The UK government has announced a 5-year plan, and 20-year 'vision', aimed at overcoming antimicrobial resistance, the British government's response to the growing problem of drug resistant bacteria, viruses, parasites infections, and infectious diseases. The Health Secretary, Matt Hancock has said that the situation is so serious that even a simple graze could be deadly:
"Antimicrobial resistance is as big a danger to humanity as climate change or warfare."
This is the depth to which conventional medicine is failing. This dreadful new world, without effective antibiotic drugs, has previously been described by the government's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, as 'an antibiotic apocalypse' in June 2015. Yet both the contents of the plan, its urgency, and the reasoning that underlays it, needs to be carefully examined.
We have been told for many years that the overuse of antibiotics is making infections harder to treat, with many thousands of deaths every year being caused by drug-resistant superbugs. And it has been pointed out elsewhere, including in this blog, that this problem is one exclusively for the conventional medical establishment.
The 'threat' is a threat to the conventional medicine, not to medicine. It is NOT a problem for natural medicine, including homeopathy. The government plan fails to recognise this. It makes the usual assumption that conventional medicine = medicine - the whole of medicine, medicine in its entirety, that there is not alternative to it.
The government plan also continues to attempt to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use, by 15% for humans in 5 years, and by 25% for animals over the next year. The problem is that drug companies do not like the idea of selling fewer drugs, and this is one of the main reasons they have decided not to develop new antibiotics. They are in the health business for profit, not for our good!
To counteract this problem the plan proposes to change how it funds pharmaceutical drug companies - to encourage them to develop new drugs, new antibiotics, to deal with conventional medicine's crisis.
The plan asks the drugs advisory body, NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) and NHS England to trial a new payment arrangement which ensure that drug companies are paid for drugs on the basis of how valuable the drugs are rather than by the quantity sold. The government believes that paying drug companies for the amount of antibiotics sold has led to this "market failure". The new new payment method will encourage companies to invest in the development of new antibiotics.
For the drug companies it means the guarantee of a hugely increased price for selling fewer drugs. It is, in other words, a reward for failure.
So although it is widely accepted that antibiotic drugs have caused the problem of superbugs, and the distress, illness and death they have cause, the plan's solution to the problem produce more, presumably more powerful antibiotics. Conventional medicine never learns!
The mainstream media should be (but aren't) asking an important question. Is the conventional medical establishment (of which the government and the NHS is an important part) able to recognise what has CAUSED the problem of antibiotic resistance, and the CREATION of superbugs?
More of the same failed medicine is NOT a new policy, nor is it a policy likely to have a different outcome, namely more drug resistance, more superbugs, more medical panic, more pharmaceutical profits.
Nor does the plan recognise that antibiotic drugs are now known to cause serious health problems for people who have taken them, often in large quantities over their lifetime. The plan fails to recognise that antibiotic drugs have caused significant patient harm over the 70 years of their existence. Antibiotic drugs are indiscriminate killers of bacteria that over the years have devastated the gut and its micro biome. As a result they are implicated in the rise of obesity, diarrhoea, constipation, asthma, eczema, diabetes, liver damage, heart disease and breast cancer. They are part of the reason for the increase, and even the creation of 'new' diseases like irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and much more.
But apparently none of this matters! None of this is ever mentioned by our doctors, the NHS, or the mainstream media. We are going to get more antibiotics, and drug companies are going to be rewarded for providing them, whether it is good for us or not!
"Antimicrobial resistance is as big a danger to humanity as climate change or warfare."
This is the depth to which conventional medicine is failing. This dreadful new world, without effective antibiotic drugs, has previously been described by the government's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, as 'an antibiotic apocalypse' in June 2015. Yet both the contents of the plan, its urgency, and the reasoning that underlays it, needs to be carefully examined.
We have been told for many years that the overuse of antibiotics is making infections harder to treat, with many thousands of deaths every year being caused by drug-resistant superbugs. And it has been pointed out elsewhere, including in this blog, that this problem is one exclusively for the conventional medical establishment.
The 'threat' is a threat to the conventional medicine, not to medicine. It is NOT a problem for natural medicine, including homeopathy. The government plan fails to recognise this. It makes the usual assumption that conventional medicine = medicine - the whole of medicine, medicine in its entirety, that there is not alternative to it.
The government plan also continues to attempt to reduce unnecessary antibiotic use, by 15% for humans in 5 years, and by 25% for animals over the next year. The problem is that drug companies do not like the idea of selling fewer drugs, and this is one of the main reasons they have decided not to develop new antibiotics. They are in the health business for profit, not for our good!
To counteract this problem the plan proposes to change how it funds pharmaceutical drug companies - to encourage them to develop new drugs, new antibiotics, to deal with conventional medicine's crisis.
The plan asks the drugs advisory body, NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) and NHS England to trial a new payment arrangement which ensure that drug companies are paid for drugs on the basis of how valuable the drugs are rather than by the quantity sold. The government believes that paying drug companies for the amount of antibiotics sold has led to this "market failure". The new new payment method will encourage companies to invest in the development of new antibiotics.
The mainstream media should be (but aren't) asking an important question. Is the conventional medical establishment (of which the government and the NHS is an important part) able to recognise what has CAUSED the problem of antibiotic resistance, and the CREATION of superbugs?
More of the same failed medicine is NOT a new policy, nor is it a policy likely to have a different outcome, namely more drug resistance, more superbugs, more medical panic, more pharmaceutical profits.
Nor does the plan recognise that antibiotic drugs are now known to cause serious health problems for people who have taken them, often in large quantities over their lifetime. The plan fails to recognise that antibiotic drugs have caused significant patient harm over the 70 years of their existence. Antibiotic drugs are indiscriminate killers of bacteria that over the years have devastated the gut and its micro biome. As a result they are implicated in the rise of obesity, diarrhoea, constipation, asthma, eczema, diabetes, liver damage, heart disease and breast cancer. They are part of the reason for the increase, and even the creation of 'new' diseases like irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and much more.
But apparently none of this matters! None of this is ever mentioned by our doctors, the NHS, or the mainstream media. We are going to get more antibiotics, and drug companies are going to be rewarded for providing them, whether it is good for us or not!
