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Tuesday 11 June 2024

Antidepressant Drugs. Record Prescriptions, but only 1 in 6 will have withdrawal symptoms!

The Lancet Psychiatry journal published a study on 5th June 2024. It found that only one in six people who stop taking antidepressants will experience withdrawal symptoms. The GP magazine, Pulse, thought that this was a good outcome.

            "This is a much lower proportion than other studies have suggested, with previous estimates that over half of patients experience symptoms".

The research found that one in three patients reported at least one withdrawal symptom such as dizziness, headache or nausea. But as 1 in 6 patients experienced the same when they stopped taking a placebo drug, it suggested that ‘approximately half of all symptoms experienced … might be due to negative expectations (the "nocebo effect”) or non-specific symptoms which may occur at any time in the general population’.

So the report concluded that about 15%, of patients experienced one or more withdrawal symptoms as a direct result of stopping antidepressants, with around 3% experiencing ‘severe symptoms’.

Pulse said that this was the first ‘meta-analysis’ on the incidence of antidepressant discontinuation symptoms, analysing 79 randomised trials, which included data from over 21,000 patients, of which 72% were women. 

So, conventional medicine now believes that the 'withdrawal symptoms' were not as bad as was previously thought, certainly after the 'nocebo effect' was used to eliminate about 50% of reported symptoms. But never mind, let's accept this, and apply it to the number of people who are taking antidepressant drugs.

According to the BMJ in 2019, the NHS prescribed a record number of antidepressants in 2018, and that the number of prescriptions for antidepressants in England had almost doubled during the previous decade.

            "Data from NHS Digital show that 70.9 million prescriptions for antidepressants were given out in 2018, compared with 36 million in 2008".

  • Therefore, in 2008, 6 million people in England alone suffered from antidepressant withdrawal symptoms; and over 1 million experienced 'severe symptoms'.
  • In 2018, nearly 12 million (11,816,333) people suffered from antidepressant withdrawal symptoms, with over 2 million experiencing 'severe symptoms'.

So this is presumably acceptable then? At least it seems to be acceptable to the Conventional Medical Establishment which seems quite willing to continue prescribing an ever-increasing numbers of these drugs.

The Pulse article also told us that the number of people suffering withdrawal symptoms was steadily increasing, year-on-year; and since then we have been told that as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic the number of people who are taking antidepressant drugs (around the world) has risen even more rapidly,  by 25%.

Perhaps I should calculate a new more up-to-date figure, but these numbers are almost meaningless once we realise that each single person within that total number are individuals, someone who is suffering as a direct result of taking pharmaceutical drugs. If the medical fraternity is pleased about this we can rest assured that the 12 million +++ patients are certainly not pleased.

There is a solution at hand, but it is a solution that will likely be ignored. In 2010 Dana Ullman (a leading homeopath) published article in Huffington Post, "Homeopathy. A Healthier Way to Treat Depression" in which he compared the safety and effectiveness of homeopathy alongside the dangers of pharmaceutical drug treatment. It surely is a must read for anyone with mental health problems!

In this same article Ullmann refers to a study that showed antidepressant drugs were ineffective, essentially useless. This is a direct quote from that article.

            "In early 2010, major media reported on a significant review of research testing antidepressant medications. What is unique about this review of research is that the researchers evaluated studies that were submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), though the researchers discovered that many studies submitted to the FDA were unpublished (they found that the unpublished research consistently showed negative results of antidepressants)".

            "This meta-analysis of antidepressant medications found only modest benefits over placebo treatment in published research, but when unpublished trial data is included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance".

So the 12 million +++ have suffered the serious side effects of antidepressant drugs, including links to suicide and violence, plus the (now discounted) withdrawal symptoms that result - all for nothing!

This is exactly what patients get from conventional medicine: a lot of problems, adverse reactions: but not many positive outcomes!


Monday 10 June 2024

A new 'double selective' Antibiotic? Is this good news? Or a belated recognition of the patient harm caused by the 'old' antibiotics?

Most people, if asked to identify a pharmaceutical drug that was "safe and effective", would point to antibiotics. So is this announcement more good news for antibiotic drugs?

            "A new antibiotic uses a never-before-seen mechanism to deliver a direct hit on tough-to-treat infections while leaving beneficial microbes alone. The strategy could lead to a new class of antibiotics that attack dangerous bacteria in a powerful new way, overcoming current drug resistance while sparing the gut microbiome".

This is how it is presented in this Medscape article, New-Era Double Selective Antibiotic Spares Microbiome. But hold on, what is this about "sparing the gut microbiome"? What is the gut microbiome?

           " The gut microbiome refers to all the microorganisms living in the digestive system. The microbiome is individual to each person and is important to digestive health as well as to overall health. Studies of the gut microbiome are ongoing, but it’s becoming clear that certain types of bacteria, yeast, and other fungi are more or less beneficial for overall health. People may be able to affect their microbiome with diet and other lifestyle factors".

So it certainly does seem important to 'spare' the microorganisms of the gut microbiome. But wait, does that mean that all previous antibiotic drugs attacked it, harmed it? Rather than being 'good news' is this an admission that hitherto antibiotics have actually harmed something that was "important to digestive health as well as to overall health"?

Over 9 years ago, in 2015, I wrote a blog, "Antibiotics. Not as safe as we have been told?", which outlined just how harmful antibiotics drugs were to our health, outlining some of the known/accepted, and the suspected adverse reactions to antibiotics. 

  • The blog touched on the fact that conventional medicine was aware of the harm antibiotics caused, as early as 1953 (4 years after their introduction).
  • It talked about antibacterial resistance.
  • It outlined how antibiotics were particularly harmful to the health of children.
  • And antibiotics were discussed as the possible or known causes of a variety of diseases, such as obesity, irritable bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, liver disease, diabetes, asthma and eczema, heart disease, mental health, and HIV/Aids.
  • All these diseases have risen to epidemic levels during the last 70 years, no doubt in large part to antibiotic drugs that have compromised our gut microbiome.
  • And I asked this important question - did the conventional medical establishment know about the patient harm that was being caused by antibiotic drugs?

Clearly they did, and the development of this new 'double selective' antibiotic is proof of this. Why else would it have been developed, presumably at massive cost?

Yet during the last 9 years, the list of iatrogenic diseases now known to be/thought to be caused by antibiotic drugs have increased to many that seem to have little or no connection with the gut, like Parkinson's Disease

Suddenly, conventional medicine seems to have realised that killing microbes is not a path to health! Hence the new drug. As usual it is hailed as a breakthrough - but the 'bad' news underlying the 'good' news is being ignored, or censored - presumably for 'commercial' reasons!

The new 'double selective' antibiotics may, or may not be safer and more effective than the 'old' antibiotics (that is, those that are prescribed, and still being taken in huge quantities today). But we can be sure that if conventional medicine continues to operate with the secrecy, and lack of transparency, we have witnessed for the last 70 years, we will probably not be aware of this for yet another 70 years!

Natural medical therapies have known about the harm caused by antibiotics for a very long time. They do not believe in the 'germ' theory of illness. They do not set out to attack or kill anything! And this is why natural medicine focuses instead on supporting and strengthening our immune system - in the knowledge that it is our natural immunity that best protects us all from illness and disease.


Wednesday 5 June 2024

Pembrolizumab (keytruda): another "safe and effective wonder drug"! So what is causing the cancer epidemic?

I am reporting on news of yet another pharmaceutical "wonder drug" This drug is called Pembrolizumab, it "melts away" tumours, and "triples the chance of survival for the 10-15% of patients with the right genetic make-up". It was reported in the Guardian on 3 June 2024, and (as usual) on several other mainstream news sources.

It is the usual reporting by the mainstream media, anxious to let us know that the pharmaceutical industry (a major source of funding for them) is winning its battle against disease, and cancer in particular. Such reports provides the industry with free advertising and promotion, worth £$millions. All the reports appear to have an identical source - no doubt a 'press release' from the drug company. They describe the drug, also known Keytroda, as:

            "A 'gamechanger' immunotherapy drug that 'melts away' tumours dramatically increases the chances of curing some bowel cancers and may even replace the need for surgery, doctors have said".

All the articles make all the usual pharmaceutical claims for a new "wonder drug". Click on the links to read them for yourself. But one claim, by the trial's chief investigator, and consultant medical oncologist, is worth repeating here - the drug is "safe and effective". Of course it is! All pharmaceutical drugs are - until they are found not to be.

            Our results indicate that pembrolizumab is a safe and highly effective treatment to improve outcomes in patients with high-risk bowel cancers, increasing the chances of curing the disease at an early stage”.

I make my usual sceptical observation, which is based on the performance of past "wonder drugs" - let us wait and see. 

Another article that appears in the same Guardian webpage today seems to indicate how well conventional medicine is doing in the treatment of cancer. "Cancer rates among under-50's in the UK have risen 24% since 1995, figures show". Cancer was once considered a disease of older age. It is no longer so. The article demonstrates that the increase is "sharper than in any age group" and we are told (by experts!) that the increases "likely linked to obesity levels, junk food and inactivity".

What these medical 'experts' must also know, but choose not to tell us, is that cancer is also known to be caused by many, if not most, pharmaceutical drugs. But this, of course, is not mentioned. 

It is on this basis that I predict that pembrolizumab (keytruda) will prove to be neither safe or effective, and indeed may well be withdrawn in a number of years time because of this.

Watch this space for updates!

 

Friday 31 May 2024

The Contaminated Blood Inquiry. Is the focus of the media response misplaced!

We do not learn from our mistakes. History should teach us that scandals, disasters and fiascos are never recognised at the time, or even soon afterwards, but usually take 30-40, or even 50 years after they happen before they are accepted. We don't seem to understand this, even today, following the publication of the Infected Blood inquiry's final report. This is how the Guardian described the contaminated blood scandal.

            "The scandal has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. People treated by the NHS in the UK between the 1970s and 1990s were exposed to tainted blood through transfusions, including during complications in childbirth, or, in the case of haemophiliacs, given contaminated “factor VIII” blood products imported from the US".

I wrote about this scandal here in 2017, in "The Contaminated Blood Scandal. The worst cover-up in NHS history". It certainly has been a cover-up of massive proportions, one that has lasted for over 50 years after the issues were first known.

And now, hiding (as yet unannounced and unrecognised) in the background, is yet another scandal in the making - the Covid-19 vaccine scandal. This has concerned a mass vaccination campaign using a largely untested, and therefore experimental vaccines). And I predict that this scandal might also take another 30, 40 or 50 years before it is fully recognised by the UK's health and political establishments.

This 30+ year gap from 'event' to 'recognition/apology' is not restricted to conventional medicine. The Hillsborough tragedy, the Bloody Sunday massacre, and the Post Office scandal, are all demonstration of this laggardly timescale; and but there are many others. Nor will these scandals be the last; there will no doubt be many others to come!

Yet it is within the confines of the conventional medical establishment that most of these scandals happen. I wrote about several of these medical scandals in Chapter 9, "Medical Errors" in my "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" e-book. And if we are ever going to learn, it is important to understand what is going on, and why these decades-long time-delays are allowed to happen - time and time again.

There are influential people and powerful organisations implicated in each and every one of these scandals. They invariably, inevitably hold control the information about the situation within their sphere; within industry, within the conventional medical establishment, within government, and/or within the mainstream media. They are people with reputations to defend, and personal wealth to protect. And corporations or institutions with profitability at stake. When it is realised that there is a problem, they defend themselves, vigorously, through many tried and tested strategies:

  • initially they ignore the situation (on the basis that it is best not to discuss the situation in case it attracts unnecessary or unwanted publicity),
  • then they obfuscate (it is best that people are confused, or over-whelmed, rather than certain that something 'bad' has happened),
  • they go into denial, they cover-up (they play for time, defending themselves with arguments like "there is no evidence", or the "correlation is not causality", et al,
  • they discount the importance of the situation (there may be a slight problem, but only a few people people were 'involved; it's not a serious issue), and they excuse themselves by saying that the benefits of what happened far outweighed the risks.

These factors were all in evidence in previous scandals; Thalidomide, Vioxx, Opioid, Primodos, Sodium Valproate, were all defended using these strategies. The infected blood scandal was no different, just the latest example of a medical scandal that took decades before the truth was recognised, and the cover-up revealed.

I suggest that the Covid-19 vaccine scandal is at the very earliest stage of this process. Literally millions of people, around the world, have reported serious adverse vaccine reactions to national drug regulators, and they have not been recognised, investigated or acted upon. There is growing realisation by doctors and others within the Conventional Medical Establishment that there is a serious problem (stemming from the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration), and when the patient harm issues have been raised in Parliament, by a handful of MP's, they have spoken to an almost empty chamber, and received only an obfuscatory response from a government minister. The voluminous reports of serious patient harm from the Covid-19 vaccines are said to be greater than any other vaccine for the last 70 years. There have been 'excess deaths' each and every month for the last 3 years (since the vaccine roll-out), and questions about  links with the Covid-19 vaccines have usually been ignored, or denied. All these suggestions and allegations meet with institutional ridicule and denial, a refusal to investigate further, and the determination to continue with the Covid vaccination campaign.

Any similarities here with the contaminated blood scandal in the 1970's and 1980's? An industry not prepared to abandon a profitable vaccine? A health system unwilling to admit that it has caused serious patient harm? A government that does not want to compensate and pay damages to damaged patients?

The problem is that we might have to wait 30 years to find out! We are in the early stages during which the victims do not receive recognition, sympathy, support or compensation. They are the 'ordinary' people, with limited resources; they are not 'experts', and they find it difficult to penetrate 'the system' which insists there is no problem; and they certainly don't have the funds to take the issue to a court of law. 

On the other side of the fence they face people in positions of great power and influence, backed by powerful institutions. These are rich and powerful people, in extremis, who stick together. They present as a united front to protect themselves, to sing from the same song sheet. Corporate directors, senior government officials, and the mainstream media control the agenda, the information is (and is not) made available to the public.

Indeed, with health scandals in particular, one notable feature of these scandals is that no action is taken to correct the fault. The infected blood products continue to be sold; the opioid drugs are still marketed; Sodium Valproate continues to be prescribed; and even the infamous Thalidomide drug is still being used, today! These sales continue until such time that the scandal becomes bigger, when sales begin to fall, or the hitherto toothless, incompetent drug regulator bans it; or the drug company 'withdraws' it because it has become "uncommercial". One of the Covid-19 vaccines, the AstraZeneca vaccine, has suffered this fate - withdrawn for 'commercial reason' even though  it was never approved in some countries (the USA), was banned in about 12 European countries, and 'withdrawn' from the UK. The 'commercial' reason was that no-one wanted the vaccine because of 'suspicions' that they caused serious patient harm!

Another common thread that runs through most, if not all, these medical scandals is that drug/vaccine/treatment involved usually started life as a "wonder drug", a "game changer" that would transform the treatment of one disease or another. However, each one has moved from being loudly heralded "a miracle cure" to be quietly being dropped as a killer drug.

And then we are led to believe that such a thing has never happened before! 

Even at the very end of medical scandals, as with the 'contaminated blood scandal', the issue is usually discounted as being a 'one-off' issue, a single, isolated and terrible medical 'mistake' that must not be allowed to happen again. Also, they are presented as situations that would not be allowed to happen, not now, because things have changed, medicine has moved on. So, the defective, disease-inducing blood scandal product becomes "the worse disaster in the history of the NHS" - the implication being that something as bad as this has never happened before. And of course the Inquiry will insure that no such thing will never happen again in future!

So usually no-one is ever held to account for the scandal. This is the main purpose of the long drawn out history of obstruction and delay. If resolution can be delayed for 30, 40, or 50 years on, the people involved will either be dead, or too old; their scandal-driven profits already spent, or no longer available. The pharmaceutical industry will have re-organised, the old, often defunct drug companies will no longer be around to question, or prosecute. The politicians and civil servants involved with the scandal will have moved on, or died. Even some of the documentation might have been 'lost'. 

So it is the current government (that is, tax payers) who foots the compensation/damages bill, especially when drug companies have been given immunity from prosecution.

Conventional medicine is inherently secretive. This is because it relies heavily on pharmaceutical drug treatments, all of which are known to have serious side effects that can cause serious patient harm. This is at the heart of what makes the NHS defensive in all its dealing with the public. This is why conventional medicine does not, perhaps cannot, function openly, transparently, or honestly.

So there will be more health scandals, and with all the evidence available at this point it seems safe to predict that the Covid-19 vaccines, which are already suspected to have caused so much serious patient harm (heart conditions, cancer, damage to the immune system, to mental health, et al), will eventually grab our attention. But not, perhaps, for another 30 or 40 years!

So how can we identify a scandal 30 to 40 years earlier? I have a couple of tips.

  • Watch for a new 'medical breakthrough', the promotion of a new 'ground beating' medical treatment by both government, and the mainstream media,
  • Listen to who is speaking, and what they are saying. (i) the voice of the 'common' people who claim they have been harmed, but who remain largely unheard, or beaten back, and (ii) the denials and obfuscations of the medical and political establishments.

If these conditions apply then we just might have another medical scandal to witness - if we live long enough to see it unravel!


Thursday 30 May 2024

Elections, Politics and Health Spending?

Health is good; therefore spending on health must be good; therefore democratic politicians at election time, when they want our votes, promise us more health care.

            In Britain, since 1948, the expansion of the NHS has been based on one extraordinary idea - that as health is ‘good’, a vote winner, so spending on health must also be ‘good’. It is this one single idea that has allowed the NHS to grow at such a phenomenal rate!

But what if the additional money is spent on a health care system that does not work; and whose drugs and treatments cause further damage to our health? This is what has been happening in democracies around the world for the last 100 years, or more".

  • we are unwell,
  • we accept ineffective pharmaceutical drugs,
  • they make us sicker,
  • so we demand more health care,
  • and we get more ineffective, sickening health care, which compounds our sickness,
  • ..... so we demand even more to be spent on health care!

Eventually, an ineffective and iatrogenic health care system dominates not only our health, but the national economy; and is now even threatening to effectively 'bankrupt' governments. There is no more money to spend.

I am not going to defend these statements here. I really don't need to - the evidence is happening right now. In the UK and India we are already in the midst of election campaigns in which health spending is dominating the political debate. European and USA elections will follow later in the year. So the proof of the statements made here will be clear for all to observe.

  • We are sick (unasked question: why are we sicker now than we ever have been before?)
  • We want more health care (unasked question: what sort of health care do you actually want/need?)
  • Okay, Okay - we are listening (we want your vote), so we will give you yet more of the health care that is not making you better, and making you sicker).
  • Then we can watch as politicians out-bid each other with spending commitments on moving more resources into pharmaceutical medicine.
  • Listen, very carefully, you might be able to hear the gleeful response of the drug companies as they vie with each other to get hold of more of the new money. Later, we will be able to see that their profits have escalated, again).
  • Ultimately, we will be able to watch how chronic diseases (allergy, arthritis, asthma, autism, autoimmune diseases, cancer, dementia, diabetes, epilepsy, heart/kidney/liver/lung disease, mental health, et al) have continue on their inexorable, epidemic rise to new unprecedented levels.

If that does not happen, please let me know!

 

Friday 17 May 2024

Informed Consent to Pharmaceutical Medical Treatment. What information do patients' require?

Informed consent is important in medicine. It is especially important in Conventional (Pharmaceutical) medicine which has a long history of causing patient harm. (Click here for a list of withdrawn and banned medical drugs prescribed by doctors, especially over the last 70 years). Conventional medicine has always emphasised the importance of informed consent. For example, the UK's National Health Service (NHS) states that: 

            "For consent to be valid, it must be voluntary and informed, and the person consenting must have the capacity to make the decision. The meaning of these terms are:
    * voluntary – the decision to either consent or not to consent to treatment must be made by the person, and must not be influenced by pressure from medical staff, friends or family;
    * informed – the person must be given all of the information about what the treatment involves, including the benefits and risks, whether there are reasonable alternative treatments, and what will happen if treatment does not go ahead;
    * capacity – the person must be capable of giving consent, which means they understand the information given to them and can use it to make an informed decision.”

Yet conventional medicine has a poor record in assuring that the patients have given their "voluntary informed consent" when it comes to the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Conventional medicine is adept at informing us of the 'benefits' of drugs/vaccines; but they have been less ready to admit to the serious adverse reactions they can cause.

Indeed, in many during the recent Covid-19 pandemic it was clear that conventional medicine was prepared to mandate (force) patients to be vaccinated, without their consent, with vaccines that were (are) by its own admission 'experimental'. Even by the rather 'carefree' standards of pharmaceutical drug testing, were not fully or properly tested.

In December 2023 the USA drug regulator, the FDA, appears to have ditched the concept of voluntary informed consent entirely when it issued a 'final rule' providing an exception from the requirement to obtain informed consent when a clinical investigation poses no more than minimal risk to the human subject, and includes appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety and welfare of human subjects. This is, perhaps, thin edge of a very hefty wedge? Or perhaps, for a fundamentally dishonest industry, it is now trying to find reasons to ignore this principle altogether. Remember, at the time conventional medicine told us that Thalidomide, Vioxx, Avandia, Acomplia, Opioid painkillers, Sodium Valproate, and many others, came with "appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety and welfare of human subjects"! And they killed patients!

Conventional medicine has always been highly secretive about its treatments. Electro-Convulsive Treatment continues to be used on mental health patients (perhaps less now than before) quite regardless of the lack of evidence for its efficacy. But it is the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines, and their adverse effects on patients, that most secrecy exists. Remember, "the person must be given all of the information about what the treatment involves, including the benefits and risks, whether there are reasonable alternative treatments, and what will happen if treatment does not go ahead" (my emphasis). The reverse is usually true.

  • Often the patient will not be told about 'side effects' at all.
  • Or they are told only of minor 'side effects'.
  • Or the serious 'side effects' are minimised, discounted, described as "uncommon" or "rare".
  • Or, when the patient suffers a side effect, the doctor assures the patient the drug was not the cause.
  • Or a patient suffers serious harm, and conventional medicine completely denies any link.

I wrote about informed consent in May 2012. This blog was in response to a report that described, in some detail, the problem of medical paternalism (I am a medical professional - I know best - you should/must take this drug - it is "safe and effective" - and I don't expect to be questioned). The report said that:

            "Doctors are deliberately withholding information about the dangers of some routine screening and clinical procedures - often because they fear patients would then refuse treatment".

In other words, doctors were refusing to give patients information which might help them make an "informed choice", that is, a choice different to the decision of the doctor! The report suggested that patients should ask the following questions before agreeing to take any prescription drugs:

  1. How long has the drug been on the market (if less than 2 years ask for an 'older generation' drug)?
  2. Can you confirm I am not taking part in a drug trial?
  3. Is the drug suitable for my age/gender/condition?
  4. Are you using this drug 'off-label' or for the condition for which it was originally licensed?
  5. Are there any special warning or 'black-box' alerts for this drug?
  6. Can you explain to me the known side-effects and the likelihood of me suffering them?
  7. Has the drug been tested among people similar to my own age/gender?
  8. Do you know if the drug has been banned from use in other countries? (Note, many drugs which are banned in one country are still sold and prescribed in others).
  9. Have you given this drug to other patients? If so, have they reported any adverse reactions?
  10. Is the dose you are recommending within the guidelines of the manufacturer for my age/ gender/ condition?
  11. Do you know if the new drug will react with other drugs I am currently taking?
  12. If I start to suffer from health problems when I take the drug, I shall stop immediately, and come to see you again. Do you agree this is the best course of action?

However, the report went on to question whether the average doctor would be able to answer many of these questions. In other words, it questions how well informed doctors are about the drugs they prescribe, and how reliant they are on inadequate, and partial information from the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical 'science' that it controls.

And then there is the question about whether medical staff are allowed to provide patients with 'negative' information about conventional medical treatment. The Telegraph has recently published a series of articles entitled "The four-step 'playbook' the NHS uses to break whistleblowers" which discuses how  doctors, who raise patient safety concerns, are confronted with systemic bullying and harassment from their managers and colleagues. 

This raises the important question - can doctors who wish to tell patients the whole truth about medical treatment actually allowed to do so?

The Telegraph articles outline how NHS whistleblowers have had their careers ruined whilc trying to raise concern about patient safety. It outlines how over 50 doctors and nurses have raised concerns about patient death, and poor patient care, and how rather than dealing with the problems raised NHS executives seek to undermine them using 4 specific tactics.

  1. Investigating the whistleblowers rather than investigating the issues raised.
  2. Bullying and Intimidatory tactics against the whistleblowers.
  3. Weaponising General Medical Council referrals to silence whistleblowers.
  4. Demotion, Disciplinary Action, and Dismissal.

Few medical professionals would want to g through this type of persecution? So the assumption must be that most do not go public with the information? So the information that the NHS does not want patient to hear about does not reach the public. And the patient has to make his/her "voluntary informed choice" without this important information.

Does this sound like an open, honest, transparent medical system to you?

Are you undertaking conventional medical treatment, or taking pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines?

Are you being denied information that would help you make an informed choice?

Even patients who were determined to obtain information about the treatment recommended to them. This link describes one woman's battle for medical information. The response she received to her questions show how careful patients must be to protect themselves from pharmaceutical harm; and the extent to which conventional medical authorities will go to ignore, discount and deny important information required by patients who seek to know the full picture about proposed medical treatment.

So 'voluntary informed consent' is not an easy, perhaps closer to impossible for the sceptical patients to elicit - which is perhaps why so many patients are seriously harmed by drugs which were given to make them well. The patient instead suffers serious iatrogenic harm which is then denied or discounted. 

No government, no mainstream news media, will assist you, as they invariably appear to follow the pharmaceutical line. An internet search might provide important information that doctors will otherwise keep secret. But even this is often difficult to find for ordinary, non-medical people to find.

One piece of advice I received when learning to drive a car, many years ago, was to assume that everyone else on the road was an idiot. It was good advice! It has kept me safe.

Similarly, I would advice any patient to assume that any doctor, if not an idiot, will not be prepared, or will not able, or willing, to tell the truth about the medical treatment you are being offered. So scepticism might just help keep you safe from iatrogenic harm!


Post Script

If you agree that informed choice is important in medicine, please have a look at the 'Free Speech for Health' website, and sign their petition.

Monday 13 May 2024

The Largesse of the Pharmaceutical Industry. Why did doctors recommend that we take Covid-19 vaccines?

During the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone was constantly urged/cajoled by the National Health Service, the Government, and the entire mainstream media, to get vaccinated against the virus. This recommendation, so regularly repeated, became known by many as "The Narrative" such was its uniformity and persistence. 

Most people in the UK who were vaccinated in 2021were given the Oxford University AstraZeneca vaccine which has now been withdrawn, effectively banned because of the harm it caused to patients. We were told, via the Narrative, that this vaccine was "safe and effective", indeed more, that the vaccine was the only thing that could save us from the virus.

One of the most important elements of the "The Narrative" was a string of doctors who regularly appeared on the media, reinforcing the pro-vaccine message. They told us we must all get vaccinated, not just to protect ourselves, but to protect other people too. Vaccination became A civic duty. 

Now it has been discovered the drug companies were paying doctors: "AstraZeneca pays doctors to promote vaccines on ITV". This Expose article examined information from the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, which is required to disclose all money that has been paid to healthcare professionals. It found that 2022 disclosures revealed that AstraZeneca had paid doctors for "contracted services". These doctors then appeared on ITV to promote the 'safe vaccine' Narrative, and to downplay concerns about vaccine injuries that quickly arose.

The figures show that AstraZeneca paid "UK healthcare professionals, and other relevant decision makers" over £7 million! They were the most generous company of all, but certainly not the only drug company that paid for these "contracted services". In total drug companies paid out nearly £63 million! The Expose article is well worth reading, in full. The figures appear to be genuine, and to date no-one appears to have refuted them (or indeed even mentioned them).

Most people who watched the testimony of these doctors on ITV, and no doubt other broadcasters too, would have assumed that they were medical professionals who were providing us with the benefit of their clinical experience, giving their considered and unbiased opinions on the vaccines. What they told us, repeatedly, would certainly have persuaded large numbers of people that they should take the vaccine. Indeed it would have been an important part of the information on which the vaccinated based their decision, their "informed consent". Most people still trust their doctors. They believe what they are told, in good faith.

  • However, I never heard one of these doctors mention that they had a conflict of interest, that they had received money from the industry for "contracted services". 
  • Nor did I hear any interviewer ask whether they might have a conflict of interest. 
  • Nor do I know why mainstream news channels asked only these same doctors, time and time again, for their views, but none of the doctors who expressed concern about their safety and effectiveness.

Nor are my expectations high about getting any future information. I do I expect the doctors involved,  ITV, or indeed any other news channel, to answer these questions. I doubt whether there will be any apologies. I doubt whether anyone will even to mention it. I have written about this before, over 15 years ago. We are dealing with a dangerous industry that routinely harms patients - yet they are capable of keeping this from the general public!

Yet there is more. Another Expose article, looking at the same (publicly available) data, has discovered that "Big Pharma have paid UK healthcare organisations £404 million during 2020-2022". So what is this huge some of money for?

According to the ABPI Code of Practice, healthcare organisations are "either a healthcare, medical or scientific association or organisation such as a hospital, clinic, foundation, university or other teaching institution or learned society whose business address, place of incorporation or primary place of operation is in Europe or an organisation through which one or more health professionals or other relevant decision makes provide services".

Apparently the beneficiary organisations do not have to be declared, as Health Care Organisations are not considered to be 'personal data', therefore "a lawful basis is not required to publish organisation names and addresses on Disclosure UK". 

  • But it is perhaps not unreasonable to suppose that organisations that benefit from this pharmaceutical largesse are expected to be supportive, and certainly not too critical, of the industry. 
  • And it is not unreasonable to assume that the beneficiaries will include organisations that supply information about pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to the general public, like media news organisations, Health Charities, and Patient Support groups.

That is, any organisation which might be expected to provide important health information, who might be persuaded to promote their produce, and who might otherwise be critical of them.

The pharmaceutical industry is certainly prepared to spend a large part of its income and wealth on ensuring that the general public is given only 'positive' information, that what we hear about its products is good, rather than bad news. For an industry that has done so much patient harm over the years this appears to be a good strategy.  - however much harm they might cause.  

For instance, I have written before on this blog about how the pharmaceutical industry provides Health Charities, and Patient Support groups with generous funding. 

In return for this funding, drug companies gain organisations that are supportive of pharmaceutical approaches to health care, uncritical of any adverse reactions treatment may cause, and dismissive or any suggestion that the illness they support might have an iatrogenic, or 'doctor-induced' cause.

The pharmaceutical industry has long been adept at applying huge amounts of their income and wealth on restricting the health information available to us. Indeed, doing so is an important, indeed crucial element in the success of conventional, drug-based medicine. The industry recognises that without controlling what the public is told about the dangers of pharmaceutical medicine, their credibility would soon be fatally damaging.

And it is for this reason that they are prepared to spend very large amounts of money to ensure we are all getting the 'right' message!


Friday 26 April 2024

Another new 'game-changing' treatment for cancer? A real hope, or another false dawn?

"‘Real hope’ for cancer cure as personal mRNA vaccine for melanoma trialled"

This is a headline in today's Guardian newspaper, although you can find similar headlines in most, probably all the UK's mainstream media (I have not checked them all!). The news story is typical of what our media puts out on a regular, almost daily basis; so it can be quickly summed up.

  • This is a serious illness/disease...
  • There is a new treatment that will be a 'game changer' in its future treatment...
  • It offers patients real hope of a cure...
  • The cure is then described, alongside its benefits, usually with examples...
  • Any adverse reactions, slight or serious, are either not mentioned, or they are discounted (in this case they are not mentioned)...
  • Also, the cost of the treatment is usually not mentioned...
  • Or when the treatment might be made available to patients.
..

These regular media reports on medical 'breakthroughs;, appearing in a variety of different news agencies, are usually identical; that is, they come from an identical source. It is not difficult to assume that this source is a press release provided by the medical organisation/company that is producing the product.

As such it is free advertising! There will already be thousands of patients who will be wanting to access this treatment, and pressing their doctors to provide it. Goodness knows how valuable this free promotion is for the companies concerned. It is difficult to know what other industry is provided with this kind of advertising.

The question now is - what happens next? It always is. The drug concerned today is a new mRNA vaccine to treat skin melanomas, and lung, bladder and kidney cancer too. But it is not difficult to predict the future - because it happens on a regular basis.

  • There is a demand for the treatment to be made available on the NHS...
  • The cost of the treatment is high, if not excessive, and questions arise about whether the NHS can afford to offer it...
  • However the treatment is offered, there is too much demand to refuse, and patients, excited by the prospect, begin to take the treatment...
  • Then serious adverse reactions are noted...
  • Increasingly these become an issue; doctors seek to reduce them, or reduce those patients offered the treatment...
  • However, the seriousness of the adverse reactions continue to rise until the treatment is no longer defensible, or too unsafe for patients...
  • And the treatment is withdrawn or banned.

The vaccine is apparently used alongside an immunotherapy drug called Keytruda, already known to cause serious adverse reactions which (of course) are not mentioned in today's mainstream news story!

I have written about this kind of propaganda before, many times. The last one was two months ago, and concerned the weight-loss drug, Wygovy. Even now, Wygovy, and similar weight-loss drugs, described in recent months as new wonder cures for obesity, and struggling with serious adverse reactions. In this same blog I mention Acomplia, another weight-loss drug that went through the same process over 20 years ago.

I predict a similar outcome for the new mRNA vaccine, one from the same stable as the Covid-19 vaccines. And readers can certainly hold me to that prediction!

Post Script 1st May 2024

It is just 5 days since posting this blog, and already the new 'wonder' cancer treatment is being called into question.

All mRNA injections, including cancer vaccines, may accelerate the development of cancer.

            "Four days ago, the Guardian reported that there was "excitement among patients and researchers" in the UK as "personalised mRNA vaccines" for cancer entered their phase 3 trial....  However, patients may be less excited about these "groundbreaking" injection when they read a paper published last week. On 23 April, a pre-print paper (not yet peer-reviewed) was published in the journal 'Anthorea' that reviewed oncogenesis and autoimmunity caused by mRNA injections. It found that repeated mRNA injections reduce immune surveillance for cancer while at the same time inducing autoimmunity".

It would appear that the 'good' news coming from the pharmaceutical medical establishment is barely keeping ahead of the 'bad' news about the harm their drugs/vaccines are doing!

Of course, patients won't be more, or less excited by this news; because neither the pharmaceutical industry, government, or the mainstream media will not tell us about this.

Sunday 14 April 2024

The 'Normalisation' of Chronic Disease Epidemics: how Conventional Medicine ignores them

There has been an ongoing epidemic of all chronic disease (eg., arthritis, autism, autoimmune disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart/liver/kidney disease, and many more) for over 70 years. Indeed it is difficult to name a chronic disease whose incidence has not risen exponentially during this time anywhere in the world in which pharmaceutical medicine reigns supreme. The data is often shared with us, information about how the disease is out-of-control, but when it is the purpose is usually to make an urgent case for yet more resources to be found for yet more conventional medical treatment. The rise and rise of chronic disease, however, is rarely considered in a broader, more general context.

    Invariably, conventional medical treatment is being, and has been used, but we are never told why this treatment has not been successful in dealing with the disease, and why despite treatment the disease is getting more common?

    The fact is that in the last 75 years chronic disease epidemics have all been running parallel to enormous and increasing resources being ploughed into conventional, drug-based medicine, but the treatment has not been able to stem the tide of chronic disease. Indeed, in most cases epidemic levels of disease continue to increase.

It is therefore logical to assume that if pharmaceutical medicine was able to treat these illnesses and diseases successfully there would be no ongoing epidemic. Certainly the incidence of the disease would not be expected to rise, often exponentially! And in fairness, the conventional medical establishment is probably well aware of this, even though it is particularly difficult for it to explain this to us, other than pleading that they need more money, for more of the same treatment. 

Yet whenever additional resources are ploughed into medical provision, the epidemics seem only to increase in size, and even in matters of health there has surely to be a time-limit on how long they are given to redeem their promise of effective treatment!

For instance, Cancer Research UK has been using the slogan "Together we are beating cancer....." for as long as I can remember! And they continue to use it. Their latest campaign is to raise more money for cancer research to avoid the annual number of cancer deaths from rising to 20,000 by 2040. One might ask how much further we will be asked to run, swim, cycle in order to raise yet more money for the charity! Cancer Research UK has roots going back to 1902, and the slogan might be nearly that old!

Other charities have similar slogans, full of hope and optimism. The British Heart Foundation uses the similar slogan, Together, we can beat heartbreak forever....". And there are many, many more similar slogans calling us to provide drug companies with more funding for drug/vaccine research.

The problem for the conventional medicine is that there is another explanation, one that does not involve the need for more money and greater resources, but questions the efficacy of the medical system on which most countries have built their health services for the last 70 years - pharmaceutical medicine. Conventional medicine know this, and it knows that it needs to justify itself, and increasingly they have devised strategies to do so.

1. See no evil, hear no evil

If you don't look for something you won't find anything. If you don't hear criticism, you won't have to respond to it. The pharmaceutical industry know this, and have used this time-honoured strategy whenever it has been confronted with questions about the chronic disease epidemics.

The failure to look for evidence of iatrogenic (medically-caused) patient harm, especially if that evidence might implicate pharmaceutical treatment (or the selling of drugs) has been going on for many years. Silence will often mean that the original question will not be heard. A lack of dialogue means that nothing will be heard. If nothing is said, especially when faced with an awkward question, no debate will ensue.

Initially you don't even deny allegations. Silence reigns supreme. For instance, even if it's alleged that a pharmaceutical drug has been used intentionally to kill sick patients, the accusation remains unanswered. The silence is only broken when an issue or problem refuses to go away. Then denial becomes necessary. But denial should never be too vociferous for fear that too many people become aware of the issue. No publicity is the best publicity for an industry seeking to defend itself from bad news.

Yet when denial becomes necessary the pharmaceutical knows that it can minimise any damage by doing several things.

  • To get 'medical science' on your side, not difficult as you provide science companies with the major part of their income.
  • To get government on your side, not difficult if you are able to entice their support with promise of industrial investment.
  • To get the mainstream media on your side, not difficult when your advertising means survival to news organisations, and news companies can be infiltrated and controlled.
  • To ensure that health charities and patient support groups on your side, not difficult if you provide them with both funding, and personnel.

And even if medical science fails to comply with supportive research, stop the research. This happens regularly, most recently when the journal Cureus retracted a peer-reviewed paper that called for a global moratorium on the Covid-19 vaccines following an investigation into vaccine trial data, and post-injection injuries suggested that they were not "safe and effective". Or if the research cannot be stopped, at least ensure that harm is minimised, like when a study of adverse Covid-19 vaccine reactions was studied, serious patient harm was found, but they were adjudged to have been "very rare".

The strategy is all about damage limitation to the industry. The pharmaceutical industry is not alone in adopting the strategy, as demonstrated by this research concerning the dangers of cellphone radiation which was cancelled after safety risks were uncovered. If an industry has enough wealth, power and influence, it can ensure that evidence that is "bad for business" does not reach the eyes of the world.

But such are the current difficulties of the pharmaceutical industry they are having to move beyond silence, denial, and the financial control of information sources. It seems that they are developing new, more subtle strategies.

2. Munchausen's Syndrome

This BBC television programme explains one such justification. This suggests that patients are not really sick at all, they are faking their illness/disease in order to get attention! Munchausen's syndrome was originally explained as a rare form of child abuse (Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy), where a parent or carer exaggerates. or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in a child. In this context, the illness has been fabricated, or induced, to draw attention to himself/herself.

This new form of Munchausen's syndrome appears to suggest that people are feigning sickness rather than being sick. Perhaps Conventional medicine sees this a a new form of defence against criticism, a way of explaining away the rise and rise of so many chronic diseases?

3. The Normalisation of Disease

The normalisation of disease is yet another strategy Conventional Medicine seems to be using to discount and minimise the spiralling levels of illness and disease. Illness and disease is just something that happens, bad luck perhaps, an unexpected, surprise attack by a some virulent virus or germ. No matter. Let's get on with life. Let's not worry ourselves about the cause the disease. Never mind if there is no effective or safe treatment. 

Mental health conditions have been particularly subject to this normalisation (and I have written about the normalisation of disease with regard to Autism recently).

But cancer, once described as a disease of old age, is now affecting babies, children, young people, and adults of all ages; and this spreading  of cancer through the age groups has been accepted as quite 'normal' now. This article, for instance, decries the attempt to dismiss cancer as "a natural disease of ageing", that we should be actively getting rid of the toxic exposures that are known to cause cancer rather than normalising the disease.  

And of course, this 'toxic exposure' should include exposure to the many pharmaceutical drugs that are known to cause cancer! But this is something that the drug companies wish to avoid!

Similarly, dementia was once thought to be a disease of old age, but describing younger adults as suffering from "early onset" dementia seems to have become a sufficient and satisfactory explanation for the extension of dementia to people in their 30's, 40's and 50's. The disease has just happened a few years earlier than it should have done, nothing usual, all quite normal - or so we are wanted to believe. 

And again it is certainly not necessary to look at the toxicity of pharmaceutical that drugs that are known to cause dementia!

4. Neurodiversity: living with and accepting illness

Neurodiversity is a further extension of the 'normalising' of disease, and has been especially used to justify the epidemic of autism. We should accept the disease, embrace it, and positively celebrate our differences. So we are asked to ignore the illness, we should not worry that something has made him or her 'different' to other people, or worry about the culpability of iatrogenic origins of the disease, and conventional medicine's their inability to do anything to treat it effectively. We are being asked to look at the individual, not his/her incapacity or disability, and just to get on looking after him/her properly!

So the pharmaceutical conventional medical establishment is asking us to accept illness and disease as a 'normal' part of life; accept it and just get on with living. Don't worry about the absence of effective treatment. And certainly don't worry about causation.

So don't be fooled into this malaise. We are dealing here with a medical system that not only fails to treat illness and disease effectively, but one that secretly (deep down) must accept at least partial responsibility for creating these epidemics of illness and disease.

Monday 8 April 2024

Autism, the Failure of Conventional Medicine, the constant cover-up of medical harm

I have written extensively about the Failure of Conventional (or Pharmaceutical) Medicine. What is happening to the health of our nations is not a failure to invest sufficiently in conventional medicine. It is not a matter of "invest more, and get healthier"; indeed quite the opposite is true; the more we invest in pharmaceutical medicine, the sicker we have become.

Equally important, however, is the way conventional medical authorities have hidden this failure, and how it continues to do so. This cover-up is the reason most people are not aware of the medical failure, and indeed why, despite continuing medical failure, most people demand yet more resources for yet more of it!

And here we need to pay tribute to the one, most important, single success of conventional medicine - its enormously successful (but pernicious) propaganda.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than how conventional medicine is currently manipulating our understanding of the autism epidemic.

Autism was unknown in the 1940’s. In many ways, this was the decade that finally confirmed and reinforced the dominance of conventional, or pharmaceutical  medicine. In the UK, in 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) was created. Henceforward everyone would be able to access pharmaceutical medicine, free at the point of use. In most other western nations similar medical schemes were introduced to ensure that populations had access to "the best drugs" available. 

The result, over the years, has been an exponential increase in the consumption of pharmaceutical drug. For the last 80-100 years we have taken them in the belief that they would make us better, that the outcome would be improved health, and less illness and disease.

Adverse drug and vaccine reactions have been less well discussed. Yet any survey of any chronic disease shows clearly that they have all risen, consistently, rapidly since the drug-fest began. They have become epidemics. And it is known, in conventional medical literature, that pharmaceutical drugs are known to be a major cause of diseases like arthritis, cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart/liver/kidney disease, and many more. 

The rise of autism is just one of them - but it is an important one. Autism rates have risen rapidly since the first case was identified in the 1940's. I wrote about this in  March 2019.

        "Autism is a disease unknown before the 1940’s, prior to mass vaccination campaigns. Since then it has risen, exponentially. And it has done so in exact parallel to the increased use of vaccines. The CDC website (a pillar of the conventional medical establishment) gives the following statistics about the rise and rise of autism in the USA.

          2000          1 in 150 children
          2002          1 in 150 children
          2004          1 in 125 children
          2006          1 in 110 children
          2008          1 in 88 children
          2010          1 in 68 children
          2012          1 in 59 children

A CDC study, published in March 2023, shows that the incidence of autism continues to rise, and shows no sign of abating.

        "For 2020, one in 36 children aged 8 years (approximately 4% of boys and 1% of girls) was estimated to have ASD. These estimates are higher than previous ADDM Network estimates during 2000–2018".

In England alone, the Nuffield Trust estimates show that there are about 1.2 million autistic people, and 2-2 million people with ADHD now. There has been a huge rise in demand for both diagnoses and support, and providing this support in going to be a huge task - the secondary costs of conventional medical failure.

If you examine conventional medical literature three things become clear. First, the cause of the epidemic of autism remains unknown (after 80 years)! Second, autism is NOT caused by vaccines (it could be any other factor, but it is definitely not our vaccines)! Nor will we look at the cause. Third, there is no effective treatment. These are some comments made on the UK's NHS website and it demonstrates conventional medicine new, blase, apathetic, unconcerned approach to autism.

    * Autism is not an illness. Being autistic does not mean you have an illness or disease. It means your brain works in a different way from other people. It's something you're born with. Signs of autism might be noticed when you're very young, or not until you're older. If you're autistic, you're autistic your whole life. Autism is not a medical condition with treatments or a "cure". But some people need support to help them with certain things. Being autistic does not have to stop you having a good life. Like everyone, autistic people have things they're good at as well as things they struggle with. Being autistic does not mean you can never make friends, have relationships or get a job. But you might need extra help with these things. It's not clear what causes autism. Nobody knows what causes autism, or if it has a cause. It can affect people in the same family. So it may sometimes be passed on to a child by their parents. (It is) not caused by vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine.

For a failed medical system this new strategy makes eminent sense. Doctors do no understand what is causing the disease; they have no treatment for it; they are embarrassed because links with vaccine damage will not go away; so they ask us to 'accept' the disease, that nothing can be done, that it is something we must just accept.

So 2nd April 2024 was officially pronounced by the USA President as "World Autism Acceptance Day". I wonder how many of us noticed how the word "acceptance" was skilfully slipped in there? Autism is no longer an "urgent public health concern", it is something we have to accept. Why? Conventional medicine can do nothing about the condition - so all we can do is to look after all those on the "autistic spectrum" properly. 

I have no problem with with the idea that autistic people have to be properly looked after. My problem is that in doing so conventional medicine fail to recognise the seriousness of the condition, and in doing so  the failure of conventional medicine - its role in creating autism, its failure to identify the cause, its inability to treat autism, and its recognition that nothing can be done to prevent an even higher incidence of the condition in future. This is what the Childrens Health Defense organisation described it.

            "The CDC has “taken action” by promoting April as “Autism Acceptance Month” from “Autism Awareness Month. But “acceptance” means different things to different people. For us, the term is, in fact, unacceptable.CHD “ accepts” and supports all efforts to improve the lives of children and families affected by autism. We accept individual differences. But we don’t “accept” the refusal by our taxpayer-funded public health agencies to investigate the real causes behind this tragic epidemic."

Pharmaceutical medicine wants to take our minds off both the cause, and the treatment of autism. We have just to accept it. Autism should be celebrated and embraced. Forget the possibility that autism might be caused by vaccines, recognise that a diagnosis of autism is a sign of social inclusivity. Let's normalise the disease. Let's celebrate neurodiversity. Autistic people are just 'different', and we should appreciate those who are different, and not consider autism to be a disease.

Yet there is a difference between celebrating and normalising an individual with autism, and celebrating autism itself. As one father of an autistic child has said, he wants to celebrate his autistic daughter, but he does not want to celebrate her disability, or what will happen to her when he, and her mother, have gone.

        "My daughter's disabled for life. Don't cheapen that disability by pretending that the fact that you're a little nerdy makes you autistic."

This is exactly right. He continues by saying that early in life autism is very costly to parents, including mothers who are often obliged to stay home and abandon their careers. Over time those costs shift, as the parents retire, and eventually die.

        “Most autistic individuals in adulthood are unemployed and unemployable … Then they’re going to have to be housed somewhere and they’re going to have to have something to do during the day. Someone’s got to watch over them.”

So 'normalising' autism might be a good strategy for the pharmaceutical medical establishment, but not for the person who has autism, or their family - especially severe autism. 

It is also fundamentally dishonest. There is no effective treatment for autism, but whilst developing the case for normalising and celebrating neurodiversity, the drug companies have also noted that autism provides them with a huge opportunity - a multi-billion market for autism drugs! The global Autism Spectrum Disorder treatment market is projected to reach $11.42 billion by 2028, according to a new report by 360 Research Reports.

So the pharmaceutical industry is riding two horses simultaneously. 

    (i) Accept autism as a normal condition, whose cause in unknown; and 

    (ii) take antipsychotic drugs, like Risperdal and Abilify to treat this 'normal' condition! 

And whilst families are doing this, they want us to ignore that the toxicity of antipsychotic drugs is only matched by their ineffectiveness! So an industry that profited from harming the children initially now want families to ignore this, to accept what has happened, accept that they will profit again - by selling them more toxic drugs that are likely to cause further patient harm.


Tuesday 19 March 2024

The NHS Crisis (Spring 2024): now there is no more money!

The NHS Crisis is developing fast, getting worse by the day, and has become a year-long event. I have been writing about this crisis for over 11 years now. The underlying pattern of the crisis has never changed:

 >>> increased sickness >>> followed by increased spending on pharmaceutical treatment >>> followed by even more sickness >>> and then even more demands for even more money. 

During this time the NHS has never changed its explanation for the crisis. They don't have enough money, they need more, lots more, for more pharmaceutical drug treatment, for more adverse drug reactions, for more sickness - for which the NHS will want more money for treatment. It is a merri-go-round!

It has always been thus. It is contained within the 14+ blogs written over the last 13 years on the NHS Crisis, all listed and linked at the foot of the page.

And no one (outside this blog) has EVER questioned whether it is wise to spend more and more money on a medical system that is so demonstrably failing to provide an effective response to the constantly expanding levels of sickness. Yet the right questions are beginning to be asked. The NHS has routinely told us that it does not have enough doctors and nurses. Yet doctor numbers have risen by 37%, and other staff by 45%, in the last 10 years. This Expose article asks "How does the the NHS do so little with so much". It fails to come to the inevitable conclusion, but it does provide some useful statistics from the Office for National Statistics.

  • The number of doctors increased by 37,467 (up 37%) from 101,137 in 2013 to 138,604 by 2023.
  • The number of nurses and midwives increased by 68,063 (up 23%) from 295,163 in 2013 to 363,226 in 2023.
  • The number of scientific staff increased by 42,938 (up 13%) from 123,912 in 2013 to 166,850 in 2023.
  • The number of support staff increased by 125,510 (up 45%) from 279,579 in 2013 to 405,089 in 2023.
  • The number of infrastructure staff increased by 62,758 (up 41%) from 152,437 in 2013 to 215,195 in 2023.
  • The number of ambulance staff increased by just 1,721 (up 10%) from 17,537 in 2013 to 19,258 in 2023.

Even the BBC is beginning to ask questions about the viability of the NHS. In July 2023 it wished the NHS a happy 75th birthday - but asked whether it could survive to 100 years old. They are right to ask the question, but as usual, wrong in their assessment of what the problem is. They mentioned the "dire warnings" that it could not do so "without drastic change". A change in the medical system, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs, that dominates NHS treatment? No, let's blame the patient instead!

            "When the NHS was created the main focus was on short bouts of treatment for injury and infection, but now the challenge is completely different.The ageing population means huge numbers of people are living with chronic health problems, such as heart disease, dementia and diabetes that require long-term care and for which there is no cure. It is already estimated about £7 out of every £10 spent in the NHS goes on people with these conditions. On average, those over 65 have at least two. And the situation is only going to worsen. "The numbers are going to grow," Health Foundation director of research and economics Anita Charlesworth says. "The baby boomer generation is reaching old age."

Predictably the BBC fails to spot that heart disease, dementia and diabetes have grown to epidemic proportions during the 75 years of NHS treatment, but fails to take the comment "... for which there is no cure" any further!

It does, however, provide graphs about health spending as a percentage of day-to-day public service spending, indicating that this rose from 27% in 1999-2000, to 32% in 2009-2020, to 42% in 2019-2020, and to 44% in 2024 to 2025. More and more money for health clearly indicates that there is less and less money for any other public service - education, police, local government, defence. We are gradually, progressively, robbing Peter to pay Big Pharma!

This Medscape article outlines just how bad the situation has become, focusing on the situation in Northern Ireland.

            "Record-breaking waiting lists and emergency department times – the worst across the UK, healthcare staff at breaking point and leaving the region, GP practices closing due to financial issues, and a scheduled junior doctors' strike this week have seen the situation hit crisis point. The health service in Northern Ireland is now in “absolute meltdown” say clinicians working in the region, with even the Minister for Health acknowledging that the situation is “deplorable” and “unprecedented”."

            "Northern Ireland's Minister of Health, Robin Swann issued a stark warning of an "extremely difficult and worsening" financial position for health and social care ... (as usual) ... calling for increased resources and multi-annual budgeting".             "We have a system that is in very real trouble. Every part of it is in profound distress.... The risks of service breakdown are real and growing in a range of areas. I do not say this to frighten people but to help build a shared understanding. We continue to have expectations and demands of health and social care that we cannot currently meet, and on the current trajectory the situation is getting worse rather than better".

In other words, there is no more money, no more handouts for a failing medical system can be expected. The Westminster Government continues to trickle money into the NHS; but it recognises that taxes are too high, that more borrowing is untenable, and in a recent budget, has said that they are expecting more productivity from medical staff (blame the staff?). The Opposition Labour party, which might find itself in government by the end of this year, tells a similar story; they will not break their fiscal rules, which effectively means - no more taxes, no more borrowing, no additional money for the NHS.

This is what has changed since I last wrote about the NHS Crisis. Both government and opposition has now accepted that there is no more money. The NHS is not going to be bailed out, again, as has happened routinely during the last 75 years. The magic "NHS money tree" is dead!

Another new factor is that key NHS staff have gone on strike; senior doctors, junior doctors, nurses, ambulance staff - people who have never been on strike before. Why? Despite the money thrown at the NHS little of it has apparently gone to staff. So not even those who deliver pharmaceutical medical treatment are content. A newly qualified doctor, after 5-6 years of training, has a starting salary is about £33,000. And it has been estimated that junior doctor's salaries have fallen by about 30% in the last 15 years.

So the NHS has not only devoted itself, entirely, to a system of medical treatment that does not work, which is actually making us sicker, it cannot even treat its clinicians, the people who operate the NHS, properly. Staff morale within the NHS is not only poor, it is getting worse.

In a health service that cannot cope with the pressures it faces, recent news from the GP Magazine, Pulse, on 12th March 2024, reported alarmingly that "swathes of GP's were at risk of redundancy". Watch this space! Is the NHS facing self-destruction? A BMA spokesperson has recently warned general practice that it has suddenly gone from a recruitment crisis to an employment crisis. 

Surely the NHS crisis cannot get any worse! But I haven't mentioned NHS dental services, which in many parts of the country are now virtually non-existent. The Guardian reported, in October 2023, that there were a record numbers of patients complaining to the NHS Ombudsman about poor care, exorbitant fees and gaining accept to NHS dental services in England. The Ombudsman said that poor dental care leaves patients frustrated, in pain and out of pocket. The number of complaints received every year has risen by 66%, and the proportion of complaints being upheld has increased from 42% to 78% over the same period. The ombudsman is currently receiving about 100 calls a week from people worried about poor treatment, an inability to access NHS dental care, and being removed from a dentist's practice list.

So the NHS crisis continues and deepens, as it is likely to do so long as we fail to recognise the main reason for the crisis. No problem is ever resolved unless and until the cause of the problem is accurately identified. The NHS, and the Government, have been singularly unable, or unwilling to do so to recognise that it has invested in pharmaceutical medicine, a medical system that just does not work. So, bad as the current crisis is, it will only get worse.

According to the USA Department of Health and Human Services, as many as 1 in 3 hospital admission each year are linked to adverse drug reactions, and inter-reactions. The situation in the UK is similar, as it is in other countries with a so-called 'advanced' or 'modern' medical system. So we have the evidence that prescription drugs, legitimately prescribed, cause patient harm, and make them sick, can even lead to death. 

In fact, many do lead to death. This is from a paper published by Imperial College London, "National State of Patient Safety, 2022. What we know about avoidable harm".

            "In 2019 there were more than 130,000 avoidable deaths in Great Britain - more than 22% of all deaths. Of these, 64% were classed as preventable and 36% were classed as treatable"

The problem is that the conventional medical establishment is skilled at discounting any such evidence. They are the result of under-performance, mistakes, errors, accidents, all of which can be avoided by improved management practices. The motto of the NHS seems to be "carry on, regardless".

 

NHS Crisis: links to previous blogs