Sir Simon Stevens is the National Health Service (NHS) Chief Executive in England, an organisation that is now close to collapse. Indeed, for the last year we have all been asked to 'Save the NHS' because it cannot save itself, allegedly as a result of the Covid pandemic. Yet, in fact, the NHS crisis this winter is not significantly worse than the crises that we have been witnessing now every winter for decades (go to 'search' at the top of this page; type in 'NHS Crisis' to find all my previous blogs on this subject, dating back to 2012).
So Sir Simon Stevens has the responsibility for saving the NHS, and one strategy he has adopted for doing so is to embark upon a gratuitous attack on homeopathy through the pages of the Sunday Telegraph (25th January 2021).
"The head of NHS England last night warned that homeopaths had 'crossed the line' after a Sunday Telegraph investigation disclosed some were peddling myths that taking duck extract was as effective as the coronavirus vaccines. (He) said that people taking their advice from homeopathy were putting themselves at risk, and warned they would slow down the nation's vaccine efforts".
Before responding to this let's be absolutely clear. The NHS has had little or nothing to offer patients who have contracted the Covid virus throughout 2021. NHS nursing and care staff have done sterling work for patients, and this needs to be applauded. Yet there has been no medical treatment. At the time of writing the NHS claims the Covid-19 pandemic has killed over 104,000 people (and rising) in Britain, and during all this time the NHS has been able only to watch over them as they died.
The reason is that the NHS has become totally dependent on a single form of medicine, conventional medicine, dominated as it is by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Other medical therapies, including natural therapies like homeopathy, have been deliberately excluded from the NHS. Stephens has been at the helm whilst the pharmaceutical monopoly has been established. At the beginning of the Covid crisis the conventional medical establishment had to admit that it had no treatment, and it has subsequently been in a state of panic ever since, as more and more people have died with the virus.
So what does Stevens do? He continues to place his reliance, totally, on conventional medicine, and he continues to exclude and gratuitously attack any medical therapy that is not beholden to pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.
So what has pharmaceutical medicine achieved since the inauguration of the NHS in 1948? There have been promises that it is "winning the war" against illness and disease. New drugs and vaccines have regularly been presented to us as 'miracle cures', 'wonder drugs' that will "transform medical treatment". Illness and disease would be eradicated because of the wisdom of conventional medical science. There has been no transformation, no eradication. The outcome of all these many NHS promises has been quite different:
- Infectious Disease. The Covid-19 outcome has not only been a medical disaster; it has been a social, emotional, and economic disaster too. It's ability to deal with viral epidemics is no better now than it was in 1918 when conventional medicine was faced with the so-called Spanish Flu.
- Chronic Diseases. Almost any form of chronic disease anyone could possibly mention (arthritis, asthma, autism, cancer, dementia, diabetes, eczema, mental health, et al) have increased from 1948 levels and risen to new epidemic proportions; and they continue to increase.
- Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines. Thousands of new drugs have been brought to the market, many as wonder drugs, prescribed to patients, only to be found to be ineffective, harmful, or both, with most of them eventually either abandoned or banned.
- Covid-19 Vaccines. This is an outcome that will become more apparent in future months. These vaccines, that Stevens believes to be so important to bring us out of the pandemic, are already known to be causing serious patient harm, including death.
And yet Sir Simon Stevens refuses to look inwardly at the possible reasons for conventional medical failure. He steadfastly refuses to look outside the box to see if there might be alternative treatments that might help the patients who are dying under his care, and make life easier for his exhausted nursing and care staff - even when he has had to continue admitting that his NHS has no effective treatment available!
And then he has the audacity to attack homeopathy!
It is fortunate for Stevens that he faces only an obedient and compliant 'free' media, which either cannot, or will not, question him about NHS failure, and why, year in, year out, the organisation that he leads finds itself in an ever-deepening financial crisis. As I have said many times before, on this blog, the crisis is NOT financial, it is MEDICAL. The NHS is investing in a failed medical system. And the more Stevens spends on pharmaceutical medicine the deeper the NHS crisis becomes.
Other national health services, notably in India and Cuba (and more recently, it seems, in Bavaria, Germany) are now investing in homeopathy. In addition, homeopaths around the world, including in Britain, are working with their patients, seeking to protect them from Covid, and to treat them if they contract it.
Does it work? The homeopathic community, patients and practitioners, thinks so. Stevens does not even want to look, preferring to continue on his myopic path, and attacking anything that lay outside his experience.
And Stevens is right about one this. Homeopaths are, indeed, using 'duck extract'! For anyone who is interested in safe and effective protection from this Covid-19 pandemic, and can consider with an open mind, free from bias or vested interests, it is an alternative that NHS patients could very well do with at the moment. It is a remedy called Anas Barbariae, otherwise known at Oscillococcinum, made from the diseased liver of a duck. I have used it as prophylaxis (prevention) of 'flu now for many winters, as have many of my family and former patients. It rarely seems to fail to protect us. It is disappointing that Stevens is unable to consider it, that he does not make it readily available on the NHS. But homeopathy is available to anyone with a more open mind.
Anas Barbariae is available from all homeopathic pharmacies around the world. For instance, a small bottle costs £4.50 from Helios. Every pharmacy will advice you (but be forewarned, they are currently extremely cautious about giving any advice on the telephone, in case the Sunday Telegraph, or similar, are embarking on another scam attack on homeopathy). I usually take one remedy, each month, during the flu season, although during this Covid-19 pandemic I am taking a weekly dose.
Just think how easily Sir Simon Stevens could find out whether this is a useful, inexpensive, safe, effective alternative to vaccination. His NHS could easily undertake a study to compare the outcomes of this, and other natural treatments, with conventional medicine. Instead he clearly prefers to attack any medical therapy other than the one he supports.
Moreover, this is not all that homeopathy does. The main strategy of homeopathy is to support the immune system, to enhance our natural immunity from infectious disease. This is something the Stevens-led NHS has never told us about during the last year - diet, nutrition, exercise, life-style choices. But turning to this strategy is a choice we all have.
I only wish more people would observe the chaos that controls the NHS,
and begin to question whether there are not better alternatives.
