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.
