Homeopathy, and other traditional medical therapies, is just bad business. They make patients better, so they are no longer a source of income!

               "Drug companies are avoiding developing drugs that work well especially if they provide one-off cures because they will lose on-going revenue."

               "Biotech companies innovating in the field of healthcare are struggling to get investment if their products are too effective (even with sky-high pricing) and provide an actual cure for disease."

These are two of the amazing conclusions reached by Milton Packer MD, Distinguished Scholar in Cardiovascular Science at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. This Alliance for Natural Health article says that he is "a top-level cardiologist and clinical researcher". As such he is a member of the Conventional Medical Establishment, someone who does not usually speak negatively about the pharmaceutical industry. Apparently, it is Packer who has drawn up and tested the heart failure protocols used throughout the Western world, and he is "a firm advocate of ARNi drugs for heart failure".

During the years I practiced homeopathy I often said that, as a business, alternative medicine was its own worst enemy! Patients would consult with me about their illness, I would treat them, and some 70-80% would get significantly or entirely better. As they left, I would write up the case notes, and smile....

"There goes another customer!"

But this is what healers do, and have always done. They see their task as making people better, and the satisfaction of the job is that patients DO get better, and they CAN get on with their lives - without need of further medical attention. It is, though, bad for business!

The pharmaceutical industry realised this a long time ago, and this is what Milton Packer is saying. They are not interested in developing 'wonder' cures, 'miracle' drugs - this is just the propaganda needed to sell more drugs, more vaccines. They know that the best business strategy is to keep patients sick, and not make them better!

Read this Health Impact News article, "The Drugging of American Seniors: Big Pharma Profits Depend on Sick Seniors" which is making exactly the same point.

               "..... it is estimated that about one out of every four Americans over the age of 55 are currently being prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, in spite of the evidence that these drugs do not prolong lifespans, and have very serious side effects. Studies have confirmed that dementia, especially early onset dementia, is often caused by too many pharmaceutical drugs."

The article goes on to outline the long list of drugs known to cause dementia (also outlined here), the strategy of expanding prescribing guidelines to get more healthy people on drugs like Statins, and drugs to lower blood pressure, and the side effects (that is, illness) they cause as a result. The outcome of taking drugs are serious and inevitable.

• Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines all have serious health side effects, most of which need treating with other drugs, which have side effects, which need treating - and so on.
• It is the ineffectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is causing the continual crisis in the UK's NHS, and other national health services. Patients just do not get better.
• It is the adverse drug reactions, which I call DIE's (or Disease-Inducing-Effects), that have caused the epidemic levels of chronic disease, of all kinds, that we have been experiencing for decades.

Apparently Goldman Sachs have also recognised this problem, and as a result they are reluctant to invest in trendy new 'gene therapy' research. They think it might be too successful, and they have asked the question

"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" 

The conclusion is clear. Conventional medicine is an illness service, not a health service. The NHS, which is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry, is in constant crisis because it is failing to make patients better, its treatments are actually making them sicker - because this is a better business model!

If the NHS, and other health services, were dominated by homeopathy rather than by conventional, drug-based medicine, there would be no ongoing NHS crisis, there would not be patients with long-term, incuarable sickness, or patients who need to take drugs for a lifetime, and disease would not be increasing so rapidly, year on year.

Patients do always have a choice of medical therapy, and it is important that people who are sick, and those who are well, begin to exercise this choice. Their health depends upon it.

EPILEPSY. Another drug is banned - after being 'widely prescribed' for over 50 years.

Conventional medicine does not protect patients from the harm caused by its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Valporoate has just been banned by the UK's drug regulator, the MHRA (April 2018). Doctors have been instructed not to prescribe this epilepsy drug to any women of childbearing age, "unless they are on a pregnancy prevention programme". Doctors have also 'advised' not to prescribe the drug, also known as Epilim, or Episenta, or Depakote, for the treatment of migraine and bipolar disorder. So is this evidence that conventional medicine is protecting patients?

Hardly. The drug was discovered in 1882, and its 'anticonvulsant properties' in 1962. The pharmaceutical industry quickly obtained approval from French drug regulators in 1967 and Valproate quickly became the most widely prescribed epilepsy drug throughout the world.

So it has taken conventional medicine over 50 years to discover that Vaproate was a dangerous drug, and to take action to protect patients.

This tardiness is not untypical of conventional medicine, and their failure to protect patients. I have listed many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that have been banned or withdrawn over the last 100 years and more. The same process is repeated, time and time again. A drug is found, it is quickly approved by drug regulators (whose main task is not to approve drugs but to protect patients from harm), used thereafter for many years, often many decades, and only accepted as 'dangerous' when this can no longer be denied. So is it possible that the conventional medical establishment did not realise that valproate was dangerous.

Hardly. The (appropriately entitled) health magazine, What Doctor's Don't Tell You (WDDTY) reported as long ago as April 2005 that pregnant women taking Valproate for their epilepsy were doubling the risk of their unborn child developing cognitive impairments.

Since then the evidence against Valproate has been building, but largely censored by the mainstream media (who have still, at the time of writing, to my knowledge, not reported the ban), and ignored by conventional medicine. So our doctors have continued to prescribe it regardless of the harm it has caused to patients. 

Doctors have been warned about the drug throughout the last 50 years - consistently. For example, on 13th October 2014 the GP magazine, Pulse, published an article "GP's advised not to prescribe valproate medicine to pregnant women". 

• There is little doubt that this dangerous drug has continued to be prescribed despite its dangers being well known within the conventional medical establishment.
• Nor can there be any doubt that over 50 years, many pregnant women have taken this drug, on the advice of their doctor, and many are now caring for children who were damaged by the drug.

So is it just pregnant women who are in danger from this drug? Hardly. Have a look at the Drugs.com website (now apparently owned by the pharmaceutical industry). They have posted these warnings about Valproate.

• This medicine may cause very bad and sometimes deadly liver problems. This most often happens within the first 6 months of using valproate injection...... 
• Children under 2 years are at greater risk of deadly liver problems.....
• There is a greater risk of liver failure and death in patients who have a genetic liver problem caused by a mitochondrial disorder.....
• This medicine may cause very bad birth defects if you take it while you are pregnant. It can also cause the child to have a lower IQ....
• If you are able to get pregnant, you must use birth control that you can trust while you take valproate injection......
• This medicine may cause very bad and sometimes deadly pancreas problems (pancreatitis). This may happen soon after use as well as many years after use.....

Then click on the linked 'side effects' page to see the full horror story of Valproate, and remember that this is a drug that conventional medicine has been quite happy to use for the last 50 years, and only now, only in the UK, has it been banned. This happens so frequently that no-one should consider any pharmaceutical drug or vaccine to be safe, regardless of what their doctors say.

If anyone, at this moment, is taking a pharmaceutical drug, be warned. The conventional medical establishment is not there for our safety, it is there to sell drugs - quite regardless of the harm they may cause us. The drug(s) YOU are taking, at THIS moment, may be the next drug that has to be banned!

New and Rare Childhood Diseases. Where do they come from? Alfie Evans, Alfie Dingley, Charlie Gard?

Anyone listening to the news at the moment will know about the plight of Alfie Evans. Indeed, children with rare and deadly childhood diseases seem to be regularly featured in the mainstream media (MSM) these days. I have written about two of them before, Charlie Gard in July 2017, and Alfie Dingley in February 2018. In these cases, and many others that we have not heard so much about, the situation appears to be similar, if not the same.

• The disease is new, rare, deadly, and often without previously being known.
• The cause of the disease is invariablyunknown to conventional medicine.
• There is no (conventional) medical treatment for the disease.

Usually, the discussion around each case is about life support and treatment, keeping the child alive, questioning whether the child might have more chance of getting better treatment outside the UK, with parents going through the courts, and taking on the medical establishment, in order to decide on such issues. The crucial and most important question, however, is never asked within conventional medicine or the MSM.

What is the cause of these new, rare and deadly diseases; and why is there no treatment?

Without asking this basic question it is likely that many more cases, involving different parents with as yet unborn babies, or as yet healthy young infants, will continue to happen. This latter point is important. Most of these children with these conditions are born normally, and developed normally for many months before being 'struck down' with the disease. Moreover, the symptoms of these 'new, rare and deadly' childhood diseases are often strangely similar, if not identical. They usually involve seizures, epilepsy, neurological damage and organ failure. So what are these rare childhood diseases, and how many of them are there?

Orphanet describes itself as "the portal for rare diseases and orphan drugs", and in answering the question about how many rare diseases there are says:

               'There are thousands of rare diseases. To date, six to seven thousand rare diseases have been discovered and new diseases are regularly described in medical literature. The number of rare diseases also depends on the degree of specificity used when classifying the different entities/disorders."

In answer to the question - what is the origin or cause of these rare diseases Orphanet says that some are genetic, some are 'rare forms' of infectious disease, such as auto-immune diseases and rare cancers, and that "to date, the cause remains unknown for many rare diseases." It says that most of them are serious, often chronic and progressive diseases, that signs may be observed at birth, but are more usually observed during infancy or childhood, and occasionally in adulthood.

The International Children's Palliative Care Network outlines just 10 of the 1,000's of these rare childhood diseases. This is how they they described them. In reading these short descriptions note the colour coding following in relation to their causation, symptoms and treatments.:

• most do not begin until infancy or later.
• many are nuero-degenerative conditions, and/or involve organ failure.
• usually no cause is mentioned, or the cause given is not a cause but a description of what is happening; or alternatively that the cause is 'inherited'' (Yet how can there be genetic causes when these are 'new diseases, and the parents, and previous family generations have not had the disease?)
• There is never any treatment or cure.

Batten Disease
This affects boys and girls. Symptoms ... usually start between the ages of 5 and 10 years, and include loss of vision or seizures. Over time there is a loss of muscle control and some wasting of brain tissue. Progressive sight loss and dementia occur. There is no treatment available to cure or slow the progression of Batten disease and it is always fatal, with death usually in the late teens or early twenties.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy
DMD affects the use of voluntary muscles in the body and is inherited, primarily affecting boys of all ethnic backgrounds. Normal development occurs initially but between the ages of 2 and 6 the affected child may have difficulty walking, running or climbing and struggle to lift their head due to a weak neck. Eventually the heart and breathing muscles are affected which leads to difficulty breathing, fatigue and heart problems due to an enlarged heart. Even with the best medical treatment young men with DMD seldom live beyond their early thirties.

CANDLE (Chronic Atypical Neutrophilic Dermatosis with Lipodystrophy and 
Elevated Temperature) Syndrome
This is a very rare autoinflammatory disease. It is an inherited, genetic condition. Patients have recurring fevers, beginning in infancy, which happen almost daily. They also present with delayed development, skin rashes and unique facial features such as thicker lips, swollen eyelids. Children develop swelling around the eye sockets, clubbing of fingers and toes and gradual enlargement of the liver. There is no effective therapeutic treatment for CANDLE syndrome and life expectancy is compromised with death often resulting from organ inflammation. Quality of life is also severely affected.

Childhood Interstitial Lung Disease or chILD
This is a broad term for a group of rare lung diseases that can affect babies, children and teens. The disease harms the lungs by damaging the tissues that surround the alveoli and bronchial tubes and sometimes the air sacs and airways. Lung function is decreased, blood oxygen levels reduced and the breathing process is disturbed. The disease has only been researched in the last decade and it is not
known how many children have each type of chILD. Severity differs according to the type of
the disease but can lead to early death. There is no cure.

Ehlers-Danlos syndromes
These are a group of genetic disorders which share common features including easy bruising, joint hypermobility, skin that stretches easily and weakness of tissues. Symptoms vary in severity according to the form of the disorder and treatment according to the particular manifestations present in the patient. Symptoms may also affect the autonomic nervous system used for breathing and urination.

Ellis Van Creveld syndrome
This is an inherited disorder due to an error on Chromosome 4 and is usually diagnosed at birth. Symptoms include short stature, short forearms and legs, extra fingers and toes, narrow chest with short ribs and malformed pelvis. 50–60% have a heart defect. Respiratory infections are common and about half those born with this syndrome die in early infancy.

Gaucher disease
Types 1, 2 and 3 is an inherited storage disorder where fatty substances build up to toxic levels in the spleen, liver, lungs, bone marrow and sometimes in the brain. It is genetically inherited and affects both boys and girls. Symptoms of Gaucher Type 2 begin in infancy, usually by 3 months and these children seldom live past 3 years of age.

Krabbe Disease
This has 4 subtypes, each beginning at different ages. Type 1 is the most common and begins between 3–6 months. It affects the nerve cells and causes nerve cell damage, leading to loss of use of muscles, increasing muscle tone, arching of the back and damage to vision and hearing. There is no cure or way to stop the disease once it is in full swing and babies with the Type 1 infantile form usually die by 13 months.

Neuroblastoma
This is a rare and aggressive childhood cancer of unknown cause. It usually affects children under the age of five, and can occur before a child is born, often spreading to other parts of the body before any symptoms become apparent. Long-term survival for children with advanced disease older than 18 months of age is poor and most of the survivors have long-term effects from the treatment.

Pompe disease
This is caused by a deficiency or lack of an enzyme, leading to the build-up of glycogen and has an infantile and late onset form. The former usually appears in the first few months of life where babies have trouble holding up their heads. The heart muscles become diseased and the heart becomes enlarged and weak. Babies with the infantile form usually die before their first birthday due to heart failure and respiratory weakness.

It is possible to read many more descriptions of these 'new' and 'rare' childhood diseases with similar symptoms. And it is important to note that many reflect the known 'side effects' of the DPT, MMR and other vaccines.

• I have written about the 'side effects' of the DPT vaccine here, taken from the PIL (the patient information leaflet that accompanies the vaccines) that I discovered several years ago. Have a look, and see the similarities!
• I have also written about the 'side effects' of the MMR vaccine here, again taken from the PIL leaflet. Have a look, and see the similarities!

Most other vaccines have similar side effects. This is because the problem with all vaccines is the mercury, the aluminium, and the other toxic metals and other ingredients that are used.

• So is the cause of these new, rare and deadly diseases really unknown? 
• Or is the causation known, but the conventional medical establishment do not wish to admit culpability? 

If this is so we can expect to hear about many more Alfie Dingley's, Alfie Evans', and Charlie Gard's in future. Whenever  conventional medicine says that the cause of an illness or disease is "not known", or when they give a description of a disease rather than a cause, or when diseases are described (dismissed?) as 'genetic', I smell a cover-up.

I cannot prove the link, and it is unlikely that the pharmaceutical companies will ever want to fund research into a possible link. Even if they do they will be able to ensure that the 'scientific' findings are favourable. Conventional medicine still pretends it does not know the cause of Autism, even though all the evidence points towards the link with vaccines (except for a few 'studies' funded by the drug companies).

So beware conventional medicine! Any parent who wishes to use the 'precautionary' principle with their children health are well advised to stay clear of childhood vaccines, and indeed vaccination at any age. If these 'rare' and 'deadly' diseases are caused by vaccines, they are certainly far worse than diphtheria, or whooping cough, or measles, or mumps, or rubella - or indeed any other childhood illness (all of which are more safely and effectively treated with homeopathy anyway).

POSTSCRIPT

2 MAY 2018
Four Months of Critical Information is Missing from Alfie Evans’ Timeline
I am not alone in harbouring suspicions about the origins of these cases, and the links with the vaccines conventional medicine insists on giving all our young children. This Vaccine Truth article looks at the known medical history of Alfie Evans, taken from court documents. The most important fact is that Alfie was healthy when he was born. His death, less than two years later, needs a satisfactory explanation, but the public records leaves important gaps. What Vaccine Truth have done in this article is to fill in the gaps by adding what usually happens to children - the normal vaccine schedule. 

 

PLEASE READ THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE, which goes into the detail. But the essential timeline is this.

• 9 May 2016. Alfie was born. It was said that “Alfie was a happy smiling baby who seemed to be perfectly well.”

• By 15 July 2016 the first evidence of an issue emerged. Alfie had a 'divergent squint'.

Between these two dates children usually receive the Pediacel or Infanrix IPV Hib, Preventer 13, Bexsero, Rotarix vaccine. Did Alfie have them? If so, why did the medical authorities not report it to the court? If he did not, will the medical authorities now confirm it. If they do so I will withdraw this blog.

• 15  September 2016 Alfie had his 4 month development check by which time "it was clear that M already had some concerns about her son's general development.

Between the last two dates, Alfie would have been scheduled to have two more vaccinations, the DPT vaccines. Again, this was not mentioned in the court documents. Did he have them? And if so, why did the medical authorities not report this? If he did not have them perhaps the medical authorities will confirm this (and again, I will pledge to withdraw this blog).

Killing a child with a vaccine that has been known for decades to damage young children, often leading to death, is one thing. To cover this up is another.

 

Everyone needs to know the truth!

Our Doctors and the consequences of the over-Prescription of Pharmaceutical Drugs. Will they ever tell us how many people conventional medicine kills?

How honest can our doctors be about the harm caused by the pharmaceutical drugs and  vaccines? It must be difficult for them to prescribe a drug for one condition, and then tell the patient they have acquired another disease, often a more serious disease, as a result of the 'side effects' of the drug. Even more difficult to tell the family that the drug has caused the patients death. I have no sympathy for them. Their 5 year training, plus their years of clinical experience, must have taught them that this is a possible consequence of conventional medicine.

So patients like you and me are prescribed drugs, and we get sicker. This blog has been making this point, consistently, for the past 9 years. It explains why doctors don't tell us, but it begs the question - how much longer are patients going to accept pharmaceutical drugs, and how long can doctors continue to refuse to tell us what too often is the outcome of conventional medicine?

I-News has recently informed us that the European Parliament in Brussels that some of Britain’s "top health experts" are concerned that the overprescription of pharmaceutical drugs is reaching epidemic levels, and that they believe this epidemic is causing excess deaths. They have asked for a thorough 'Chilcot style' inquiry over the tens of thousands of annual deaths they think these drugs cause.

               "They claim that millions of people are being prescribed medications for no good reason at all. Some of the focus drugs were statins, blood pressure medications, and type-2 diabetes drugs. They assert that these drugs do more harm than good, essentially pointing out that harm done via side-effects outweighs any benefits. And this, they say, is leading to a massive spike in deaths that could ultimately be avoided if there were more responsible prescribing."

Does that sound alarming? Does that sound like news that every single one of us needs to know? Might we not expect that this is something that should hit the headlines of our national media? That governments, the NHS, the Drug Regulators around the world, would want to tell us?

Yet what we get is silence! A deafening silence. It seems that we are not supposed to know, that our task is to continue taking the pills, regardless of the consequences. Conventional medicine does not work on the basis of either 'informed consent' or the 'precautionary principle'. Doctors tell us what we need, what is good for us, and we are expected to comply.

The I-News article goes on to mention a Cambridge University study that found that 50% of people over 65 years of age take a minimum of 5 drugs a day, up 12% from two decades ago. This study, at least, was reported by the Times, and I have blogged on the situation facing older people here, "It's us old people who are ruining the NHS".

               "When it comes to what’s killing people, heart disease and cancer are still topping the charts. However, overprescription of drugs has now moved into the 3 slot. In the UK, it is estimated that overprescribing of drugs is killing 125k to 150k people annually. That’s an insanely high number of people. While big pharma has been fined in the billions for all types of nefarious activity, they’ve hardly been called out as a supreme cause of what they claim to cure. Pharmaceutical companies easily pay fines and consistently operate under the guise that their misdeeds are by far overshadowed by all their good deeds. The thing is, 150,000 deaths a year in a country as small as the UK is now throwing salt in that play."

I-News then quotes Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and member of the Academy of Royal Colleges as saying that being an honest doctor doesn’t mesh with the new world of pharmaceutical prescribing, calling the current state of affairs an “epidemic of misinformation.”

               “After almost 17 years as a doctor, I have slowly and reluctantly come to the conclusion that honest doctors can no longer practice honest medicine. Poor quality research, influenced by vested interests has resulted in an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients leading to poor clinical outcomes and the unwitting practice of unethical medicine due to the lack of transparency in the prescription of medications, which are now estimated to be the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer.”

Doctors are one of the most trusted professionals throughout the world. Yet they are clearly not telling us the truth. Indeed, it is only by not telling the truth about pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that they can maintain their position - as the most trusted professional in the world!

Anyone for homeopathy, and alternative medicine?

What has gone wrong with conventional medicine? How can the continuous NHS Crisis be explained?

What has gone wrong with the NHS! 

Why are we getting sicker individually, and as a nation? 

Why are we suffering from increased levels of chronic disease? 

And why do we face a continual resource and funding crisis?

Regular readers of my blog will know my answer to this question. The NHS is dominated by conventional medicine, itself dominated by the pharmaceutical industry, its drugs and vaccines, which are not only ineffective, but cause more sickness and disease through their side effects, adverse drug reactions. In other words, conventional medical treatment is actually causing chronic disease at epidemic levels.

However, throughout the world the conventional medical establishment goes out of its way to deny this. Actually they do not have to 'deny' anything because their is a deafening silence from doctors, governments, and our 'free' press about this possibility. Everyone comes up with other reasons, inadequate reasons that do not, and cannot explain medical failure. The failure of the medical system that dominates health care is never spoken!

The NHS was established in 1948, its aim to provide the best healthcare for everyone in Britain. The same can be said for many other national health systems set up in other countries, most of them dominated by conventional medicine in much the same way.

Everywhere, not just Britain, the excuses for the bankruptingly high costs of medical treatment, the minimal effectiveness of the treatment provided, and the failure to cope with the ever-increased healthcare demands, is the same. Recently I found these eight explanations for the ongoing failure of the NHS in Britain, although I regret to say that I have lost the original source. None of them, singly or taken together, are adequate to explain what is going wrong with our drug-dominated health services.

• People’s expectations of the service has changed. Growth in demand for healthcare services and treatments overall as people’s expectations of the healthcare services changes

The implication of this explanation is that patient expectations have risen. Yet the expectations in 1948 were high. It was thought then that if people were provided with "the best healthcare available" the cost of the service would actually reduce over time. High expectations indeed! 

So is this an adequate explanation? If it is the fault lies with conventional medical establishment, at least in part. Barely a week goes by without some declaration being made about a new 'wonder' drug, a new 'miracle' cure, a treatment that will 'transform' our experience of one disease or another. Yet all that has happened over the 70 history of the NHS is that almost every chronic disease you wish to mention has grown to unprecedented, epidemic levels!

And the treatments offered have become ever more extreme. Conventional treatment, based on pharmaceutical drugs, cannot deal effectively with joint pain, the drugs used are toxic, so instead of treating a condition, the limb itself ultimately has to be replaced. Limb replacements operations are wonderful technical achievements, but they are necessary only because of medical failure. Similarly, conventional medicine cannot deal with progressive organ failure, so ultimately we now rely on surgeons to get rid of our diseased organs, and replace them with another. Again, brilliant technical achievements, each and every one, but based on medical failure.

So yes, expectations have risen. There are many more examples. Patients are offered, and then demand more of these kind of treatments, at enormous cost to the NHS. But is it good health care, based on an effective medical system?

• The population of the UK has grown by 5.7 million since 2004.

In 1948, the population of the UK was just over 50 million. In 2004 it was just over 59 million. In 2016 it was about 63.5 million. So, does a 30% rise in population over 70 years explain the exponential growth in NHS expenditure? This growth, averaging about 4% annually, can be seen in this Nuffield Trust webpage, both in terms of expenditure, and proportion of national income. Yet despite large annual increased spending on the NHS, it continually fails to cope with the increased levels of sickness and disease it faces.

• An ageing population is placing additional demands on services.

This reason is regularly cited by conventional medical spokespersons to explain the reason for NHS failures. I have blogged before about the NHS trying to place the blame for its constant state of crisis on older people. Increased levels of sickness are not confined to older people. And diseases that were once associated with old age, like cancer and dementia, are now affecting much younger people, including children.

• As the population of the UK has grown,  demand for GP services has increased. Often resulting in long waiting times for patients to see their GP, despite GP numbers increasing by 33% since 2004.

This is a description of the crisis, not an explanation for the crisis!

• Lack of patient engagement.

I am not sure why this should be an explanation for the continual crisis in NHS funding and performance. I suspect that conventional medicine gains the level of patient engagement that it asks for. Certainly, most alternative medical therapies ask for much more because treatment is considered to be a joint enterprise. Conventional doctors routinely rely on medical testing to diagnose and treat illness, tests that do not require patient engagement.

• More and more people have become reliant on prescription drugs for a 'quick fix'.

This is certainly true, not least because for decades the conventional medical establishment has implied that good health emanates from a bottle of pills, 'wonder' drugs, and 'miracle' cures.

• Too many people are relying on the NHS for self-treatable conditions. We no longer believe or understand that often simple changes to diet and lifestyle can have a positive impact on our health and help us take control of our own health.

Good health has always been largely in our own hands, and this is recognised by all alternative medical therapies. It has been the arrogance of conventional medicine alone that has taught people to believe that doctors can cure ill-health. Now, when most of the pills are not working, and/or they are known to be harmful to our health, this understanding is returning - and the medical establishment wants to blame patients!

• Rising levels of complex chronic diseases and conditions that require long-term management of chronic disease

The rising levels of chronic disease and conditions is the main symptom of conventional medical failure. At least this reason recognises that there has been a significant rise in chronic disease throughout the years of conventional medicine's domination of health care services. 

The tragedy of presenting this as one of the reasons for the continuous failure of the NHS is its failure to recognise that the rise of chronic disease has been caused by conventional medicine, and in particular by the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, it has championed. By denying this association the conventional medical establishment abandons any hope, and chance of putting the situation right.

Making these lame excuses for medical failure prevents the conventional medical establishment from investigating and understanding the real reason for medical failure. 

So conventional medicine can, and will never learn! 

Ultimately, conventional medicine is doomed to failure, its only option to continue making demands for more resources, more money, more of everything - for more of the same treatments that have been making us sicker for over 70 years.

It's us OLD PEOPLE who are ruining the NHS! We should all be ashamed of ourselves for being so sick!

The NHS is in crisis. It always needs more resources. 
And when asked why it cannot manage, why every part of the NHS is failing to cope with patient demand, we are told that it is because of an ageing population. 
So, all you old people, it is YOU who are to blame! 
Or are we?

Old People Get Cancer

Yes, I can remember the time when cancer was considered to be a disease of old age. But no longer. Young children now get cancers of all kinds and descriptions. So do adults. It has been reported, for example, that 'young onset' colon cancer has quadrupled in the last 20 years, and in this Natural News article the prediction for the future is worse.

               "These numbers are only expected to get worse; calculations in a 2014 study show colon cancer cases rising by a frightening 90 percent among those aged 20 to 34 by 2030."

So its not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause cancer?

Old People get Dementia

Dementia, in all its guises, has been increasing rapidly, especially during the last 40 years, and this is another major reason for conventional medicine demanding more and more resources. Yet it is also recognised that this disease is now affecting younger people, to the extent that it has been described as 'the silent epidemic'.
The Alzheimers Research UK states that ever-increasing numbers of people, in their 40's, 50's and 60's, who are now contracting 'early onset' dementia.

               "Although often thought of as a disease of older people, around 4% of people with Alzheimer’s are under 65."

So its not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause dementia?

The term 'early onset', even 'young onset',  is now widely used within the conventional medical establishment! I did a quick web search and came up quickly with

• Menopause, 
• Osteoarthritis, 
• Scoliosis, 
• Parkinson's, 
• Intra-Uterine Growth, 
• neonatal group B streptococcal disease, 
• and many more.

All these 'early onset' diseases were once thought to affect older people, but they now affect younger people. And each one costs the NHS money and resources. Yet there is rarely, if ever, an adequate explanation for these 'early onset' diseases that were once associated almost exclusively with old age.

So it's not just old age, something else must be happening. For instance, do pharmaceutical drugs cause ALL these 'early onset' diseases? For instance,

• do they cause Osteoporosis? 
• do they cause Parkinson's? 

Is it the hugely increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is causing increased levels of illness in older people, and now in much younger people? And don't just take my word for linking these increased levels of chronic disease with pharmaceutical drugs. The evidence is in conventional medical literature, as all the above links demonstrate

Conventional Medicine and the medical treatment of older people

So what is the NHS, and conventional medicine around the world, doing to treat older people? Well, we are all getting a lot more pharmaceutical drugs. A Cambridge University study has found that almost half of over-65s in England are taking at least five different drugs every day. This was reported in the Telegraph in November 2017. The study found that this figure had risen from 12% only 20 years earlier. Moreover, the proportion of older people who were taking no drugs had dropped from about 20% in the late 1990s to 7% now. 

So why don't we benefit from these drugs? If doctors prescribe them to us when we are sick, why aren't we getting better. Isn't that what we take drugs for?

               "Researchers expressed concern at the increasing dependence on prescription and over-the-counter medicines - known as 'polypharmacy'. Studies show polypharmacy can increase the dangers of interactions between different drugs and the risk of frailty in older patients. It's feared many patients are left on medications long-term without thorough or regular GP reviews."

The article went on to express concerns that many of these drugs were

1. unnecessary, 
2. that the dangers of harmful drug interactions was increased, and 
3. there was the increased risk of death. 

It added that a Spanish study in 2015 had found that older people who were taking six medicines or more daily were nearly three times more likely to die prematurely than those on no drugs at all!
Death is not the problem, its the illness caused by drugs
Yet for the NHS, and its continuous financial crisis, it is not 'death' that is the problem! Death means we are no longer a problem, no longer a charge to them.

The crisis of the NHS, and conventional medicine generally, arises from the serious illnesses and diseases that are known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs, the ones that actually DON'T kill us. It seems that we oldies regularly take 5 or 6 or more drugs, plus an annual flu vaccination. They don't make us better. But we do suffer from their side affects, the adverse drug reactions, and the serious illness and disease drugs and vaccines are known to cause.

The drugs our doctors give us, ostensibly to make us better, are actually making us sicker, more dependent, less able to live independent lives. So we become a continual drain on NHS resources. 

The more pharmaceutical drugs we take, the more care we need, and the more resources the NHS need to spend on us. So they can give us even more drugs and vaccines, which in turn make us even sicker, and even more dependent.

So it is no wonder we old people are a drain on NHS resources!

And the problem is that we just won't die, indeed we are getting younger! The 'old' people who 'need' medical care are actually getting younger, and younger, and younger. Is it any wonder that the NHS keeps running out of resources?

So excuse me if I opt out of this race for more and more conventional medical care. Allow me to progress through my old age without drugs and vaccines.

Instead, let me stay healthy by saying "No, thanks" to the pharmaceutical industry. They wanted to give me drugs for gastric ulcers, then for migraines, then for heart palpitations. Instead, I used homeopathy, and I no longer suffer from any of these conditions.

Older age has much to recommend it - 
as long as you stay away from conventional medicine!

The Failure of Conventional Medicine. An invitation to read an e-book that explains in detail why conventional medicine is failing, causing so much harm to our health, and yet most people remain entirely unaware

I wrote the first edition of this e-book, 'The Failure of Conventional Medicine' over 10 years ago. This new, revamped and updated version is now available. Go to the link now, and take time to read the full, alarming story.

Over the years this blog has dealt with many aspects of this alarming medical failure, but inevitably it does so in snippets, in small bite-size pieces that alone can never cover the full picture. So the Failure of Conventional Medicine

• defines what 'conventional medicine' is - a form of medical treatment dominated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.
• provides a brief history of conventional medicine, and why during the 20th century it came to dominate medical practice to the extent that it does now.
• describes the core of the failure of conventional medicine - that rather than working alongside the body, and its brilliant self-healing mechanism, it declares war on it.
• outlines how we can witness the failure: the dangerous banned drugs, how they have created illness through their side effects, the epidemic levels of chronic disease, and the continual crises through which modern medicine passes.
• looks at how the failure of conventional medicine has been kept from us, why it is that we continue to spend £billions on it every year, and still want more of it - that profits of an industry that bought political influence, subverted medical science and drug regulation, and silenced the mainstream media.
• examines how the modern drug culture has developed, and how this, supported by corruption and fraud, has led to the domination of conventional medicine within national health services around the world.

Sometime in the future, probably the not-too-distant future, the failure of conventional medicine will become clear and obvious, and future generations will wonder how we ever got into the position we now find ourself. 

• Patients are being made sick in their millions, and are being killed in their thousands, by a form of medicine we take in the belief that it will make us better. 
• So we spend £billions every year to enable this to happen, so we get sicker, so more money is required, and successive governments are happy to provide it - because we want it and we vote for it! 
• We are even prepared to work and run and cycle and swim to provide more money for health charities in order to support a medical system that makes us ill.
• Generally, and as individuals, we are sicker now than we have ever been. After a century of conventional medicine illness and disease of all kinds has never been more rife.

Why? It's a long story, and the book is a long read, but a necessary one if we are not to be overwhelmed with ever-increasing levels of sickness and disease. Start here, take your time, take it all in. Let me know if you think I am wrong. It could be the key to a more healthy future for you and your family.

THE FAILURE OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

Autism, Mercury and Vaccines. 80 scientific studies have proven the link. But doctors still insist that the cause of 1 in 36 children being autistic is "unknown"!

The discussion about the association between Autism and Mercury is ongoing. However, it is ongoing only because of the malign influence of the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

I get tired of writing about the evidence that clearly links Autism and Vaccines (not just the MMR vaccine; not just vaccines that contain mercury, but also those that contain aluminium). Eventually, those who are responsible for allowing it to happen must be held to account.

•  The evidence that links them is either ignored or denied by Big Pharma.
•  The evidence is censored by the mainstream media. 
•  National Health Services have been infiltrated and are dominated by conventional medicine.
•  And politicians and governments know where their financial interests lie!

It is now estimated that 1 in 36 children in the USA are now somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and the figure is not much less now in Britain, Europe, Australasia - anywhere in fact where there is a high level of vaccine updake.

So what is the cause of this epidemic? The conventional medical establishment claims it does not know. It is a complete mystery to them. The British NHS tells us about their perplexity.

               "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."

So it may come as a surprise to all our conventional doctors, who encourage us to vaccinate, but do not know the cause of autism, that there are now over 80 independent studies that have proven the association between autism and the vaccine preservative, thimerosal. If anyone wants a rather long read these 80 plus studies are all summarised on this World Mercury Project webpage.

Note the word 'independent' here! There are other studies that deny the link, but these have all been funded by the pharmaceutical industry. It would appear that they can always find 'scientists' who can come up with the 'right' result in their 'randomised controlled test (RCT) studies.

So whilst the conventional medical establishment is perplexed, whilst medical science, national health services, politicians and governments, and our news media, are not prepared to accept the evidence that is screaming at them, parents remain in the dark, and will continue to take their children for routine vaccinations - only to discover, soon afterwards, that they become the parents of damaged children. And that conventional medicine is unable to do anything about the damage.

WHERE ELSE WOULD THIS BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN? Try to buy something, anything that is likely to kill or injure you, or try to do something that is potentially dangerous. Our 'health and safety' regulations will soon appear to protect us. Moreover, the regulations will be there to protect us even when there is the merest suspicion that something might be dangerous. This is based on 'the precautionary principle', and for this to apply there is usually no need for 80 scientific studies. The exception, of course, is when the threat comes from our conventional health system.

Indeed, politicians and governments in parts of the USA, Australia and Europe politicians want to make vaccination mandatory, and force those who recognise the danger to get vaccinated!

In time we will look back at this time, the last 70 years and more, in amazement. How was it possible, why was it allowed to happen, that so many young people were damaged for life, that there was so much scientific evidence about the cause, yet this was all denied by the medical establishment, that it was allowed to go on for so long - because of immensely powerful vested interests.

The only question is - how much human damage is the pharmaceutical industry going to be allowed to do before they are stopped, and the corruption that underlies it uncovered?

Patient Outcomes. The most important test for patients in choosing a medical treatment for their illness is that they get better, and get better quickly.

This article was first published in my e-book "Why Homeopathy?" which compares the conventional medical treatment available for a variety of specific illnesses and diseases with homeopathic treatment.

The most important consideration any sick patient has, when seeking medical treatment for their illness, is that they get better, and to get better safely, without being harmed.

It almost seems too trite to make such an obvious remark, but whenever patients seek medical treatment they not only have choices to make, those choices vary in terms of both effectiveness, and safety of the treatments available. Yet it is important to do so. Too often patients are told that conventional medicine provides the best treatment, the only 'scientifically proven' treatment. And even when conventional medicine has no treatment, and admits that it has no treatment for an illness, it routinely fails to mention that there are alternative medical therapies. This is so even when the illness is known to be terminal.

So how can patients determine what is the best treatment for them. The first prerequisite is to understand that when doctors say "there is no treatment" for a condition what they mean is that there is no conventional treatment! The second is that the patient should understand that conventional medicine normally does not mention any alternative treatment offered by an alternative therapy! The third is to understand how conventional medicine, and homeopathy, test their treatments for both effectiveness and safety.

Randomised Controlled Tests (RCT's)

Conventional medicine uses these tests to ascertain whether its drugs and vaccines are effective an safe. They describe these tests as 'the gold standard' of science. All pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines have been tested using RCT procedures, now required by all drug regulator agencies around the world.

Yet even some members of the conventional medical establishment now recognise the limitations of RCT's. For instance, Sir Michael Rawlings, for many years chair of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, criticised, and pointed out their limitations when giving the Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians in 2008. 

Ben Goldacre has gone further, in his book "Bad Pharma" where he wrote about how the results of RCT's can be manipulated and skewed by a variety of factors, including dishonesty and fraud in the science of drug testing.

Yet the main problem of RCT's is that they have been unable to prevent both ineffective and dangerous pharmaceutical drugs being used with patients. This is best demonstrated by the large number of pharmaceutical drugs that have been banned and withdrawn over recent years, after being put through the process of randomised controlled tests

IF RCT's are really the 'gold standard' in drug testing, why is it that they have consistently failed to discover that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are both ineffective and unsafe for patients?

Yet this continues to be what is claimed for them by the conventional medical establishment, and it is the basis of their criticism of homeopathy, which uses a different process for determining the effectiveness of a remedy, and a sure-safe way of ensuring that all its remedies are safe.

Homeopathic Provings

Homeopathy does not use RCT's. Homeopathy works on the principle of  'Like curing Like', that is, a substance known to cause the  symptoms of illness in a fit and healthy individual can cure those same symptoms in a sick person. As a result, over the last 220 years, homeopathy has undertaken what it calls 'provings' on the many thousands substances that form the basis for its remedies. In these provings, a substance is given to fit and healthy volunteers, who note the symptoms the substance produce.

Moreover, because homeopathy has discovered that the therapeutic action of a substance in increased by diluting and succussing them, a process known as potentisation, it means that they can be given to patients in dilutions, or potencies, that do not harm them. Indeed, the potentisation process means that remedies are usually given to patients without there being any 'chemically active' ingredient left which makes them entirely safe for patients to take. There are, in other words, no side effects to homeopathic treatment.

Although homeopathy has no need to RCT test their remedies for either safety or effectiveness, there has to date been nearly 500  scientific studies into the effectiveness of homeopathy, many of them using RCT procedures, undertaken because they are a means of ensuring patients can recognise that homeopathy is effective using the techniques of conventional medicine.

Clinical Outcomes

So which is best proof or safety and effectiveness, RCT's or homeopathic provings? To answer this properly it is important to return to what patients want, described at the top of the page. What patients want is a good outcome, that is, they get better, and they get better safely, undamaged by the treatment. Neither RCT's or Homeopathic Provings can determine which is best as they both test drugs / remedies before they are given to patients.

What is needed to determine this are properly conducted comparative studies, studies that look into the patient outcomes of various medical therapies. Such studies have been too rarely done within most national health services, which are dominated by conventional drug-based medicine. 

Patients love Homeopathy! Big Pharma, the Conventional Medical Monopoly, and the NHS hate it!

Patients love homeopathy, when they are able to access it. This has been demonstrated over and over again in clinical outcome trials, and observational studies, conducted around the world. In these patients were asked whether they enjoyed and/or benefitted from the experience of being treated with homeopathy for their illness. Here are just a few of the studies.

2000. Carlisle, Cumbria
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.518.4702&rep=rep1&type=pdf
An  audit  was  conducted  of  829  consecutive  patients  presenting  for  homeopathic treatment  of  a  chronic  illness,  conventional  treatment  had  either  failed,  plateaued  in effect, or was contraindicated by adverse effects, age or condition of the patient. Of  the  829  patients,  503  (61%)  had  a  sustained  improvement  from  homeopathic treatment, of these:

• 357 patients (43%) had an excellent response;
• 146 patients (18%) had a good response;
• 6 patients (0.8%) became worse.

2001. Liverpool, England

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11479784

An Outcome Survey carried out at Liverpool Regional Department of Homoeopathic Medicine between 1 June 1999 and 31 May 2000. If found that overall 76.6% of patients reported an improvement in their conditions since starting homeopathic treatment, while 60.3% scored +2,+3 or +4 on the scoring system used. 52% of patients were able to reduce their conventional medication.

2005. Bristol Homeopathic Hospital, England
https://www.britishhomeopathic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/JACM_11_5_p793-798.pdf
The aim of this study was to assess health changes seen in routine homeopathic care for patients
with a wide range of chronic conditions . It was was a 6-year outpatient study. Over 70% of patients with chronic diseases, often of many years duration, said they had improved with the homeopathic treatment. 6,544 patients were involved in the study and 70.7% reported positive health changes with 50.7% recording their improvement as better or much better.

2005. Sheffield, England
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15970019

Sheffield's National Health Service community menopause clinic ran a homeopathy service from 1998. The service provided alternative treatment option for those women who cannot take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), did not want it, found it ineffective, or were advised to stop it. Patients received homeopathic treatment for up to six sessions, and patients referred between 2001 and 2003 were involved in this study. Patients reported 'significant benefit' from the service, with the greatest benefit seen in patients reporting headaches, vasomotor symptoms, emotional/psychological symptoms and tiredness/fatigue as their primary symptoms.

2005. Norway
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15751329
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the patient reported effects of homeopathic care 6 months after first consultations. It found that 7 out of 10 patients visiting a Norwegian homeopath reported "a meaningful improvement" in their main complaint 6 months after the initial consultation.

2006. UK NHS Research
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17015190
Over a 6 month period, 14 homeopathic physicians collected clinical and outcomes data in their practice setting. Almost 80% of the 958 patients who had two or more appointments reported  a 'positive outcome'.

2008. Germany and Switzerland
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630323/
In a multi-centre study, information was collected from 3,079 first-time patients from 103 different centres across Germany and Switzerland. The patients were observed over an 8 year period, and it was found that

• On average, disease severity decreased dramatically and improvements were sustained
• Those who were sickest at the beginning of the study often noticed the greatest improvement
• Three in ten patients stopped treatment because of major improvement
• Mental and physical quality of life scores increased substantially
• Children improved more rapidly than adults

The conclusion of the study was that the findings demonstrated that patients who seek homeopathic treatment were likely to improve considerably, although this effect must not be attributed to homeopathic treatment alone, and that the effects persisted for 8 years.

2008. Switzerland
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/8/52/abstract
This study was conducted by the Swiss government. It main objective was to investigate patient satisfaction and perception of side effects in homeopathy compared with conventional care in a primary care setting. The conclusion reached was that overall patient satisfaction was significantly higher in homeopathic than in conventional care. Homeopathic treatments were perceived as a low-risk therapy with two to three times fewer side effects than conventional care

2008. Northern Ireland
http://www.australiannaturaltherapistsassociation.com.au/downloads/news/2009/SMR-Report_CAM-Pilot-Scheme.pdf
This was a study undertaken by the Northern Ireland Government following a pilot study in which patients were allowed access to a variety of CAM therapies. The study involved 713 patients and found that alternative and complementary therapies offered significant health benefits for patients, and savings in government healthcare costs. Many therapies, such as acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, reflexology, massage and aromatherapy were used, but homeopathy did the best of all.

2008. British Homeopathic Hospitals
Five_hospital_study_2008.pdf
In a pilot study published in 2008, data from 1,602 follow-up patient appointments at all five NHS homeopathic hospitals were collected together over a one month period. At just their second homeopathic appointment, 34% of follow-up patients reported an improvement that affected their daily living. For patients at their sixth appointment, the corresponding improvement rate was 59%.

2011. Germany
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2958565/?tool=pubmed
This postal survey was sent to parents in 2004 in collaboration with ... the German Childhood Cancer Registry). The study included all parents in Germany with a child under the age of 15 years diagnosed in 2001 with one of the diseases registered and systematically recorded by the GCCR. The conclusion of the study was that homeopathy is the most frequently used complementary therapy in pediatric oncology in Germany, that most parents had used homeopathy before the cancer, and would further recommend homeopathy to others in a similar situation.

2012. Dorset NHS, England
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22226315
A study at the Dorset NHS Community Homeopathy Clinic led to 84% of patients experiencing an improvement in their health with 81% saying it was due to the homeopathy. A wide variety of conditions were seen, the greatest in incidence being depression, anxiety and grief. iii

2014. Lanarkshire NHS, Scotland
http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/Involved/consultation/homoeopathy/Documents/NHS%20Lanarkshire%20Review%20of%20Homoeopathy%20Services%20Final%20Consultation%20Report.pdf
This was a public consultation exercise following a proposal to stop referring patients to the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital. In response to the question “Should NHS Lanarkshire refer patients to the Centre for Integrative Care (Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital), 80.6% of the responses of nearly 6,000 people was 'Yes'. It was an overwhelming vote in support of homeopathy.

The decision, typical of the conventional medical establishment, was to stop referring patients to the Homeopathic hospital!

2018. India
https://www.homeobook.com/90-people-trust-homeopathy-imrb-international-study/
This study was conducted in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Kolkata. It found that 90% of people perceived homeopathy as a trusted form of treatment, and its usage is higher than any other form of treatment. Among homeopathy users, 91% were satisfied with the treatment and 93% were willing to recommend homeopathy to others.

And it is catching too! In March 2018, one regional Indian government, where homeopathy is offered to patients, reported that there was a rise of 50% in the number of people seeking homeopathy treatment in the past five years.

There are many, many more of these studies. Whenever it is offered, wherever it is available, patients like homeopathy, and benefit from it. Yet everywhere homeopathy is under attack, not only from the conventional medical establishment, but from the mainstream media too. Wherever public money is being spent on homeopathy within national health service provision there are moves to stop it, regardless of whether patients want it or not.

What this demonstrates is that it is only the conventional medical establishment, and the powerful pharmaceutical lobby that dislikes homeopathy, and want desperately to restrict our access to it. You don't really need to ask why, do you? They are protecting their vested interests, their dominance in national health services in Britain, the USA, Australia, and most other countries around the world.


POST SCRIPTS
2017. More evidence from this German survey. It showed that 70% of German patients were satisfied, or very satisfied, with the efficacy of homeopathy. The German population believed that health insurance companies should cover and reimburse homeopathic treatments.

 

2021. Two more studies from Germany that show the patients love homeopathy, when they give it a chance.

Opioid Addiction. The disastrous failure of painkilling drugs

Opioid Addiction in the USA if rife, and there are concerns that a similar situation may arise in Britain, and other countries where conventional medicine, with its reliance on painkillers, dominates health care. The addiction kills - drug overdose, arising from addiction, is now a leading cause of 'accidental' death.

Opioids drugs are made from opium, and 'work' by stimulating the brain's opiate receptors. In other words, they trigger 'pleasure receptors' in the brain, which makes them drugs to which people can easily become addicted, and in time requiring more powerful drugs as the body begins to tolerate them.

In the US alone, 42,000 people have died from opioid addiction, and another 2.1 million became addicts, in 2016. Opioid drugs are prescribed by conventional medical doctors under names such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, buprenorphine, with more commonly as fentanyl, codeine, morphine, and tramadol.

Conventional medicine is dependent on these opioid drugs in palliative care, after major surgery, and serious accidents. But they are also used frequently for more common conditions - as painkillers for back pain and similar.

The problem for doctors is that whilst they might know how dangerous they are, they have nothing safer to prescribe They know that they should not be used on a long-term basis (for any more than a few days) but they do. Faced with a patient in chronic pain, when there is nothing else in their medicine cupboard, doctors feel obliged to prescribe them. Other painkilling drugs, like NSAIDs, are not so 'effective' in killing pain, and in any case they too come with serious side effects that patients are not told about. So doctors continue to prescribe them, and patients become addicted to them. Or alternatively, doctor's refuse to prescribe them and addicted patients go on to obtain heroin, illegally, on the black market.

Opioid prescription has soared in recent decades, and alongside this the rates of addiction and death by overdose have increased proportionately. The statistics coming out of the USA are devastating.  Overdose deaths caused by painkillers have risen by more than 300% since 1999, and it is estimated that more than 12 million Americans used prescription drugs for 'non-medical' reasons in 2010. In just three years, deaths from opioid drugs have risen from 3,000 to over 20,000 in just three years, and this carnage is expected to continue, devastating the lives of huge numbers of people and their families.

Whilst doctors have little else to offer, and in any case most of them are too busy attacking alternative medical therapies to find safer and more effective treatment, the evidence is that pharmaceutical companies have not only profited from selling them, but promoted them aggressively. They said that the addictive properties of opioid drugs were not really as bad as believed, so they could be used more widely, and for longer periods.

In other words, Big Pharma used their normal marketing strategy - minimising the risks of their drugs addiction - and exaggerating their benefits.

So we have the rather strange situation of a society that bemoans the use of 'illegal' drugs, and the human devastation caused, but allows drug companies to advertise, promote and profit from 'legal' drugs that are indistinguishable from them! Drug pushers who do not have a conventional  medical qualification are pursued and prosecuted, but pharmaceutical companies are allowed to push similar drugs because they are used for 'medical' purposes. The outcome of both is human tragedy.

Yet perhaps the tide is turning, there are now moves to prosecute the pharmaceutical pushers. One Natural News article states that "Settlement talks have begun in opioid lawsuits against Big Pharma with over 250 cases have been brought against multiple companies". This would certainly be well deserved, but the drug companies will probably pay their way out of this legal crisis - they usually do. We will see.

The conventional medical establishment is aware of the problem. An article in The Lancet, 24 February 2018, outlines the seriousness of the situation. Yet there is no proportionate response forthcoming. If road deaths, and accidents at work, were killing as many people as opioid drugs (as well as other pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines) health and safety measures would swing into effect. Decisive action would be expected, demanded, and the public authorities would be obliged to respond. But not in health, not if it affects the pharmaceutical industry. The Lancet article does not ask for action, there has been no call to ban these drugs, just their more responsible prescribing behaviour by doctors.

If the precautionary principle were to be applied to this situation pharmaceutical drugs would be immediately banned.

So will the USA opioid crisis be exported to Britain? The MIMS magazine clearly thinks so, in its article "Long-term opioid prescribing increasing despite questionable efficacy", which states that opioid prescribing in England increased from 2010 to 2014 despite these drugs have been shown, in a study published by the British Journal of General Practice, to be "ineffective in the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain". So the devastation caused by opioid drugs continues - even though doctors have been told that the drugs are of 'questionable efficacy'.

Patient Harm without any corresponding Patient Benefit!

Yet there is worse. Pharmaceutical companies have actually been paying (bribing) doctors to prescribe opioid drugs. This was reported by CNN, a USA news agency that is usually very friendly towards conventional medicine. Alongside Harvard University they found that opioid manufacturers, the drug companies, have been paying doctors huge sums of money to prescribe the drugs, and the more opioids a doctor prescribed, the more money he or she makes!

               "In 2014 and 2015, opioid manufacturers paid hundreds of doctors across the country six-figure sums for speaking, consulting and other services. Thousands of other doctors were paid over $25,000 during that time. Physicians who prescribed particularly large amounts of the drugs were the most likely to get paid."

In a What Doctors Don't Tell You (WDDTY) article another suggestion is made, that the opioid epidemic has been fuelled by doctors "who have forgotten just how many prescriptions they have written out to patients"! It states that around 65% of doctors working in hospital emergency units are under-estimating the number of prescriptions they are writing, that emergency unit doctors write up to 10% of all opioid prescriptions, and researchers think a similar under-estimation could be seen among other doctors as well. These findings cam from a year-long survey whose lead researcher is quoted as say that
               "Most believe they are doing the right thing, but we need to directly address this thinking to be sure they are not part of the problem"

So we are left with a conundrum. 

Do doctors know what they are doing and get paid for doing it? Or are they just rather forgetful? 

Either way, as usual, it is the patient who submits to conventional medicine who suffers!

NHS in Crisis (Summer 2018)

The NHS is in crisis again. It has come under 'unprecedented' pressure this winter, with Accident & Emergency attendances, waiting times and admissions rising to alarming levels. These are the words of the British Medical Association, the professional association and registered trade union for doctors in Britain. who undertake regular analyses on pressure points within the NHS. Today, after the 'unprecedented' winter of 2017-2018, they have highlighted "several worrying trends as spiraling demand outstrips the ability of services to cope" which predicts that the annual winter crisis is set to become one that goes on into the summer. Apparently, the crisis has become a constant, ongoing one!

               "Based on current trends, our assessment is that rather than experiencing the customary fall in pressures this summer, the NHS will experience similar levels of demand and activity this summer as it did in the winter of just two or three years ago."

I have written much about the annual winter crisis within the NHS. My most recent blog was written in November 2017, predating this winter's crisis, and referencing all the other blogs I have published over the years. My argument remains the same.

• The NHS crisis is MEDICAL.
• It concerns the failure of conventional medicine to help sick people become better.
• It concerns the side effects, or more accurately, the 'disease-inducing-effects', of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - which are making us sicker - and which have led to the epidemic levels of chronic sickness and diseases from which we now suffer.

Once this cause of the NHS crisis is understood the future can be confidently predicted. Conventional medicine will continue to fail to make sick people well. Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines will continue to make us sicker, epidemic rises in levels of chronic sickness and disease will continue. And all this quite regardless of the money spent on the NHS.

Yet when the crisis in the NHS is discussed, it is always a plea for more money, more resources, more of everything. And with every ensuing year the government is obliged to respond by investing more money into the NHS. This money is spent on MORE conventional medicine, MORE pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, in fact MORE of the very things that are producing the ongoing health crisis.

Conventional medicine has to find a scapegoat for this failure, a reason for the crisis that deflects attention from its performance. This scapegoat is always older people.  The crisis, we are told, is caused by an ageing population, who are placing 'unprecedented' pressures on the NHS, and its ability to cope. 

This is nonsense too. Cancer is no longer just a disease of old age. Dementia is now affecting people in their 30's, 40's and 50's. Organ and limb transplants are needed by every younger generations. And the same can be said for every epidemic of chronic disease from which we are suffering today. Indeed, our babies, our children, our young people are now sicker than they ever were prior to the inauguration of the NHS.

So what is the BMA now predicting. They present their 'best case scenario' for the coming summer as follows:

• 5.89million attendances at A&E.
• 613,000 people waiting over 4 hours at A&E.
• Only 89.6% of patients seen, admitted or discharged within four hours.
• 1.51million emergency admissions.
• 127,000 trolley waits of four or more hours.

So conventional medicine is now predicting that the NHS crisis will now extend into the summer. Many more £billions are going to be spent over this period, but even so, the BMA, a leading doctor's organisation, is resigned to a winter crisis extending throughout the entire year. 

The BMA is predicting a medical crisis, but failing to recognise the medical cause of the crisis.

The NHS is running out of money, doctors, nurses, and resources of every conceivable kind. Every specialism is saying that they could cope with the increased demand - but only if they are given lots more money. But when conventional doctors get lots more money (for instance, the NHS budget was tripled between 1997 and 2010) the crisis continues - regardless!

What follows has not yet been written.......................................

This is a space reserved for comments on what happens within the NHS during April, May, June, July and August 2018.

My prediction of what will fill that space is based on my interpretation of the NHS crisis, as follows:

• The crisis will continue because conventional medicine will continue to fail to make sick people better, as it has always done.
• The crisis will continue because pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines will continue to make people even sicker, and add to the epidemic levels of chronic disease.

Is there anyone out there who dares to predict anything else?