy is dangerous because it contains a dangerous active ingredient.

Yet according to Victoria Firefly, this represents "proof that Homeopaths know that their treatments are ineffective, otherwise why else would they put a known toxin into their medication if they didn't believe that in the end it would be so diluted that it couldn't possibly end up having an effect on anyone?" 

All this statement does is to confirm Victoria Firefly's own prejudice - that any medication, in order to be effective, has to have an 'active' ingredient. Homeopathy denies this entirely, and seldom uses 'active' ingredients in its remedies. To answer her question (why do homeopath's put a known toxin into their medication?) homeopathy uses a variety of substances prior to their dilution and succussion, including most known toxins and poisons. Belladonna is just one of these, snake venoms, arsenic, mercury and alumina are always used, but ALWAYS in an attenuated form.

However, Victoria Firefly needs to be reminded that the pharmaceutical industry uses toxins and poisons, like mercury and aluminium, in many their drugs and vaccines and they do so in a non-attenuated form.

Indeed, conventional medicine routinely injects mercury and aluminium (and other toxic substances) into the bloodstreams of babies, in the form of vaccines.

AND THIS USE OF POISONOUS SUBSTANCES IS WHAT HOMEOPATHS, AND A GROWING NUMBER OF CONVENTIONAL DOCTORS, NOW BELIEVE TO BE A SIGNIFICANT CAUSE OF AUTISM.

Indeed, this is why homeopathic CEASE therapy is based on detoxification - its seeks to remove dangerous toxins from the body of autistic children, many of them put there intentionally by conventional doctors, thereby removing the cause of autism.

The conventional medical establishment cannot even admit that this is, or even might be, a cause of autism. This is how the NHS Choices website describes the cause of autism.

               "The exact cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently unknown. It's a complex condition and may occur as a result of genetic predisposition (a natural tendency), environmental or unknown factors."

It would be difficult for any medical system which has created a new disease (autism was unknown prior to the 1940's) to admit that it has actually caused it. Modern vaccines, with all their toxic ingredients, were first introduced in the 1930's and 1940's, and the autism epidemic has risen alongside the increased use of vaccination ever since.

Yet the inability of doctors to accept that they have caused the autism epidemic is only one part of the problem for conventional medicine, and the pharmaceutical industry. In denying one of the principle causes of autism, conventional medicine cannot make use of this insight to develop treatments. This is one of the main reasons that conventional medicine has no treatment for autism.

The other reason is that as soon as conventional medicine does admit that their drugs and vaccines cause autism, the best treatment of the condition is to prevent it in the first place - by stopping the prescription of drugs and vaccines to their patients.

Clearly this would be bad for business - and autism has certainly become big business!


Friday 22 December 2017

Big Pharma announces new drugs. We await to hear about their side effects, and how patients will be harmed by them

MIMS, first published in 1959, claims that it is an "essential prescribing and clinical reference for general practice", and so it is, probably. It is published quarterly, and print copies are sent free of charge to all UK-based GPs. What they claim to be their top 10 stories for 2017 make interesting reading. Here are some of them.

Quinine for muscle cramps linked to increased mortality.
This announces that long-term use of quinine for nocturnal leg cramps, something that doctors have prescribed for many years, has now been found to increase the risk of mortality. The British study was published in the medical journal, JAMA. It is yet another pharmaceutical drug that has been found to be deadly to patients, but as usual, only after many patients have died in order to prove it!

The authors of the study concluded that "the benefits of quinine in reducing cramps should be balanced against the risks" and owing to the poor benefit-to-risk ratio, both NICE and the drug regulator MHRA now (belatedly) advise that quinine should not be considered as a routine treatment for nocturnal leg cramps. However, this does NOT constitute a ban! It can still be considered when self-care measures fail, and cramps cause regular disruption of sleep.

Adjust gabapentin dose to avoid respiratory depression, MHRA advises
Gabapentin, perhaps better known as Neurontin, is a drug used for epilepsy, neuropathic pain, hot flashes, and restless legs syndrome. For many years it has been associated with a rare risk of severe respiratory depression when prescribed with or without concomitant opioids. (Many drug side effects are described as 'rare' to reassure patients and to encourage them to take the drug. But remember, only 1% to 10% of adverse drug reactions are ever notified).

Now the MHRA has issued a drug safety update - which means they were not aware of all the adverse drug effects before, but the damage done to patients is now sufficiently clear to have to come clean!

                "Prescribers should consider whether the dose of gabapentin needs to be adjusted in patients at higher risk of respiratory depression, including patients with compromised respiratory function, those with respiratory or neurological disease or renal impairment, patients taking other CNS depressants and elderly people."

The game of Russian Roulette, played with our health at stake, clearly continues within the conventional medical establishment!

First triple combination inhaler launched for COPD
The other top 10 stories are apparently considered to be good news! Trimbow has been approved as 'maintenance treatment' in adults with moderate to severe COPD "who are not adequately treated by the combination of an inhaled corticosteroid and a long-acting beta2-agonist". It says that as COPD patients deteriorate in time treatment needs to be progressively increased, and patients may have to take several drugs through two or three different inhalers. Trimbow simplifies treatment by providing just one inhaler, and a 'measured' dose.

Nothing about safety, of course. But inhalers are steroid drugs, with serious known side effects. Trimbow apparently enables patients to risk the side effects more efficiently. As as COPD patients 'deteriorate in time' it would appear that they are not entirely effective either!

Liraglutide provides new weight loss option for overweight and obese adults
MIMS tells us that Liraglutide, an anti diabetic drug, is now available as Saxenda - for weight management in obese patients and overweight patients with one or more associated comorbidities. What it does not tell us is that this 'top 10' story concerns a drug that already has a length list of side effects, some of them extremely serious, as detailed in this Drugs.com webpage. MIMS mentions a few of these, but it would appear that any 'new' branding of an old drug constitutes good news for the conventional medical establishment!

Baricitinib: oral rheumatoid arthritis treatment in new drug class
Baricitinib, or Alumiant, is now available to doctors for the treatment of moderate-to-severe active rheumatoid arthritis. More good news! The drug is apparently a 'Janus kinase inhibitor'. No, I don't know either - so let MIMS explain.

               "There are four known Janus kinase (JAK) enzymes. Baricitinib is a reversible inhibitor of JAK1 and JAK2, which are widely expressed and mediate signalling of multiple cytokines implicated in the pathogenesis of RA, including interleukin-6, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor and interferons."

Perhaps it is sufficient to say that Baricitinib is another drug that seems to prevent our bodies working normally! So it is a drug that will cause side effects. MIMS does its best to explain what these are.

               "The most frequent adverse events seen with baricitinib during trials were increases in LDL-cholesterol, upper respiratory tract infections and nausea. The risks and benefits of treatment should be carefully considered before initiating therapy in patients with active, chronic or recurrent infections. Lipids should be assessed 12 weeks after starting treatment."

However, as this is a new drug, and if history repeats itself, the full side effects will not be known until patients are prescribed the drug, suffer them, report them, and conventional medicine takes action. This might take several years, during which time lots of patients will suffer!

Tofacitinib: new type of rheumatoid arthritis treatment launches
So, yet more 'good news' for sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis! MIMS says that Tofacitinib, or Xeljanz is a new oral treatment option for patients with moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis. It says that it belongs to a new class of therapies called Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors. I feel that we have heard this before, quite recently! So its a new drug, and the good news is that doctors can now use it. So what about side effects? At least, the side effects currently known after just 3 months of clinical trials?
               "The most common serious adverse reactions to tofacitinib are serious infections, including pneumonia, cellulitis and herpes zoster."

The drug is also known to cause headache, respiratory tract infections, nasopharyngitis, diarrhoea, nausea and hypertension. Nothing too serious there, then. No wonder the drug regulator approved them! And I am sure that doctors will, right now, be treating their arthritis patients in the hope that they won't contract any of these conditions, or indeed any of the other adverse drug effects not yet known to conventional medicine.

So it must have been an exciting 'good news' year for MIMS, with these warnings about the new side effects of old drugs, and the new drugs with unknown side effects!. Perhaps what this really demonstrates is more 'good news' - that there is absolutely no 'good news' coming out of conventional medicine at the moment.

Sick people need to understand that conventional medicine has little to offer patients. There are no good new drugs coming through the pipeline, and plenty of bad new about old, failing drugs. Time for everyone to check out alternative medicine before conventional medicine fails completely.

Antibiotic Drugs. Resistance is part of their failure. But they are also dangerous

Antibiotic drugs have been the most magic of all 'magic pills', the most wonderful of all 'wonder drugs'. They have been in the vanguard of the conventional medical success, however shallow this 'success' may have been. They have been used, and over-used by doctors for decades. We have been taught to believe that they effective and entirely safe.

Yet now it is well documented that they are failing. They are not going to with us for much longer. Resistance is growing. The microbes have learnt how to defend themselves from attack. We will not have the benefits of them for much longer. Doctors have been told not to use them so much, reducing sales, and threatening pharmaceutical profits. So drug companies have no incentive to go on producing newer, more powerful antibiotics.

The failure of antibiotic drugs has been called 'the antibiotic apocalypse'. For conventional medicine it will indeed be apocalyptic. Our doctors have relied on them increasingly for the last 70 years and more. Yet antibiotic failure has been dominated by the discussion on drug resistance, even though it is only one part of their failure. The other, major part is the harm they cause to our health.

I will not cover all the illness and disease caused by antibiotic drugs. I have dealt with them more fully in this blog. In the main they concern children, and the health of our gut, and include obesity, diarrhoea, blood sugar levels and diabetes, asthma, eczema, heart disease, and a variety of 'new' disease like Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel.

Now, new research reported on the Natural Health website shows that the 'side effects' of antibiotics can be passed to the next generation. Canada's McMaster University has shown that taking antibiotic drugs during labour can negatively affect the gut health of newborn children. It found that giving mothers antibiotics whilst pregnant can delay the growth of healthy gut bacteria, the microbiota, for up to the first 12 weeks of life. As the researchers emphasise, early development of healthy microbiota is essential for lifetime health.

              “Early life microbial colonization and succession is critically important to healthy development, with impacts on metabolic and immunologic processes throughout life.”

This is not a time for anyone to panic, or to wonder what will happen when antibiotic drugs fail completely. It is a time to stop taking antibiotic drugs, and to move on to safer, more effective medical therapies.

People who use homeopathy to maintain and regain their health are subjected to neither the 'apocalypse' of resistance, nor their dangers to health of antibiotics. The failure of antibiotic drugs is a problem for conventional medicine only. Indeed, I have suggested that when antibiotics fail completely it may be a blessing in disguise. There are safer, more effective alternatives.

But don't expect the conventional medical establishment to tell you this soon. They will continue to ply their trade in dangerous pharmaceutical drugs for as long as they can, and for as long as they remain profitable. They have always done so.

Tuesday 19 December 2017

Breast Cancer. And its links to Pharmaceutical Drugs

Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that between 1971 to 2004 the number of breast cancer cases rose by 81% to 36,939 cases - in England alone. It had become the most common form of cancer, and it was estimated that 1 in 9 women could expect to get breast cancer during their lifetime. In 1971 the incidence of the disease was 66.9 per 100,000 people. In 2004 this had risen to 120.8 per 100,000. It became, and remains, the disease most feared by women.

Nor is breast cancer a disease that only strikes older women. As with most other cancers it now affects people at any age, and an increased incidence has been recorded across all age groups. Among women aged 20 to 34, the disease increased by 50% between 1971 to 2001. Morever, several hundred men contract the disease each year now.

So why did the rates of breast cancer rise so steeply during that time? Conventional medicine has come up with a variety of explanations, mostly based on a range of 'lifestyle factors', such as diet, increased alcohol consumption, obesity, more women going out to work, earlier menstruation, reduced breast feeding, smaller families and later menopause. It has even been called the disease of prosperity!

Maybe. But 'prosperity' probably account for only a small part of the huge increase. The role of pharmaceutical drugs has to be considered. For instance, in a Guardian article, dated 8th August 2006, Sarah Boseley wrote this:

               "The daughters of the thousands of women who took an anti-miscarriage pill more than 40 years ago are at increased risk of breast cancer. The drug, known as DES (diethylstilbestrol), was commonly prescribed for pregnant women between the 1940s and 1960s if doctors thought they were at risk of miscarrying and sometimes also for morning sickness. There are no definite figures for the number of women who took it, but research suggests there may have been as many as 200,000 in the UK".

The article, written at a time when the mainstream media was prepared to be mildly critical of conventional medicine, described a study by scientists at Boston University, published in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. It found that the daughters of women who took DES had an almost double risk of breast cancer of their peers. And the more their mothers took of this now banned drug, the greater their chance of developing the disease. Concern about the side effects of DES started in the early 1970s when first it was discovered that 1 in 1,000 girls born to women who had taken the drug were likely to develop vaginal cancer. It was then found that the women who had taken it had an increased risk of breast cancer.

DES was withdrawn in the 1970’s and is no longer used in the developed world - except for prostate cancer (men beware)!

So it is well known that pharmaceutical drugs has been a important part in the rise of breast cancer figures. And if there were sufficient research done on the adverse reaction of pharmaceutical drugs, more evidence would almost certainly be found.

Another culprit is probably chest X-rays. A Times-on-Line article, dated 27th June 2006 outlined research on 1,600 women that indicated that women under-20 who had a chest X-ray had a 2.5 times greater chance of developing breast cancer before their 40th birthday, whilst women with a family history of breast cancer were 54% more likely to suffer the disease. The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Calls were made for further research into the link between breast cancer and X-rays. They have not been done - conventional medicine does not go out of its way looking for 'bad' news about any of its treatments!

Yet for many years, the massive use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) during the previous decades had been the drug most implicated in the rise and rise of breast cancer. So what happens when the prescription of a pharmaceutical drug, implicated in causing disease, is significantly reduced? If HRT was a significant cause of breast cancer, perhaps the increased incidence of the disease would also start to fall.

And this is exactly what has happened!

In July 2002, research indicated that HRT can increase the risk of breast cancer (and heart disease too), and the tests were halted as a result. Many thousands of women came off the drug as a result, at least 50%. In 2003 the University of Texas recorded a 7% drop in breast cancer rates, and a 12% drop in women aged 50 to 69. This was reported in USA Today, 14 December 2006; and New York Times, 15 December 2006). According to a BBC News report, 15th December 2006, UK researches also measured a drop in breast cancer cases. Professor Valerie Beral, director of Cancer Research UK's Cancer Epidemiology Unit, was reported as saying that there had also been a drop in breast cancer incidence in women aged 50-64 between 2003 and 2004.

So here is a very clear link between disease, breast cancer in this instance, and pharmaceutical drug treatment. Yet what happened following the virtual withdrawal of HRT, and the reduction in breast cancer rates, defies belief!

The conventional medical establishment put this evidence of reduced breast cancer as a victory! Our doctors told us that it indicated that conventional medicine was beginning to win the battle with cancer generally, and breast cancer was put forward to justify the claim! This was a brilliant piece of marketing!

  • First, conventional medicine causes a disease. 
  • Second, it withdraws the drug that has caused the disease. 
  • Third, it claims the credit for reducing the disease, even though it caused it in the first place!

Good marketing perhaps, but little to do with the reality, and even less to do with honesty! And unfortunately what happened afterwards has little to do with patient safety. Conventional medicine has tried to rehabilitate HRT, which means that more women are taking the drug, and many of them will contract breast cancer as a result. I have written about this rehabilitation in two blogs.



There is only one lesson that can be learnt from this sequence of events - conventional medicine cannot be trusted with our health. It creates illness with its drugs. It creates profit from our illness. And then our doctors do not tell us truth.

So one of the best ways to avoid breast cancer is to avoid pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - at any cost!



Monday 18 December 2017

Alzheimers Disease. How doctors treat people with Dementia

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I believe that Alzheimers, and other forms of dementia, are caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Those drugs implicated include many vaccines, including the flu vaccine, Antidepressant and Antipsychotic drugs, Statins, PPI's, Benzodiazepines, Antihistamines, Anticholinergic drugs, H2 blockers, and many others. They are listed, and the evidence described on this website. Indeed, when you look at the known side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, most of them list 'confusion'.

So once conventional medicine has caused a disease, how does it then treat it? They use more pharmaceutical drugs, including drugs known to cause dementia - Antipsychotics. These have been known as the 'chemical cosh' - drugs that do not treat the illness but which keep people with dementia calm - manageable.

New evidence, revealed in UK's doctors e-magazine, Pulse on 15th December 2017, has estimated that nearly 43,000 dementia patients were prescribed antipsychotic drugs during a a six week period during the autumn. This represents 9.4% of the 458,461 on the dementia register in England. The research, undertaken by NHS Digital, also recorded the number of patients who did not have psychosis but were prescribed the drug, but the information was only available 'on request'.

So the chemical cosh is alive and well, and being used with our older friends and relatives throughout the land. Antipsychotic drugs do not treat Alzheimers, and doctors do not pretend that they do. One doctor says so, in a comment on the Pulse article.

               "Apart from Risperidone, which has a 6 week licence for BPSD in Alzheimer's type dementia all other drugs are OFF label."

It is fair to say that some other doctors recognise that prescribing antipsychotic drugs "is a bad thing because these drugs are being overprescribed in place of hands on care" and that "there is also robust evidence that antipyschotics can increase morbidity and mortality". Yet the figures show that doctors are still prescribing them, and it is clear in other comments that some doctors seek to defend their use with Alzheimer's patients.

               "Is this really such a bad thing? These drugs have been unfairly demonised by NICE because of their risks but the reality is that those with advanced dementia have palliative needs that we are simply not recognising. It can't be very nice to be chronically agitated, shouting, wandering around at night and lacking a sleep wake cycle. Its often unsafe and distressing for patients, fellow residents and also carers. Even the best EMI homes struggle with all this and many are sub-par. The reality is that low dose antipsychotics are often effective for a wide range of these symptoms. Evidence for other 'trendy' behaviour based intervention is woolly at best. Perhaps it's time to recognise the terminal nature of dementia and relax the dogma around the use of antipsychotics antil something better comes along?"

The reference to 'other trendy behaviour' is pertinent. Conventional medicine has no effective treatment for dementia. The pharmaceutical industry is coming up with several extraordinarily expensive drugs, for which the 'evidence' is certainly 'wooly', to say the least. But to say that doctors should 'recognise the terminal nature of dementia' misses one important consideration - that there are other alternative therapies, including homeopathy, that can treat dementia. These are neither 'wooly', nor do they resign themselves to dementia being 'terminal'.

The unfortunate fact is the people with dementia, a disease now being contracted by many younger people, cannot choose their treatment. And their carers too often accept what doctors tell them, that it is a terminal disease, and there is no treatment. The result is that very few dementia patients are ever offered homeopathic treatment, and very few have been treated with homeopathy. I outlined a number of homeopathic remedies that are known to treat the symptoms of dementia.

So Alzheimer's Disease, and dementia generally, should represent a perfect opportunity for conventional doctors. They are only too aware that they have no effective treatment, and most recognise that antipsychotic drugs do more harm than good to their patients. So why not try homeopathy? How effective are the remedies that I outlined in my 'Why Homeopathy?' website? Many will dismiss the suggestion, out of hand, saying that 'there is no evidence'. Yet there is no evidence for the use of antipsychotic drugs in dementia, but they clearly use them!

If it wanted to do so, the NHS could discuss the use of homeopathy in the treatment of dementia, and set up a pilot study. It won't do so. Indeed, it is doing the very opposite, currently seeking to stop all expenditure on homeopathic treatment!

It would appear that dementia is another one of those illnesses that the conventional medical establishment would rather patients DIE than be offered more effective, safer alternative medical treatment!



Friday 15 December 2017

Mumps. A benign disease that turns nasty - although only after the MMR vaccine is introduced!

Mumps was always considered to be a relatively benign disease. It was described in 1982 as follows in the MacMillan Guide to Family Health.

               "A fairly common risk of mumps is the swelling of testes in a boy or the ovaries in a girl. This is much more common in an adult. Invariably the swelling goes down after a few days leaving no ill effects. It is excessively rare for the swelling to cause sterility. A rare complication is acute pancreatitis which passes within a few days. Mumps is generally a mild disease. The usual outcome is complete recovery within about 10 days".

It would seem that there was little to worry about, and this had always been the situation. But by this time the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) vaccine had been introduced, and the pharmaceutical industry were eager to promote it. This is more difficult if it is protecting children from an acute illness with such a benign prognosis.

So mumps suddenly became more serious. Compare the above description to the one that appeared in  the British Medical Association "Complete Family Health Encyclopaedia" published in 1995.

               "Mumps is an acute viral illness mainly of childhood. Serious complications are uncommon. However, in teenage and adult males, mumps can be a highly uncomfortable illness in which one of both testes become inflamed and swollen. Most infections are acquired at school or from infected family members. In the US, where many states required proof of mumps vaccination for school entry, the incidence has dropped markedly over the last 20 years. In the U.K. by contrast, before routine immunisation was introduced in 1988, mumps affected a large proportion of the population at sometime in their lives, usually between the ages of 5 and 10. An occasional complication of mumps is meningitis. A less common complication of mumps is pancreatitis which causes abdominal pain and vomiting. In males after puberty, orchitis (inflammation of the testes) develops in about a quarter of the cases. Subsequently the affected testis may shrink to smaller than normal size. In rare cases, mumps orchitis affects both testes leading to infertility".

The book also contains strong warnings about the consequences of older people coming into contact with people infected with mumps. Yet other than the financial incentive to promote the MMR vaccine, it is tempting to ask what had occurred during the intervening 13 years to transform mumps. As always, the answer is to 'follow the money'! There are profits to be made!

Mumps is not the only disease that conventional medicine has used in this way to promote the use of drugs and vaccines. It is easier to sell them if patients (in this case parents) are made to feel afraid. Fear leads to looking for prevention, or treatment. It can make customers of all of us!

Yet there is an easier, safer and more effective way of dealing with mumps. I have outlined several key remedies that deal with the disease in one of my "Why Homeopathy?" pages, which compares conventional and homeopathic treatment of mumps.


Iatrogenic Disease. The disease and death inducing effects (DIE's) of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines


Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are the primary weaponry of conventional medicine for the treatment of all illness and disease, yet frequently they actually cause disease!

Although the conventional medical establishment accepts that all their drugs and vaccines cause ‘side-effects’ or ‘adverse reactions’ they always underplay or discount their real seriousness. Indeed to describe the harm caused some of these drugs as 'side-effects' or ‘adverse reactions’ is an understatement of enormous proportions.

The term 'side effects' does not adequately describe the damage that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines can cause, and grossly underestimates the harm they can do to patients.

People take pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines because our doctors tell us they will make us better, help us overcome illness, and conquer disease. Unfortunately this is not the reality. People's lives can be fundamentally changed, sometimes destroyed, by the serious ill-health that can be caused as a direct consequence of taking pharmaceutial drugs and vaccines.

Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines can create new diseases, often diseases far worse and more life-threatening, than the original condition for which they were given. And they can kill too! For instance:

Beta blocker drugs may lower blood pressure;mbut they are also known to cause diabetes, and increase the risk of death.

Statin drugs are said to protect against heart disease, and we have regularly been told that they are ‘entirely safe’. But this is just not true. They are now known to cause mental and neurological problems, kidney failure, Parkinson’s disease, myoopathy, a muscle wasting disease called rhabdomyolysis, dementia and death.

Painkillers may temporarily deaden pain. But they are also now known to cause gastro-intestinal bleeding, renal failure, and heart failure, and they can cause death.

Antidepressant drugs are given to treat depression. But they are also known to cause severe birth defects if taken during pregnancy, they harm the immune system, they can cause liver failure, and diseases such as diabetes. Bizarrly, they are also known to cause mental health problems such as anxiety, mania, agitation, even violence, and they increase the risk of suicide, especially in children and young people.

So the 'side effects' of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are much more serious than the term implies. Even the term 'adverse drug effects' is not sufficient to describe the damage they can do to our health. No pharmaceutical drug or vaccine in safe. Most are known to be harmful to both human and animal health. For this reason we need a new, more accurate way of describing the real outcome and consequences of taking pharmaceutical drugs, a description that illustrates realistically what they can do to us. We need a description that encapsulates what drugs and vaccines do, a description that are more apt, more accurate:

Disease-Inducing-Effects... 
    Incapacity-Inducing-Effects... 
             Addiction-Producing-Effects... 
                  Quality-of-Life Destroying-Effects...
                           Death Inducing Effects too.

This e-book replaces the terms 'side-effect' and 'adverse reaction' with the concept of DIEs, or Disease Inducing Effects, as the 'D' can be used interchangeably for both 'disease' and 'death'!

Many patients, who take a pharmaceutical drug for one illness, often discover that they contract a new, often a much more serious disease, soon afterwards. Too often we do not associate the new disease with the taking of medical drugs and vaccines. Too often, doctors deny that there is any such connection. Instead it is assumed that the new disease is an unfortunate event, a misfortune without cause, an chance encounter with some bacteria or virus!

Then, of course, the new disease needs to be treated. So conventional doctors then give us yet more drugs, which have more DIEs, and so places us in greater danger of contracting yet more new and serious diseases.

And so it continues - one illness, leading to to drug, which leads to a new disease, leading to another drug and another disease, in the end  leading to a very sick individual.

Is the illness you suffer from the result of pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines?

Thursday 14 December 2017

Medicine and Informed Consent. Patients take drugs and vaccines because they are kept ignorant of the harm they do to our health

How many people will see their doctor today? How many will start taking drugs and vaccines as a result? Throughout the world the numbers run into many millions. And those many millions will do so because they are ignorant of their dangers. They do not realise that they are putting their health on line in a dangerous game of Russian Roulette.

Why do they not realise? They are not told. Surely, their doctors would not give them something that is harmful to their health? Surely medical science, and drug regulation would ensure that harmful drugs are banned. Surely national health services would not allow patients to be given dangerous drugs and vaccines. If pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines did cause patient harm, our newspapers would tell us about it.

This blog (and my 'Failure of Conventional Medicine' e-book) has featured many examples of this over the last 8 years. But let's look at two current pieces of press censorship, things we should be told about, news about pharmaceutical drugs that patients need to know - but we have just not been told.

The Flu Vaccine
Everyone living in the northern hemisphere are being urged to have the flu vaccination. Yet the flu season has already happened in the southern hemisphere, and a study has concluded the vaccine being used has very low effectiveness. As has happened regularly over the last few years the virus being used does not match the virus which is causing flu this year! The estimate is that it is only about 10% effective. What that means is that the flu vaccine is of limited value, it offers minimal protection.

And, of course, the vaccination still have all the serious side effects that have been so often outlined on this blog. (Do a search, "flu vaccine", on the upper left hand side of this page).

But this information has not been made available to us in the mainstream media. And the conventional medical establishment, who must know about the vaccines ineffectiveness, as well as its dangers, continue to urge that we get vaccinated!

The Dengue Fever Vaccine
The conventional medical establishment insists that all their vaccines are entirely safe. The second situation has arisen in the Philippines and the dengue fever vaccine. This vaccine has been heavily promoted by the drug giant, Sanofi. But the government have recently stopped the national vaccination campaign, although only after thousands of children had been vaccinated - and suffered harm as a direct result.

What is the evidence of harm? Sanofi itself raised the warning, that the vaccine can cause more serious infections in those who had no previous exposure to the virus. Now, the Philippino government  has begun an investigation, with possible legal action to follow. The dangers of this vaccine has been known for some time - but of cause these warning were never publicised!

These are just two current situations concerning the dangers and ineffectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. They happen all the time but the conventional medical establishment pay little or no heed to any of them, continuing to insist that all vaccines are safe and effective. And our compliant media, supported as they are by pharmaceutical advertising, refuse to inform us. Their viability is at stake!

So what happens is that people will be going to see their doctor today, and they will accept the drugs or the vaccines that are offered because they have not heard about the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine, or the dangers of the dengue fever vaccine. Nor will they have heard that the medical science that proved there was no connection between the MMR vaccine and Autism was fraudulent (see the following blogs).

               MMR Vaccine, Autism, and the silence and culpability of the Political, Medical and Media Establishment

               Autism IS caused by MMR vaccine. Evidence of 'no connection' was fraudulent medical science

               The MMR-Autism Controversy, and the dishonesty of Medical 'Science'

               The Vaccine - Autism Cover-up

               Autism, the MMR Vaccine, and Media Censorship

Anyone reading this information, undeniable as it is, unreported as it has been for the last 3 years, has to be amazed, or upset, or angry. The only possible conclusion is that patients cannot exercise an 'informed choice' about medical treatment because they are just not informed. Why are we not being informed.

The reason is simple. If patients did know about the serious side effects that harm patients, cause illness and disease, they would choose not to accept it. Conventional medicine, based as it is on dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, just would not exist. The future of the mighty pharmaceutical industry depends on our ignorance. And they are fully aware of this!

Wednesday 6 December 2017

Does Conventional Medicine prefer patients to die rather than refer them to Homeopathy?

Does conventional medicine prefer patients to die rather than refer them to Homeopathy?
Does conventional medicine prefer patients to suffer rather than offer them another treatment?

This might appear to be an extreme question, perhaps even a silly one to some people. Yet any cursory examination of conventional medical practice has to answer with a clear and definite "Yes".

So let's examine the evidence. During the past few months I have been writing my Why Homeopathy? e-book, which seeks to compare conventional with homeopathic treatment of a variety of illnesses and diseases. Although when setting out on the project I knew that conventional medicine had little to offer when compared with homeopathy, I did not expect to find, time and time again, illness after illness, that conventional medicine frequently and openly states

  • that it does not know what causes a particular illness or disease
  • and that they have no treatment for so many of these!
On each page of the book I always use the NHS Choices website to ascertain what conventional treatment is for each of the illnesses I research. This is a highly reputable agency within the UK's conventional medical establishment so its descriptions are authentic, definitive statements.
  • ADHD. "there is no cure for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder".
  • Ankylosing Spondylitis. “There is no cure for ankylosing spondylitis..."
  • Arthritis. "Osteoarthritis cannot be cured...."
  • Autism. "There is no cure for the condition...."
  • Blepharitis. "The condition cannot usually be cured...."
And so it continues, for an amazing number of illnesses that have now been covered in 'Why Homeopathy?'. All conventional medicine can claim to do for so many of these conditions is to enable the patient to live with it, or to treat specific symptoms, or to provide pharmaceutical drugs, with all their inherent dangers, for the rest of our lives.

Given that homeopathy can treat and cure almost any condition I was surprised to discover the extent of this failure. But then I began to wonder about more deadly diseases, ones that ended, inevitably, in the death of the patient? I cast my mind back to a situation that occurred soon after I had qualified as a homeopath. A man had contracted Rabies, and this made national news headlines. This is what I wrote about the situation soon afterwards.


A Case of Rabies
I remember in about 2002 listening to news story about the man in Dundee who contracted Rabies from a bat. He was treated in hospital, presumably by conventional medicine, and it was reported that 'there was no cure' for this condition, but they were making him "as comfortable as possible".

I wrote to the Department of Health asking whether anyone within the health service in Dundee had bothered to see whether there was any traditional therapy for the condition, and in particular, whether they had contacted a homeopath in the area. I pointed out that homeopathy treats 'like with like' using substances in high dilution/potency, and that the remedy Lyssinum was made from the saliva of a rabid dog.  I said that, if asked, any homeopath could have tried this remedy, or indeed several others used by homeopaths for the treatment of this disease.

The response I received was that was a matter of patient confidentiality, and the could not give me the information I required.

The man’s death was announced a few days later.

It is extremely unlikely that any homeopathic treatment was requested or tried in this case, despite the fact that homeopathy is used regularly to treat rabies in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere in the world.

The only assumption I could draw then, and now, was that when people contract illnesses that conventional medicine cannot cure, absolutely no effort is made to check with other medical therapies about whether they are able to treat the condition – even when, as in this case, death was the outcome!

There are probably not many people in Britain who die of rabies, but there are many serious illnesses and diseases that do kill patients, many of them conditions for which conventional medicine has no successful treatment.
  • Cholera, where treatment is limited to oral rehydration.
  • Haemophilia. "There is no cure for haemophilia..."
  • and many others.
In addition, there are many other deadly conditions that are only treated with antibiotic drugs, resistance to which is rapidly becoming total. Or treated with drugs with dangerous side effects. When this happens, the conventional medical establishment just throw in the towel.
  • Doctors tell us that an illness is 'terminal', that the patient will die. 
  • There is nothing further that can be done for them.
As I have often said, such statements mean only that there is nothing further conventional medicine can do for the patient. So when this happens, do conventional doctors refer patients on to other medical therapies, such as homeopathy? Never. As with the man who contracted rabies and died, patients with terminal illness are left to die. There is an assumption that if conventional medicine cannot cure an illness, no-one else can!

This is lethal medical arrogance! They might be correct, after all we all die, eventually, of something. And no medical therapy can save everyone from everything at all times. Yet homeopathy has the distinct advantage of recognising the principle of 'treating like with like'. So to make a homeopathic remedy with the saliva of a rabid dog is a potential cure for rabies. But apparently it is not one that conventional medicine is prepared to offer its patients.

In fact, there are several remedies that homeopaths have used for the treatment of rabies, and some of these remedies are outlined in the Dr Makkar Family Clinic website.

For any doctor, or any medical system, to claim that they have a monopoly on effective medical treatment, for any illness, is unacceptable. For anyone to do so, especially when they realise that they have nothing else to offer a patient, especially when that patient will die, is inexcusable. 

Nor is it just death. It is also conditions that cause constant, permanent discomfort and pain. It is conditions that patients have to suffer from, for a lifetime, without the prospect of relief. Maybe there is nothing further that conventional medicine can offer for these patients, but quite clearly it is not prepared to offer anything else, even when that 'something else' might be more successful.

Perhaps especially if that 'something else' might be more successful. Conventional medicine never offers itself up for comparison. It has a dominant role in most health services around the world. If homeopathy did, actually, cure a case of rabies, when conventional medicine couldn't what would this tell people? It is best that people are allowed to die!

Yet this is what conventional medicine does, throughout the world. They tell us that their medical system is the only one based on 'science'. They tell us they are winning the 'war' against disease. They announce new wonder drugs, miracle cures, almost every week. It is as if conventional medicine cannot admit failure, or even take a chance that another medical therapy might be able to do something they cannot do! So patients suffer and die without any thought of referring them on.

Friday 1 December 2017

Viagra. Now on sale without a doctors prescription

Many people believe that when pharmaceutical drugs are on sale without a doctor's prescription they are safe. Well, now the UK's drug regulator, the MHRA has decided the make Viagra, the male impotence, or erectile dysfunction drug available 'over-the-counter'.

I wrote a blog about Viagra in November 2014, "Viagra? An erection at any cost to our health?" in which I outlined the quite horrendous number of serious side effects of this drug. So if any man is about to rush to the local chemist to buy it perhaps should read about these side effects first.

Amongst much else, the drug is known to cause

  • confusion (the precursor to dementia)?
  • convulsions and seizures (the precursor to epilepsy)?
  • deafness and hearing loss
  • vision impairment, even blindness
Your doctor won't tell you about any of this (and won't even need to keep it from you now). All pharmaceutical drugs are dangerous, whether doctors prescribe them or not. They exist to make the drug companies rich, not for our health, and should all be avoided at all costs.

It would also appear that our drug regulator has no interest in patient safety, which in fact is the only reason for their existence. It would appear that there is no-one out there interested in protecting us from the pharmaceutical industry!

Monday 27 November 2017

Okay! I think vaccines are harmful, so now I'm a Russian Agent! What has happened to the health debate?

Yesterday I posted several of my blogs on the MMR vaccine, and its links to the creation of Autism as a disease. Today the mainstream media is saying that I, and many other people of like mind, am repeating Russian lies, spreading false information about the flu, measles and other vaccine. The Mirror seems to be leading this story, but the rest of the mainstream media, the Sunthe Express, the Telegraph, and of course the BBC, are joining in.

They all provide the story, with the same words, almost identical headlines, which suggests that they are, as usual, singing from the same hymn sheet, the same press release, the same propaganda. "UK lives in DANGER because of Russian propaganda and fake news over MMR jabs" states the Express. They continue.

               "Experts have previously warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has been trying to erode trust in US and European Governments by spreading lies on social media and 'fake news'. But now it is feared the Kremlin is using the same techniques of misinformation over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine. This is all about destabilisation by external forces. War is ever changing and becoming much more cyber-based. For generations, governments in the UK and the West have been extremely worried about destabilisation from external forces." (My emphasis).

Apparently these are the words of Chris Phillips, former head of National Counter Terrorism Security Office, who said it has become "a threat to daily life". The Express article then quotes Public Health England, and the Royal College of GPs, who have "repeatedly expressed concern" over the amount of 'fake news' shared on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

So clearly I am a Russian agent, an external force, spreading misinformation, fake news, and causing destabilisation, and eroding trust in US and European Governments! 

Or am I? Are my blogs 'misinformation', 'fake news'? Or is the underlying problem here the censorship of the media's coverage of important health issues?

Underlying this whole story are people, like myself, who genuinely believe that there is clear and undeniable evidence that the MMR vaccination is causing harm to children, particularly in creating the new disease of Autism. My concerns have been around for decades,  and particularly since the late 1990's. But then, in the early 2000's there were several studies that proved conclusively that there was no link between the MMR vaccination and Autism. Since that time, the mainstream media has refused to cover the concerns, there has been no further coverage, debate has ended.

So has the issue gone away? No, it certainly has not. Those who question the safety of vaccines, all vaccines not just the MMR, have used the social media to raise important and ongoing safety issues that arise, and we have done so mainly because the mainstream media have refused to do so.

So let me make an offer to the security forces, to the pharmaceutical industry, and to the mainstream media. I will take down this blog, and stop posting on social media, if the following issues are fully and openly discussed in future, as and when necessary.
  • If vaccines are entirely safe, why are so many victims of vaccine damage paid $millions by the US Vaccine Court after they have suffered vaccine damage?
  • Why have governments around the world given the pharmaceutical industry indemnity against any legal or financial claim for compensation?
  • If it is not vaccines, what is the cause of the epidemic rise in Autism, why is a disease unknown in the 1940's now affecting at least 1 in 10 children?
  • Why has the author of an important study that 'proved' there was no link between the MMR vaccine and Autism admitted that he and his team destroyed evidence that would have proved otherwise? Why has this never been discussed in the American Congress?
  • How effective is the flu vaccine, when for the last several years after flu seasons studies have shown that it has only minimal effectiveness?
  • Why is the health of so many fit, healthy, normal young girls been so completely compromised and destroyed after they are given the HPV vaccine?
  • Why is it that when there are outbreaks of mumps and measles it is vaccinated children who contract the illness rather than the unvaccinated?
  • Why is it that so many older people, and now so many younger people, suffer with dementia? Is the research that links dementia with annual flu vaccines correct?
These are just a few of the non-debated questions about vaccine safety. There are many more that should be discussed by the mainstream media. BUT THEY ARE NOT DISCUSSED. There is silence. Media organisations refuse to engage in the health debate. Why?

Wherever there is division, or disagreement or debate in society, a genuinely 'free' press would want to discuss the issue. They would examine the arguments of both sides. They would ask questions of both sides of the argument. They would ensure that they are brought together to debate the issue. Yet in matters of health this has not been done for the last 20 years. So many people accept these vaccines without any engagement in the debate about the issues. They have never looked at the pros and cons. They have never been made aware of the issues. MOST PEOPLE, AS A RESULT, ARE QUITE UNABLE TO MAKE AN INFORMED CHOICE.

The evidence against vaccines cannot never be discussed in any mainstream media platform. We are routinely denied access to those platforms. We have to resort to social media, not because the evidence is weak, not because it is 'fake' news, not because it is disinformation, but because they are the only platforms available to us.

And now we are accused of spreading false information that puts people lives in danger! We would argue that lives are placed at risk because people are not warned of the dangers of vaccination. So who is right? The issue is never argued. Governments tell us that vaccines are safe. The pharmaceutical industry tells us that vaccines are safe. The conventional medical establishment tells us that vaccines are safe. The mainstream media goes along with them, slavishly - vaccines are safe. So it is not surprising that most people accept that vaccines are safe.

So which side is putting the lives of people at risk? Those who are giving people vaccines containing mercury, or aluminium, and other substances known to be poisonous? Or those who are encouraging people not to accept vaccination, thereby denying them access to vaccines that are, apparently, so effective and 'entirely safe'?

  • Those who argue the former are asking for a debate, an open examination of the evidence. 
  • Those who argue the latter insist that they are right, that they should not be questioned, and that to do so creates 'a threat to daily life'.
I, and many other people, believe that vaccines are harmful to health. This is not 'fake news'. It is not 'disinformation'. All we ask is that the issue and the evidence is debated, openly and honestly, by the mainstream media. We may be wrong. Our arguments may be shot down in flames by the conventional medical establishment. If so, fine. The problem is not fake news it is no news, it is media censorship that bars discussion. Everyone should at least know the issues, the arguments, the evidence. Without it no-one can exercise an informed choice about vaccines.

At the moment people will have their lives destroyed either because they see something on social media that makes them decide not to accept vaccines that are a positive bonus as they keep us healthy, or because they have not heard about the evidence against vaccines, and their dangers. There is only one thing that needs stating, in a society that prides itself in being free.

Silence in not acceptable!


Thursday 23 November 2017

Thalidomide. Still alive, kicking, and harming patients around the world to this day!

The magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY) published an article on Thalidomide in its October 2017 edition. It gave the drug's timeline, which I reproduce here in order to draw out some of the salient features of how conventional medicine deals with pharmaceutical drugs that are known to be harmful to patients.

1953. Thalidomide is discovered in a German laboratory.
After the discovery of a new drug they are tested by medical science for both its effectiveness and safety, then approved by drug regulatory agencies. These agencies were not so developed then as they are today, largely as a result of the damage Thalidomide was later to cause.

1956. Thalidomide is launched as a prescription drug for anxiety and insomnia in West Germany.
The drug company conducted all the trials considered necessary at the time, which found that the drug was both effective and safe (they usually do), or they manipulated the trial results to indicate that the drug was effective and safe. In other words, and for whatever reason, medical science was unable to detect that there was anything wrong with Thalidomide.

1957. Thalidomide is made available as an over-the-counter drug (without a prescription) to east morning sickness in pregnant women.
I am aware that many people continue to believe that if a drug is available at the local chemist, or from the supermarket, they are safer than drugs that are available only with a doctors prescription. This is not so, and has never been so. I have blogged about this before. The most disastrous pharmaceutical drug, that was destined to do so much damage to unsuspecting patients, was mostly purchased at the local pharmacy!

1958. Up to 7,000 children in Germany are born with severe birth deformities. In the same year the UK introduced the drug on to the market.
Pharmaceutical drugs spread much quicker across the world than most viruses! Presumably the UK authorities also approved Thalidomide on as an effective and safe drug for patients, including pregnant women, and certainly the drug companies were eager to profit from it as soon as possible.

1961. Thalidomide is taken off the market in most Western countries, with at least 10,000 babies born with severe deformities; unofficial estimates put the figure at 100,000 cases.
It took over four years for medical science, and the drug regulatory authorities, to determine that one of their approved pharmaceutical drugs was causing this devastation. It is important to bear in mind that whilst ALL pharmaceutical drugs are tested for safety, it takes this length of time, sometimes longer, to discover that they are not safe, even when the consequences of taking Thalidomide are so blindingly obvious!

1962. Canada is still prescribing the drug. The drug also remains available in Spain throughout the 1970's and 1980's.
This is an amazing feature of pharmaceutical drugs. They can be banned in one country but continue to be sold in others. It is a regular feature of drug histories, it happens all the time, with lots of unsafe drugs. This suggests that either the drug regulatory agencies do not speak to each other, or that they make their decisions based on some kind of bogus 'benefit-risk' calculation that comes up with a different answer! Thalidomide was as dangerous in Canada and Spain as it was in the UK.

As far as the pharmaceutical industry is concerned, it demonstrates that they are quite willing to sell any drug, however dangerous, anywhere in the world, and despite the damage they know the drug to be causing.

1965. Thalidomide is licensed in Brazil for erytherma nodosum leprosum (ENL).
Most people assume that when a pharmaceutical drug has been found to be harmful to patients, and has been banned because it has caused the kind of horrendous damage to human life as Thalidomide, drug companies are still quite happy to sell it, and find other reasons for selling it.

Of course, the drug was not sold as 'Thalidomide'. The name was changed, presumably so that patients were not aware of what they were taking. It is a diabolical corruption!

1998. Thalidomide is approved in the USA for treating ENL.
If dangerous drugs can be approved in the USA, where pride is taken in their drug regulatory system (perhaps inappropriately) they can be approved as safe and effective just about anywhere. Again, the drug is not called Thalidomide, even though the drug regulators would have known that what they were approving. It must be supposed that they were happy to go along with the deception!

The use of dangerous pharmaceutical drugs is allowed throughout the world, with drug regulatory agencies apparently keener to assist drug company with their profitability rather than performing their primary statutory function - to keep patients safe!

2008. Thalidomide is approved for use in the UK as a treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.
There is no-where in the world safe from the exploitation of patients by the pharmaceutical industry, or the willingness of drug regulators to connive in that exploitation. No doubt medical science, and the drug regulation agencies, placed many restrictions on the use of the drug, although with what success is harder to fathom.

2010. The World Health Organisation pronounces that Thalidomide should not be used for any condition, as its use cannot be properly controlled.
For an agency that has also been so heavily infiltrated by the pharmaceutical industry this was a surprising and unusual decision. However, its advice was completely ignored!

2017. The UK approves the third spin-off drug from Thalidomide for treating multiple myeloma. Today, 48 countries actively use the drug.
Ask anyone whether they know about Thalidomide. Most people will know that it caused untold harm to thousands of children. Ask anyone whether they think that Thalidomide is still prescribed by doctors for their patients. Most people will say 'No'! So the moral of this timeline is clear.

  • Patients are NOT protected from dangerous pharmaceutical drugs by medical science, or by the Drug Regulatory system. 
  • The Pharmaceutical industry will sell their drugs to anyone, anywhere in the world, in the full knowledge that they are dangerous, but caring more about their profits than patients.
  • Doctors are willing to prescribe these drugs, whether in ignorance, or on the 'evidence' produced by medical science, or just with the authority given by a drug regulator.
  • The entire conventional medical establishment - governments, national health services, doctors, nurses - just go along with it.
So are you taking Thalidomide? Probably not, although it is now used for a wide variety of conditions, ranging from cancer, multiple melanoma, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and ENL (leprosy).

But if you are taking Thalidomide, it will be called something else, perhaps an 'analogue' of thalidomide (not thalidomide, but something so damned similar as to make little difference). It will be called Lenalidomide, or Pomalidomide, or Apremilast, or Otezla, and no doubt a host of other names.

The conventional medical establishment should not be allowed to play these games with our safety. But they are! And they do!

We all need to search for safer and more effective treatments, practiced by more honest practitioners.


Wednesday 22 November 2017

Concordia and Liothyronine. Monopolies both large and small within the Health Service

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has found that the drug company, Concordia, has overcharged the NHS for its thyroid drug, Liothyronine. The CMA said that in 2016 the NHS spent £34 million on its drug, liothyronine, whilst in 2006 it was just £600,000. The amount the NHS paid per pack rose from about £4.46 in 2007 to £258.19 by July 2017, a staggering increase of almost 6,000%.

So what is the problem? Has demand for the drug risen? Are there lots more people suffering hypothyroidism? No, all kinds of sickness is rising, but not by 6000% in 10 years! Has there been a supply problem then, some difficulty making the drug, an increase in the cost of making it? No, the CMA said the price rise took place despite production costs being "broadly stable".

               "We allege that Concordia used its market dominance in the supply of liothyronine tablets to do exactly that."

So this is yet another example of pharmaceutical industry profiteering. Nor is it an isolated incident of a drug company milking national governments, national health services, and patients. I blogged in October 2015 about the drug Daraprim and Turing Pharmaceuticals, which gained control over the drug and increased the price from $13.50 to $750, a rise of over 5,000%!

The strategy appears to be for smaller drug companies to gain control over a specific drug, and once in a monopoly position to exploit it for all it is worth.

The price change happened after the drug was de-branded in 2007, that is, the patent expired. Drugs are expensive under patent; but the government can cap the profits drug companies are allowed to make. Afterwards, drug prices usually fall. But not if the pharmaceutical industry takes action, and gives an individual company a monopoly in marketing the drug. This is what happened in this case, and the earlier one concerning Daraprim. Concordia was, until earlier this year, the only supplier of the drug, selling in in more than 100 countries. The CMA report commented:

               "Pharmaceutical companies which abuse their position and overcharge for drugs are forcing the NHS - and the UK taxpayer - to pay over the odds for important medical treatments."

And for some patients, in a country where conventional medicine is also a virtual monopoly, this has indeed become an important drug. The mainstream media produced several patients who have found the drug useful, and have been affected by the price hype. Owing to the cost, the NHS stopped doctors prescribing it, and these patients suffered as a result.

It is, of course, a good human interest news story, and most of the mainstream media reported it. What they did not report, or even suggest, was that this story demonstrates clearly that drug companies are essentially private business enterprises, interested mainly in maximising their profit. Producing drugs is not, for them, a philanthropic patient-centred exercise. Indeed, by hyping the price to this extent it is clear that the last people the company were thinking about were the patients!

Nor did the media ask what appears to be a natural question. How is it that within the pharmaceutical world one small drug company is allowed a monopoly over the manufacture and distribution of a drug? How is it that when an established drug comes off patent, and are 'debranded', its price can rocket? Apparently this is the CMA has challenged a number of drugs companies about. It is not an isolated example.

The company, Concordia, has stated that it did "not believe that competition law has been infringed", and that the pricing of  liothyronine had been conducted "openly and transparently with the Department of Health in the UK over a period of 10 years". However, earlier in 2017, Concordia was accused of pushing up the price of another NHS drug, hydrocortisone, by striking a deal not to compete with another firm. Their innocence, and the innocence of the pharmaceutical industry generally, seems to be highly questionable.

Moreover, the liothyronine case is not the only one being investigated by the CMA. The drug giants Pfizer and Flynn Pharma have been intestigated for excessive and unfair prices being set for the anti-epilepsy treatment, phenytoin sodium capsules, and it has imposed fines of about £45 million on a number of other pharmaceutical companies in relation to the anti-depressant drug, paroxetine.

All this raises another unasked question. If this is so, how is it that a government department, and the NHS, has not picked up on the profiteering? Has there been collusion, at a time when the NHS is getting deeper into crisis and bankrupcy? As I have argued at length elsewhere, the pharmaceutical industry is important to government because it is an important part of the British economy.

Yet as always the main unasked question is whether this drug is safe. Although the media produced patients who felt they had benefitted from it, the Drugs.com website outlines the side effects of the drug, some of them serious. It warns that any patient should get "emergency help immediately" if any of the following known side effects of the drug occurs:

               * Arm, back or jaw pain
               * changes in appetite
               * changes in menstrual periods
               * chest pain or discomfort
               * chest tightness or heaviness
               * cold clammy skin
               * confusion
               * decreased urine output
               * diarrhoea
               * dilated neck veins
               * dizziness
               * extreme fatigue
               * fainting
               * fast, slow, pounding, or irregular heartbeat or pulse
               * fever
               * hand tremors
               * headache
               * increased bowel movements
               * irregular breathing
               * irritability
               * leg cramps
               * lightheadedness
               * menstrual changes
               * nausea
               * nervousness
               * sensitivity to heat
               * shortness of breath
               * sweating
               * swelling of face, fingers, feet, or lower legs
               * troubled breathing
               * trouble sleeping
               * vomiting
               * weak pulse
               * weight gain
               * weight loss
               * wheezing

Monopoly is a major problem in the provision of health care services. A monopoly over the sale of a single drug can lead to cost of pharmaceutical drugs becoming exhorbitant. The monopoly of a single type of medicine within a national health service can lead to patients having to suffer the consequence of harmful and dangerous drugs, with patients believing that they are the only way to treat their illness.

  

Monday 20 November 2017

The Dead Horse Theory. "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount!"

The Dekota Indians had an excellent theory, and it is one that the many governments around the world which are struggling to fund their national health service, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, might benefit from learning. It is the 'Dead Horse'. The 14 points that follow clearly represents the current strategy many governments use, including the British government's policy towards the National Health Service.







































The NHS is in constant crisis. It spends an enormous amount of money, mainly on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines (= the dead horse), yet year by year demand for health services outstrips the supply. More money is then demanded, given, and spent on yet more drugs, but quite regardless of this, the crisis continues. The horse is, indeed, dead, and it has been dead for some time. The animal is, after all, over 70 years old, and it has been fed, almost exclusively, on pharmaceutical drugs during all that time! The NHS does not realise this, or if it does it ignores the wisdom of the Dakota Indians, and instead makes use of 'more advanced' responses!

1. Buying a stronger whip.
The NHS believes that it would be able to produce better outcomes for patients if staff could only be made to work harder, to increase their productivity.

2. Changing riders.
The NHS regularly changes it riders, managers are sacked who are just not good enough, and do not spend the money properly. It is important to employ better riders to manage the available resources.

3. Threatening the horse with termination.
The NHS cannot pursue this policy, as unfortunately, in this case, the dead horse has wealthy and influential backers, too powerful to be 'terminated'. However, it regularly terminates some drugs and vaccines because they are so clearly dead, but never the complete animal.

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
NHS committees are rife, and have been vital to the NHS development. They study why the demand for health care continually outstrips supply, why offering more drugs and vaccines appears to lead to more sickness (invariably deciding it is due to patients getting older), and to come up with new ideas about how the NHS might function better.

5. Arranging to visit other countries to see how others ride dead horses.
The NHS regularly examines health services in other parts of the world. They usually find there is not much difference because they, too, are trying to ride the same dead horse! But some countries spend more of their GDP on health, so if only they could have more money too......

6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
The NHS regularly seeks to lower standards, for instance, nurses doing the work of doctors, hospital beds being reduced, et al. This is not to save money, but to release more money to spend on reviving the dead horse with more pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

7. Re-classifying the dead horse as 'living impaired'.
The NHS, whilst hyping the value of every new pharmaceutical drug and vaccine, is at the same time trying to reduce patient expectations. Look at the NHS Choices website to see just how many illnesses and diseases there are for which, we are told, their is no treatment, no cure, no chance of recovery.

8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
The NHS is an inefficient public enterprise, say some, and if more of the work could be contracted out to private companies the greater efficiency would ensure that the dead horse might be able to enhance health outcomes for patients.

9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the dead horses performance.
The NHS is constantly asking for new horses, new pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to help them if their fight against disease. The one's they have may not work, the new ones just might be better.

10 Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horses performance.
The NHS always needs more doctors and more nurses to provide even more health treatment to an increasingly sick population, treatments based, of course, on those that has been offered for decades.

11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
It is frequently said that the NHS is too 'top-heavy', that there are too many managers and administrators (people who do not give patients the drugs) and not enough doctors and nurses, who do.

12. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overheads, and therefore contributes substantially more than the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
Unfortunately the NHS is totally committed to the most expensive of all medical treatments, so this is a difficult argument to make. However, it does regularly state that the newer drugs costs are too expensive, and that 'generic' cost less.

13. Re-writing the expected performance requirement for all horses.
The NHS has struggled for decades to keep waiting times (for a doctors' appointment, for A&E, for operations, for hospital beds) to a minimum. We are regularly told that unless more money is spent on the dead horse, patients must expect longer waiting times.

14 Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position of hiring another horse.
Most NHS managers and supervisors are former doctors who have spent their careers prescribing 'dead horse' drugs and vaccines to their patients. Why should they start recognising that the horse is dead after a lifetime of devotion to it?

IT IS TIME WE STOPPED FLOGGING THE DEAD HORSE!
IT IS TIME TO GIVE THE HORSE A DECENT BURIAL!