The First Australian Report on Homeopathy. Lies, damned lies, and medical science

• In July 2012 the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) published its first report on homeopathy. This report was withdrawn, and its existence and its contents were first denied, and never disclosed to the public.

• In March 2015 the NHMRC published its second report on homeopathy, and this concluded that “…there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”.

I wrote about this situation in my blog, "The Australian Report. The credibility of medical science" in April 2017, and again in "The Australian Report on Homeopathy. A travesty of evidence and science" in August 2017.

Homeopathy is used to being regularly attacked by the conventional medical establishment. We normally just get on with what we do best - making sick people fit and well! But this report seemed particularly dodgy, and I outlined the reasons for this in my second blog. In the main they were the same reasons as in any other report by medical science that states that homeopathy is ineffective.

But with the Australian report there was a further mystery. Why was the first report withdrawn? What were the findings of the first report? For several years a number of 'freedom of information' requests were made, but each time, they were turned down. No-one was allowed to see it.

Now, after considerable pressure from the homeopathic community, led by the Homeopathic Research Institute (HRI), the first NHMRC paper has been published. It can be read, in full here. It turns out that the author of this earlier report concluded that for at least five medical condition there was
               "encouraging evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy"
 This is a different conclusion to the second report, which has been used homeopathy skeptics (supporters of conventional medicine and the pharmaceutical industry) to attack homeopathy ever since. This is the conclusion reached by Rachel Roberts, Chief Executive of HRI.

               “For over three years NHMRC have refused to release their 2012 draft report on homeopathy, despite Freedom of Information requests and even requests by members of the Australian Senate. To see this document finally seeing the light of day is a major win for transparency and public accountability in research.”


The HRI will now carefully review the first (positive) report and compare it with the second (negative) report in terms of the science, or more accurately the misuse of science, that this whole episode has made clear. It is important that this is done.

This blog, however, raises important questions about the political power of the pharmaceutical industry, how influential the conventional medical establishment has become, how it now dominates public health services, and the health information and misinformation that patients are being subjected to by so-called medical 'science'.

In brief, the situation demonstrates that the conventional medical establishment....

1. ... has the power to overturn a government sponsored report which found homeopathy to be an effective medical therapy, and insist on the writing of another report that would come to the opposite conclusion,
2.  ...has sufficient influence over medical science to insist that the new report deviates from what is generally considered to be 'good scientific practice' in order to come to the conclusion that the evidence for homeopathy does not warrant,
3. ... has sufficient control over the mainstream media to ensure that it does not investigate what has happened, and censors any information that comes from homeopathy, and the natural health community generally,
4. ... has sufficient influence and power over the Australian government to ensure that the findings of the 1st report remain unknown for several years, whilst the misinformation and lies contained in the 2nd report are taken up through its health policy, and acted upon.

Now that the first report has been published, belatedly, new questions come to mind. For instance, I am now wondering whether the conventional medical establishment has the power to ensure that the publication of the 1st report, favourable as it is to homeopathy, will still not mentioned, leave alone discussed, by the mainstream media?

And I wonder whether the Australian government's health policies will continue to exclude homeopathy, and other natural therapies, on the basis of the now discredited 2nd report?


Another, more general question, is this. Can the conventional medical establishment, that peddles such misinformation, ever be believed again, about anything? And can patients trust that conventional medicine is really interested in delivering good health?

Mandatory Vaccination (DPT, MMR HPV). If the Patient Information Leafets outline their serious side effects, can they be considered to be 'safe'? And should these side effects not be mentioned when doctors tell us they are safe?

I hope that you have been following my communication with the British Department of Health about mandatory vaccination, and the safety of vaccines as evidenced in each of the Patient Information Leaflets. If not, you can look at these two blogs.

Mandatory Vaccination. A letter to my MP, the Department of Health, and the Secretary of State, Matthew Hancock

Mandatory Vaccination. An obfuscatory response from the UK's Department of Health.

Arising from this obfuscatory response, I have now written the Department of Health another letter, repeating more succinctly the main question I am asking - about what the British government thinks I should be allowed to tell you about the safety of the MMR, DPT and HPV vaccines. This is the letter.

Dear Secretary of State
Further to my recent letter, and subsequent to your response, I can confirm that I am opposed to mandatory medicine because I do not believe that the MMR, DPT or HPV vaccines are safe.

I am aware that the Department of Health believes these vaccines are safe, and I understand, from your previous correspondence, that you consider anyone who says otherwise to be "deliberately spreading myths about vaccination for personal gain" and that the department "takes this very seriously".

This being so, and after reading the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come with each of these vaccines, outlining their side effects, I need to ask these questions.

1. Which of the side effects, listed on each of the PIL documents, am I (or anyone else) allowed to mention without being accused by the Department as “deliberately spreading myths about vaccination”?
2. Does the Department of Health consider that the listed side effects on each of these vaccines make the vaccine ‘safe’, and that when the public is told that the vaccines are ‘safe’, these reported side effects should not be mentioned?

These PILs are, after all, official documents produced by the conventional medical establishment for patient information; but I am aware that not many parents read these documents, and no mention of them is ever made about them by spokespersons of the Department of Health, or then NHS, when speaking to the mainstream media.

I look forward to your response to these questions.

I will, of course, let you know the response to these questions as soon as I have received it. 

So carry on watching this space!

Conventional Medicine & Chronic Disease - the desperate search for excuses for modern disease epidemics - and what is causing them - and to confuse patients with medical 'science'

There has been an explosion of chronic diseases, many running at epidemic levels for decades now. And year by year they still increase, with conventional medicine is apparently unable to do anything about it. Yet all these disease epidemics have three things in common.

(i) They are all, at least in part, caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

(ii) Conventional medicine knows this - the evidence is in their medical literature.

(iii) Doctors deny they cause disease - and instead seek alternative explanations.

So when the conventional medical establishment is responsible for causing this level of medical mayhem, and is quite incapable of doing anything about it, what do they do?

• Watch on, hopelessly, as the truth emerges? 
• Wait until patients begin to ask searching questions? 
• Prepare themselves for yet more failure and criticism? 
• Or do they fight back? 

They do the latter. Lubricated and armed with massive pharmaceutical profits, and determined to maintain their monopoly in health care provision in most of the developed world, they do several things which I have regularly outlined in this blog. They ensure:

• that politicians, governments, medical science, and the mainstream media are kept firmly in line, dependent, subservient and uncritical.
• that all major official health organisations throughout the world (the FDA, CDC, NHS, NICE, WHO, et al), and Patient Support groups, are all under their total control.

AND THEN THEY GO ONE STEP FURTHER...

They offer alternative explanations for the parlous state of our health, silly, light-weight excuses that are designed to deflect attention from why our health is getting worse, year on year.

Recently, for example, the e-magazine 'What Doctor's Don't Tell You' has recently featured an article "Bad sleep more to do with wine than coffee", perhaps a legitimate question, perhaps a legitimate piece of research.

But a more legitimate question might have been to asked - how many pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause sleeplessness, or insomnia. The answer is clear, and can be found by reading conventional medicine's own literature. There are many such drugs, ranging from Alpha blockers, beta blockers, statins, corticosteroids, antidepressants, anti-histamines, ACE inhibitors, Angiotensin 11-receptor blockers, Cholinesterase inhibitors, and many others.

All these drugs are far more likely to cause insomnia than either wine or coffee - yet they are rarely, if ever mentioned or discussed. Do such articles seek to deflect our attention?

Epidemics of Chronic Disease
Every chronic disease you can wish to mention is now running at unprecedented levels. I have outlined some of these epidemics elsewhere, in my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine". The Chapter on "Epidemics of Chronic Disease" covers the modern epidemics of:

• Allergy
• Alzheimer's (Dementia)
• Arthritis
• Asthma
• ADHD
• Autism
• Birth Defects
• Cancer
• Heart disease
• Chronic Fatigue (ME)
• COPD (Bronchitis)
• Diabetes
• Irritable Bowel, Ulcerative Colitis, Crohns
• Mental Health
• MS
• Osteoporosis
• Violence
• and many others....

For each of these I have outlined startling statistics that clearly demonstrates that these diseases are all running at unprecedented levels. Yet for many of these diseases I describe how the conventional medical establishment can provide no clear or satisfactory explanation for what is causing them. What they usually tell us is that they do not know!

Yet for all these diseases pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to  be a significant cause, and this is evidenced within the literature of conventional medicine itself. In other words, doctors know that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines have, in large measure, caused of the rise and rise of chronic disease during the last 70-100 years. It's just that they are not very keen on telling us! Conventional medicine has developed another technique for diverting attention and blame, for obfuscation - courtesy of medical science.

• It is constantly looking to deflect the blame for these epidemics on other social and environmental factors.

This is why, most days, we are regaled with news of new 'scientific' insights into the possible links and causal factors of some disease or other. They are explanations that increasingly confuse and frighten people - should we stop drinking coffee? Or wine? Or both? So in this way disease is linked to a variety of factors - these are just a few that spring to mind:

• genetics - the presence, or absence, of a particular gene
• eating too much red meat: or not eating enough red meat.
• fast food diets, containing too much fat, or too much cholesterol
• too much sugar and salt, or not enough fresh food
• vegetarianism, or veganism
• environment pollution
• lack of exercise; or to too much exercise
• breast milk which is good for health; or alternatively it is bad for health
• etc., etc.

It is not that these factors do not have some impact on our health. It is that for conventional medicine this kind of silly medical science achieves something else too.

They are conventional medicine's desperate attempt to explain what (to them) is inexplicable. 

It deflects attention away from the culpability of a dominant medical system that for over 70 years has contributed to making us sicker than we have ever been before.

This kind of medical science represents an attempt to persuade us that it is genuinely looking for the cause of illness and disease, but is, in fact, merely deflecting attention away from one of the most important causes of all. Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. For the last 70-100 years we have been persuaded that 'pill-popping' is the route to good health, but these generations of drug takers have proved just one thing - that they are actually causing enormous harm to the very patients they are supposed to be treating.

So let's have a closer look at some of these epidemics of chronic disease (based on my free-to-read 'Failure of Conventional Medicine' E-Book). For each disease there is (i) an unwillingness to focus on causation, and (ii) an unwillingness or failure to inform us that conventional medical literature knows that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to cause them.

Allergy

This is said to be an 'auto-immune' reaction - but with no corresponding explanation of what causes these totally inappropriate auto-immune responses, or an admission that 'auto-immune' reactions are known to be caused by many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines

So whilst conventional medicine can describe what an allergy IS it always fails to say what CAUSES it, preferring to state that it's the body’s immune system failing to react to an allergen. The real question, of course, is not WHAT is happening - but what is CAUSING IT!

Drugs such as painkillers, antibiotics, anticonvulsant drugs, vaccines, and many other drugs that intentionally interfere with the autoimmune system, are known to cause allergy. 

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Allergy, visit this website.

Alzheimer's (Dementia)

Dementia is invariably blamed by conventional medicine on an 'ageing population, or to dying brain cells. This is an explanation that is completely oblivious to the fact that dementia is now affecting young children, adolescents and younger adults, often called 'early onset dementia' with little or no explanation for why younger people are now suffering from dementia.

Other excuses are that people with dementia were not diagnosed before the 20th century, so more people suffered from dementia than we realise, and anyway, people are now living longer.

The relationship between pharmaceutical drugs and dementia is now well documented! The BNF (British National Formulary) highlights many drugs associated with the side effect 'confusion', 'memory loss', and other symptoms of dementia. These include the flu vaccine, sleeping pills, anticholinergic drugs, proton pump inhibitors, antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs, statins, and many more are now known to cause the symptoms of dementia.  

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Alzheimer's disease and dementia, visit this website.

Arthritis

This disease has witnessed the most alarming rise in recent decades. So what does the conventional medicine believe is causing this epidemic? The NHS website says that rheumatoid arthritis "is an autoimmune condition, which means it is caused by the body's immune system attacking itself". They go on to say that what causes this is "unknown"!

Arthritis is often blamed on 'wear and tear', an explanation that ignores the increasingly sedentary lifestyle led by most arthritis sufferers. Factors such as bad diet, and increased sugar consumption, are also often implicated by medical science (quite rightly), but conventional medicine continues to blame 'ageing', although the statistics show that an increasing number of children, adolescents and younger adults now suffer from severe arthritis.

What is rarely admitted is that conventional drug treatment involves the use of painkillers, which temporarily ‘kills’ the pain of arthritis, but at the cost of increasing the toxicity within our body. So in the longer term pharmaceutical drug treatment only deepens and worsens arthritis pain. Many sufferers find that taking more painkillers progressively leads to the need to take more, and stronger drugs. So taking pharmacetucial drugs usually involves a vicious circle of increasing pain and disability. Yet there are many other drugs known to cause arthritic conditions.  

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs that are known to cause arthritis, and related conditions, visit this website.

Asthma

When writing the first edition of "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", in 2007, it was estimated that 1 in 13 people in Britain, and throughout the world, suffered from it, that 180,000 died from asthma, and that children were suffering from it most. Eight years later, in 2015, Asthma UK provided the following facts about asthma describing how this epidemic was still increasing.

So what has caused the asthma epidemic, according to the conventional medicine? Again, the NHS gives its usual response! “It's not clear exactly what causes asthma, although it is likely to be a combination of factors.”

The most popular explanation is environmental pollution, and there is, of course, more than an element of truth in this attribution, which is leading to demands to reduce such pollution.

Yet it is also know that pharmaceutical drugs have contributed to the rise and rise of asthma! Common painkillers, like aspirin and paracetamol (acetaminophen), taken routinely for decades by so many people are known to cause asthma. The DPT, and other vaccines, are also know to cause upper respiratory track infections. And over 20 studies have found that antibiotic drugs are also implicated.
But because this link is largely ignored there is no similar reaction to do something about the drugs and vaccines that are contributing to asthma.

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause asthma, and related conditions, visit this website.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

The first time this condition was described was in 1943 by the Austrian-American psychiatrist, Leo Kanner. In 2015, the National Autistic Society’s website said that in Britain, there are around 700,000 autistic people, more that 1:100 of the population. 

So what does the conventional medicine believe has caused this epidemic? The NHS provides its usual, unhelpful answer. “The exact cause of attention deficit hyperacivity disorder (ADHD) is not fully understood, although a combination of factors is thought to be responsible.”

So again, is conventional medicine itself a possible cause? Pesticides, sugary drinks, and artificial food colourings have been linked - but there are a large number of pharmaceutical drugs known to cause ADHD, including anaesthetic drugs, painkillers, antidepressant drugs, and common children’s medicines such as Benylin, Calpol, Tizylis and Sudafed.

Yet perhaps the main culprit are childhood vaccinations, particularly the DPT and MMR vaccines. Such a suggestion is effectively a ‘no-go’ area for conventional medicine though. They refuse to believe it, and refuse to investigate the possibility. Vaccines, they insist, are entirely safe!

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines known to cause asthma, and related conditions, visit this website.

Autism (ASD - Autistic Spectrum Disorder)

Autism has increased to quite staggering proportions throughout the 'developed' world (the world that uses pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines). In 2008, when the first edition of "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" was written, the Autism Society of America said it was the fastest growing developmental disability in children, with a growth rate of between 10-17% per year. It stated that during the 1990’s, whilst the population of the USA grew by 13%, disabilities increased by 16%, and Autism by a massive 172%. Eight years later, in 2015, the Autism Society of America’s website estimated that in 2015 about 1% of the world population has ASD.

So what does conventional medicine think is causing this epidemic? The NHS website again offers its usual explanation! "The exact causes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are unknown, although it is thought that several complex genetic and environmental factors are involved.”

So conventional medicine has no explanation for Autism. Yet it adamantly refuses to hear any suggestion that childhood vaccines are to blame. So doctors say they don't know what causes Autism - but they do know, with the utmost certainty, what does NOT cause it!

So once again conventional medicine seeks to deflect our attention. For instance, we are often told that the rise of autism is due to 'increased awareness', suggesting that previous generations of parents were either too stupid to observe that their children were 'different' in the way they responded to stimuli, or so lacking in care for their children they did not bother to report it!

Birth Defects

There is an ongoing debate within conventional medical literature concerning the effect certain drugs have on causing birth defects when taken during pregnancy. Yet, when it comes to informing us it is routinely denied. It has been estimated that about 1 in 33 babies born in the USA now has a birth defect, whilst the estimate in Britain is about 1 in 40. So how is the link with pharmaceutical drugs deflected?

Often birth defects are described as ‘congenital’. Wikipedia describes explains that there are two main types, “The first is caused by genetic abnormalities, which are hereditary. The second is caused by conditions (such as infectious diseases) which a baby gets from its mother”.

Yet it can quickly be established that there are many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to cause birth defects when mothers take them during pregnancy. The Thalidomide scandal of the 1960's could not be deflected, but conventional medicine has now become more adept at doing so! Diet, stress and environmental pollution now play an important role in such deflection.

Yet many drugs, including entire drug groups are now implicated in causing birth defects, including  new diseases, such as FACS (Foetal Anti-Convulsive Syndrome). Yet still, there is little public acceptance of the link with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Cancer

There is evidence of cancer in human populations from the very earliest times. Yet the levels cancer has now reached are unpredented, to the extent that some argue that cancer is a ‘modern’ disease. Conventional medicine does not accept this, but the prodigious growth of cancer during the 20th century is not easily repudiated. 

Instead it argues that the cause of the cancer epidemic is about diet, or smoking, or an ageing population, and similar. The reason is clear. Cancer, the 'Big-C'  has been the highest profile disease for many decades, and massive amounts of money have been raised and spent on cancer research - without there being any safe or effective cure for cancer being found. 

Cancer was once considered to be a disease of old age, but this is no longer the case. It has been estimated that the main disease-related cause of death in USA's children, aged 1 to 14, is cancer. It is second only to accidents among all causes of childhood mortality, with leukemia and malignancies of the central nervous system now are the most common types of childhood cancers.

Future projections see the incidence of cancer continuing to rise. So what is causing this ongoing epidemic?

• Are people smoking more?
• Is our diet going to continue getting worse?
• Or is there another explanation?

It is well known that many pharmaceutical drugs, tested and pronounced as being ‘entirely safe’, have subsequently been proven to be carcinogenic. The BMJ published this list of such drugs in 2005. So at least part of the explanation for the dramatic increase in cancer should be laid at the door of conventional medicine, which must be aware of this but does not tell us, preferring to deflect our attention to other factors.

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines known to cause Cancer, visit this website.

Cardiovascular (Heart) Disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disease has been the leading cause of death throughout the western world for both men and women for decades. This is not a new epidemic, it's an old one. But the increased availability of conventional medical drugs over the last 70 to 80 years has done little to improve the situation. Statistics from the British Heart Foundation outlined the enormity of the problem in Britain in 2015.

So does conventional medicine have any idea about what causes CVD? As usual, the NHS website states that it is caused by several factors, all them, to varying degrees, deflectory, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes and thrombosis (a blood clot). As usual there is no mention of pharmaceutical drugs as a cause of CVD. 

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Heartt and Cardiovascular disease, visit this website.

Chronic Fatigue (ME)

For many years, prior to 2002, conventional medicine used quite another strategy for deflecting our attention. It was an illness that did not exist. It was dismissed as 'yuppie flu', the sufferers being lazy, faking all the symptoms. Its epidemic rise led to a 2007 NICE report that said that CFS/ME had become “a relatively common illness”.

So can conventional medicine tell us what is causing this new disease? The is what the NHS website tells us. “Exactly what causes chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is unknown, but there are several theories.” These theories link the condition with glandular fever, with a bacterial or viral infection, a hormonal imbalance, problems with the immune system, psychiatric problems, traumatic events - or a combination of all these factors. As far as conventional medicine is concerned there is no evidence that pharmaceutical drugs are implicated in the rise of CFS/ME.

However, conventional medical literature itself suggests that this might be another autoimmune condition. But as usual it fails to tell us what is causing the body’s main defense mechanism to turn against itself, but with no mention that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are part of the problem.

For more information on the pharmaceutial drugs and vaccines known to cause Chronic Fatigue, or ME, visit this website.

COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Bronchitis)

COPD has many names, including - chronic obstructive airways disease, chronic obstructive lung disease, chronic airflow limitation, and chronic airflow obstruction. COPD was once known by more familiar names, notably chronic bronchitis, emphysema, bronchiectasis, and asthma.

In the first edition my 'Failure of Conventional Medicine' book, written in 2007, it was already the 5th biggest killer in the UK, killing more people than breast, prostate or bowel cancer. It was described as "one of the commonest respiratory conditions of adults in the developed world", and one that it "poses an enormous burden to society both in terms of direct cost to healthcare services and indirect costs to society through loss of productivity". The following statistics were taken from the Priory.Com website.

•  COPD was the fourth commonest cause of death in middle aged to elderly men in the western world.
• It was estimated that in the UK 18% of males, 14% of females aged 40-68 years, developed features of COPD, and that 3 million people were affected, causing 30,000 deaths annually.
• In the USA, 13.6% of males and 11.8% of females aged 65-74 years are thought to have COPD.

At the same time statistics produced by the American Lung Association showed that 15 million Americans suffer from COPD and claimed the lives of 87,000 Americans in 1992. The COPD Foundation website shows how COPD, then at epidemic levels, has continued to rise.

               "COPD affects an estimated 30 million individuals in the USA....The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates that 12 million adults have COPD and another 12 million are undiagnosed  or developing COPD. The World Health Organisation estimated 210 million individuals worldwide have COPD and total deaths were expected to increase more than 30% in the next 10 years".

So in over a decade conventional medicine has been unable to prevent these increased levels of COPD, nor do they appear to believe that it will be able to prevent in increasing further in future. It continues to do so. Yet during this time smoking, once considered a major cause of this disease, has been drastically reduced.

Pharmaceutical drugs, once again, are rarely mentioned.

So for more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Bronchitis, visit this website.

Diabetes

Diabetes is a serious disease that can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, stroke and limb amputation following nerve damage, and many other diseases. In the 20th century insulin treatment was hailed as a significant breakthrough. It was instrumental in raising the profile of conventional medicine, and the belief that the application of ‘science’ to medicine would eventually make the world a healthier place.

The problem with insulin, like so many conventional medical treatments, is that it a short-term ‘mechanical’ fix. The body does not produce insulin for itself (or it is unable to use the insulin it does produce) so insulin is introduced artificially. Whilst not criticising the importance of such 'mechanical' fixes it is wrong to present them as 'cures'.

There has been an epidemic rise in diabetes in the latter half of the 20th century. Diabetes UK provided these figure in 2015. 

• The estimated diabetes prevalence for adults aged 20 to 79 worldwide in 2014 was 387 million, and expected to affect 592 million people by 2035.
• The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimated that in 2013 five countries had more than 10 million people with diabetes.It is estimated that more than one in 16 people in the UK has diabetes.
• There are 3.9 million people living with diabetes in the USA. 
• Around 700 people a day are diagnosed with diabetes, the equivalent of one person every two minutes.Since 1996, the number of people with diabetes in the UK has more than doubled from 1.4 million to 3.3 million.
• There are 3.3 million people diagnosed with diabetes in the UK (2014). By 2025, this is estimated to rise to 5 million people.It is estimated that there are around 590,000 people in the UK who have diabetes but have not been diagnosed.
• This gives a UK average prevalence of 6.2% in adults.

These statistics demonstrate that there is now a worldwide epidemic of diabetes. So what does conventional medicine think is causing it? NHS Choices says the the cause of diabetes is that the pancreas does not produce enough insulin to maintain normal blood glucose levels, or the body is unable to use the insulin it produces. Again this is a description of the illness, it is not the cause. 

If a causal explanation is given it is invariably linked to bad diet, and particularly to sugar, and whilst undoubtedly this strongly linked to diabetes, it is used to deflect attention away from another well-documented link - pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.There is even a condition named after one of the offending drugs, know as ‘steroid-induced diabetes’. Steroid drug and inhalers are, of course, widely used in the treatment of asthma, especially children. Diabetes.co.uk, who describe themselves as ‘the global diabetes community’, supplies a list of five major pharmaceutical drug types known to cause diabetes. These are:

     •     Corticosteroids

     •     Thiazide diuretics

     •     Beta-blockers

     •     Antipsychotics, such as Zyprexa and Seroquel

     •     Statins

Yet antibiotics are also suspected of causing diabetes. The magazine WDDTY (December 2006) published an article by Dr Lisa Landymore-Lim, who carried out a pilot study of drug-prescribing among juvenile diabetics, and she outlined her evidence for suggesting a link between the excessive use of antibiotics and diabetes.

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Diabetes, visit this website.

Irritable Bowel (IBS), Crohns Disease, Ulcerative Colitis

Serious new illnesses are developing that affect our stomach. Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a painful and distressing condition that is becoming increasingly common. It is estimated that it now affects about one-third of the population in some way, at some time, depending on how it is defined or measured. The symptoms of IBS may include abdominal pain and spasm, diarrhoea, constipation, and can take more serious forms, such as Crohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis.

And in recent years many non-stomach diseases have been linked to a poorly function gut. So why is the modern gut suffering from these diseases, and contributing to other diseases? It has been estimated that 9 million people suffer from IBS in the UK, and that 64,061 people died of the disease in 2002. But reliable figures for IBS, and related conditions such as Crohns Disease and ulcerative colitis are difficult to ascertain

IBS, and related conditions, are yet another disease for which the conventional medical establishment struggles to identify causation. NHS Choices says that “the exact cause of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is unknown, but most experts think that it's related to problems with digestion and increased sensitivity of the gut".

There is little doubt that the cause of the IBS epidemic has much to do with the food that we eat, depleted as it is from over-farmed and over-fertilised soils, contaminated by herbicides and pesticides, and heavily processed by big food companies. 

Yet conventional, drug-based medicine cannot deflect all the blame  Most pharmaceutical drugs are taken by mouth, so pass immediately to the stomach. The gut, therefore, is the most likely organ of the body to be subjected to adverse drug reactions. And the purpose of antibiotic drugs is to indiscriminately kill the bacteria of the stomach. They unbalance and destroy the gut microbiiolme - quite deliberately.

So perhaps it is not too much of a surprise that we face epidemic levels of these stomach ailments. The Right Diagnosis website provides a very long list of over 1,000 pharmaceutical drugs that are known to cause stomach upsets! Many are the most common, frequently taken drugs, with painkillers such as aspirin and antibiotics.

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause IBS, Crohns Disease, and related conditions, visit this website.

Mental Health

When pharmaceutical drugs seek to ‘force’ the body into compliance, the body will resists, and consequently a new dis-ease is created. One of the body's principle organs, the brain, might be expected to suffer most. It is, after all, the most sensitive, and in many ways, the most vulnerable of all human organs. And this is, indeed, what we find. 

The statistics for depression, suicide, and related mental health conditions, have risen alarmingly in recent years, particularly in the later half of the 20th, and early 21st century. And it continues to rise, particularly with younger people, alongside corresponding demands for more medical treatment.

Mental health illnesses are all ill-defined, and so difficult to diagnose with any certainty. And causation is equally difficult to ascertain, such if the complexities and stresses of modern life. Yet the claim that life today is more stressful that in previous decades, or that it gets more stressful as time goes on, is difficult to argue.

So have pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines played a part in the increase in mental health issues? The UK’s BNF provides evidence that many conventional medical drugs can cause depression, which underlies most mental health conditions. The magazine WDDTY (October 2005) listed the pharmaceutical drugs with the strongest links to depression, and as usual, these include some of the most used drugs of the last 70 years.

     •     Ritalin (a drug increasingly used for ADHD in children).

     •     Aromatase Inhibitor drugs.

     •     Statin drugs.

     •     SSRI Inhibitor drugs.

     •     Beta Blocker drugs.

     •     Steroid drugs.

     •     Tranquillizer drugs.

     •     Birth Control pill.

     •     Aspirin and other salicylate drugs.

     •     Accutane (a drug used for acne in young people)


And in terms of the link between depression and suicide there is now a 'scientifically proven' connection with pharmaceutical drugs such as Vioxx and Seroxat, and many others.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. MS causes many neurological symptoms, including  vision loss, vertigo, weakness, numbness, fatigue, muscle stiffness or spasticity, and bladder or bowel dysfunction.MS is a relatively new disease. According to the Multiple Sclerosis Trust it was first recognised as a condition in the middle of the 19th century.

               “Prior to this time, there are reports of a few instances of what may have been MS, although the variety of symptoms, the range of other possible causes and the incompleteness of records make these impossible to confirm.”

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society states that more than 2.3 million people are affected by MS worldwide. But as the USA's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not require physicians to report new cases, and because symptoms can be completely invisible, the prevalence of MS in the USA can only be estimated. However, in 2008 they said that there are approximately 400,000 people with MS, and that about 200 people were diagnosed with the condition every week.

Each of these MS organisations states that the cause of MS is unknown, but might be linked to environmental factors. Conventional medicine itself offers no cause, but confirms that it is an autoimmune disease, that the body fails to protect itself from the damage witnessed to the myelin sheaths around nerves that send messages to and from the brain.

Any autoimmune disease is likely to be caused, at least in part, by pharmaceutical drugs, although few studies have looked into this possibility. However, some drugs have already been identified as potential causes.There are many drugs known to produce symptoms that are distinctly similar to MS itself. Anticholinergic drugs, used to treat bladder irritability, and antidepressant drugs like amitriptyline, are known to cause visual blurring and urinary retention. And painkillers, particularly tricyclic antidepressants, and anti-anxiety drugs are known to cause fatigue. So all these drugs, and perhaps many more, may well be linked to the creation of the MS epidemic.  

For more information about the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause MS, go to this website.

Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a disease of the skeletal system when the bones lose density, become brittle and become prone to fracture. It is the major cause of bone fractures in older people, particularly post-menopausal women. It is a new and real epidemic. The International Osteoporosis Foundation has provided the following facts about the incidence and impact of this disease.

• Osteoporosis affects an estimated 75 million people in Europe, USA and Japan, with
  30-50% of women and 15-30% of men now expected to suffer a fracture related to osteoporosis in their lifetime. 
• Nearly 75% of hip, spine and distal forearm fractures occur among patients 65 years old or over.
• By 2050, the worldwide incidence of hip fracture in men is projected to increase by 310% and 240% in women.
•  In white women, the lifetime risk of hip fracture is 1 in 6, compared with a 1 in 9 risk of a diagnosis of breast cancer.
• Approximately 1.6 million hip fractures occur worldwide each year, by 2050 this number could reach between 4.5 million and 6.3 million.

So what is causing this epidemic rise osteoporosis, at least according to the conventional medical establishment? NHS Choices again gives us a description of the disease when it purports to be describing the cause.  It says that “Osteoporosis causes bones to become less dense and more fragile” and so unsurprisingly goes on to implicate ageing as one of the main reasons for the disease.

So again conventional medicine is not providing an entirely honest answer. There is no shortage of pharmaceutical drugs known to cause this condition bone density to decreasei including proton pump inhibitors, corticosteroid drugs, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), antidepressant drugs, and even the drugs given to patients for the treatment of osteoporosis! Indeed, it is likely that the main cause of the epidemic of osteoporosis being experienced throughout the world may well be the consumption of pharmaceutical drugs.

For more information on the pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Osteoporosis, visit this website.

VACCINES. "We can handle an open discussion on vaccines". But we are not getting one. The views of two ex-Guardian readers.

Soroush Ebrahimi and I have at least two things in common.

• We are both homeopaths. 
• And we are both former readers of the Guardian newspaper.

There is a third link too, as both of us now believe that these two things are incompatible. As homeopaths we both expect to come under constant attack from the conventional medical establishment - during the last 15-20 years this has become an occupational hazard. What we do not, and cannot accept is that 'our' newspaper, one that we bought because of it open and liberal stance on social and political issues, should have become so opposed to any kind of health debate.

Soroush sent me a copy of his letter sent recently to Sarah Boseley (Health Editor of the Guardian), and he has given me permission to reproduce it here - not least because he is not expecting any response from the newspaper. This is it

     "As a Guardian reader of many years I am well aware that you are very pro-vaccination.

     "We rely on organizations like FDA, CDC and WHO to tell us the truth about the safety of medicines in general and particularly regarding vaccines. But what we find is the ‘game-keeper’ has become the poacher. I would like you to kindly read this article by Robert F Kennedy Jr., 'Americans can handle an open discussion on vaccines' , published by the Children's Health Defence website. In this you will see that:

• "FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from industry.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including the pharmaceutical industry and its allied foundations. 
• And CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.
• The pharmaceutical industry directly funds, populates and controls dozens of CDC programs through the CDC foundation. 
• A British Medical Journal editorial excoriates CDC’s sweetheart relationship with pharma quotes UCLA Professor of Medicine Jerome R. Hoffman “most of us were shocked to learn the CDC takes funding from industry… It is outrageous that industry is apparently allowed to punish the CDC if the agency conducts research that has potential to cut into profits.
• For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.
• Dr. Aaby was one of five co-authors of a 2017 study of the diphtheria tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine, the most widely used vaccine on earth, which found that children who received DTP had ten times the risk of dying compared to DTP-unvaccinated children.

      "I would really appreciate your comments especially if you can refute any of RFK’s assertions, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

     "Kind regards, Soroush Ebrahimi

I have asked Soroush to let me know if the Guardian responds to his letter, and if they do I will share their response here. However, the hostility of the Guardian towards any form of natural medicine during the last 20 years, alongside its meek and uncritical compliance to the agenda of the conventional medical establishment, means that we are expecting little.

If the Guardian was still an open and liberal newspaper it would not only respond to Soroush's letter, it would commission Robert F Kennedy to write an article outlining his views. It would examine those views, investigate them, and it would ask those with a differing view to respond to them.

It would, in other words, initiate a health debate on vaccines, and the overall impact conventional medicine has had on our nation's health during its 70 years of almost total dominance within the NHS.

Yet the Guardian, alongside the rest of the mainstream media in the UK, steadfastly refuses to do so. This is why there is little or no 'informed' patient choice in this country about vaccines, and pharmaceutical drugs generally.

• Vaccines, we are told, are safe; and any suggestion that they are cause harm is censored by the mainstream media.
• Pharmaceutical drugs are 'wonder cures', they keep people alive; and if anyone suggests that people now suffer more chronic disease than ever before, they are not heard because the Guardian, and other papers, do not want to know.

Robert F Kennedy, Jn, is correct. We can handle an honest debate on vaccines. Indeed we desperately need to have one. But in order to survive newspapers have to listen to its paymasters, and this is no longer its readers, it's the advertisers. And it's been estimated that some 70% of advertising revenues now comes from the pharmaceutical and allied industries.

So Kennedy is not published in the mainstream media, his views are aired on the internet, by the Children's Health Defence website. And the internet is, of course, fake news, it cannot be relied upon, and so now the conventional medical establishment wants to stop it being published.

All this confirms one thing. The Guardian is no longer an open, liberal newspaper. It is struggling financially, and perhaps one reason for this is that people like Soroush and myself will no longer support it.

And another is that everyone who has received homeopathic treatment will quickly recognise that what it says about natural medicine is untrue..... so why should they believe what the Guardian writes about any other subject is not equally biased and unreliable?

Why should it be?

 

Mandatory Vaccination. An obfuscatory response from the UK's Department of Health.

When the Secretary of State for Health said he was considering imposing mandatory vaccination in the UK (or at least in England) I decided to write to the Department of Health for clarification of its policy on this matter. The letter, and my comments about why I wrote the letter, is contained within this blog, written in May 2019.

I do not write to the government often. And doing on this occasion has shown just how futile it can be, and more importantly, how committed the UK government is to the Conventional Medical Establishment, and how beholden it is to the powerful Pharmaceutical Industry. And I am not making a party-political point - this is true of all political parties and governments of every colour.

THE RESPONSE I HAVE RECEIVED SHOWS THAT THE UK GOVERNMENT, AND THE  DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, HAS NO SEPARATE EXISTENCE OUTSIDE THIS CLOSED AND POWERFUL COMMUNITY. This is amply demonstrated in both the answers they provided, and the questions they did not even bother to answer! So this is a summary of my questions, and their response.

• On 4th May 2019, the Times reported that the health secretary was considering making child vaccinations compulsory and that he accused anti-jab campaigners of having “blood on their hands”. The article stated that he spoke to the Times following their investigation that found "almost 40,000 British parents have joined an online group calling for children to be left unimmunised against potentially fatal diseases such as tetanus”.

As I expected, the response to this question was the repetition of conventional medicine's mantras about 'vaccines saving lives', 'vital in protecting children and the wider community', and how serious the "vaccine preventable illnesses" are. The only mention of compulsory vaccination was this.

               ".... vaccinations are not compulsory in the UK, which operates a system of informed consent", and that "there are no compelling reasons to introduce compulsory vaccination, given the high rates of protection for the individual and the community that is currently achieved".

So as far as compulsory vaccination is concerned this is at least reassuring, but just how their 'system of informed consent' was to operate remains a concern, considering that response to my other questions clearly showed that patients are only to be allowed access to information that confirms the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

• The policy of the Conservative government in 2010 emphasised the importance of ‘Patient Choice’, with a White Paper that included the phrase “No decision about me without me”. Can I ask whether patient choice is still part of the government’s health policy? If so, how does he square mandatory vaccination with this policy? If not, what has changed since 2010 which now allows decisions to be made - about me - without me?

This question was studiously avoided! My conclusion is that if a Secretary of State for Health can suggest that compulsory vaccination is being considered, patient choice is no longer a priority.

• Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme
• This scheme was introduced in 1979, and I believe it continues to this day. Can I ask how much has been paid out under this scheme for each year since 1979, to how many claimants, and also how many claims have been turned down. 
• Further, can I ask for a breakdown of the major injuries for which these compensation payments have been made, including side effects such as brain damage, seizure disorders, deafness, Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), encephalitis, and death.

These questions were answered exactly in the way that I expected (and predicted) in my May blog! These were "one off, tax-free, lump sum payments of £120,000 to ease the burden of individuals who were severely disable as a result of a vaccination against the diseases covered by the scheme". So an admission here that vaccines do, indeed, cause harm, but one that was immediately discounts this harm as 'rare'.

Similarly, there was no explanation about how vaccine damage be acknowledged, however 'rare' these might be, and still lead to government and NHS pronouncements that vaccinations are 'safe' - usually without reservation.

The letter further said that they could not identify any particularly disabling conditions that are known to have been caused by these vaccines, because this is not a requirement of the scheme. I thought, perhaps, that this might be information that the Department of Health, with the health and safety of the public in mind, might want to know! But apparently not.

• Patient Information Leaflets (PILS)
• Can I ask the Department of Health to comment on some of the known, and presumably accepted side effects of the DPT, MMR and HPV vaccines. These are contained within the PILS of each vaccine. I have these leaflets, and I would like to know, should I see fit to mention some of the side effects outlined therein, whether the Secretary of State would consider me to have “blood on my hands?”
• Which one’s am I allowed to mention, and which one’s am I not allowed to mention? 
• Can I also ask the Department of Health whether they aware of these leaflets, and if they are, why they are not mentioned when the NHS informs the public these vaccines are safe.

In the entire response I received from the Department of Health there was no mention, whatsoever, of Patient Information Leaflets, or the serious 'side effects' they confirm are known to be caused by these vaccines.

Instead they referred me to 'The Green Book - Immunisation Against Infectious Disease', which was described as a set of national guidelines which outlines that individuals... must be given enough (?) information to enable them to make a decision before they can give consent. "This should include the process, benefits and risks of the vaccinations, including potential side effects".

Maybe. But this is NOT information that is given to patients when they are vaccinated. Moreover, there is no comment about whether these guidelines are being actively undertaken by doctors. And the 'Green Book' is not mentioned in government, departmental, NHS or media coverage of vaccines - which routinely emphasise the benefits of vaccines and exclude any mention of the known risks.

But then the Department of Health's response goes on the attack.


               ".... the Government takes the issue of deliberately spreading myths about vaccination for person gain very seriously. The Online Harms White Paper ... sets out plans to tackle this.... We work with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to explore actions to address this and a range of other online harms, including working with platforms to ensure that high-quality information about vaccination can be easily found".

So I (and you) have been warned!

So remember the the main, most significant question that I asked. Vaccines have known risks and dangers, and these are contained within official medical literature.  So

• which one's am I allowed to mention? 
• which one's am I not allowed to mention?
• which one's, if mentioned, would cause me "to have blood on my hands"?

Here, I received no guidance whatsoever. I wonder why?

• The decline of measles in the 20th century
• The department of health suggests that the introduction of the measles vaccine has been responsible for reducing the incidence and elimination of measles. Can the Department of Health provide me with the numbers of people who have been diagnosed with measles each year from 1900 to 2000. 
• And will the department point out to me when, and to what extent, the introduction of the measles vaccine can be shown to have reduced the declining incidence of measles.
• As Mr Hancock is reported by the Times to have mentioned Tetanus, can the department also provide me with statistics on the incidence of this disease between 1900 and 2000, and point out how these statistics to any significant degree after the Tetanus vaccine was introduced.

The response I received provided no such figures, and so no recognition that measles and other childhood diseases were declining rapidly before the introduction of vaccines, and they have declined no faster since the vaccines were introduced.

• Reported Measles Epidemics
• The department of health, and its Secretary of State, is reporting an increased number of children who have been diagnosed with measles in recent years. Can the Department of Health provide me with statistics about the number of measles cases each of these epidemics represent, and break these cases down into those who have been vaccinated, and those who have not been vaccinated.

Again, the Department of Health provided no figures relating to measles affecting vaccinated and un-vaccinated children. Another blank! It is quite amazing how a three page letter can contain so little information.

SO I AM GOING TO WRITE A NEW LETTER TO THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. This will have much more specific questions about what side effects I can, and cannot mention on this blog - without having "blood on my hands" (click here to see letter).

Watch this space for further obfuscation 

from our Department of Health!

Homeopathy can reverse cancer. It is much more than placebo!

This article has been taken from the magazine "What Doctors Don't Tell You" (WDDTY), and was published on 26th  February 2018. They asked for it to be disseminated as widely as possible - and reproducing it here is my contribution to this.

It is, indeed, important information that every cancer patient should know.

Conventional medical treatment is dreadful - chemotherapy, radiotherapy and invasive surgery - and it is important for everyone to be aware that these are not the only treatment available - that homeopathic treatment is more effective, considerably safer, and far kinder.

Doctors call it ’nonsense on stilts’; professors of medicine have been bullying government and health authorities to stop offering it on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and yet studies paid for by the US government are showing that homeopathy could be our best defence against cancer. Several homeopathic remedies are as effective as powerful chemotherapy, according to clinical trials, and thousands of cancer cases are being reversed by homeopathy alone.

The extraordinary success of homeopathy remedies which are diluted hundreds of times against the most dreaded of diseases is being demonstrated every day at several homeopathic clinics in Kolkata (Calcutta) in India.

In one review of the work at the Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, 21,888 patients with malignant tumours were treated only with homeopathy; they had neither chemotherapy nor radiotherapy between 1990 and 2005. Clinical reports reveal that the tumours completely regressed in 19 per cent or 4158 of cases, and stabilized or improved in a further 21 per cent (4596) of patients. Those whose tumours had stabilized were followed for between two and 10 years afterwards to monitor the improvement (Banerji, 2008).

This suggests that homeopathic remedies on their own are reversing, or certainly stabilizing, 40 per cent of all cancers, a success rate that matches the best results for conventional medicine, and without the debilitating effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The foundation’s homeopathic therapy, ’the Banerji Protocol’, has been independently tested under laboratory conditions, and two of the remedies used, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, were found to be as effective against breast cancer cells as the chemotherapy drug Taxol (Int J Oncol, 2010; 36: 395403).

All of the remedies used at the foundation are available in shops, and Ruta 6 is one of several regularly prescribed. The Protocol refers to the foundations use of high-technology screening equipment and the mix of remedies two practices that are contrary to Classical Homeopathy, which attempts to prescribe one precise remedy that fits with an individual’s mind/body profile.

Another clinic in Kolkata, the Advanced Homeopathic Healthcare Centre, claims similar levels of success with its cancer patients and, although well documented, they have not been subjected to the same level of scientific validation as the Prasanta Banerji Foundation.

Getting noticed

The work at the Banerji Foundation first came to the attention of the West in 1995 when Dr Prasanta Banerji and his son, Dr Pratip Banerji, presented a study at the 5th International Conference of Anticancer Research of 16 cases of brain tumour that had regressed, using only homeopathic remedies. At the time, they had been testing homeopathic remedies on cancer patients since 1992 at their Foundation, and they say they now treat around 120 cancer patients every day.

Dr Sen Pathak, professor of cell biology and genetics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston, approached the Banerjis and, together, they set up a trial to test two homeopathic remedies, Ruta 6 and Calcarea Phosphorica 3X, on 15 patients with brain tumours. Six of the seven patients with gliomas, a type of brain cancer, had complete regression.In an accompanying in vitro laboratory study, scientists noticed that the remedies induced death-signalling pathways in the cancer cells (Int J Oncol, 2003; 23: 97582).

The result is astonishing. Gliomas are considered to be incurable; of 10,000 people diagnosed with malignant gliomas each year in the US alone, only around half are alive a year later, and just 25 per cent two years later (The Washington Post, 20 May 2008).

The scientists at MDACC were so impressed by the results that they started to offer homeopathic remedies as part of their range of cancer treatments.

In 1999, the US governments National Cancer Institute (NCI) independently evaluated the Banerji Protocol on 10 patients with different kinds of cancers. In four cases of lung and oesophageal cancer, the NCI researchers confirmed that there had been partial responses to the homeopathic remedies. None of the patients had received any previous conventional cancer treatment.

The NCI concluded that there was sufficient evidence of efficacy to support further research into the protocol, an historic decision as it marked the first time that any official health institute in the US had worked with an alternative therapy for cancer treatment (Oncol Rep, 2008; 20: 6974).

 

In the laboratory

To understand the mechanism of the homeopathic remedies on cancer cells, eight scientists from MDACC tested four remedies, Carcinosin 30C, Conium Maculatum 3C, Phytolacca Decandra 200C and Thuja Occidentalis 30C on two human breast-cancer cell lines. Around 5000 cells were exposed to the remedies and to a placebo, the solvent without the active ingredients of the remedies, for periods of between one and four days. The experiment was repeated three times.

Two of the remedies, Carcinosin and Phytolacca, achieved up to an 80 per cent response, indicating that they caused apoptosis, or cell death. By comparison, the placebo solvent achieved only a 30 per cent reduction, suggesting that the effect was more than twice that of the placebo.

Also, the effect was strongest with the greater dilution which, in the contrary world of homeopathic medicine, means more powerful and for longer periods of exposure.

The remedies triggered an apoptotic cascade that interfered with the cancer cells normal growth cycle and, yet, the surrounding healthy cells were untouched, the researchers found. In other words, they targeted only the cancer cells, whereas chemo-therapy drugs attack all growing cells. And, say the researchers, the effects of Carcinosin and Phytolacca were as powerful as Taxol (paclitaxel), the most commonly prescribed chemother-apy drug for breast cancer (Int J Oncol, 2010; 36: 395403).

Rooting for Ruta

Although Carcinosin and Phytolacca fared well in the laboratory, many of the Foundations patients are taking the Ruta 6 remedy and with extraordinary success, according to one survey of 127 American patients with brain tumours, half of whom were at grade IV, the end-stage before death.

The tumours had completely disappeared, according to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, in 18 of the 127 patients who were taking only Ruta and no conventional treatment. Another nine patients had significant tumour regression. The tumours were stable in around half of all patients scanned, but had grown in around 27 patients. Overall, around 79 per cent of the brain-tumour patients surveyed saw either great or some benefit from Ruta.

In an earlier study by the Foundation among patients who were taking Ruta alongside conventional chemotherapy for brain tumours, 72 per cent derived some or great benefit from Ruta and chemotherapy combined, suggesting that Ruta on its own is more effective than, or certainly as effective as, the drug, and without its debilitating side-effects (http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/Ruta6).

In a separate study of brain-tumour cases, 148 patients with malignant gliomas and 144 with meningiomas treated at the Foundation between 1996 and 2001, the 91 patients who had been treated exclusively with Ruta and Calc Phos had an average survival time of 92 months, whereas 11 patients who had been treated conventionally, and used homeopathy as a supplement, survived for 20 months. In addition, 7 per cent of the homeopathy-only patients had a complete cure, 60 per cent were improved, 22 per cent were stable with the cancer neither improving nor worsening and 11 per cent saw their cancer worsen, or die (Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation, www.pbhrfindia.org).

The other clinic

There is a second homeopathic clinic in Kolkata that is, confusingly, also run by two P. Banerjis, Parimal and his son Paramesh. The clinic, the Advanced Homeopathic Health-care Centre, has not attracted the same interest from the West; although its claims appear to be equally as impressive, they have not been independently verified.

Parameshs grandfather, Dr Pareshnath Banerji, opened a homeopathic clinic in India in 1918, and his work was continued by his son, Parimal, who adapted Classical Homeopathy into the new approach he calls Advanced Homeopathy.

With this method, he uses homeopathic remedies in the way a conventional doctor would use drugs, by treating one presenting symptom at a time; a cancer patient with pain would be treated for the pain first, for example. Parimal claims the approach is scientific, based on around 14 million cases dealt with through past generations of his family, with results that can be replicated by any trained practitioner.

The claims that the Banerjis make for Advanced Homeopathy are extraordinary. They say that 95 per cent of their patients do not need surgery, not even for major diseases, including cancer. Although the Centre has not undertaken any clinical trials, its case studies draw an impressive picture.

• A 65-year-old woman with advanced pancreatic cancer, whose tumour was too large to be removed and who refused all other conventional treatment, was alive two years after starting Advanced Homeopathy.
• A 35-year-old man had a malignant nasal polyp so large that it completely filled the left nostril. Initially, he had the polyp surgically removed, but it grew back each time. However, since 2007, he has not had any surgery but, instead, has relied exclusively on Advanced Homeopathy, and the tumour has not grown back.
• A 14-year-old boy had advanced glioma so severe that it was pushing against the eyeball. His only treatment was Advanced Homeopathy, says the Centre and, within a year, all of his symptoms had disappeared; the boy had gone from a comatose state to running around and playing.
• A 24-year-old man with a brain tumour that had spread to his spinal cordwhich could not be treated conventionally because of the risk of permanent paralysiswas treated with Advanced Homeopathy. According to MRI scans, the tumour stopped growing, and the patient was able to carry on with his life, free of symptoms.

Other Research

Outside of India, research into the effects of homeopathy on cancer is very limited, primarily because it is seen as being no better than a placebo and, so, is an unethical treatment. Because of this, most studies in the West have reviewed homeopathy as a palliative therapy to help patients cope with the rigours of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

In one study, 100 women with breast cancer completed a one-hour consultation with a homeopath who was asked to help with any three symptoms chosen by the women that were the result of conventional treatment. The 67 patients who completed the homeopathic treatment and the two follow-ups all reported significant improvements in their hot flashes, fatigue, anxiety and depression, although the remedies did not ease pain (Palliative Med, 2002; 16: 22733).

In another study of women with breast cancer, the homeopathic remedy Verum was tested against placebo for treating hot flashes after taking the drug tamoxifen. In this experiment, 26 women were given Verum, 30 took Verum and a placebo, and 27 were given just a placebo. Both the combination- and single-remedy groups reported improvement in symptoms compared with those in the placebo group (J Altern Complement Med, 2005; 11: 217).

Homeopathy also helped ease some of the effects of radiotherapy in a group of 32 women with breast cancer. Hyperpigmentation or darkening of the skin after radiotherapy was reduced in the homeopathic group compared with 29 controls who did not receive homeopathy, and their overall side-effects were also reduced (Br Homeopath J, 2000; 89: 812).

The homeopathic remedy Traumeel, for skin and muscular problems, has been successfully tested in several trials. In one, it was given to 15 patients (aged three to 25 years), who had undergone stem-cell transplants for their cancer, to treat stomatitis (mouth ulcers). Compared with a placebo, which was given to 15 other patients, Traumeel may reduce significantly the severity and duration of stomatitis (Cancer, 2001; 92: 68490). In a second study, Traumeel was tested on 20 patients with various cancers, again for treating stomatitis. It reduced the duration of symptoms to just six days, compared with 13 days in the placebo group (Biomed Ther, 1998; 16: 2615).

Individualized homeopathic remedies helped a group of 45 women who had been treated for breast cancer. Homeopathy was prescribed to treat symptoms following oestrogen withdrawal; the severity of hot flashes and other symptoms, except for joint pain, decreased, while their general quality of life and well-being scores increased (Homeopathy, 2003; 92: 1314). Another group of 20 women recovering from breast-cancer treatment, including tamoxifen, also reported improvement in the severity and frequency of their hot flashes (Homeopathy, 2002; 91: 759).

The black hole

The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently joined the chorus in the West that maintains that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo effect. Responding to a Voice of Young Science Network campaign, which is calling for a ban on the promotion of homeopathy in developing countries, the WHO stated that homeopathy is not a cure for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis or malaria.

Welcoming the WHO statement, Dr Robert Hagan, a member of the Voice of Young Science Network, commented: We need governments around the world to recognize the dangers of promoting homeopathy for life-threatening illnesses (BBC News, 20 August 2009).

Yet, homeopathy is doing just that in India. In that culture, homeopathy is accepted as a genuine medical therapy, and is governed by laws that ensure that homeopaths are properly trained and registered.

It is perplexing why good medical studies, which are supported by the US government and by leading American academics, are not being recognized, let alone discussed, in the West. Surely, cancer is so serious a threat that every avenue needs to be explored with an open mind, and not left to the drug and academic cabals? Conventional medicine does not offer any genuinely effective solutions and, yet, blocks anything that might, especially something as impossible and nonsensical to their science as homeopathy.

Bryan Hubbard

Factfile A: Homeopathy in India

Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India, described homeopathy as a refined method of treating patients economically and non-violently. Government must encourage and patronize it in our country.

And so they did. In 1960, the Maharashtra Actalso known as the Bombay Actset up a court of examiners, concerned with the teaching of homeopathy and the creation of new colleges to do so, and a board of homeopathy, which regulated and licensed practitioners.

Nine years later, a new act was passed that created a central council to govern homeopathy and Ayurveda, Indias traditional medical system. In 1973, the Homeopathy Central Council Act was passed, which standardized homeopathic education and allowed homeopaths to practice in different states throughout the country.

The legislation formalized a rich tradition of homeopathy in India that began in 1839, when Romanian doctor John Martin Honigberger successfully treated the Maharaja of the Punjab for paralysis of the vocal cords. Honigberger had been taught homeopathy by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, its creator, and became convinced of its efficacy when he treated himself for malaria. After treating the Maharaja, Honigberger moved to Calcutta, where he was known as the cholera doctor because of his successful treatment of the disease using homeopathic remedies.

In 1867, Dr Salzar from Vienna began teaching homeopathy in India, and two of his students went on to create the first homeopathic college in India in 1878.

However, the British rulers were not sympathetic to homeopathy, and it began to flourish in India only after the country achieved independence in 1947.

Factfile B: Not just water

Scientists and doctors say homeopathy is a nonsense because of the high dilution of the active ingredient. Most remedies are diluted beyond Avogadros number, which is the final concentration at which molecules of the original substance can still exist.

Any homeopathic remedy with a potency of 12Cin other words, 1200 dilutionsor greater is beyond the Avogadro number, suggesting that only water is left. This means that any effect of homeopathy must be due to the placebo, or feel-good, factor, say sceptics.

But homeopathy turns conventional science and medicine on its head: it contends that greater dilutions have greater potency and, so, the more dilutions, the more powerful the remedy.

Conventional science doesn't have a model to explain how homeopathy works and, yet, a meta-analysis of 75 studies concluded that 67 of them demonstrated an effect well beyond that of placebo (Complement Ther Med, 2007; 15: 12838). The effects have also been seen using highly sophisticated measuring technology, such as:

• calorimetry, which measures the amount of heat given off by a sample (J Therm Anal Calorim, 2004; 75: 81536); 
• spectroscopy, which measures how a substance absorbs and emits electromagnetic radiation (Homeopathy, 2007; 96: 17582); and
• thermoluminescence, which measures the amount of light produced by a sample when heated (Physica A, 2003; 323: 6774). 
• Succussionor vigorous agitationis as important as very high dilutions in creating the remedies. One study even measured the effectiveness of two highly diluted therapies, one succussed and one not, and found a difference between the two (Biochim Biophys Acta, 2003; 1621: 25360).

Factfile C: The new science of water

Undaunted by the public ridicule of his compatriot Jacques Benveniste and his theory that water has a memory, Nobel prize-winning virologist Luc Montagnier has confirmed that water does indeed retain frequencies, even at levels of dilutions as used in homeopathy.

Montagnier, who was awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of a link between HIV and AIDS, has found that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria could emit low-frequency radio waves. These waves influence the molecules around them, turning them into organized structures. In turn, these organized molecules also emit waves.

Confirming what homeopaths have said for several centuries, Montagnier has discovered that these information-emitting waves remain in water even after it has been diluted, often to levels regularly prescribed in homeopathy (Interdiscip Sci, 2009; 1: 8190).

Montagniers discoveries mirror those of French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who spent the last 15 years of his life investigating water and its ability to remember substances, even after it had been diluted many times.

However, after having had his original paper published in the prestigious Nature journal (Nature, 1988; 333: 8168), Benveniste was visited at his laboratory by the journals editor John Maddox and quackbusting magician James Randi.

They said that Benveniste was unable to replicate the findings that inspired his original paper, effectively accusing him of being a quack and, thus, ruining his reputation.

Factfile D: Homeopathy and the NHS

The UKs National Health Service (NHS) spends around 100 billion a year, and 4 million of it on homeopathy, mainly by funding the UKs four homeopathic hospitals.

Even though the expenditure is negligible, doctors continue to call for its complete abolition in the NHS. Groups of doctors have pressed primary care trusts (PCTs) to stop offering homeopathy to local patients, while the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors trade union, has called on the UK government to ban it outright.

The BMA meeting, where one doctor described homeopathy as ’nonsense on stilts’, also called on the government to place all homeopathic remedies in pharmacies under a special Placebo section (Mail Online, 2 July 2010; www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1290861/Homeopathy-remedies-labelled-placebos-banned-NHS-say-leading-doctors.html).

WDDTY Vol. 22, 12. March 2012