MEDICAL SCIENCE. It provides the 'evidence base' for conventional medicine. But is drug testing honest?

On the same day that the UK government announced in its budget an increase of £20 billion for the NHS, it was reported that "Unpublished medical research is "a threat to public health". Apparently this is the conclusion of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which says that important information about the efficacy of new drugs and treatments are going unpublished, posing a risk to health. It goes on to say that

               "... despite repeated warnings, not enough is being done to make sure the results of all clinical trials are reported".

Medical science is supposed to provide the "evidence base' for conventional medicine, dominated as it is by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Yet it is accused, here, of failing to make public all the available evidence from all clinical trials - and that this has been going to for a long time - despite repeated warnings.

Repeated warnings?

The modern system of drug regulation, and drug testing regimes, began soon after the pharmaceutical industry was forced to recognise that one of its drugs, Thalidomide, had caused devastating harm to hundreds of babies in the 1950's and 1960's. In future, drug regulation would safeguard patients from dangerous drugs that were harmful to our health.

YET THE FACT IS THAT SINCE THE 1960'S DRUG AFTER DRUG HAS BEEN  PASSED BY DRUG REGULATORS, AND PRESCRIBED TO PATIENTS, ONLY TO CAUSE SO MUCH HARM THEY HAD EVENTUALLY TO BE BANNED!

Withholding information means that evidence indicating that a new drug is harmful is not published. Even our doctors do not know. They prescribe drugs to patients - ignorant of the evidence of harm that may be caused. Only the pharmaceutical companies, and the medical 'scientists' know about this, and it is in the business interests, and their profits. that they decide that we are not to be told.

Yet the situation is far worse than just the withholding of information. Information about the harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs is hidden from view in lots of other ways. I have written about this in more detail in "Drug Regulation and Medical Science", emphasising the reasons why conventional medicine is not scientific, why drug regulation is ineffective, and why it does not provide an 'evidence base' that safeguards patients. In summary, this is what is known:

• The financial rewards of a 'successful' drug mean that drug companies are reluctant to admit any 'negative' information.
• Drug Regulation agencies, throughout the world, are now dominated by people who have a vested interest in the pharmaceutical industry. In effect, they have been 'captured' by drug company place-men.
• The funding of drug trials is predominantly done by the pharmaceutical industry, with all the problems 'cheque-book science' brings with it.
• they select the scientists
• they make it known that if scientists want further work drug companies require the 'correct' result.
• The manipulation of drug test results is also a problem. The way this is done was outlined in Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Pharma", and summarised and extended in my ebook. My summary is as follows

               "Goldacre ... is ...setting out what has long been recognised about what constitutes a properly and honestly constructed randomised trial. All medical scientists know this but quite regardless have chosen to conduct the trials in the way (he) describes. Perhaps these 'scientists' will argue that they had to, even though they must have been quite aware that they were 'massaging' the test results in favour of the drug companies."

• Withholding 'negative' tests results is then covered, and in my book I provide several examples of when this has been done, involving drugs like Vioxx, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Fosamax, Neurontin, Avandia, et al. Some of these cases date back to the early 2000's so it is little wonder that the House of Commons report talks about 'repeated warnings'!

There is more dishonesty though. I go on to deal with drug companies secretly pulling out of studies that are producing the 'wrong' results. And the 'favourable' interpretation of test data. And the lack of any checks on the honesty and integrity of published medical science.

So why is it that nothing happen? Why will this House of Commons report, like similar reports, make any difference? Why has Ben Goldacre's book (published back in 2012) made no difference to the way medical science operates? Why does the dishonesty and corruption, outlined in my 'Failure of Conventional Medicine' ebook, continue to be ignored by politicians and the media?

And why do we continue to insist on spending more money on an NHS dominated by pharmaceutical 

drug and vaccine treatment? An extra £20 billion for the NHS? To spend on the same medical treatment that has consistently failed to cope with the health demands being made on the NHS for over 70 years? Does it make sense?

It is all quite simply the result of the conventional medicine's amazing success in keeping the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, from us!

We must now wake up to the reality - that pharmaceutical drugs do not work. They harm us. The more drugs and vaccines we take, the sicker we become. Conventional medicine is not winning the battle with illness and disease, as it so often claims. It is creating epidemics of chronic disease.

So the solution is not to spend another £20 billion of the same, failed and failing medicine. It is to begin to look for something different, something safer and more effective, something that actually works for patients, something that keeps them healthy, and make them better when they are sick.

The Secondary Costs of Conventional Medicine

Hitherto, this blog has focused on how much conventional medicine costs to deliver. Every time a patient visits a doctor, undergoes a medical test, is given pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, goes into hospital, is operated on, etc., it costs money.

The cost of conventional medical treatment is staggeringly high. It is bankrupting many health services around the world. Medicine based on pharmaceutical drugs is the most expensive medical system available, by far. And in Britain, and elsewhere, demands for more and more money are constant being made.

This blog has also argued that conventional medical treatment is not very effective. It is failing to make patients well, it does not cure illness, indeed, it often admits that it has no treatment for major diseases.

The blog has also argued that it is not a safe system of medicine, that through adverse drug reactions patients can often be seen getting sicker, not better. One illness leads to drug prescription, and through drug side effects, the patient contracts another illness, for which more drugs are required, which also cause illness - and so on.

So once patients step over the threshold of conventional medicine they keep having to return, they don't get better, they need more and more treatment, which makes them sicker and sicker. And so it has gone on for the last 70 years and more.

The Secondary Costs of Conventional Medicine
But what happens then? What happens to people who are made sick, or made sicker, by conventional medicine? This is where the secondary costs begin.

• At the start of life, healthy babies and children who have been vaccinated, and the vaccines cause health damage. So, for example, we now have ADHD, an Autism epidemic, and many other diseases, that increase the number of people who require a lifetime of care - special education - ongoing health treatment- special day care provisionet al. Plus parents who can no longer work as they have to become full-time carers.

• Older people who become ill, not because of their age, but because the harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs. For example, the rising numbers of older people (and indeed, much younger people) who suffer from dementia, who can no longer look after themselves, whose children have to give up their careers to look after them. And the home care services, and the residential care they need as their dementia progresses.

Then there is the explosion of diseases, all now running at epidemic levels. and all known to be caused (at least in part) by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines (click on the links to see which drugs cause these conditions).

• People with allergy, often allergies that require intricate special diets, and the fear that to eat a simple food that become a killer
• The Arthritis epidemic that stunts people's life, makes them immobile, and prevents them from earning their own living.
• The Asthma epidemic that now curtails the ability of so many people to lead a full, sometimes an independent life.
• The epidemic of cancer that cuts short the lives of so many people, requiring both medical, social, and end-of-life care.
• The explosion of diabetes, and its related conditions, that is now incapacitating so many more people than ever before, and increasing their need for life-long medical and social care.

There are many more illnesses for which conventional medicine admits it has no cure. And worse, there are a multitude of illnesses that are known to be caused, directly, by conventional medical treatment. Many of these are covered in my ebook, DIEs - the Disease Inducing Effects of Pharmaceutical Drugs.

So the cost of conventional medicine does not stop with the direct provision of health services, it goes far, far beyond this, to the services sick people require to live permanently with illness, the number of people who are no longer economically active, or have to care for relatives who cannot care for themselves, or who need state support to live their lives.

So how much are we talking about? The British NHS alone costs £120 billion (and rising). 

• Is it half this amount, again?
• Double? 
• More? 

It is difficult to calculate the 'secondary' costs of conventional medicine, not least because the conventional medical establishment steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the damage it is doing to our health, to our lives, and to the society in which we live.

However, one estimate from the USA suggests that pharmaceutical drugs alone add a half a TRILLION dollars to the national healthcare budget.

I suggest that even this might be an under-estimate!

Female Ailments. "It's part of being a woman! You just have to put up with it!"

How many women have heard this from their doctor? Menstrual problems? Cystitis? PMT, PMS? Mastitis? Vaginal Thrush? These can all be painful, annoying - but just get on with it. It's life! Not only have many women told me about this response, some have commented that if men had periods there would have been a cure for Amenorrhoea, Dysmenorrhoea, Menorrhagia, Metrorrhagia, et al, long, long ago.

Conventional medicine has been dominated by men ever since its origins, in the universities of 12th and 13th century universities. It continuers to be dominated by men. And it is usually male doctors who make these dismissive comments.

Homeopathy has always been different. From the beginning it has always had effective treatments for 'women's complaints', but throughout the 20th century, and today, it is female homeopaths have played a leading role in its progress and development. Unlike me, a mere man, they know from personal experience what these conditions are like, and much of their work has been directed towards these neglected ailments.

I was aware of this during my training as a homeopath. I was under no illusion, women have particular medical needs, and they should not be underestimated. And why should they be underestimated. Homeopaths have at their disposal some remarkable remedies to deal with all these conditions. If, similarly, conventional doctors had drugs equally able to deal with them they probably would not be dismissive either - often their attitude is the result of having little to offer.

In my 'Why Homeopath?' website I have compared and contrasted what conventional medicine and homeopathy has to offer women for all these ailments. Have a look at the links below, the one's  relevant to you, to see the difference in treatment options.

Menstrual problems (in all its many forms).

Cystitis.

PMT, PMS.

Mastitis.

Vaginal Thrush.

You will then be more able to make up your own mind what kind of treatment is best for you.

NHS in Crisis (2018-2019)

It's only October but a new winter NHS crisis is on its way. Actually this annual crisis should not be called a 'winter' crisis. It's becoming an Autumn, Winter, Spring crisis - and I suspect soon it will become a Summer crisis too!

Nor should we be talking of an 'NHS" crisis. It is really the crisis of conventional medicine, the medicine that has a virtual monopoly with the NHS, which is itself dominated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. (For my previous posts on this subject, some dating back to 2011, go to the top right of this page and enter a search on 'NHS Crisis').

Notice of the crisis has been given by the NHS Providers organisers, widely reported in the national press this morning (22 October 2018). Its report, 'Steeling Ourselves for Winter 2018/19' says that there are “clear warning signs” that the situation is likely to be worse than last year (itself the worst on record), and describes pressures across all hospital activity, and primary care - staff vacancies, a tired and pressured workforce.

And this is despite £millions of additional money being pumped into the NHS, with £billions more promised over the next few years. All that this proves is that it is pointless pouring more and more money into a failing and crumbling health system. Yet this is what the warning is about - more money - the NHS does not have enough money:

• GP's, and primary care generally, need more money
• Ambulance services needs more money
• A&E services need more money
• Every hospital speciality needs more money
• Mental Health services need more money
• Children and Adult disability services need more money
• Social care needs more money

Political parties are clambering over each other, trying to out-bidding each other, to provide more money for the NHS. But they have never been able to provide enough. Not even the Labour government of 1997 to 2010 could do that. They increased NHS spending by nearly 300% over this time - but this did not stop what the report describes as "the recurring cycle of winter crises".

Nor will more money, however much can be found. The problem is that conventional medicine does not make patients better. Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines makes them sicker, through the pernicious effect of side effects, adverse drug reactions. Pharmaceuticals cause disease - and the more money the NHS is given the more drugs patients are given - and the sicker they become.

So the NHS provides us with a vicious circle. This is why demand constantly outstrips the ability of the NHS to cope. It invests its money into a failing and moribund medical system. Unfortunately, politicians, governments and the mainstream media are unable, even unwilling to recognise this. And the conventional medical establishment has a vested interest in the system remaining as it is - so they are unlikely to tell us either.

So more money for the NHS, to avert another crisis?

• Or should we go out and buy a car that cannot move (except, perhaps in reverse)?
• Or a washing machine that is unable to wash our clothes?
• Or a vacuum cleaner that does not pick up dirt from our carpets?

Anyone who is concerned about the prospect of another health crisis in the next few weeks does have an alternative, to do what many other people are doing - finding a medical system that works - a natural medicine that promotes a healthy lifestyle to stay healthy - that does not require the patient to take drugs that make them sick - that offers the prospect of curing illness and disease.

Look up a local homeopathy, or herbalist, or naturopath, or osteopath. Visit your local natural health centre to see what they have to offer. It will invariably offer something better than is available in our monopolistic National Health Service!

Patients pressurising doctors to give them more drugs. Why? And is honesty with patients the best solution?

Public Health England (PHE) is concerned that patients are pressurising doctors to give them more antibiotic drugs (Pulse 18 October 2018). This is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, it has become a feature of the National Health Service in the UK. Patients, it seems, can never get quite enough of the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are on offer to them - even when doctors do not think they need them.

Another recent post in Pulse may be relevant here, it suggested that if patients were aware of the cost of the treatments they received they would appreciate them more. So perhaps if patients were aware of the cost of antibiotic drugs they would appreciate them more? Unfortunately, antibiotics are not particularly expensive. And they are already too popular, in too much demand it seems, and PHE feels it needs to take action.

So PHE is going to reintroduce its 'Keep Antibiotics Working' campaign. In doing so it has the approval of doctors because "93% of those surveyed said that it supported them in refusing patient requests for antibiotics" - by informing the public about the risks of antibiotic resistance, and to urge them to take their clinicians advice on antibiotics.

As this blog has regularly reported, there are two major problems with antibiotic drugs. One of these is, indeed, resistance - the creation of superbugs - their inability to treat the conditions, illnesses and disease that once they were able to treat - an increasing number of patients no longer responding to them.

The other problem is the serious side effects they are known to cause. For my previous blogs on the dangers of antibiotic drugs, go to the top left-hand side of this page and search 'antibiotic drugs'. Alternatively, go to my webpage on the dangers of antibiotics drugs.

So why do patients continue to demand antibiotic drugs, given that they are now known to cause such serious side effects? The answer is, of course, patients are not told. To a large extent the conventional medical establishment does not accept that they cause harm, even though the evidence is there, published and available within their own information base. Certainly doctors do not admit, publically, the harm they cause. And the mainstream media does not ask questions about the dangers of antibiotic drugs. So how do we ever get to know?

Since the 1940's we have all been told that antibiotics are wonder drugs. Once we were told they were wonder drugs with no side effects! This is the information most people still understand and believe. They have never been told otherwise - so why should they know that they are dangerous?

So whether the '‘Keep Antibiotics Working' campaign works remains to be seen. Pulse states that in 2016 antibiotic prescribing decreased by 6% over three years, but that research continued to show that between 8% and 23% of antibiotic prescriptions are still inappropriate. They want to reduce this by half.

I believe that this is unlikely to happen. It will not happen until we are all told the real reason we should not pester doctors for drugs - that they are dangerous to our health.

As long as doctors tell us that the problem with antibiotics is a 'technical' one, concerning 'resistance', whilst we continue to believe they are effective and safe, patients will continue to demand them, and doctors will feel pressured into prescribe them. Patients need to be told that antibiotics are UNSAFE, and HARMFUL to our health.

So the solution to this particular problem is an easy one - HONESTY! 

But actually honesty is a problem for conventional medicine. Most of their drugs are largely ineffective. All of them are dangerous. And perhaps even more important, antibiotics are the very drugs upon which the reputation of conventional medicine has been built for the last 70 years. This base is becoming increasingly flimsy, at best, and it crumbles a bit more every time a doctor prescribes another drug to another patient.

Encephalitis. A man lives when conventional medics had given up on him - thanks to homeopathy. A miracle cure?

Homeopathy is a very powerful medical therapy. Occasionally I hear about cases that are really stunning. This one comes from Dr Nader Moradi, who is a a friend of a colleague of mine. He described him to me as follows.

               "an incredible Iranian homeopath... a gifted homeopath with great observational powers. He sees about 50 patients a day, and patients fight to get an appointment! In between patients he reads books on Materia Medica! Amazing."

Amazing indeed, as the summary of this case indicates. First, Dr Moradi's diagnosis, and these are his own words.

               "About one month ago an acquaintance - 51 years old - suddenly had convulsions, headache, agitation, altered consciousness and left sided paralysis. An MRI showed there were two huge opacities in both hemispheres with oedema. Here is the MRI report:

               “Two hypersignal areas were noted at left temporal and right frontoparietal lobes with extension to right temporal lobe. The lesions are extended to subcortical, peri and paraventricular white matter and shows vasogenic type edema. Cortex is not involved and white matter involvement id dominant. There is no significant mass effect. Very mild restriction on diffusion is noted at some areas of lesions particularly at medial side of right parietal lobe lesion. Apparent effusion is measured 0.86 mm/s. 

Dr Moradi thought from this that "Encephalitis was the most probable diagnosis. Acquired metabolic disease and side effects of drugs should also be considered in differential list.”

Note. There are now so many conditions, especially sudden and unusual conditions like this, in which the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs are implicated as a cause.

Conventional doctors then examined the case in some detail, and their conclusion was that there was no hope of recovery. Again, in Doctor Moradi's own words:

               "Neurologists believed that it is due to ADEM (Acute diffuse encephalomyelopathy) or SOL (space occupying lesion). The GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale - conscious level) was about 5. Therefore doctors said that there is no hope for recovery and they did not even hospitalise him in an Intensive Care Unit." (My emphasis).

I have often written about this. Hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of patients around the world, every year, find themselves in a similar situation.

• Conventional medicine decide that they have no effective treatment for the patient.
• They arrogantly assume that no other medical therapy will have effective treatment.
• So effectively the patient is left to die.

When there is no effective or useful conventional medical treatment DOES NOT mean that there is no treatment available! Fortunately, for this patient, Doctor Moradi's decided that he would not leave it there.

               "I decided to treat him with Homeopathy. As there was oedema in the brain, and the progression was sudden, and as he was shrieking and agitated before decreasing conscious level, I decided to give him Apis 1m. After Apis he calmed down."

               "On the CT scan brain oedema had been stopped but GCS was still 5. After 3 days I gave Apis 10m. The GCS then went up to 7, and doctors agreed to transfer him to the Intensive Care Unit."

               "I repertorized the case, using Repertrium Virosom, and found that TBE and INF were the top miasms, with Sulphur, Helleborus, and Belladonna the top remedies."

               "In the Intensive Care Unit I noticed the patient had automatic and rhythmic motion of the right side extremities, but the left side was paralyzed, and he had no motion. I gave him Helleborus  200C. After the Helleborus automatic motions disappeared and respiration became normal. Before Helleborus his respiration had been deep and rapid."

               "On the 4th day after Helleborus I noticed anger on his face and spasm in the right side, so much so that I could not open his eyelids, his body was hot, and that night he had fever, a seizure and become agitated. Belladonna 10m was prescribed. There was a brief aggravation and then everything became better."

               "On the CT scan oedema had been decreased, there was no agitation, fever and respiration was normal. Everything was getting better but the GCS was the same on the 7th day after Belladonna, so I decided to give him Sulphur 200C."

               "2 days after the Sulphur he opened his eyes while calling him. The GCS score had became 9-10. He improved daily, and they removed his endotracheal tube."

               "On 9th days after Sulphur there was mild anger and anxiety on the face, and he had a gesture like pulling hair or picking something and also pupils were dilated. I decided to give him Belladonna 50m. After that he became better, his paralyzed limb began to recover, and he could move his paralyzed limb, and muscle forces on paralyzed side is 3/5."

               "I am following the case to see whether he will need another remedy or not?"

The last report was that the patient had been released from hospital. He could talk and had control over his bowels. With some help he could walk. His cranial nerves were working normally. His hand strength was 3/5. And his left leg strength was 4/5.

A miraculous cure? Or just another wonderful example of homeopathy curing a patient conventional medicine had given up on? Certainly in this case homeopathy was brilliantly applied to a patient who would otherwise have died.

As a homeopath I have never ceased to wonder at how illness, even the most serious illnesses, including patients who have been under conventional medical treatment for many years, can cure. As a relatively new homeopath I remember once being very proud and excited after treating a woman who had less than 50% lung function. I presented the case to my supervisor. He cautioned me. Yes, it was wonderful what I had achieved. But, he said, what the case really demonstrated was not just that I had done a good job, a source of personal pride, but to marvel at the power of homeopathy to cure.

So what happened to this patient was not a miracle. It is what happens when homeopathy is skilfully applied to even the sickest of patients.

POSTSCRIPT
Since writing this I have been waiting for Dr Moradi to approve my draft, which he has now done. So I can now give a further update on the patient's progress.

• He is now walking, unaided.
• The strength in his left hand is coming up to 4/5. 
• He has lost a considerable amount of weight, so they are now focusing on increasing his weight 

Remember - this is the man that conventional medics thought would die - and would have allowed to die because they had no effective treatment for him.

Are the Pharmaceutical Drugs your doctor is prescribing today any safer than the drugs that have already been banned because they were found to be dangerous to patient health?

Are the pharmaceutical drugs your doctor is prescribing today any safer than the drugs that have already been banned as they were a threat to patient safety? The second section of my ebook "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" seeks both to demonstrate and justify that title.

• Chapter five outlines many of the failed pharmaceutical drugs that have been withdrawn or banned over the years - the dangerous drugs of yesterday.
• Chapter six deals with 'the dangerous drugs of today, and highlights the point that the pharmaceutical drugs prescribed today are no safer than yesterday's banned drugs. 

Today I have discovered that the doctors e-magazine, MIMS, publishes a regular list of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that have been recently 'deleted', many of them because they have been found to be harmful to patient health.

MIMS was established in 1963, and describes itself as "a multi-channel provider of drug information, medical education and services connecting healthcare communities". It says that it empowers healthcare professionals to "improve patient outcomes by facilitating knowledge exchange and better decision-making". It claims that it has a presence in 13 countries across the Asian Pacific, and has about two million healthcare professional subscribers to its drug and resource portal.

It is one of the 'bibles' used by conventional doctor, informing them about pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - their uses, their contraindications, their side effects, and much else. So each year MIMS routinely chart and publish information about the drugs that have been deleted.

In 2017 MIMs listed 75 deleted drugs and vaccines! Each one is named, alongside the type of drug it is (or was). There was no indication about whether the drug was banned, withdrawn; they were just 'deleted' perhaps some of them replaced by another drug.

Already in 2018 (that is, first 9 months of the year) MIMS reports that further 96 drugs and vaccines have been deleted.

What this indicates is that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines doctors are prescribing to us today are no safer than the drugs they were giving us in previous years, and that they continue to cause the same kind of patient harm that led to the withdrawal, banning or deleting of so many old drugs.

Month by month pharmaceutical drugs are being deleted, and let's be clear, the one's that will be deleted next month, and next year, are the same drugs our doctors are prescribing today - to you and me.

What MIMS has demonstrated is that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines being prescribed today are all likely to be deleted tomorrow, next week, or next month, and that conventional medicine, and the pharmaceutical drugs that dominates it,  cannot be trusted with our health.

Placebo. Homeopathy and other natural therapies are often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So what is wrong with that?

Homeopathy is often dismissed as being "no better than placebo". So exactly does this mean? Is it important to patients? Why has the concept of a 'placebo' become such a problem in recent years? And why do so many people want to disassociate themselves from it?

A placebo is usually defined as a substance ‘containing no medication’ or ‘an inactive substance’ that is given to patients to help him/her get well. Or a placebo is a substance that has ‘no intrinsic value’ but manages to trick someone into feeling they are better.

Most standard definitions explain placebo using the concepts highlighted above, or similar. It is used in the context of medicine, drugs, active substances that make sick people better. It is supposed to help us distinguish between substances that ‘work’ and substances that don’t ‘work’.

So the value of the term ‘placebo’ should become clearer. It has become a weapon used by those who claim to make people well through ‘active substances’ and ‘medication’ - by conventional, or 'scientific' medicine. Everything else is of ‘no intrinsic value’, merely a confidence trick. The term has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical companies and their supporters, to attack natural medical therapies, to dismiss them as worthless, as being ‘no more, no better than placebo’.

So why is placebo a problem?

It is a problem because most natural therapies utilise methods that are designed to stimulate the body’s own healing mechanisms, not necessarily through 'active substances'. This may be through essential oils, or homeopathic remedies, or the needles of the acupuncturist, or the hands of the reflexologist. So for this reason such therapists can be routinely dismissed and discounted as users of ‘placebo’. Their patients don't really get well. They just think they get well (and presumably they are too stupid the recognise the difference)!

So is this a problem for the patient?

People who are genuinely sick have one main, over-riding priority - to get better. I have never treated a patient, and made them better, who then asked

* “how did you do that?”
* “I hope there was an active ingredient in what you gave me!”
* “I hope what you did had some ‘intrinsic value’!”
* “If it’s just a placebo I will be unhappy”.

Patients want to get better, and largely that is all they want. They don’t ask about the number of randomised double blind trials the treatment has been subjected to. If the treatment does not hold, if the illness returns, the patient will not use the therapy again. Therapies that don’t work for patients don’t survive, especially when they do not have government subsidy! Essential oils, homeopathy, acupuncture have all been around a long time. Patients use them to get better, and they do so because they know that it does make them better.

Conventional medicine may not like this, and no doubt they will continue to rail against us, and dismiss natural therapies for being “no more than placebo”.

But as far as most patients are concerned, they don’t give a damn! 

The future of medicine. It does not rest with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. It will be with medical therapies that can cure sick people, safely

Since the beginning of the 20th century, conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry has constructed itself upon an edifice of ‘crucial discoveries’ - new ‘wonder drugs’ and ‘miracle cures’ and medical treatments that ‘will transform our experience of disease.

It began just before the discovery of penicillin, with a number of drugs that have now been withdrawn, abandoned, banned - owing to their ineffectiveness, or the harm the caused to patients.

Penicillin itself appeared to herald a new age of 'scientific' medicine, but as we all know now both penicillin and its antibiotic successors are now reaching the end of their useful life too. As resistance to them grows, we must now realise that they, too, also have seriously harmful side effects.

Since the mid-20th century hundreds of 'wonder drugs' and 'miracle cures' have either been banned or withdrawn. Even the pharmaceutical drugs prescribed by doctors today, such as Painkillers, Beta Blockers, Benzodiazepines, Antidepressants, Statins, and many others, are proving harmful to patient health.

Yet for most people the promise of 'scientific' medicine creating "a pill for every ill" has prevailed. The reassuring picture of medical science conquering disease is something we want to believe. After all, we have had over 100 years of this kind of propaganda.

The truth is more mundane. After a century of consuming an ever-increasing amount of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines we are now experiencing

• levels of serious chronic disease we have never before been seen
• a plethora of ‘new’ diseases we have never heard of before
• and diseases once thought to be about ageing and old age, like cancer and dementia, which are now being contracted by younger people and children.

So what we can actually see, the evidence before our eyes (if we were to lift our blinkers and observe) is a medical system, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, in constant crisis because of the apparently insatiable demands of an increasingly sick population.

This has not yet a picture of conventional health care that many recognise at the moment but it is one that we all need to understand, as soon as possible. For those who do recognise it the search for safer and more effective medical therapies has already begun, therapies that actually cure people of illness, do so safely, without creating new disease through side effects. This is a trend that will continue, in inverse proportion to the ongoing failure of conventional medicine.

It is becoming a crucial understanding that we all need to make - and soon.

ALLERGY. A Tragic Death. It's in the news and is being widely discussed. Yet no-one asks what is causing the allergy epidemic

The death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse was undoubtedly a tragedy. Her story can be simply retold. She had a nut allergy, and ate an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette at Heathrow Airport in July 2016, believing that it did not contain nuts. On the flight she went into cardiac arrest, and despite having two EpiPen injections (adrenaline) she died the same day. The baguette contained sesame seeds, an ingredient apparently not listed on the packaging.

At the recent inquest into Natasha's death the court focussed on food labelling. Pret A Manger did not label its baguettes as containing sesame seeds even though there had been six allergic reaction cases in the previous year. So the family is now campaigning for a change in food labelling laws.

An allergy is simply explained. "An allergy occurs when our immune system overreacts to what is normally a harmless substance, and triggers what, for the healthy human body, is an inappropriate and unnecessary response."

To eat a few sesame seeds, and die as a result, is most certainly "an inappropriate and unnecessary response", so whilst it is appropriate to look at food labelling, it is surely more important to discuss why Natasha's immune system, designed to defend and protect itself from attack from foreign substances, should react to a food it should have been able to eat in complete safety.

Allergy has become an epidemic in recent years. I have written about this in 'Epidemic of Chronic Disease', and in this blog from October 2012.

               "According to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's report, published in July 2007, "the prevalence and incidence of allergic disease have markedly increased over the past 50 years", and that evidence presented to the Committee showed that "an increasing prevalence of asthma was first noted in studies of Birmingham school children, starting in the mid 1950s," and that since then "the prevalence of asthma and wheezing appears to have doubled "approximately every 14 years" until the mid 1990s. It added that the trends for other disorders such as hay fever and eczema are similar."

The 2004 report showed the scale of the "allergy epidemic" - that 39% of children and 30% of adults had been diagnosed with one or more of asthma, eczema and hayfever; and 38% of children and 45% of adults had experienced symptoms of these disorders during the preceding 12 months. Yet since then the allergy epidemic has continued to grow!

AND NO-ONE APPEARS TO WANT TO ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTION - WHY?

In the current debate about Natasha, no one seems to want to ask why she had this allergy in the first place. The cause of her death was her allergy - it was not a sandwich containing sesame seed, this was just the trigger. After all, we should all be able to eat sesame seeds without such a reaction!

The answer is agonisingly simple. One of the main causes of the allergy epidemic, if not the main cause, are pharmaceutical drugs. This link lists the drugs known to cause allergy - including painkilling drugs, antibiotic drugs, sleeping pills, and in particular, childhood vaccinations and the plethora of drugs that 'work' by interfering with our immune system.

Does conventional medicine know about this? Apparently not, although perhaps more pertinent questions might be "does it want to know", and "does it want us to know?" This is what the NHS Choices website tell us about the cause of allergies.

               "Allergies occur when the body's immune system reacts to a particular substance as though it's harmful. It's not clear why this happens.....

               "The number of people with allergies is increasing every year. The reasons for this are not understood....."

So conventional medicine claims not to know - even when its medical textbooks, the doctors bibles like the British National Formulary and MIMS, very clearly provides the evidence for the link with pharmaceutical drugs!

There is a fundamental problem with this. If conventional medicine refuses to acknowledge the serious side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, if doctors won't tell patients about the harm they can cause, if our mainstream media decides not to ask important questions about iatrogenic disease, there will be no solution to this problem, or any other health problem. 

The campaign being waged by Natasha's parents will be doomed to failure because it does not address the most important question of all. Why was Natasha body allergic to what should be a harmless food?

Before it is possible to reach a solution for any problem it is first necessary to know what is causing the problem. Identify the wrong cause and a solution is not possible.

Allergy Treatment

And there is another problem. Where should parents be looking for safe and effective treatment for allergy? Natasha's father used two EpiPen injections, and they failed. I have written about the conventional treatment of allergy - the antihistamine drugs, the steroids, the decongestants, the 'Leukotriene receptor antagonists', and of course immunotherapy (playing around with our immune system). In the same link I have written about the homeopathic treatment of allergy, which is altogether more effective, free of serious adverse drug reactions, and safer.

Indeed, conventional medicine has proven that homeopathy is an effective treatment for allergy, and nut allergy in particular. In January 1914 the mainstream media heralded a new and successful treatment for peanut allergy. This from a BBC article.

               "Doctors say a potential treatment for peanut allergy has transformed the lives of children taking part in a large clinical trial. The 85 children had to eat peanut protein every day - initially in small doses, but ramped up during the study. The finding, published in the Lancet, suggest 84% of allergic children could eat the equivalent of five peanuts a day after six months".

As I said at the time, this is a treatment based on the principle of 'like (in small quantities) curing like'. It is, in other words, based on the principles of homeopathy! Whilst Homeopathy prefers to use peanuts in potency (in high dilution), these researchers used minute doses of peanut itself. This is probably not as safe as homeopathy, and probably produces results more slowly, but it is nonetheless homeopathy!

Yet in the years since that research was heralded as a breakthrough treatment conventional medicine  is still not using. So perhaps we should all be asking why!

But then, in matters of health, the right questions are rarely asked. This is why the allergy epidemic continues to grow, year by year, and why so many more 'Natasha's' are likely to die. Her mother was quoted as saying that "nobody else should ever have to suffer such a needless death". No-one is likely to disagree. Hopefully the food industry will eventually get its labelling right.

I am less optimistic that conventional medicine will ever admit that pharmaceutical drugs are a significant cause of allergy. And it is this that will be the basis of future tragedies.