The Inadequacy and Failure of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs), Drug Package Inserts, to keep us safe

PILs are meant to protect patients from harm, to provide us with information about ‘side effects’, adverse reactions of pharmaceutical drugs. The UK’s drug regulator has admitted they do not do so.

Pharmaceutical medicine works within the confines of a code of ethical conduct that (should) recognise the possible dangers of drugs and vaccines, and thereby seek to protect patients from harm.

One central concept is that if pharmaceutical medicine can cause serious patient harm, patients should at least be informed about that possibility, not least to enable them to make an ‘informed’ choice about whether or not to take the drugs/vaccines/treatment.

1. That is why we have Drug Regulatory bodies - to ensure that we are all informed about the potential dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

2. That is why drug companies are obliged to test their vaccines and drugs for both (i) safety and (ii) efficacy - and to put this information on PILs.

3. That is why doctors have a reporting system (Yellow Card system in UK) that obliges doctors to report any adverse drug effects suffered by their patients to the drug regulator.

4. And that is why all vaccines and drugs prescribed to patients are accompanied by a PIL, or Package Insert, to inform patients about the potential harm each drug are known to cause.

The problem is that (i) Drug Regulators are now controlled and staffed by people with close links to the Pharmaceutical industry, whose main concern seems to be the best interests of the industry rather than the safety of patients. Another problem is that (ii) Big Pharma companies are the main funders of the ‘medical science’, and have demonstrably corrupted the ‘science’ that is supposed to underlay conventional medicine. And further, (iii) most adverse drug reactions are not routinely fed to drug regulators, those that are reported are increasingly ignored, and so many adverse drug reactions do not make their way on to PILs'.

These long-standing ‘faults’ in drug regulation, all meant to protect patients from harm, have been discussed on this forum many times. But hitherto I have paid less attention to the inadequacies of PILs.

The medical journal, MIMS reported in October 2026 that the UK’s drug regulator, the MHRA, is to undertake a major review “to improve communication of key risks associated with antidepressants, including suicide and sexual dysfunction..…” The article says that this action follows a major review that recognised most patients are NOT being sufficiently warned about the adverse reactions to antidepressant drugs. 

“The review came after patients and families raised concerns regarding the adequacy of existing PILs in communicating antidepressant risks”

What this means, in effect, is that antidepressant drugs, prescribed by thousands of doctors to millions of patients for over 70 years (antidepressant drugs were developed in the 1950’s) have not been accompanied by PILs that adequately warn about the risks of taking them! So, it says, doctors must now to impart this to their patients.

“Clinicians are advised to discuss the risks of suicidal thoughts and behaviours, and the potential for persistent sexual dysfunction with patients when starting or changing an antidepressant dose, or at their next review. They should also advise patients to seek urgent medical attention if they experience new or worsening suicidal thoughts, particularly early in treatment or following dose changes.”

After 70 years this is seriously belated advice! Both suicide and sexual dysfunction resulting from antidepressant use has been in PILs for decades! And these are just two serious side effects that have been known about antidepressant use for decades. The Drugs.com website, for instance, reports many more serious side effects, including drowsiness and fatigue, gastrointestinal problems, and weight gain and much more. So it should be asked:

• How many depressed people have committed suicide (and self harm) not because of their depression but because of the drugs they were taking to ‘treat’ their depression?

• How many people with problems during sexual activity, such as lack of libido, arousal, orgasm, pain, should now be blaming pharmaceutivcal drugs rather than personal inadequacy? (And perhaps the relationship between antidepressant drugs and gender dysphoria should be more closely investigated,  something I have already written about, here.

• Gastrointestinal problems and weight gain are also growing health problems. How many patients have these problems because they have been taking antidepressants, without realising that they are well-known adverse reaction? And how many patients now taking the new, much lauded weight-loss injection drugs are doing so as a result of the havoc that has been caused by taking another pharmaceutical drug?

Violence is another known ‘side effect’ of taking antidepressant drugs. This is also in conventional medical literature. The question is, to what extent has this serious social issue, that has increased enormously in recent years, the result of taking antidepressant drugs? Dare I say that social violence has grown “in line with the increased consumption of antidepressant drugs”? And that there are many other pharma drugs that are known to cause violence. I have read many cogent, well researched articles suggesting that most mass shootings in the USA were carried out by people with ‘mental health’ problems, and who were taking antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs. I have no evidence to suggest that this is any different in the UK!

All this indicates that PILs do not, and have not worked. It is not just about antidepressants and sexual dysfunction/suicide. Most patients, taking most drugs, remain oblivious to the possibility of drug harm. The information contained in PILs have just not reached patients.

So what measures are the MHRA bringing about, what are the “new safeguards to strengthen antidepressant safety information”? They are breathtakingly simple. But unfortunately there is no explanation about how they will be more “visible” to patients than they have been hitherto.

“A new boxed warning in the PILs aims to highlight information on suicidal thoughts and behaviours and signpost patients to sources of help. The term post SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) is being added to the PILs of antidepressants associated with a risk of sexual dysfunction which may persist after treatment discontinuation, including certain SSRIs, SNRIs and tricyclic antidepressants.

“A new patient card, to be included in or on medication packaging, will reinforce key safety messages and help patients and carers understand how and when to seek further support. It will initially be available electronically, and may be given to the patient by dispensers as an interim measure ahead of cards becoming available. Hard copies are expected to be credit card-sized and easy to carry.”

Yes, but the crucial question is this. How will patients be any more likely to see these new methods of communication, especially if there is no-one who is going to draw their attention to them.

“An ancillary safety leaflet is being developed in collaboration with other healthcare system partners to provide more detailed information on the benefits and risks of antidepressants, as well as alternative treatment options. It is intended for use during the first consultation for new patients or at the next consultation for existing patients, and is expected to become available in 2027.

Yes, but will doctors avail themselves of the opportunity to do this during the first, or next consultation? They could/should do so now but rarely do!. So will they be any more likely to do so under this new jurisdiction?

Finally, MIMS quotes Dr Alison Cave, MHRA Chief Safety Officer, as saying that “these measures will help ensure patients, carers and healthcare professionals can have more informed conversations about the benefits and risks associated with antidepressant medicines, and better support people throughout their treatment’.

Unfortunately she does not say how this will happen! She fails to address the historical unwillingness of the Conventional Medical Establishment to inform patients about serious adverse drug reactions. From pharmaceutical companies, to medical science, to medical journals, to doctors and nurses, dismissive mantras, and throw away comments, are commonplace. “They are well tolerated” patients are routinely told. They are meant to reassure. They are meant to persuade patients to take the drugs. They are not honest!

I, for one, will certainly NOT be ‘tolerating’ any vaccine or drug.

And I patiently await the time when the Conventional Medical Establishment demonstrates that it is prepared to be honest and transparent with their patients about the serious adverse drug effects their medications can, and do cause.

The Medicalisation of Maternity Care.

It is doctors, not midwives, who now lead in maternity care services. So how is medicalisation going?

Throughout human history, delivering babies has never been an easy or straightforward procedure. In the process of giving birth both women and their babies have died in the process. Making comparisons about numbers and trends over the centuries is not an easy task.

          “In the 19th and first half of the 20th century, everybody knew about death in childbirth, particularly those women who were about to go through the process. Although death rates from many other conditions were high, they at least were among people who had been ill beforehand. Death in relation to childbirth was mostly in fit young women who had been quite well before becoming pregnant. They died, often leaving the baby, and other children in the family from previous births, with a widowed husband.”

This general understanding probably underscored the reason for the medicalisation of maternity services over recent decades. Childbirth is no longer led by midwives. Most babies are now delivered within a hospital settings overseen by doctors.

          “Over the past two decades, the landscape of childbirth in the UK has changed beyond recognition. From campaigns promoting physiological birth to scandals, safety inquiries, and a growing midwifery crisis, the role of the doula is now more vital than ever.”

A Guardian newsletter, dated 22 October 2026, ”The crisis putting maternity units in England at risk of closure”, has highlighted some of the problems that has resulted from the medicalisation process. It outlines staff shortages that are leading to the suspension and closure of some hospital in some ‘remoter’ areas of the country. The Guardian reported that up to 20 maternity units in England could close, and that “the story sheds light on a maternity care crisis that has been rumbling on for years”.

One reason the Guardian gives for this situation is the reducing birth rate, coupled with changing birthing practices.

          “More women than ever are now getting C-sections or having births that require medical intervention from doctors, and smaller maternity units are also grappling with a widespread lack of obstetricians.”

Indeed the rise of C-section births has been dramatic.

          “The proportion of births performed by caesarean increased from 31% in 2019 to 45% in 2024, and last year was the first time in England that more babies were born via c-section than “natural” births.”

The Guardian justified placing “natural” in inverted commas as it has become “a term that many women find pretty grating because it implies there’s a hierarchy between births with medical intervention and those without”. This in itself was a fundamental change in attitude. When my children were born in the 1970’s, ‘Natural Childbirth’ was in vogue, and my wife was part of this trend.

As a mere man, I became aware of the ‘struggle’ between midwives and doctors when my children were born, some 50 years ago now. If I recall correctly most births at that time took place at home, with the mother-to-be having regular access, for several months, to a midwife, who was in charge of the process, preparing the birth alongside the mother. Most births began and ended with this simple/natural process - although midwives always had access to medical advice and intervention as and when the need was identified.

Whatever the nature of the ‘struggle’ that has taken place over the intervening years it is clear that it is doctors in hospitals, rather than he midwives in the community, who now lead the birthing process. Why did this happen? It is easy to understand the medical justification - the assumption that ‘scientific’ medicine would soon be able to resolve the problems involved in giving birth. Medicine has made similar claims in many different areas over the last 100 years. 

• Vaccines have conquered infectious illness (sic). 

• Surgery is replacing failing organs and limbs (sic). 

• Pharmaceutical drugs were winning the battle against serious illness and disease (sic). 

So doctors would be able to improve the experience, and the outcomes of women giving birth. But as one midwife says:

          “I was a midwife watching as the tide shifted, as older midwives retired and as the new midwives came in, and I knew the blanket induction policy at 41 weeks would seal the fate of birthing women and people. A fate that involved induction of labour, medicalised and traumatising births often ending in a caesarean that they did not expect or want. I don’t personally believe it’s about money or Big Pharma. It’s a patriarchal medical model of pregnancy and birth that believes we are a machine that can be split into parts to be fixed and saved. Yet no one asked the women. Or the birthing people.”

So what has been the outcome of the medicalisation of maternity care? 

In September 2025 the UK government announced that 14 NHS Maternity Trusts were under investigation. Over the previous years the plight of so many NHS Maternity Trust’s has made regular headline news - even in the usually pro-medical mainstream media. So clearly, all is not well if the Guardian newsletter describes the broader picture as follows:

          “Some women are also worried about the type of care they might receive during vaginal births. Successive reviews portray a state of crisis, with burnt-out and exhausted midwives, a growing risk of serious injuries, and women of colour experiencing persistent racism and discrimination. A national review of maternity services in England from 2022 to 2024 by the Care Quality Commission warned that serious harm in maternity care risked becoming the norm”.

And all this with a considerable reduction in birthrates! So it has not arisen because of increased workload! 

A Medscape article, July 2026, stated that one in five women now needed emergency medical care. Discussing a Nuffield Trust report it said that more than 1 in 5 mothers (22%) needed emergency care in the year following the babies birth, the article outlining some of the salient features of emergency medical intervention in the early months following birth.

So as usual, the conventional medical establishment has failed to live up to the reputation it has routinely claimed for itself!

The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation Report into the 14 hospital trusts was delivered in June 2026. It was a damning, describing the ‘toxic’ culture that now pervaded maternity services,. It highlighted many aspects of the problem. One key reason given for the rising rate of caesarean births is known as “defensive practice”, which arises when doctors make decisions in order to avoid blame or parental complaints, rather than doing what is necessarily in a patient’s best interests. The Health Secretary, speaking in the House of Commons, has highlighted this new “culture” that he said meant that when mistakes were made, maternity units prioritised their reputation over and above their duty of openness to families.

          “Culture is where so much of the responsibility lies. That culture is the most deep-rooted cause of the failures we have seen, and the most fundamental thing we must change”.

This is the medicalised culture that has developed over the last 50 years. It is rife throughout the NHS. The reports author, Baroness Amos, identified a host of other “shocking” failings in maternity care, including women being ignored, poor triage of mothers-to-be, putting lives at risk, and chronic understaffing of services.

The ‘old’ culture, based essentially on one mother, with one midwife, and the relationship they developed during the months of pregnancy, would perhaps have been a good antidote to all these problems but seems nowhere to be mentioned in the discussions now going on within health services.

According to the Guardian newsletter the cost of the ‘new culture to the NHS is huge, and rising. In order to settle outstanding maternity-related claims in England (alone) is estimated at £37.5bn in 2025. This is nearly two-thirds of the NHS’s £60bn clinical negligence liabilities bill, and the Guardian calculated that the bill for maternity negligence claims in England since 2019 could be more than the health service’s budget for newborns during the same period.

So I ask the question. Did these problems exist, or were they as bad in the pre-medicalised arrangements for maternity care? The old culture at least provided a structure for each woman that offered 1-1 support, friendship, and information about giving birth, including how much they wished the process to be medicalised.

When delivering any health service, my view is always that the best policy is to ‘follow the patient’, to be patient-focused, to provide as much information and support as possible to ensure that patients are making properly informed choices, and that their voice is clearly heard above the arrogant noise of the medical profession. Their science just does not deliver

Putting a huge medical bureaucracy in charge of maternity care, led by conventional doctors, is perhaps the worst possible direction that could have been taken; and it is time that we all began to realise this!

Brain Cancer and Young People. The failure of the Conventional Medical Establishment to ask the most fundamental question. Why the sudden increase?

The BBC has highlighted the issue of brain cancer and young people in the UK both on their news programmes, and this article. Its focus on it stems from an interview conducted with Archie Goodburn, aged 25, a swimmer who has this year represented his country, Scotland, in the Commonwealth Games. He was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer two years ago (when aged 23).

Goodburn reached the final of the 50m breaststroke at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July this year. He made a tearful TV appeal for more investment to be put into brain cancer research so that new treatment can be found. Later he met with the UK’s prime minister who then announced a new national brain cancer clinical lead, and promised a review of brain cancer progress, and action to get patients treated sooner.

This might appear to be a sensible approach. Brain cancer is rising rapidly, not least in younger people, not least in the UK. It is clearly a matter for concern - even for an athlete, in the prime of life, who we must assume to be physically fit, and someone who has paid close attention to diet and other fitness and health matters as part of his training in recent years. And it is quite natural that he should want ‘treatment’ to be developed for his condition.

Yet there is a prior question, rarely asked by the Conventional Medical Establishment. It is not “WHAT can be done to treat the condition”. Rather it is “WHY has this condition emerged”. As usual we have been given the diagnosis, but no cause has been suggested. Disease causation does not appear to be something that anyone is interested in.

The failure to ask the question leads to an interesting situation, a highly profitable one for the pharmaceutical industry! There is now a national call to raise large amounts of money so that medical science that develop new treatments, new drugs, for the problem. Medical charities, and Patient Support Groups, enter the scene to organise and publicise the issue.

Yet if the “WHY?” question was asked it might prove to be a more uncomfortable situation for both the Conventional Medical Establishment, Medical Science, and the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Cancer rates, of all kinds, have increased rapidly in recent decades. Cancer was once a greatly feared but uncommon disease mainly contracted by older people. Now it is more widespread, and is affecting not just fit young adults, like Goodburn, but infants and children too.

And it is well known that cancer is caused by many factors; in our sedentary lifestyle, in our diet, in the chemicals that surround us in our daily lives, in the electro-magnetic smog that is an increasing part of modern life, and not least by the pharmaceutical drugs that we have been consuming in ever-increasing quantities for the last 70 years - not least since the inauguration of the National Health Service.

Indeed, the rise and rise of cancer has exactly mirrored in increase in vaccine and drug taking in recent decades. Moreover, it is known (but not highly publicised by the medical profession) that pharmaceutical drugs do cause cancer. This fact is routinely published in the conventional medical literature, and in the Patient Information Leaflets that accompany each pack of pills, and each vial of vaccine.

I have outlined some of the research into the pharmaceutical causes of cancer here. None of this information is ‘misinformation’. It is all part and parcel of conventional medical literature. It is just not emphasised, or mentioned as a cause of the cancer epidemic that we have been experiencing for the last 70-80 years.

Worse, since 2021, many leading doctors have said that the Covid-19 vaccines have been causing cancer; including brain cancer; and that this has affected young adults too.

Conventional medicine would not doubt claim that there is no ‘scientific’ proof that this is so. They would be correct, no least because ‘medical science’ has never seriously investigated it, or been asked to investigate it. The Pharmaceutical industry dominates the funding medical research, and whilst they are happy to fund new research into new drugs they certainly will not fund research that delves into the outcomes of their existing drugs!

So to ask the “WHY?” question is problematical. The answer might have serious implications affecting a powerful commercial concerns, not least the Pharmaceutical industry. So it is better not to ask the question at all, especially if the “WHAT can we do?” leads to yet more money being raised for medical science, the possibility of discovering new drugs, for a market remedy to be exploited.

This situation demonstrates that the Pharmaceutical Establishment has developed one of the the most brilliant business plans.

• It focuses on an illness or disease.

• It develop a drug to treat it, regardless of its safety or effectiveness.

• It sells the treatment to doctors, and to patients as “safe and effective”.

• And if patients develop serious side effects, it organises people (including medical charities, patient support organisations, mostly funded by the Pharmaceutical industry) to clamour for more drugs, more treatments.

• Then it asks Medical Science to spend the new income on developing new drugs to treat a condition they have been instrumental in creating.

• Finally, drug companies can patent and sell the new drug, and the entire process can begin again from scratch.

And all this can be done with no embarrassing questions being asked about the quality of their current pharmaceutical vaccines and drugs, or the disastrous patient outcomes they have caused!

So is the recent rise in ‘turbo’ brain cancer in younger people, at least in part, the result of pharmaceutical drugs?

Did Archie Goodburn take the Covid-19 vaccines just prior to the problems he is now experiencing? If he wanted to swim competitively in 2021 he might have been obliged to get vaccinated. This was, after all, the situation that Novak Djokovic faced when he tried to play in the Australian Open Tennis tournament.

So we don’t know. And we probably won’t know. The question I want people to ask will be dismissed. “You have not evidence”. “There has been no research”. “It is just a conspiracy theory”. So there will be no research. The pharmaceutical establishment (in control as they are of governments, and mainstream media around the world) will make sure of that!

So what to do? It is time we all began to consider more seriously the “WHY?” question when we become ill. Conventional medicine appears to believe that serious illness and disease is an unfortunate occurrence, just bad luck, a chance encounter with a germ, and that this can be controlled by a drug.

Certainly no one is going to tell us otherwise. Despite the patient harm it has caused we are still being offered the Covid-19 vaccines; and other cancer-causing drugs continue to be prescribed. And most people buy into this view of health and medicine because we are not told otherwise.

So it is up to all of us to develop a scepticism about pharmaceutical medicine, its safety and effectiveness. We must all learn that more drugs and more vaccines are not the path to health, and that they are often the path to ill-health. 

We must begin to ask the right question, the “WHY are we ill?” question - and be prepared to look beyond the explanations that are routinely provided to us by the pharmaceutical health establishment.

Cancer before 50: why is it rising?

The  BBC Panorama programme with this title was broadcast, on 5th October 2026. It failed to answer this question by making one very important omission.

Back in April 2026 I wrote an article on Cancer, “Why are more younger people getting this ‘old age’ disease?”. I asked why media programmes dealing with the cause of illness and diseases (not least cancer) remain seemingly blind to the fact that pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause cancer - as a ‘side effect’. After all, it is in the medical literature for everyone to see, it is in the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that come with every packet of drugs, every vial of vaccine.

Yesterday a BBC Panorama documentary asked the question, “Cancer before 50: why is it rising?” The programme can be seen on BBC i-Player. Please watch it (30 minutes) to confirm that I am correct - pharmaceutical drugs were not mentioned, not once, as a ‘possible’ cause of cancer.

Apparently the programme raised the question because NHS data showed that rates of bowel, breast and other cancers are rising among younger generations.

Remember that when the NHS was inaugurated in 1948, nearly 80 years ago, cancer was a dreaded disease; but not a common one. And remember too that it was then considered a disease of older age.

So why are ever younger people getting cancer?  The Panorama programme featured several patients who were facing the much-feared diagnosis, and it proceeded to investigate some of the factors that might be driving the increase. In doing so it dealt with diet, ultra-processed food, to changing diets, to chemicals that are now found in everyday products, and mentioned obesity and much else. Panorama claimed that it would:

     “… examine the latest scientific research into possible causes and asks whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”.

Yet if the BBC deliberately chooses to ignore the role of pharmaceutical drugs, a known cause of cancer as a ‘side effect’, it should be asked whether they themselves are “doing enough to protect public health”?

Perhaps they, too, are failing to inform the public about an important link to the rising cancer epidemic. If I am correct, cancer was an uncommon disease before the drug-fest of the NHS was started? An it was primarily a disease of old age.

So what was the situation in 1948? There is a document on the internet, ‘Public Health in 1948: remarkable statistics’ report’ that can be seen here. It was a document published by the Ministry of Health that examined health and mortality outcomes between the inception of the NHS on 5th July 1948 and March 1949

     “The mortality rates of 1948 were compared with those of 1938 (the last full year of peace before the outbreak of the Second World War and the year which had the lowest pre-war death rates of any year before the war). The report found that there had been a significant reduction in death rates. It suggested that mortality rates had fallen by 20%.

So the UK population was healthier in 1948 than it was in 1938. But unfortunately when I tried to read further I was forbidden access to the report! (Check it out)!

So I went to a report by the Nuffield Trust entitled “Death through the decades”. This looked at, and compared the causes of death in the 70 years from 1948 to 2016. It starts positively by looking at deaths from heart disease and stroke, and (as is usual) attributes this to pharmaceutical medical care:

     “We can see positive developments particularly clearly in deaths from heart disease and strokes, both of which have fallen by 40% since 1948, even as the population has grown. This probably reflects advances at every level of medicine. Statins and other drugs have improved prevention, new immediate interventions to break down blood clots have been developed, and there is better care after people experience an attack”.

Of course, it could also be the result of a multitude of social, work-related and environmental changes too But then it moves on to deal with cancer deaths (alongside dementia death too).

     “On the other hand, cancer claimed nearly twice as many deaths in 2016 as in 1948. Dementia is somewhat difficult to classify due to the widespread practice in 1948 of simply logging “senility” as a cause of death. But even if we add together “senility” and dementia, deaths from these causes have quadrupled”.

The report says that these are not merely increases in the proportion, but in the total number of deaths.

So whilst Nuffield claims responsibility for improvements in health for conventional medicine , the report does not explain responsibility for failures. This trend continues to this day, right up to yesterday’s Panorama programme.

The question I raise is an important one. Why is a vital question is being ignored, not just by the BBC but by all mainstream media; not just by the media but by most of the conventional medical profession; and by Government too?

Moreover, where are the public to find someone prepared to ask the question, “have pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines played a role in the rise and rise of cancer, as well as the creeping involvement of younger people in its devastating consequences?”

If the question is not asked there will never be an answer. What is more, failing to ask the question (in a programme that tasked itself to “examines the latest scientific research into possible causes and ask whether regulators and government are doing enough to protect public health”) was not an unintentional omission. It is always a deliberate and regular omission, a intentional failure to ask questions pointed questions about the role of pharmaceutical medicine in the creation of modern illness and disease.

Medical science provides us with important clues to this link in its admission that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines cause ‘side effects’. Side effects - what an innocuous phrase! Yet there appears to be a unwritten, unspoken societal decision to ignore this association between pharmaceutical drugs and serious illness and disease.

Why? Just how powerful are the drug companies? Does anyone dare challenge them? Will we ever know if the question is never asked?

So are we patients supposed just to go on taking the pills, and the shots, without being aware of what the consequences might be? Are we instead destined to believe that we should blame illness and disease entirely as the consequences of other, non-medical things?