Conventional drug-based medicine. The death throes.

• Our doctor's can no longer cope with the demands being made on them by patients.
• Our Accident and Emergency Services can no longer cope with the demands being made on them.
• The NHS demands more and more money

Together, what does this mean? Are we witnessing the death throes of conventional, 'science' based medicine?

This is a heartfelt plea by a doctor, a GP, recently published on Facebook, and worth of note. It has attracted much support and sympathy from the professional medical fraternity.

• Unhappy with your GP?
• Write to your MP. 
• There is absolutely nothing we can do about this at a practice level. 
• We cannot recruit any more GPs. 
• We cannot fund any additional staff.
• We cannot work any longer hours and be safe (bet you didn't know that I often leave work around 11pm and have left at 2am before). My 'part time' 5 session (ie 20h) is approaching three times that in reality. 
• Why do you think we're running late? (Genuine question - I'm interested to know what people think we're doing.) It's because people come with lists. It's because 10 minutes isn't enough. 
• It's because people use appointments that they don't need when actually self-care and time and patience will do the job perfectly well. The human body is designed to cure a lot of things itself, especially infections. 
• It's because we're interrupted, quite legitimately, by phone calls from palliative care nurses wanting to discuss medication urgently for the dying patient; by ambulance crews called inappropriately who are asking us to take responsibility for patients not being taken to hospital; by the coroner asking us for information to try to prevent a bereaved family having to wait for a postmortem before they can arrange a funeral; by nurses who need us to give a second opinion on something that they're already gallantly managing beyond their duty; by urgent prescriptions that need signing because the patient didn't plan properly (we all make mistakes). I could go on. 
• We get brought tea because otherwise we wouldn't drink anything for 5h at a time - morning surgery typically is 4.5-5h, with patients every 10 minutes. 
• Each patient is not just a symptom. They are people with problems, with lives and responsibilities, and we try to treat them holistically. In 10 minutes. 
• It takes the frail old lady 2 minutes to undress so we can examine her, another minute to get up onto the couch, another couple to put herself back together again. That's half the appointment gone. 
• We could do longer appointments, but would have fewer.
• I really do understand the frustrations of the general public - remember I have a family too, who occasionally need to see a doctor.
• But. We are working flat out. There is a reason that there is a shortage of GPs. There is a reason that no one wants to train as a GP.
• If we were genuinely working 9-5 on >£100k then why would there be a recruitment problem?
• No one wants to do it because it's a draining job, very heavy on workload, and we are demoralised and constantly berated by the press and portrayed as lazy and money grabbing.
• If you have ideas on how it could be done better then please share. Genuinely. We are all out.

So what is happening here? Why are our doctors struggling? Why does the NHS need more and more £billions, and each time more resources are found and spent another crisis emerges?

During the General Election in May 2015, the political parties were fighting over how they were going to fund a further £billion for the NHS. Within two weeks of that election parts of the conventional medical establishment were already saying that this massive increase in spending was not enough! And so it goes on!

No-one has yet diagnosed the real problem. Rising levels of expenditure on health. Rising levels of illness and disease. And doctors unable to cope.

This crisis situation in health care provision arises from devoting all our resources in a medical system that relies on drugs and vaccines that are 

1. ineffective (so ailments, illnesses and diseases remain, ongoing and unimproved, so patients come back, time and time again)
2. dangerous (which means patients get 'side effects' from the drugs, which are really new diseases, and so return to their doctors with more serious conditions). 

The result is patients do not get better, they get sicker. Chronic diseases, like arthitis, asthma, allergies, dementia, depression, et al, are at epidemic levels, and rising. And even new diseases, like autism, unknown, or virtually unknown since our love affair with toxic drugs and vaccines began over a century ago, are now affect an increasing number of people. 

So they go to their GP's who cannot cope. So the go to their A&E departments, who cannot cope. And when key medical staff cannot cope, the NHS keeps asking for more and more money. 

But they ask for money and resources for the same failed, and failing medical system. The NHS invests in yet more ineffective and dangerous 'scientific' drugs. More and more harmful vaccines. Even the most successful conventional drugs are failing now, antibiotics and painkillers, to name just two. So, the major tools that conventional doctors have relied on either don't work any more, or they are now known to be too dangerous to prescribe.

So what we get is more patient sickness, and more doctor fatigue.

We are witnessing the death throes of 'conventional' medicine, based as it is on failed drug and vaccine based medicine. Medical science has failed.

But the conventional medical establishment is just too big, and the pharmaceutical drug industry is just too powerful and influential, to allow us to realise it yet.

The penny will have to drop very soon, but until it does, we should have sympathy for those doctors who are trying their best to help us. They are just unable to do so.

Do Big Pharma drug companies bribe our doctors?

According to a Reuters news report, British doctors were paid £38.5 million by pharmaceutical drug companies in 2013. This figure was announced by the 'Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry', who said that it was "slightly down" on the 2012 levels, when they paid out £40 million. This is a lot of money, even when divided by the number of GPs and hospital doctors who presumably benefitted financial from the payouts. 

The main question arising from Big Pharma's largesse is - what is expected of our doctors in return?

There has been concern about these payments for decades, throughout the world, not least in the USA, where it has been suggested (heaven forbid) that such payments might constitute bribery, and put commercial interests ahead of the best interests of patients.

Evidence of these financial links between doctors of Big Pharma are so explosive that some drug companies are now rethinking the relationship! Glaxo-Smith-Kline, for instance, said that it would stop paying doctors to promote their drugs. But they would continue to pay 'fees' for clinical research and advisory work! Reuters also announced that other firms have taken 'more limited steps' to curb marketing to doctors, including AstraZeneca, which said in 2011 that it was scrapping payments for doctors attending 'international congresses'.

But none of this suggests an end to the practice!

Why, suddenly, are we being told about this? Apparently, under USA healthcare law, drug companies are now forced to disclose any payments made to doctors. In Europe, drug companies will soon be required to make public the names of individual doctors that have received such payments.

This blog regularly questions why pharmaceutical drugs, which are known to be harmful to the health of patients, are still being prescribed to patients by their doctors. And why are we not being told about the dangers of Big Pharma drugs? These payments, presumably, are one of the reasons. Many people continue to trust their conventional doctors: but every patient would do well to understand that it may not be only the Big Pharma companies that profit from their drugs!

No patient should take any conventional drug before researching the adverse reactions, and the disease-inducing-effects for themselves. It may be that your doctor will not tell you about them.

I wrote about this same subject many years ago, for my ebook "The Failure of Conventional Medicine". Here is what I was saying then:

"The question about doctors being too close to drug companies is recognised as a serious problem. In a Daily Telegraph article on 9th July 2006, the GMC (General Medical Council) was said to be warning doctors about taking ‘freebies’ from pharmaceutical companies, and to ‘blow the whistle’ on colleagues who were ‘taking bribes’ from drug companies. They were revising their rules to enable such doctors to be removed from the register, and ‘struck off’.

“The decision to toughen up the rules comes as evidence increases that, in return for promoting their products, some doctors are taking inappropriate gifts and hospitality from the pharmaceutical industry.

The article pointed to a report by the campaign group Consumers International that said doctors were continuing to accept kickbacks, gifts, free samples and consulting agreements in exchange for prescribing or promoting drugs. It said that such inducements accounted for a substantial part of the £33 billion spent on product promotion by the industry worldwide each year.

Despite this, concerns continue. WDDTY reported on 6th November 2007 that the drug giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (annual sales: $17.9bn) had been handed a $515m fine for mis-selling drugs, inducing doctors to prescribe drugs inappropriately, and setting fraudulent prices on some of its products. It said that the company had been caught making illegal payments to doctors as an inducement to get them to buy their drugs. Doctors had also received ‘consulting fees’ to sit on ‘advisory’ boards and programmes, some of which involved necessary trips to luxury locations. Meanwhile, the company was paying retail and wholesale pharmacies to buy its drugs. It was also encouraging doctors to prescribe its anti-psychotic drug Abilify (aripiprazole) to children when it had been licensed for use only with adults. (The source of this information was the British Medical Journal, 2007; 335: 742-3).

In another WDDTY article, “Bribery: Doctors gifted $100,000 a year to use hip replacement products”, dated 29th November 2007, Orthopedic surgeons in the US were reported to have received bribes of $100,000 and more every year to use special hip and knee replacement products on their patients. Apparently five manufacturers were fined $311m (£150m) by the US Department of Justice. The companies admitted paying 'many' orthopaedic surgeons 'consulting fees' that ranged from $10,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Investigators discovered that the payments had been common practice between 2002 and 2006, and that as well as receiving “consulting fees”, the surgeons were also treated to lavish trips and expensive gifts. (The source of this information was the British Medical Journal, 2007; 335: 1065).

The objectives of the ‘No free meals’ group of doctors is as follows:

“We are health care providers who believe that pharmaceutical promotion should not guide clinical practice. Our mission is to encourage health care providers to practice medicine on the basis of scientific evidence rather than on the basis of pharmaceutical promotion. We discourage the acceptance of all gifts from industry by health care providers, trainees, and students. Our goal is improved patient care.

We aim to achieve our goal by informing health care providers as well as the general public about pharmaceutical industry efforts to promote their products and influence prescribing; provide evidence that promotion does in 
fact influence health care provider behaviour, often in ways that run counter to good patient care; and provide products that can replace pharmaceutical company paraphernalia and spread our message.

We believe that there is ample evidence in the literature-contrary to the beliefs of most heath care providers - that drug companies, by means of samples, gifts, and food, exert significant influence on provider behaviour. 
There is also ample evidence in the literature that promotional materials and presentations are often biased and non-informative. We believe that health care professionals, precisely because they are professionals, should not allow themselves to be bought by the pharmaceutical industry: It is time to Just say no to drug reps and their pens, pads, calendars, coffee mugs, and of course, lunch.

These are laudable objectives. However, there appears little evidence that their motives have been generally accepted by the conventional medical establishment".

It would appear that the objectives have still not been achieved. Pharmaceutical drugs still continue to harm patients. And Big Pharma continues to "incentivise" doctors and GPs to prescribe them to us!

Statin Drugs. Why are they not banned?

This blog is all about 'safer medicine'. One of the most dangerous drugs sold today, and one of the most widely taken, are Statins. I first wrote about the dangers of Statin drugs back in July 2010, with a blog entitled: "Statin drugs: another 'wonder drug' ready to take a fall!"

          "Many doctors have told us that these drugs were so good in preventing heart disease we should all be taking them! They were also supposed to be entirely safe". 

And this has been the propaganda that has persuaded so many people to take them.

Of course, the propaganda was more to do with selling drugs than any benefit to our health. Statins have been one of the most profitable drugs Big Pharma has ever come up with.  And of course, what we were told by the Conventional Medical Establishment, including our GPs, has proved to be entirely wrong.

Let's be forthright about this. Statin drugs are prescribed by doctors to make us better. But Statins are actually making people sick. In October 2011 I wrote this:

          "Even drugs like Statins, which we have been told are 'entirely safe' for decades, are now known to be unsafe. This article outlines the case against Statin drugs, and suggests that heart failure, pneumonia, nerve damage - and many other diseases can be contracted by people, the increasing numbers of people, who take them believing them to be safe.
http://safe-medicine.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/failure-of-conventional-medicine-2.html

Then,  in May 2012 I wrote this:

          "The prodigious rise in the use of Statin drugs over the last few years is another example. Statins have only recently been associated with both diabetes, and prostate cancer - so are Statins one cause of the epidemic of both these diseases? The Media has spent enough time in recent years allowing ConMed spokesmen to tell us how 'safe' these drugs are, and how we should all be taking them : perhaps now they can spare a little time asking why they have been telling us this, when it is palpably untrue, and may be connected with an increase in both these diseases.
http://safe-medicine.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/health-debate-5-epidemic-rise-in.html

You might be thinking that the conventional medical establishment would not be knowingly giving us drugs that were causing disease. But they certainly do know about the dangers. In November 2010, the British Medical Journal announced that Statins cause liver damage, kidney disease, and cataracts. This followed research undertaken at Nottingham University, using data from over 2 million patients taking Statin drugs.

So why are they still on sale?

Yet worse was to come. In October 2012, the FDA (the USA drug regulator) told us that Statins caused memory loss. Yet, despite this evidence, millions of patients are still taking these drugs. As I said at the time:


          "The FDA may have caught up - but have our doctors, the NHS, as they seem intent on continuing to prescribe Statin drugs, regardless of the evidence that they are causing serious DIEs. Indeed, I am not certain that all doctors have stopped telling us that these awful drugs are 'entirely safe'.

Given the epidemic rise in dementia among older people, did this connection with 'memory loss' lead to any action? No, they remain on sale. This is what I said at the time.

          "And what exactly is 'memory loss'. At the extreme end of the spectrum, memory loss equals Dementia. Can the FDA, or Big Pharma, or the NHS, tell us that 'memory loss' ends with a little bit of forgetfulness? Can they be certain Statin drugs are not implicated in the epidemic of dementia that we have been experiencing over recent decades.

And then there are links between Statins and Diabetes, another disease we are experiencing at epidemic levels. And still this there is no action taken. It is estimated that about 7 million people are taking these drug. How many of them go on to develop diabetes. Does anyone know? Does the Conventional Medical Establishment even care?

Then, if we look at the meek acceptance of our mainstream media, it becomes clear that we are not being told about the dangers of Statin drugs. Indeed, despite all this evidence, we are still being told that we should all be taking these drugs, because of their 'benefits'. Perhaps the worst culprit is BBC News. As recently as May 2012 their Today programme on Radio 4 extolled the benefits of Statins, with no mention of the dangers. As I said in this blog, there was:

* No mention of adverse reactions.

* No mention of Disease-Inducing-Effects (DIEs).

* No mention that Statins are now known to cause Diabetes.

* No mention of serious structural muscle damage.

* No mention of serious skin diseases.

* No mention of Prostate Cancer.

* No mention of heart disease.

* No mention of Arthritis.

In other words it is typical media reporting - by media organisations who appear to have more commitment to Big Business, and Big Pharma in particular, than the health and well-being of their viewers, listeners and readers. 

As far as health are concerned, they support the ConMed monopoly that exists within the NHS to the hilt. They will tell us nothing about the dangers of our drug and vaccine-led medical system. Nor will they do anything to inform us about safer, more effective medical therapies.

The vast majority of people who are taking Statin Drugs at this moment will not realise these dangers, they will not have been told either by their GP, the NHS, or the mainstream media.

And so we continue to be asked to continue taking "those nice, safe Statin drugs", and told "we should all be taking them. This, my last blog on the subject of Statins outlines even more information now available about the dangers of these drugs.

Do GPs know the harm drugs cause but just don't bother to tell us?

It would seem that our doctor's/GPs know something about their medicine that they are not prepared to tell us!

New research suggests that when faced with a choice of treatments, doctors often choose a different option than they recommend to patients. The research was published on 11th April 2011, in the 'Archives of Internal Medicine'.

          "It's a pretty clear message: There's a discrepancy between what doctors recommend to their patients and to themselves," said Dr. Timothy Quill, author of an accompanying editorial in the journal.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_110848.html

Most people were aware that during the most recent (ConMed engineered) panic about Avian Flu that about 60% of GPs were not prepared to have the 'flu jab they were routinely recommending to patients. So perhaps they know something about the DIEs (disease-inducing-effects) of the drugs they recommend to us - but aren't prepared to tell us.

The misinformation about health stems from Governments, Drug Regulatory agencies, the Big Pharma drug companies, the NHS, the mainstream media (who refuse to tell us the truth); but at the end of this shameful process, it is GPs who have given us the toxic drugs that have caused such harm to our health for so long.

This makes the right of patients to choose the medical therapy of their choice more vital than ever. Patient choice is an important part of the UK government's health policy. We now have to ensure that they actually implement it. Patient's are not just looking for medicine that makes them better. They are looking for medicine that is safe.

Doctors with CAM training more effective

Doctors normally prescribe pharmaceutical drugs to their patients, some almost routinely. This was not always the case. Once GPs had many other skills, connected to life-style, diet, and simple non-drug techniques, and they were able to advise their patients about these.

The dominance of pharmaceutical drugs have led to a de-skilling of our doctors, and this piece of research seems to illustrate that the more knowledge and skills GPs can develop improve their outcomes with patients. This is what the research discovered.

A small fraction of general practitioners (GPs) in the Netherlands has completed additional training in complementary medicine after obtaining their conventional medical degree. Using a data set from a health insurer, this paper documents that patients whose GP has additional training in anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, or acupuncture have substantially lower health care costs and lower mortality rates. The lower costs result from fewer hospital stays and fewer prescription drugs. Since the differences remain once we control for neighborhood specific fixed effects at a highly detailed level, the lower costs and longer lives are unlikely to be related to differences in socio-economic status.

http://dbiref.uvt.nl/iPort?request=full_record&db=wo&language=eng&query=doc_id=4083172

GPs, after all, are supposed to be 'general practitioners', not 'specialists in drug treatment' and it is a great shame that most of their training appears to be about drugs. Apparently, GP training on diet and nutrition now appears to be minimal. And it is all-too-apparent that most GPs have little knowledge or understanding of therapies such as homeopathy.

The researchers put forward several reasons why GPs using CAM should produce substantially lower costs and lower mortality rates. They have tended to under-value the simple explanation; the effectiveness and low cost of treatments like homeopathy. And in addition, of course, saving on the cost of treating the DIEs (disease inducing effects) of conventional drug treatment.

Why do GPs prescribe dangerous treatments?

Are GPs as much to blame as the NHS and the Big Pharma companies for putting our health at risk by prescribing dangerous drugs and vaccines? Most people seem to trust their GPs. I stopped doing so several years ago when a GP, and a hospital registrar, both told me that Beta Blockers were 'well tolerated' (they aren't)!

Well, look at this piece from Child Health Safety.
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/gmc-fraud-for-bonuses/

It describes why GPs may be keen to push drugs and vaccines on their patients - there are financial incentives for them to do so. And not only that, the GMC (the GPs statutory body, established to protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards of practice) apparently advised GPs to remove unvaccinated children from their list in order to reach their 'targets', and thus, receive their incentive payments.

I have no doubt that the GMC, and most GPs, support vaccination, and that they do so despite all the evidence in front of them of the widespread tragedy caused to some people. But the picture of GPs recommending vaccination to their patients in order to reach their targets, and for the GMC to recommend their GPs de-register people who did not want to be vaccinated, takes this situation a long way from being 'ethical' medical practice.

It means that just as the Big Pharma companies pursue profits by selling dangerous drugs, GPs are prepared to pass them on to you, with the full support of their governing body.

So next time your GP tells you something, work out why he is telling you. Is it in the best interests of your health? Or does he/she have a financial motive?

Read the article, and make up your own mind.

Is your doctor paid to give you dangerous drugs?

Or, in other words, why isn't your doctor telling you the truth about dangerous, disease-inducing drugs?

Drug companies are now allowed to advertise their drugs in the UK. So getting GPs to prescribe them is good marketing.

The Dr Mercola website has recently published some information about this, appertaining to the USA (where drugs can be advertised directly to the public). They found that $282 million was paid to doctors by drug companies in a single year, and asks whether this is compromising the best interests of patients?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/17/how-much-is-your-doctor-being-paid-and-manipulated-by-the-drug-companies.aspx

You can be sure it is! But by and large, people trust their GPs. So there are important question we should all ask our doctors.

     Why have you been so willing, so consistently, over decades, been prepared to prescribe us drugs that have ultimately proven to be ineffective, and dangerous?


     Why do you trust drug companies who have proven to act so irresponsibly in marketing drugs to the public when so often they are useless, and cause serious disease?


     How can you assure me the drugs you are prescribing today are not equally useless, or dangerous?

As Dr Mercola says, the chances are "your doctor has fallen prey to pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Most doctors simply do not have the time to research each drug, and rely heavily on information from their pharmaceutical reps and from other 'experts', that is, doctors who are receiving significant fees to talk about drug companies".

Some doctors do recognise the problem, and have even formed a group to counter the propaganda and bribes of the drug companies.