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Tuesday 23 February 2021

Arthritis Drug, Tocilizumab. A cure for Covid-19? But why no mention of harmful adverse drug reactions?

 I really should do a pro-forma for these blogs, concerning pharmaceutical press releases about old drugs that will do wondrous things for a new group of sick patients; heralded by the mainstream media (MSM); but failing to mention the nasty side effects.

Arthritis drug tocilizumab cuts deaths from Covid

This is how BBC News presented the new 'breakthrough' treatment. It can, the article says, be a live-saver for some of the sickest hospital patients with Covid-19. The research showed that for every 25 patients treated with the drug an additional life would be saved, and as well as improving survival and recovery time it can avoid patients needing to be moved to intensive care.

Good new then? Perhaps more like out of the frying pan straight into the fire!

Toxilizumab has a long list of serious adverse drug reactions, as outlined here. These include a wide range of psychiatric side effects, "including affective reactions" like irritability, depression, suicidal ideation, and psychotic reactions, such as mania, delusions, hallucinations, behavioural disturbances, anxiety, insomnia, cognitive dysfunction (confusion, amnesia) and aggravated schizophrenia.

I am not going to list the gastrointestinal, hypersensitivity, endocrine, metabolic, ocular, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, dermatologic, hematologic, genitourinary, hepatic, immunologic and other adverse reactions. You can read these for yourself. 

The point is that the MSM, the medical profession, medical science, government, and certainly the pharmaceutical industry don't feel the need to tell us about the 'bad' news. This is good news. 4 out of 100 sick patients with Covid might survive. The personal cost of survival is immaterial.

The main question this blog has been raising, throughout this pandemic, is that the best treatment for Covid-19 has been completely ignored - natural immunity - supporting and strengthening of immune system - and the use of safe/effective natural medical therapies.

However, none of these treatments cost £500 per patient, so I wonder; can anything be learnt from this?

Monday 22 February 2021

Obesity. A new breakthrough treatment? Or the promotion of another failed and unsafe drug with serious known side effects?

Earlier this month another new 'wonder drug' was announced in the mainstream media (MSM), who provide advertising for the pharmaceutical industry, free of charge. BBC News set the general tone with its headline.cons

"Obesity: Appetite drug could mark 'new era' in tackling condition"

The problem with these pharmaceutical news releases, dutifully repeated by the MSM, is that they invariably come to nothing. The 'new era' does not happen.

Nor are the known adverse drug reactions. Perhaps there is a mention of some minor side effects later in the article. The drug referred to here is semaglutide. It's not a new drug. It has a long list of serious side effects but these are glossed over. On this link there is a clear warning at the top of the page, there are side effects that you need to 'check with your doctor', and a very long list of known adverse reactions that go far beyond the nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting and constipation the BBC article chooses to mention.

But no matter, The intended message is that conventional medicine has discovered yet another new treatment for a very serious problem. We are reminded not only of this, but the fact that obesity can lead to much more serious outcomes, including heart disease, diabetes and severe Covid-19. So provide warnings of the consequences of the condition, whilst emphasising the 'game changing' effects of the drug. It is an advertising strategy designed to produce queues at the doctors surgery.

When this drug strategy works, when or if the obesity epidemic is reduced by semaglutide, I will return to this subject. I will also return to it when (or if) the drug is withdrawn or banned - because it has caused more serious patient harm than even the drug companies are able to justify.


Thursday 18 February 2021

Homeopathy. Why do people pay for it when they can get free medical treatment?

Homeopathy is not provided within most national health schemes around the world. Most national medical services are dominated by conventional, or pharmaceutical medicine which is either 'free at the point of need', or heavily subsidised, or available through an insurance scheme.

In the UK, for example, homeopathy has been largely excluded from the NHS whilst conventional treatment is entirely free. As a result, any patient can visit their doctor, or their hospital, and not face a large bill.

Yet many people who become ill still prefer to book an appointment with a local homeopath, and pay for homeopathic treatment. Is this irrational? Or are there good reasons for doing so?

Effectiveness. Many patients using homeopathy will have already had conventional medical treatment, and it did not work. Many may have been treated with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines for many years, without success. Or, more usually, their condition will have got worse over time.

  • So many people will have begun using homeopathy because of a friend, or colleague, or acquaintance, who has discovered that homeopathy worked; and they turned to homeopathy to see if would work for them too.
  • Then, when homeopathy does work for them, they are hooked; and in future they will prefer to buy medical treatment that works rather than something free which is inferior.

Safety. Many patients seeking homeopathy will have experienced harm caused by conventional medical treatment, perhaps an adverse drug effect which has led to worsening the condition, or actually creates a new illness. Or they may have friends, colleagues or acquaintances who have suffered harm at the hands of conventional medicine, and advised them against this kind of treatment.

  • The decision to use homeopathy rather than conventional treatment is done on the understanding that homeopathy does not, and indeed cannot produce serious or harmful side effects. Initially, there is nothing to lose; so people just try it to see if it works for them.

It makes sense! Often, when the principles of homeopathy are explained to people, the response is - "Yes, I understand that, that makes sense to me". Often this happens when a homeopath explains that the only thing that will help them recover from illness is their own body, their natural immunity, the functioning of a strong immune system; and that all homeopathic treatment does is to help the body heal itself. This has proven to be a 'Eureka' moment for so many people.

  • More people are beginning to realise that 'health' and 'wellness' does not come from a packet of drugs, or an armful of vaccine; it cannot be imposed from without, it has to happen from within. 
  • The Covid-19 situation has been particularly helpful to homeopathy in that respect as people have recognised that it makes little sense 'chasing the virus' when the best strategy, the best treatment, is to maintain and strengthen natural immunity. Covid-19 has highlighted the fundamental difference between conventional medicine and homeopathy, and natural medical therapies generally.

It is not expensive. There are only two things that patients pay for when they see a homeopath. The remedy or remedies, which are all very inexpensive; homeopathic remedies cost a tiny fraction of pharmaceutical drugs. And the time and expertise of the homeopath. Moreover, significant progress can usually be made with even the most difficult and long-standing health conditions within 3-4 consultations, so the number of consultations are usually limited.

  • There are usually no elaborate and time-consuming medical tests that need to be done, or referral to 'specialists' or 'consultants' - just a description of the patients symptoms, and matching these with an appropriate remedy.

Conclusion. People choose to use homeopathy, and pay for it, for all these reasons. It is about patient choice that follows a cost/benefit analysis. It is similar to the choices we all make every day when we decide to buy something - we have to decide whether to buy a cheaper, or a more expensive product. Our decision is usually based on our perception of value for money, the quality of the product, and more specifically in this choice, about favourable patient outcome.

We should remember that the conventional medical establishment has made extravagant promises over the years about the effectiveness of its treatments; 'wonder drugs', 'miracle cures', 'game changing' new treatments, and 'winning the war' against disease. It has never delivered on these promises. We are sicker now than we have ever been. We suffer from more chronic disease than ever before. And Covid-19 have demonstrated its total inability to cope with viral infections and acute diseases.

So is it any wonder that more people are choosing to buy into homeopathy, and other natural medical therapies.

Conventional medicine may still be dominant within most national health provision, but it is failing, and an increasing number of people are recognising that it is failing. And it is these people who are prepared to pay for medical treatment which they know is both safe and effective. They are turning their backs on a medical system, even when it is free; they are putting their money where their mouth is.

Think about that. When a patient chooses homeopathy over conventional medicine it is a choice that costs them; they are aware that it costs them; but they are still willing to pay that cost because homeopathy is something that works so well for them.


Tuesday 16 February 2021

Phyllocontin (aminophylline). Pharmaceutical drugs are no longer "banned" when they cause patient harm; they are "discontinued"!

When a pharmaceutical drug has been prescribed for years/decades but then found to be dangerous they were once "banned"; or at least "withdrawn. There have been a very long history of such harmful pharmaceutical drugs ending up in this way, in the dustbin of history. Now, Phyllocontin, a drug routinely used for the treatment of bronchospasm in Asthma and COPD, can be added to this long and ever-growing list. 

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of this new ban is that Phyllocontin (aminophylline) has been around since at least 1974, so has presumably been harming patients for some 50 years now. Seemingly it takes this long for conventional medicine to understand the dangers. They are slow learners!

The drug is also known as Euphyllin, Truphylline, and Minomal so these are dangerous too. And although the drug is now banned in the UK it will still be considered 'safe', or safe enough to be prescribed, in other parts of the world. So patient, beware.

Yet the "banning" of a drug is never good publicity for pharmaceutical drug companies, so the first 'progression' in how these drugs were removed from the market was to "withdraw" them before the regulator moved to ban it. Withdrawal could be done without the level of publicity a ban entailed; that is, without patients, some of whom will have been seriously harmed, getting to know there was a problem. Now, the latest banned drug is not withdrawn, it is "discontinued". Drug companies are masters at obfuscation!

This is how MIMS describes this latest pharmaceutical drugs to be (effectively) banned (15 February 2021). The drug might be dangerous but the ban, or withdrawal, will not be imposed until 'remaining supplies' are exhausted. A few more months of patient harm is apparently acceptable. But no new prescription should be made, and in this sentence is some glimmer of the seriousness of the problem with this drug.

        "Patients currently prescribed Phyllocontin will need to be contacted promptly to allow time to plan for treatment reviews and switching. Prescribers should seek support from specialists for patients with unstable asthma, and children should be referred to secondary or tertiary care to decide on further management."

So, what harm does Phyllocontin (aminophylline) do? This is not a secret. The adverse affects are listed here, and no doubt some of them are listed in the Patient Information Leaflet, which probably have gone mostly unread and disposed of in the bin for 50+ years. They include chest pain, irregular heartbeat, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, seizures, disorientation, confusion (dementia?), and much more. Presumably so much more the drug companies could no longer protect the drug from being banned. So it has been quietly 'discontinued'.

But never fear. Doctors will now be expected to 'review' all their patients on this drug in order to ensure there is "an up-to-date plan" in place, and an alternative drug has been suggested. This is theophylline, Uniphyllin or Continus. So presumably these are safer drugs that do less harm to patients. Well, sadly not. The adverse affects of theophylline are listed here. And if you want to spend more time than I have in trying to spot any difference between the side effects of theophylline and phyllocontin, please do so?

It would seem that, as far as the patient is concerned
 it is out of the frying pan right into the fire!

Monday 15 February 2021

TWITTER CENSORSHIP! A social media platform that does not allow questions to be asked of their powerful friends.

My Twitter account was suspended at the weekend. It's open again now, but perhaps not for long as Twitter does not allow questions to be asked of their powerful friends! Apparently I have "violated the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19". Me? Surely not! How did I manage to do this?

Well, first I referenced an article in the Greek City Times, "Nurse partially paralysed after second Covid-19 shot in Corfu". I did not write, or publish this article in the Greek City Times. The article is just one of the many thousands of articles that are appearing, regularly, in newspapers around the world, and on social media, telling of the harm being caused by the Covid-19 vaccine. Here are the introductory remarks, so please read them. 

Do they sound like misinformation, potentially harmful information? Is it not information that the public needs to in order to make an informed decision about the Covid-19 vaccines?

        "A 42-year-old woman suffered paralysis of the lower body after receiving the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. According to preliminary information, the nurse at the hospital on the island of Corfu has developed symptoms closely matching with the autoimmune neurological Guillain-BarrĂ© syndrome after receiving the second COVID-19 vaccination jab.

Guillain-BarrĂ© syndrome (a rare neurological disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves, causing the patient to become paralysed and numb – usually in the arms and legs). The mother of two, who is now in a wheelchair, has reportedly no previous underlying health issues.

Health experts are scrambling to investigate whether the event is connected to the vaccine, a side effect not known until now. The case was revealed on Thursday morning by the president of Hospital workers union POEDIN Michalis Giannakos. It was also confirmed by the general director of the 6th Health Care Department in charge of the Peloponnese and the Ionian islands, Giannis Karvelis.

        “She was in perfect health, it is certainly a side effect of the vaccine,” POEDIN president told OPEN TV.

So I posted the link to the article so that my followers, and the general public generally could read it. It's surely one of the things social media allows us to do. There is not hate speech, no abusive language, nothing in the article to offend. It is just information from what sounds like reliable medical staff, interviewed by a Greek newspaper, and accurately reported. The article even made the point that the link with Covid-19 vaccines had not been established.

The mainstream media (MSM) does not carry such news. They also  dismiss such information as 'misinformation' and 'fake news' - perhaps something Twitter have caught from them. Remember, this is just one report among thousands about the reported harm being caused by the Covid-19 vaccines. Few have been mentioned in the MSM, so most of the public does not know either. But the MSM is telling us  the Covid-19 vaccines are safe, with reservation or caveat.

So perhaps Twitter took exception to the words I wrote alongside the link, which were as follows:

            "Please, MSM, if this (and many other similar reports) is 'disinformation', or 'fake news', can you let us all know your reasons for thinking this is NOT true?"

So I was asking the MSM, and the conventional medical establishment, whether this information, about a healthy nurse now partially paralysed, was true or not. It is a request for information, for clarification. It is not hate speech, it is not abusive - it is asking that the information is not ignored or denied, that it is either confirmed, or the 'misinformation' explained. That's all!

What does matter is that thousands of reports of patient harm caused by the Covid-19 vaccines are being routinely ignored, both by government, conventional medicine, the MSM, or even Twitter (who after all seem to have assumed that any criticism of Covid-19 vaccines is 'misinformation').

So whilst the public is being told Covid-19 vaccines are entirely safe, this is NOT borne out by any of these reports of patient harm. They cannot both be true. It is NOT good enough that they are all summarily dismissed as 'fake news' without further investigation. The public are entitled to the truth, to an explanation, to know whether this and other similar reports are true, or untrue, and whether there is a connection with the Covid-19 vaccines.

That is ALL my Twitter feed asked, a question. It should not have led to the suspension of my account.

Yet this is exactly what happened to me, and is happening to others too. The public is being told, ad infinitum, that Covid-19 vaccines are entirely safe; and that any report suggesting they are not safe is 'disinformation'. Those of us who want an explanation, and an investigation, are receiving no explanation. Instead we are routinely dismissed as 'anti-vaxxers' spreading 'disinformation'.

A bad explanation is one thing; at least it starts a discussion, a debate. No explanation is quite another matter; perhaps there is no explanation; perhaps there is a cover up of something unsavoury. It raises suspicions that the 'vaccines are safe' message is untruthful.

So Twitter's reaction says more about the conventional medical establishment (of which Twitter must now be considered an integral part) than it does about my tweet. Something is wrong when there is such blatant censorship of simple questions; when asking a simple question is dismissed as "misleading and potentially harmful" with no investigation or explanation.

It matters not to me that my Twitter account was suspended. Clearly Twitter is unable to distinguish between a question and information; and when it considers a questions to be 'misinformation' Okay, so they want to prevent their powerful friends (Big Pharma) being asked awkward questions. Okay, they have threatened me with exclusion. My response to Twitter is one of contempt, not reconciliation.

 

On the basis that these blogs may be censored in the near future, by Twitter and other social media platforms, please 'follow' this blog in order .


Friday 12 February 2021

Organ Transplants and Limb Replacements. Medical triumph? Or Pharmaceutical Failure?

The pharmaceutical medical establishment are masters of turning failure into triumph. They have had lots of practice over the years.

  • 'wonder' drugs' and 'miracle cures' that have had to be abandoned; but only (they say) because they have come up with something better to replace them,
  • cancer, diabetes, dementia, autism, arthritis, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, and most other chronic diseases, have risen to epidemic levels; but people are surviving longer now with the disease.

Organ Transplantation and Limb Replacement surgery may be brilliant. But these operations are required only following years of failed medical treatment. 

Patients who require them will all have been treated with ineffective and toxic pharmaceutical drugs for years, often decades, during which time their condition have only worsened.

Indeed, most of the brilliant surgical operations that have been developed over the last 100 years or so have successfully protected conventional medicine from having to admit that much of its drug treatment is not only ineffective, but toxic, and unsafe, and usually exacerbates the original illness until it becomes a much more serious ill-health and disease.

I have written more about this medical failure in a chapter of my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine".

There is only one way of avoiding the spiralling need for this kind of surgery, and that is to invest in a competent medical system that produces good patient outcomes.

  • Investing in a medical system that can successfully treat hearts, kidneys, livers, and other organs before they need replacing, and which can help keep them functioning properly.
  • Investing in a medical system that can deal with painful limbs without the patient having to take toxic painkillers for decades, drugs that eventually, inevitably, leads to limbs breaking down.

Only then will the need for transplantation gradually decrease, and at the same time, reduce the need to increase the number of organ donors.

Transplantation surgery are brilliant achievements. But they are needed only following years of failed medical treatment. And as pharmaceutical medicine continues to fail the only certainty is that the demand for transplantation will increase, as it has done during the last 50 years. 

Organ transplantation and limb replacement does not represent medical progress, it represents medical failure.


Covid-19. The Undermining of our personal freedom and liberty by government policy

This is a proforma letter, written by a lockdown sceptic, who has given permission for other people to use it. If you feel that our personal freedom and liberty is being unnecessarily sacrificed by government reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic (for all the reasons I have argue in other blog posts here) please feel free to write to your MP, or similar.


"I would like to be succinct and to the point, so I present to you a series of questions that I want you to consider carefully.
 
1) Are you feeling comfortable about the way things are going? Any sense of disquiet? Any worries that you might just be a participant in the biggest tyranny ever enacted in a previously free, liberal, democracy?

2) Do you have any sense that the absolute powers currently being wielded under the auspices of the 1984 Public Health Act are disproportionate to the threat, bereft of any mechanism of oversight, and in complete contradiction to the actual laws of the land and legal mechanisms established over centuries?

3) Are you comfortable with the increasingly maniacal power grabs of certain individuals within Government, in particular the Health Secretary, who seemingly has no regard for the actual health of the nation or what the word “health” even means in the wider context of mental, physical, emotional and social health. In the context of humanity?

4) Are you comfortable with the persons wielding this absolute power being enthralled to a small subset of unelected and unaccountable “Scientists”, whose models reside in crystal ball territory and whose paymasters are intertwined with powerful pharmaceutical lobbies?

5) Are you comfortable with the trashing of the economy, the destruction of jobs and businesses and the wreckage of lives both young and old?

6) Are you happy for your children to live in a country where they have no automatic rights to education, no freedom of association with their friends and peers, no pleasures of leisure time to enjoy – pubs, cinemas, leisure centres, bowling alleys, theatres, live music, travel – all gone?

7) Are you comfortable with forced quarantines of the healthy in holding facilities, and criminal sanctions up to and including long prison sentences against ordinary members of the public who choose to take a holiday? Are you comfortable that such sanctions are selective, as presumably they won’t apply to certain sectors of the population such as truck drivers, airline staff, elite sportspeople and undoubtedly high worth individuals and celebrities?

8) In your heart of hearts, do you honestly believe that a virus can’t mutate if we pretend to close the borders and throw a few dissenters in jail? Can a virus respect borders? Does it bend itself to futile Government interventions cooked up in the recesses of what appears to be the increasingly deluded mind of the Health Secretary? 

9) Do you have any reservations about the sinister media fear campaign still being waged against the British people, at great expense using our own hard earned money? Can you look me in the eye and tell me that it’s all been worth it? That the measures have saved more people from Covid than they’ve killed or will kill without Covid? That laying blame on the public for the virus is a reasonable thing to do, when the Government itself has failed so completely to protect those in care homes and hospitals? 

10) Finally, have you thought about how you feel about being associated with this tyrannical Government forevermore, with being a part of it all? Have you considered that by saying nothing, questioning nothing, you are complicit?
I really hope you can sleep at night. I can’t, and my conscience is clear.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Acton)

And if you still think that the vaccines are going to get us out of this mess, well, you haven’t been paying attention.
 
Yours sincerely, etc.   "


Thursday 11 February 2021

Covid-19. BBC News continues to peddle propaganda rather than journalism. The Mainstream Media has failed us completely.

Several homeopathic colleagues awoke recently to a BBC news item on "Fake Covid-19 videos" that "will cost lives". It made us question the quality, and the purpose of journalism in Britain's 'public broadcaster. If you want to hear a short 6-minute piece of rank-bad journalism it is worth a listen. It arose who this.

               "The Royal College of Physicians is urging people not to share and "copycat" "dangerous" videos claiming steam inhalation can prevent Covid-19. The BBC has found that alternative coronavirus treatments are being sent on chat apps like WhatsApp, as well as being widely available on social media."

The video was 'dangerous', apparently, because it did not comply with government policy, or NHS treatment, for Covid-19, or the BBC's editorial policy of not allowing anything to be said or done that does not conform with either.

In truth it was typical of mainstream journalism throughout the Covid-19 crisis, which has been rather like reading/listening/watching the news on Russian newspapers, Izvestia or Pravda whilst growing up in the 1950's. Actually, I never read either paper but I do remember what the BBC, and the rest of the British journalism, said about those news agencies at the time. They were propaganda sheets, controlled by the Russian government, and the Communist party that controlled the government. They were allowed to say only what they were allowed to say. They could not report on anything critical, or question the competence of the government. The Russian people, the BBC said, were not being properly informed. Their journalism was controlled, completely different to 'free press' journalism in Britain.

The news item concerned a video circulating on social media about the treatment of Covid-19. The Royal College said was 'dangerous' because it was stopping black and minority ethic (BAME) communities from taking the new Covid-19 vaccines. This is a perfectly acceptable opinion about the video that suggested breathing in steam was an appropriate treatment. And it is, of course, an opinion shared by the British government, the conventional medical establishment (CME), and (quite clearly) BBC News too.

So how did the bastion of our "free media" deal with the subject? Was this an open and balanced debate? A courteous discussion about a doctor who was suggesting an alternative medical approach to the treatment of Covid-19? Remember (if you need to be reminded) that conventional medicine has had to admit that it had no effective treatment to offer anyone for the last 12 months, during which time over 113,000 people have died.

The piece was nothing of the sort, it was junk journalism, at its very worst. First, the journalist involved, Sima Kotecha, took up a firm and decisive position. It is a stance that has become typical of BBC health reporting: support the side of the dominant player; and attack the side the dominant player disagrees with. So although I am focusing on this one, short, 6 minute piece this is what BBC journalism has been doing for over a year, dealing with Covid-19, and for at least 20 years when dealing with medical issues.

First, the full frontal attack. A video of the doctor was played which showed him advising the inhalation of plain water steam. Immediately alarm bells sounded (literally), and warnings appeared on the screen about 'fake news'. The usual BBC impartiality!

Sima Kotecha then talked to her mother. "You don't believe it, do you?" No, she didn't, but apparently so many other people had received the message. She talked to someone who had tried steam as a treatment, and he thought that it worked. Sima wanted nothing to do with this, and she referred to doctors "around the world" who said steam inhalation was not a preventative measure. He thought that it worked, but he was wrong!

Sima Kotecha then asked three conventional doctors to confirm her view, which of course they did. One opined that such people should be arrested for spreading false news, and false hope. Another said that such messages should be removed from social media. And Sima proudly announced that Facebook had now removed the post, after she had alerted them to it.

So Sima Kotecha spoke to the offending doctor, asking him a loaded question. "Why was he spreading false information?" He tried to explain, but Sima told him that what he was saying was a lie - according to the doctors with whom she had sided, who also told her that he is "doing more harm than good".

So, given such a news item, whose side would you be on? There is, of course, only one answer. The Indian doctor is a charlatan, he is telling lies, and spreading false information. Sima doctors were, of course, speaking the truth, the only truth. 

Was the doctor's approach to breathing steam tested? Was it adequately discussed? Of course not. This was not a news item intended to develop our knowledge, and understanding of the treatment of Covid-19. Sima's doctors, who admit they have no treatment, and have watched on, helplessly, as 113,000 people have died in their hospitals, were correct. There was no treatment, and anyone who said otherwise was spreading misinformation.

And let us not be too critical. Just as with journalists who worked for Pravda and Izvestia, it is not Sima Kotecha's fault. Nor is it Nick Robinson's fault, who hosted the programme. They were both pursuing BBC health policy: support the government: support the conventional medical establishment: and attack anything that might suggest there is an alternative.

  • Vaccines are good, and it's important that everyone is vaccinated, including the BAME community who are refusing the vaccine in large numbers,
  • If there is an alternative treatment it must be dismissed as it might encourage vaccine 'hesitancy', which cannot be supported, and must be attacked.

So, unlike the BBC, let's ask a question. Is inhaling steam such a crazy idea? As a young boy my mother would always get me to inhale steam whenever I seemed to be contracting a cold or cough. I think she would put Vic (?) into the water. And are we not aware that Covid-19 virus function better in the cold, and less well in warmth? And that Covid affects mainly our ability to breath?

Another question.... Is steam dangerous? Certainly not in itself! Certainly it is no more dangerous than washing our hands, and less emotionally, socially, and economically dangerous than social distancing and lockdown.

One more..... Why is the BAME community reluctant to accept the Covid-19 vaccines? Is it really thoughtlessness, ignorance, the inability to make up their mind because of the influence on social media videos? Or has it something to do with the failure of conventional medicine to deliver treatment without it causing harm, and more harm to BAME communities?

And yet another. Is there any science to support steam inhalation? Conventional medicine likes to consider itself to be 'scientific'. And medical science is, allegedly, at the heart of BBC's unbounded support for conventional medicine. So where is the science? Has any been done? And if not, why not? Why is the BBC not challenging medical science to do the science? 

And finally, why slag off an Indian doctor who stated that he is only trying to help his patients, perhaps in contradistinction to more conventional doctors who appear content to watch them die, whilst wringing their hands in despair because they have no effective treatment? And is his claim that none of his patients, or his team, has suffered seriously from Covid-19 not worth some consideration?

The role of good journalism is not to support one side of any argument. This is propaganda rather than journalism, particularly when it sides with government and/or the dominant medical establishment. Good journalism is open-mined, it asks questions of both sides, it delves deeper, it investigates, it informs. Unfortunately the BBC, as with Pravda and Izvestia in Soviet Union times, do not appear to be prepared to do this - at least not as far as health issues are concerned.

This is why our mainstream media have failed us over Covid-19. They have not been prepared to question the dominant narrative presented by government and conventional medicine. Instead they have preferred to constantly and unquestioningly repeat their rather hopeless and forlorn message. 

  • Why has natural immunity been almost totally neglected? 
  • Why has supporting and strengthening our immune system not been central to the advice we have been given to protect ourselves? 
  • Why have natural therapists been working in isolation, locked down with the rest of us? 
  • What results have they been having with their patients?

The BBC, and the mainstream media generally, have never asked these, and a host of other important and relevant questions. They have sided with a failed, often shambolic government policy, based as it is on a failed medical science, and a dominant medical elite that has always admitted it has no treatment to offer.


Wednesday 10 February 2021

What is a Safe Medicine? Seeking Conventional Medicine's concept of safety

The Conventional Medical Establishment (CME) is telling us all, through national governments, conventional doctors, national and international medical organisations, and the mainstream media (MSM) that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe, entirely safe, usually without any reservation or caveat.

At the same time there are a number of internet websites that are reporting serious adverse reactions, including deaths, which have been attributed to these same vaccines. Indeed, reports of vaccine harm are commonplace on the internet - here are just two of these.

501 Deaths + 10,748 other injuries reported to official CDC 'Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System' (VAERS).

This website has attempted to keep an ongoing record of all reports of serious adverse reactions to these vaccines.

So what is becoming increasingly clear is that these two narratives about the safety of Covid-19 vaccines are mutually inconsistent - they cannot both be true!

The central question is how the Conventional Medical Establishment (ConMed) can continue to make their unreserved claims that Covid-19 vaccines are safe refuting these reports. Do they know about these worldwide reports of patient harm? Are they ignoring them deliberately? Surely, if such reports are untrue, the CME would be refuting them?

Regular readers of this blog will know that there is a credibility gap between the efficacy claims of pharmaceutical medicine, and its actual performance. CME has always made claims about the safety of its drugs and vaccines, and their value for patient health. So the claims about Covid-19 vaccine safety, and their tenuous connection with reality, is not new. It is a well-used, well-rehearsed CME strategy. 

Proxy Advertising

In the advertising industry it is well known that if people/customers are told, frequently enough, that a product is effective and safe it will be believed, and the product will sell. So in order to sell drugs and vaccines it is important that drug companies state that they are safe. So, of course, they do. And every sector of society under the control of the CME, including national governments, world and national health agencies, and the mainstream media (MSM), fully support these assertion. 

Indeed, all the CME does more than merely support the pharmaceutical industry. They provide the advertising for the drug companies. When was the last time you heard the MSM being critical of a drug or vaccine? When was the last time you heard a spokesman from a drug company defending the safety of a drug or vaccine? The pharmaceutical industry is being provided with not only free advertising, but more credible promotion from a supposedly 'independent' source.

If a washing machine manufacturer told us their washing machines were safe and effective we might all say - "well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" We would be sceptical, we would check, we would compare. And we would also assume that if the claims being made were untrue we would be warned about it, by government agencies, consumer groups, the MSM, and the like.

With the pharmaceutical industry, and its drugs and vaccines, this is just not happening.

The Credibility of Medical Science

Allegedly, the proof of the safety of pharmaceutical medicine is medical science. We are told all the time - conventional medicine works because it is based on science. The safety of Covid-19 vaccines are based on the scientific testing programmes to which they have been subjected, rushed maybe, but scientific, and therefore unchallengeable. Just mention the word - "science" - and it must be true - it cannot be questioned, leave alone challenged!

I have argued many times that medical science has become a scion of the pharmaceutical industry, part of the CME, a 'science' that has been bought and paid for, to deliver what its paymaster wants it to deliver - not least of which is that scientific testing has shown a drug, or a vaccine to be safe.

Drug Regulation and Medical Science - why conventional medicine is not scientific

The Credibility of Doctors

Doctors have become one of the most respected of all professions. Gone is the 19th century idea that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away", even though a fruit-rich diet would certainly have had more impact on Covid-19 than any treatment conventional medicine has had available to treat it! Doctors are the experts we see at our surgeries, they are paraded on our television night-after-night, their task to reassure us that a particular pharmaceutical drug or vaccine is safe. They are used by the CME to reinforce the safety message, in a variety of ways.

  • The drug/vaccine has been proven to be "entirely safe" for patients. The drug/vaccine is "well tolerated" by patients.

Yet this routine reassurance is usually contradicted by the Patient Information Leaflet, which legally has to accompany each drug, and outline all the known adverse reactions the drug or vaccine is known to produce. In other words, what doctors tell us is invariably contradicted by CME's own medical literature.

  • If the safety message is challenged, conventional medicine's spokespersons will usually tell us that the benefits of the drug/vaccine outweighs any possible dangers.

Suddenly, patient harm is admitted; but instantly discounted. The drug/vaccine is so effective we should not be concerned about the side effects. Who makes this judgement? Who does the 'cost/benefit' analysis? The CME, specifically medical science, of course. Where is it published? Nowhere. It is merely an assertion. This washing machine is safe - because we are telling you it is safe.

The effects of the 'safety' message

Doctors are expected to reassure their patients, just as washing machine salesmen are supposed to reassure their customers. It is safe, there is no need for concern, just don't worry. Listen to what you are being told. In medicine this safety message can, and often does, have consequences far beyond just taking the pill. 

    a) the patient suffers an adverse reaction to the drug/vaccine, but as (s)he had been assured by the doctor it was "entirely safe", it could not possibly have been a side effect. So the patient will often not bother to report the side effect to the doctor. The harm goes unrecognised, either by patient or doctor.

    b) A patient takes a drug/vaccine - and suffers an adverse reaction - and does report it to the doctor. Clearly the complain will cause some embarrassment. to the doctor. "You told me it was safe, you did not warn me it might do this". So the doctor finds it difficult to accept, or just won't accept, that his/her patient has been damaged by a prescribed drug/vaccine. So perhaps it wasn't really a side effect. Perhaps it was just coincidence, or part of the initial illness, nothing to do with the drug/vaccine. So the side effect is not reported, an easier position for the doctor to assume.

So the patient is reassured, it wasn't the drug, it must have been something else. How unfortunate, what bad luck!

Reporting Side Effects

Studies have regularly shown that less that 1% of drug/vaccine side effects are ever reported to drug regulators. It is the national drug regulator who examine reports of side effects, and in face of this under-reporting they can come to the conclusion that the drug/vaccine only affects a very small number of people, especially when compared to the number of people who have received the drug/vaccine. 

So the drug regulator publishes the side effects they have received, as they are legally required to do, but they can 'legitimately' describe them as 'uncommon' or 'rare'.

So in terms of the cost-benefit analysis, the benefits of the drug/vaccine, over-emphasised by a compliant medical science, are not outweighed by the disadvantages, the adverse reactions, which are under-emphasised by the reporting system.

So playing the game of Russian Roulette with adverse drug/vaccine reactions suddenly becomes more acceptable - to both the CME and the patient.

There is a vicious circularity about this situation. A drug/vaccine is safe; and because it is proclaimed as being safe its safety is never seriously questioned or investigated.

CME - don't break ranks - or else

 The CME is powerful, but at its centre is the PME, the pharmaceutical drug companies that generate huge profits (it is by far the most profitable industry in the world) which are spent on controlling the different constituent parts of the CME.

Doctors owe their status and position to the ongoing success of the CME. To break ranks is taboo, and results in the severest of punishments. Medical staff who act as 'whistleblowers', anyone who questions the safety of pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines, is putting himself/herself in professional jeopardy. Dr Andrew Wakefield is perhaps the most notable case in recent years, when he questioned the safety of a vaccine, and had his mainstream medical career destroyed as a direct result.

In any Establishments members expected to close ranks, especially in adversity. This is why the secrecy and lack of transparency within Britain's National Health Service (NHS) has been regularly criticised when it has tried to cover up medical errors, bad practice, and is asked to explain the harm done to its patients. 

At the very heart of this medical secrecy are issues of patient safety, and the safety of the treatments they have been given. 

The routine denial of patient harm has become endemic within the NHS because of the need to defend the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, the very backbone of conventional medical treatment.

But breaking ranks is not reserved for medical staff, it also applies to constituent parts of the CME most people would not think of being part of the CME.

National Governments

The CME needs government backing because they are vitally influential in providing health services to their populations. So they fund politicians and political campaigns. They lobby parliaments. They make huge investments within economies that depend on them. And in return CME expects to receive political support for their medical treatments. Many national governments have become as beholden to the future of the CME as any doctor.

The MSM

The mainstream media is also vitally important to the CME. The MSM controls what the public are told about health, and what they know and understand about medical treatment.

It would have been difficult for the CME is control the Covid-19 agenda without both the support of governments, and the MSM. Remember, it had no treatment, and no prevention to offer patients: yet the competence of conventional medicine has never been seriously questioned. 

Hand washing, masks, social distancing, lockdown have had devastating effects on our emotional, social, recreational and economic lives; but the adequacy and relevance of these policies have never been seriously examined or challenged, nor the immense harm it has done, and is doing to our emotional, social and economic life. 

The CME agenda for Covid-19 did not include any reference to natural immunity. The importance of the immune system has rarely been mentioned, and natural medical therapies have been totally excluded from any discussion.

None of this would have been possible had it not been for the compliant silence of both government and the MSM.

Yet the control of government and MSM has one further major benefit for the CME. Medical claims (perhaps more accurately called lies?) about the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are further safeguarded. They are all safe because there is no-one left to tell us they are not safe.

Claims of Medical Safety

Government and MSM compliance to the pharmaceutical medical agenda reinforces the message about the safety of drugs and vaccines. Doctors and other medical staff are able to tell us they are "entirely safe" because they know they will never be challenged about the veracity of such claims. Doctors can parade these views directly with the MSM, and the main journalistic response is usually "that really is good news, thanks for reassuring us". Just as James Bond has a license to kill, doctors have a license to lie about the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. There is no questioning, no investigation into what they actually mean by 'safe' and 'safety'.

And just as in the doctor-patient relationship, the government-citizen and MSM-public relationship has, as a result, become a hostage to fortune. 

  • Government and MSM have repeatedly said that Covid vaccines would be our salvation; in much the same ways they have heralded each new 'wonder drug', or 'miracle cure', as something that would soon "win conventional medicine's war" against disease.
  • Both have welcomed the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines as "good news, the best possible news", without reservation, without question or restraint; just as they have welcomed new conventional treatments that would "transform our experience" of a particular disease.
  • At the same time both have ignored any issue that has been vaguely critical of conventional medicine; that pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines cause serious adverse reactions; the fraudulent activities of medical science; the prosecution of drug companies for serious criminal offences; et al.
  • And they have even dutifully attacked the opposition, natural medical therapies, and removed them from any significant role within the NHS.

So how can they now admit that there are real safety issues with pharmaceutical medicine when they have supported and praised all their treatments over the decades? 

In order to do so they would have to admit they had been wrong? They had both failed to ask relevant questions. They had failed to investigate the claims of the CME. Their politics were corrupt. Their journalism incompetent. For decades, both had misled the people to whom they had both a duty of care, and a responsibility to inform and protect.

Safe is what we tell you is safe!

So the concept of safety within convention medicine is very different to the kind of safety most people would recognise as 'safe'. Crossing a motorway on foot might be described as 'safe' in the context of the concept of medical safety! You are safe because we would get away with it much of the time, but not all the time. In much the same way conventional medicine can say their drugs and vaccines are safe. 

  • The CME might know they cause serious adverse reactions, that they harm patients. It is, after all, in the medical literature, available to doctors, governments and the MSM. But the CME won't openly and transparently admit to it; and there is no-one to tell patients unless the patients look for themselves.
  • Government agencies might regularly pay out large sums of money for those patients who have been able to prove they have been harmed by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines; but responsibility for the damage caused is not formally recognised, and certainly not connected or compared with the CME's 'vaccines are safe' mantra.

First do no harm

Since Hippocrates, in 4th century bce Greece, this principle is supposed to underlie all medical practice.  The CME is certainly aware of the the principle, but its concept of safety allows it to deny it is causing harm to patients. So the CME is in trouble; and the more people who recognise that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause harm, the more trouble it will be in. This is why reports of patient harm caused by its new Covid-19 vaccines are so important to ignore, discount and deny.

The future of pharmaceutical medicine depends on its ability 

to maintain its concept of medical safety.

 

DIE's. The Disease Inducing Effects of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines

For a broader, more direct insight into how pharmaceutical drug and vaccine treatment causes patient harm (and are therefore not safe by any normal definition of safety) this E-Book links the drugs and vaccines that are known to be associated with a wide variety of illnesses and diseases.