"The Elderly suffering from medicines overload"
This is the headline of an article published by the GP e-magazine, Pulse, on 5th November 2019.The article itself reports a House of Lords committee, which found that elderly patients are being put at risk of being 'poisoned' by their medicines because not enough research has been done on the best doses to give older patients, not enough is known about harmful drug interactions.This is not new news. It has been happening for decades. It was happening when I managed a group of residential homes for older people in Northamptonsire - in the late 1970's. I wrote about it in last year, in a blog "It's us older people who are ruining the NHS! We should all be ashamed of ourselves for being so sick!
"The NHS is in crisis. It always needs more resources.And when asked why it cannot manage, why every part of the NHS is failing to cope with patient demand, we are told that it is because of an ageing population. So, all you old people, it is YOU who are to blame! Or are we?
Or are we indeed? My conclusion in that 2018 article was simple and straightforward.
"Older age has much to recommend it - as long as you stay away from conventional medicine!"
The House of Lords is not pulling punches. It might still call pharmaceutical drugs 'medicine' (which implies that they make us better) but the actually describe them as 'poisons' which is more accurate.
Aging Care has come to a similar conclusion in their article, 'Medical Over-treatment can have dire consequences for seniors'.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement comes to a similar conclusion in "The hidden drug problem of older adults; medication overload".
And any web search will bring up a host of articles, some going back decades, identifying health issues with older people that are related to pharmaceutical drugs.
So what will conventional medicine do about this new House of Lords committee report? They will do nothing! Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that harm are all conventional medicine has to offer, so what else can they do, other than ignore it. Shelving reports like this is what conventional medicine has been doing for years.
But fear not! There will be other reports, in the years to come, that will point out the same thing - drugs harm older people, and make them sick. The problem is that these will be ignored too, until such time as we ALL begin to realise that
- pharmaceutical drugs are not 'medicines' - they are poisons
- it's not about 'over-treatment' - its about treatment
- and the problem is no 'hidden' - it is out here in the open
