Searching for safe medicine: wellness without harm.
Exposing harm caused by pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines and other conventional medical treatment.
Commenting on current medical issues from a 'natural health' perspective.
The NHS winter crisis happens every year. I wrote about it first in 2011, and the subject has become a regular annual blog. The 2019-2020 season is nothing new, except that it has had two distinguishing features.
The General Election of December 2019 saw all the main political parties falling over each other to promise NHS more and more £billions because the NHS was on its knees.
The Coronavirus epidemic has drawn attention away from just how bad patient care has been during this winter.
My argument remains. It does not matter how much money is thrown at the NHS, it will always continue in crisis because it is monopolised by pharmaceutical medicine; and it is a medical system that is not making us better, it is making us sicker.
I will not repeat my argument here, or the evidence to support it here. If anyone wants to do so, and to trace this sorry story I suggest that you put in a search above - "NHS Crisis" - and that will bring up all my blogs written over the last decade on these crises.
It is BBC News that has come up with statistics supporting this year's sorry story, one which never changes, regardless of how much additional money is ploughed into the NHS. "Sickest NHS Patients 'face hours on trolleys'." They based their analysis on NHS England data.
"Many of the most seriously ill patients are waiting for hours on trolleys and in corridors as the NHS struggles to find them beds, BBC research shows. Nearly a quarter of patients admitted on to wards during December and January in England faced delays of more than four hours before a bed could be found. It has created a backlog outside hospitals with patients brought in by ambulance facing long waits too."
The BBC stated that 199,000 patients had four-hour 'trolley waits' in hospital corridors after being seen in A&E (no mention about how long that wait was) and before a bed could be found, and that this was more than twice the numbers seen 4 years ago. In some hospitals 50% of patients had waited more than four hours.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is quoted saying the situation was unacceptable, that treating patients in this way was undignified, and put them at risk.
NHS England, speaking in their defence, said that extra money was being invested which would help hospitals recruit staff and cut waiting times.
Indeed, there is always 'extra money' but a BBC graph demonstrates just how the problem has escalated since I first wrote about the NHS crisis in 2011. Then there was about 20,000 patients waiting in trolleys for over 4 hours. So in 8 years this number has grown ten-fold.
And, as usual, year by year, there is no analysis about why the crisis is happening; just concern this year the coronavirus epidemic was likely to make the situation a lot worse. Even the usual, routine excuses - under-funding, an ageing population - et al - are not to be found in the BBC article, although they will no doubt be trotted out again, when necessary.
So I repeat. The NHS crisis has nothing to do with funding, or an ageing population. As I have argued, at length, elsewhere, this is a medical failure. It is one of the clearest signs that pharmaceutical medicine, which dominates the NHS, is failing, not only in its inability to make sick people better, but actually making them sicker. The queues never get shorter - they get longer.
So no doubt I will return with another crisis bulletin for the winter of 2020-2021, with exactly the same message!
There are many questions that need to be asked of Pharmaceutical Medicine, and in particular what our doctors should, or should not be doing when treating their patients.
Why does Pharmaceutical Medicine continually make little changes to their guidance to doctors?
Is the new guidance better than the old guidance?
How long will the new guidance last?
Are these just slight adjustments, to get everything right?
Or does no-one really know what they are doing?
Just in the last few days the following 'little changes' have been announced by the medical magazine, MIMS. What I would like you to do, when reading each headline, is to remember this - the previous guidance given to doctors was wrong? And I would like you to question, after reading each one, is - what harm has the previous guidance caused to patients?
Macrolide antibiotics that have been used for many years, and they are known to have many serious side effects. Read about the side effects of one of them here. You will not find anything about birth defects though. This new guidance means that doctors have been prescribing these drugs without any knowledge that they cause birth defects.
Parents have been use emollient moisturisers for children who suffer from eczema for decades, and now doctors have been told that they are ineffective, useless.
This new advice shows just how confused the conventional medical system is about the safety and/or the value of its treatment. This is the second change in advice over a short period of time. The first change, in 2017, told doctors to increase the dose. Now that has been overturned; they should not increase the dose! So where to next? Does anyone know?
These
are just three recent changes in what is an an ongoing, continual and constant stream of
changes in the conventional medical advice given to our doctors.
Is it any wonder that doctors are confused? This is clearly not a medical system that
knows what it is doing.
The next time a doctor tell you that a pharmaceutical drug or vaccines is safe, ask them to read the British Medical Journal's (BMJ) campaign "to produce better evidence".
And the next time you are told the conventional medicine is 'evidence based', and supported by medical science, tell them about the BMJ's opinion on the quality of that science.
What follows are passages taken direcctly from the BMJ website. It concerns the BMJ's campaign to produce "better medical evidence" for such claims. What the campaign proves, without any doubt, is that the conventional medical establishment are aware of the situation that has led to so much patient harm over the last 70 years, and demonstrates that the BMJ, at least, are trying to do something about it. "The BMJ believes that the design, conduct, and reporting of healthcare research should better serve the needs of patients and the public: better evidence leads to better healthcare. To produce better evidence the BMJ aims to:
• Expand the role of patients, health professionals, and policy makers in research and healthcare • Increase the systematic use of existing evidence for better decision making • Make research evidence relevant, replicable, and accessible for healthcare professionals, patients, and the public • Take a stand on financial interests by reducing questionable research practices, bias, and conflicts of interests.
What are the problems with current research evidence?
Patients are being let down by serious flaws in the creation, dissemination, and implementation of medical research. Too many research studies are poorly designed or executed. Too much of the resulting research evidence is withheld or disseminated only piecemeal. As the volume of clinical research has grown the quality of evidence has often worsened, which has compromised medicine’s ability to provide affordable, effective, high value care for patients. There are many problems. In our editorial launching the manifesto we describe the following:
• Results from half of all trials are never published, and positive results are twice as likely to be published as negative ones.
• 85% of research spending currently goes to waste.
• Over four fifths (86%) of a sample of Cochrane reviews did not include data on the main harm outcome.
• A systematic review of 39 studies found no robust studies evaluating shared decision making strategies.
• The drug industry has been fined for criminal behaviour and civil infringements, but little happens to prevent such problems occurring again.
• Despite repeated calls to prohibit or limit conflicts of interests among authors and sponsors of clinical guidelines, the problem persists.
• A third of scientists report questionable research practices, including data mining for statistically significant effects, selective reporting of outcomes, switching outcomes, publication bias, protocol deviations, and concealing conflicts of interest.
• More than one in 10 authors and reviewers has first-hand knowledge of inappropriate adjustment, alteration, or fabrication of data. More than one in 20 admits having lied in authorship statements.
These flaws have been known about for many years. I wrote about them in my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine". Ben Goldacre wrote about them in his book, "Bad Pharma".
So it remains to be seen if the BMJ campaign will make any difference on this long-standing problem.
When we are sick today, a visit to the doctor always ends in the same way. The doctor listens to our problems. We are asked questions by the doctor. We undertake some tests suggested by the doctor. The doctor diagnoses what is wrong, and writes a prescription for pharmaceutical drugs.
That is how our dominant, monopolistic, pharmaceutical-led medical system works today. We are sick. And we get pharmaceutical medical treatment - whether we like it or not! There is no health freedom.
So what would happen if our health services were operated on the principle of Health Freedom? What if Patient Choice held sway within conventional medicine. What if the concept of "no decision about me without me" was put into operation. What would a visit to the doctor be like then?
Probably much the same, at least to begin with.
The doctor will listen to our problems.
ask us questions.
perhaps undertake some tests.
then the doctor will diagnose what is wrong.
But then the doctor will provide us
with information about the choices we have - we would be asked about our treatment preferences.
So let's suppose we have some sort of pain, perhaps lower back pain, or fibromyalgia, or rheumatoid arthritis, or osteoarthritis.
The doctor will probably do what (s)he does now - offer us painkilling drugs; but now we will be shown the Patient Information Leaflet, which includes information about known drug side effects, and (s)he will explain how painkillers only dampen pain for a short time, a palliative response to the pain that will not be effective in treating our illness.
Patient Choice. The doctor will then reach for several leaflets outlining other forms of treatment, perhaps dietary and nutritional advice, physiotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractor, naturopathy, homeopathy, acupuncture, Alexander technique, yoga, and many others.
Informed Choice. We would then be asked to read the leaflets. The leaflets would be written by health professionals who are qualified in their particular therapy. On this basis we would decide which treatment we would prefer to use.
No decision about me without me. Alongside the doctor we would then make our decision. We would have the option of working directly with the doctor with pharmaceutical medicine. Or we would ask for, and the doctor would refer us on to a naturopath, a homeopath, an acupuncturist, et al., for a course of treatment of our choice for a defined periods of time.
Patient Outcome Assessment. At the end of an agreed period of treatment we would return to the doctor, tell him how we are, and in particular whether our pain was worse, the same, or improved.
On the basis of this, alongside the doctor, we would fill in a form to assess the outcome of the treatment.
The form would then be submitted for analysis, along with millions of others, to assess the outcome of the treatment for the patient.
Comparative outcomes of the different treatment therapies for similar conditions would then be calculated.
Treatment outcomes would then become part of the information provided to us at every stage of our treatment.
Further Treatment. The outcome of the discussion would be a decision about further treatment, whether to continue with the treatment for another period, or to try another kind of medical therapy. And the process would begin again.
We have freedom of choice in most other spheres of life
I have a particular loathing for Beta Blocker drugs. In 2006 my doctor told me the drugs were safe, 'well-tolerated'. I refused to take them, even though, at the time, I was having regular heart palpitations.
Now (13th February 2020) MIMS has announced that a new report (on Propanolol) has found that the toxicity of this 'commonly prescribed' beta blocker "needs better recognition across the NHS to prevent deaths from overdoses", and that these 'over-doses' had increased by 33% between 2012 and 2017. Further, the report states that "patients with migraine ... may be at an increased risk". I was experiencing migraines at the time.
So was I lucky to have refused them? Well, not lucky. I was seeking homeopathic treatment, and had no intention of taking any pharmaceutical drug. And I also looked into the known side effects of beta blockers at the time, so refused them on the basis of good information - information my doctor did not tell me about, and attempted to gloss over.
Having read the MIMS article I looked up the known side effects of Propanolol again at Drugs.com. In the 14 years since I was offered Beta Blockers, the 'known' side effects have risen, and got more serious. Even so, doctors continue to prescribe them, at the same time, no doubt, reassuring patients that they are "safe, and well tolerated"!
Anyone who is currently taking Beta Blocker drugs should look at this Drugs.com webpage. If you did not know about these serious side effects your decision to take them was not an 'informed' decision. Your doctor probably told you the same as mine told me - "Beta Blockers are safe, well tolerated"! Quite clearly they are not - quite clearly they are dangerous drugs. I have listed some of the known side effects below.
But don't stop taking them 'abruptly' as now, there is even a boxed warning about 'discontinuing' the drug abruptly - it can cause angina - and myocardial infarction.
This is the kind of fix that patients get into once they put their trust in conventional medicine, and begin taking pharmaceutical drugs.
Back in 2006 it took me 11 months of fighting the NHS to get my homeopathic treatment. The outcome was that I have not had another heart palpitation for 12 years. And the same remedy also stopped my migraines. And all this without having to suffer from the side effects of Beta Blocker drugs. So, in this sense, I am very lucky indeed.
Beta Blockers - some of the known side effects (taken from Drug.com)
Abdominal or stomach pain and tenderness
black, tarry stools
blistering, peeling, or loosening of the skin
blood in the urine
bloody nose
bloody stools
blurred or loss of vision
body aches or pain
burning, crawling, itching,numbness, prickling, "pins and needles", or tingling feelings
Jon Rappoport is reporting (14 February 2020) that the fightback against mandatory drugs is starting in the USA, that those in favour of health freedom and patient choice are beginning to get their voice heard. Vaccine revolution in one State of the union) indicates that the state is South Dakota, who are proposing new state legislation. He provides these quotations from the legislation.
"No pubic or non-public post secondary education institutions may mandate any immunizations for school entry. A public or private post secondary education institution may request any student to submit medical records. No educational institution may use coercive means to require immunization"
"The bill would make it a Class 1 misdemeanor for 'any education institution, medical provider, or person to compel another to submit to immunization' according to the bill text."
"No child entering public or non-public school, or a public or non-public early childhood program in this state, may be required to receive any immunization or medical procedure for enrollment or entry. The Department of Health may recommend any immunization for school entry but may not require them. No school may use any coercive means to require immunization."
And perhaps most important of all, the underlying principle of the bill.
“Every person has the inalienable right to bodily integrity, free from any threat or compulsion that the person accepts any medical intervention, including immunization. No person may be discriminated against for refusal to accept an unwanted medical intervention, including immunization.”
Health freedom is an inalienable right. Dr Benjamin Rush, a signatory of the USA's Declaration of Independence, and a committed believer in, and supporter of human rights, made this prediction about health freedom in 1776.
"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time
will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover
dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal
privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science.
All such laws are un-American and despotic."
When most of the other 49 states are falling over each other to legislate for mandatory drugging, South Dakota are bucking the trend. It is good to know that they, at least, are standing up for the 250 year principles of the founding fathers.
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they! Drug regulators around the world are controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, they have become part of the conventional medical establishment. And for the last 10 years the seemingly all-powerful drug cartel has been leading the worldwide move towards mandating vaccination, forcing them on people who want nothing to do with them.
Pharmaceutical medicine admits that it has no effective treatment for the coronavirus (now called Covid-19). Consequently it is in a state of panic; and the process of panicking is successfully getting all of us to panic.
Thus we are witnessing the spectacle of people wearing masks, and goggles, and white spacesuits; of huge cities being closed down; passengers stranded on cruise ships, and people placed in quarantine for 14 days. And, of course, 1000's of people now dying of this strain of influenza.
I have just answered a question that was posed on the Quora website, which asked whether China was doing enough to contain the spread of the epidemic.
My answer was a very emphatic 'NO'.
The reason is simple. China, and most other countries, with the one exception of India, are doing what they always do - relying entirely on pharmaceutical medicine, which admits quite openly that it has nothing, either preventative or in terms of treatment, that is effective for this outbreak.
Most people, when they hear this, believe this means that there is no treatment for coronavirus. This is not true.
The homeopathic community most certainly does have treatments that are likely to work in preventing and treating the epidemic.
The situation is a repeat of the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918, when homeopathy proved that it had remedies that could prevented, and treated flu once patients contracted it.
What this new Covid-19 epidemic is going to do is to prove, once again, that homeopathy is more effective than conventional medicine in the treatment of influenza; and that pharmaceutical medicine has not advanced in its ability to treat flu over the last 100+ years.
The homeopathic community is currently looking at the symptoms of the Covid-19 coronavirus strain of influenza, with the view to recommending the best remedy for patients who contracts the disease. For anyone who wants to view the discussion that is happening, this link is probably the best one. It demonstrates how homeopathy seeks to match the symptoms of a disease with a remedy that is known to treat similar symptoms, and it has come up with a number of homeopathic remedies.
So whilst pharmaceutical medicine has no treatment for coronavirus, homeopathy most certainly does. Anyone who is worried about coronavirus should key into this discussion. It's certainly a good time to find out more about homeopathy - to combat the current panic with the knowledge that a few simple, and common homeopathic remedies will help if you come into contact with the virus.
India is one country, as far as I am aware the only country, that is doing more than any other country. The Indian health ministry is currently recommending a remedy they feel best matches the current flu outbreak. It is Arsenicum Album, and what they are recommending is outlined here.
I have looked at the symptom picture of Arsenicum alongside the symptoms of the new coronavirus and they do seem to match. This means that there is a strong possibility that it will be effective.
So my argument is straightforward. If any country is not looking at homeopathy when responding to this epidemic, and failing to utilise the expertise of homeopathy in the treatment of flu, it is most certainly NOT “doing all it can”.
Not only is China (and the UK, USA, and most of Europe) refusing to consider homeopathy, it is actually criticising us for suggesting that we have remedies that will help control the spread of the epidemic, and the number of people dying from it. This stance might be understandable if they had effective treatment to offer patients - but it hasn’t.
Even if the conventional medical establishment is sceptical about homeopathy I do not know how they can justify allowing people to die rather than utilising something, anything (even homeopathy which they hate) to try to save lives.
The fact that they can't, or won't, demonstrates the power of the pharmaceutical lobby. Conventional medicine is failing across the board, its failure with Covid-19 just the latest demonstration of this. It wants to avoid any possible comparison with other medical therapies, not least homeopathy. If such a comparison is made, as in was with the Spanish Flu epidemic, it will once again demonstrate that pharmaceutical medicine is both dangerous, ineffective, and also extremely expensive. By contrast, using Arsenicum Album (or any of the other remedies mentioned) will prove to be safe, effective, and extremely inexpensive.
So the conventional medical establishment has effectively put itself into a self-imposed quarantine! It is avoiding any possible contact with other medical therapies to avoid the realisation that it is failing, sick, and dying. Yet this self-imposed quarantine will ensure that many people who contract the disease will have contracted it unnecessarily. And those who die will lose their lives without being offered effective treatment.
More concerning still - the conventional medical establishment is quite prepared to allow this to happen, entirely for its own selfish reasons. It is desperate to survive!
The UK Government has announced that the Coronavirus is now "a serious and imminent threat" to public health. This will lead to them taking new powers in a frantic effort to stop the spread of the virus. The panic is necessary, and is caused by two factors.
One single medical system dominates the UK's health system.
This health system is unable to prevent people contracting the coronavirus, and unable to treat it effectively, without people dying, once someone has contracted it.
As I said in my previous blog, homeopathy is an effective medical therapy, although of course there are no guarantees of effectiveness. But anyone in the UK who is alarmed, and feel they need protection, this is the time to take action, either by purchasing a preventative flu remedy (Influenzinum, or Oscillococinum) from a homeopathic pharmacy, (go to this link, the pharmacies will post the remedy to you quickly), or to contact a local homeopath for possible treatment. A local homeopathy can be found by going the the 'findahomeopath' website, here.
One warning. There are many homeopathy trolls around who are prepared to attack homeopathy at any stage, so anyone you telephone will be naturally suspicious, and will be very cautious about responding to you. So you may have to take time to ensure them that you are making a genuine enquiry.
Medical cannabis, CBD oil, or cannabidiol, based on cannabis or marijuana, is controversial.
In the UK there are an increasing number of parents who are demanding access CBD oil through the NHS. A gruop of parents today (5 February 2020) have travelled to Westminster to lobby MP's, demanding free medical cannabis prescriptions for their children. Cannabidiol is very expensive, and the conventional medical establishment does not appear too keen on granting anyone access to it, certainly not the UK's Department of Health, and the NHS.
The makers of Cannabidiol claim that it is non-psychoactive (it doesn't act like cannabis), and make many marketing claims for CBD oil.
it is claimed to be the answer to many illnesses, including chronic pain, diabetes, depression, anxiety, epilepsy, seizures, and autism.
over 50% of patients using can stop taking pharmaceutical drugs.
that it has been clinically proven in treating a wide range of health benefits
it can regulate mood patterns and sleep cycles
it can mitigates inflammatory response
improve cognitive performance
So what is the row about? Why is there such disagreement? If parents want it for their children; and it has such sweeping benefits why is it not being offered to them, free on the NHS? Is it the expense? Pharmaceutical drugs which are equally expensive can be obtained on the NHS. Or is the problem that CDB oil is effective and might reduce demand for pharmaceutical drugs? The drug companies would not welcome this.
Medical cannabis was made legal in he UK in 2018, yet many parents are spending more than £1000 per month on buying it for their child. The campaigners visiting Westminster are mainly parents of severely epileptic or autistic children who have decided to take legal action to challenge the NHS's refusal or failure to prescribe it. Very few people obtain a prescription for medical cannabis, a few children and adults with rare and severe forms of epilepsy, some who have serious side effects from chemotherapy, and some people with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The NHS defends this stance in a number of ways.
There are concerns about the safety of medical cannabis (although there are no concerns about the pharmaceutical drugs currently being prescribed).
There has been inadequate scientific trials (the testimony of parents who have used it and found it to be transformational is not sufficient).
Medical cannabis is not required when there are pharmaceutical alternatives (and parents can have as many of these drugs as they need, even if parents say they do not work).
The fact that prescribing CBD oil might damage sales of the pharmaceutical drugs currently being used is, of course, denied.
I am not entering into a discussion about any of these political/financial/medical arguments. I would rather the NHS, and these campaigning parents, discovered the advantages of (i) not using pharmaceutical medicine, and particular childhood vaccines, which have most likely caused the problems of epilepsy and autism in the first place, and (ii) the benefits of homeopathy, and other natural therapies, which would offer safer, more effective, and less expensive solutions. However, the issue surrounding medical cannabis clearly demonstrates another important issue: Health Freedom and Patient Choice.
The Conservative government came to power in 2010 advocating patient choice. Remember the White Paper - "no decision about me without me". Whatever happened to that? It was never publicly reversed, just left on a shelf to be forgotten, to gather dust! The pharmaceutical companies certainly did not like it; perhaps they thought too many people would not want to take their drugs and vaccines. And perhaps the drug companies were too powerful for the weak, irresolute conservative politicians.
At the same time there was also a pilot policy to develop direct payments to patients: personal health budgets. This was a system where sick people (or their parents) could receive a lump sum payment from the NHS which they could then allocate to the treatment of their choice. Whatever happened to that? Perhaps the drug companies thought too many people might opt for treatment that did not include their highly profitable drugs and vaccines.
So, 10 years on, patient choice has not advanced. It has been reversed. Politicians are no longer talking about patient choice. Indeed, they are more likely to be heard advocating mandatory drugging and vaccination policies. And this is the case even though 'patient choice' and 'personal health budgets' would resolve the problem.
So whatever the rights and wrongs of medical cannabis the current row is informative. It is still the conventional medical establishment that decides who can have what treatment. The patient can either accept their decision, do without, or bankrupt themselves by paying for it themselves.
Patients have absolutely no rights in health care.
The malpractice of Ian Paterson, a breast surgeon operating in the English West Midlands, has led to him serving a 20 year prison sentence for 'wounding with intent'. He undertook 'needless surgery' on hundreds of women, with the coroner, and West Mindlands police, looking into the deaths of at least 23 patients. Paterson is a rogue doctor; but there have been many others - Harold Shipman, an English doctor working in Greater Manchester, comes immediately to mind, someone who killed over 200 of his patients.
Do these, and similar rogue doctors, represent a serious argument against the practice of pharmaceutical medicine? As a supporter of natural medicine, should I be using their activities to attack the conventional medical profession?
No! I believe that this would be inappropriate. There are 'rogues' in every profession, in every walk of life. Such doctors use their position and expertise to maim and kill their patients; but most doctors are not motivated in this way. They genuinely want to help their patients.
"The suffering described; the callousness; the
wickedness; the failure on the part of individuals and institutions as
well as Paterson himself - these are vividly described in what patients
told us. The scale of what happened, the length of time this malpractice
went on; the terrible legacy for so many families; it is difficult to
exaggerate the damage done, including to trust in medical organisations."
These are the words of the independent inquiry into Paterson's activities, so the suffering he caused cannot be discounted. But even so rogue doctors are not grounds for the wholescale abandonment of conventional, drug-based medicine.
So is the problem that these doctors operate within a medical system that is inherently dangerous for patients, a medical system that can cause serious patient harm?
Yes. This is undeniably true. Pharmaceutical medicine is the only form of medicine based on the use of treatments that are known to harm and damage patients, which can cause disease, and ultimately death. Indeed, the conventional medical establishment often states that unless a drug DOES have such an impact on the body, it cannot and will not work. Pharmaceutical medicine does not respect the precautionary principle, or the Hypocratic oath of "first do not harm".
What all this means is that Paterson, and other rogue doctors, should be punished; but not used as scapegoats for a medical system that is routinely causing harm to thousands of patients every day. Conventional medicine is a danger to patients even with Shipman dead, and Paterson in prison.
Even so, this is not the main lesson that can, and should be learnt from the medical career of Ian Paterson. The real lesson is alluded to in the conclusions of the independent inquiry into his malpractice which described the environment in which he was allowed to work.
"There was a culture of avoidance and denial, an alarming loss of corporate memory and an offloading of responsibility at every level. This capacity for wilful blindness is illustrated by the way in which Paterson's behaviour and aberrant clinical practice was excused or even favoured. Many simply avoided or worked round him. Some could have known, while others should have known, and a few must have known."
The NHS cover-up of Paterson spanned many years, just as it had done with the activities of Shipman. Paterson began working at Solihull's Spire hospital in 1999, and was appointed at Solihull Hospital (part of the local NHS Trust) in 2000. The General Medical Council did not investigate his practise for the next 11 years, even though 'concerns' were raised as early as 2003. The inquiry found that hospital management had "missed several opportunities to stop him".
This is the real lesson to be learnt (but probably won't be). Pharmaceutical medicine does not operate openly and transparently, within the NHS, and within national health services around the world. Indeed it is difficult to see how the conventional medical establishment can EVER open itself to scrutiny - and survive.
In other words, if the conventional medical establishment were to be as open and honest as the inquiry into Paterson wanted, no patient would ever want to use pharmaceutical medical treatment again.
So cover-ups like this one over Ian Paterson, and the secrecy within which conventional medicine always shrouds itself, is an important and necessary feature of its survival, and that this is unlikely to change.
