Health and the Mainstream Media. What does mainstream meida think we need to know about health issues? And what it refuses to investigate and discuss with us?

The mainstream media is not prepared to tell us the whole truth about what is happening within conventional or pharmaceutical medicine. It is too close, too dependent on the funding they receive from drug companies, to do any of the following:

• The inexorable rise of Chronic Disease in recent decades.

• The ineffectiveness and failure of conventional medical treatment to cope with chronic disease.

• The massive increase in pharmaceutical drug prescriptions during the last 70 to 100 years.

• The truth about the real seriousness of the ‘side effects’ of drug and other conventional treatments“.

• The role of pharmaceutical medical treatment in generating the epidemics of chronic disease.

Since writing my ‘Safe Medicine’ articles, first on Blogger, now on Substack, I have focused on these issues. But a few days ago I wondered about what sort of medical information the mainstream media was prepared to share with us. So I went to the BBC’s health news website, and looked at what this was featuring. I discovered that the full enormity of the failure of conventional medical treatment was there for anyone to see. All that was necessary was for someone to site back and identify exactly what was happening. Conventional, drug-based medicine is failure - day by day. Here is a brief outline of the articles.

GP’s told to guarantee same day appointment for urgent cases. This highlighted the inability of the NHS to cope with the huge amount of patient sickness that it now has to cope with routinely.

Streeting (the government’s Health Secretary) says he takes the Leeds maternity care inquiry extremely seriously. This is yet another inquiry into the distressing failings of yet another NHS maternity service in the UK.

First baby born using transplanted womb from dead doner. A good news story, certainly from the parents point of view, indicating that surgery can now do all kinds of brilliant medical treatment - with exception of effective treatment for more common chronic diseases.

GP’s to get £3,000 bonus to maximise weight-loss drug prescriptions. The NHS regularly pays doctors to prescribe pharmaceutical drugs, not least for increasing vaccine take-up. These are often ‘incentives’ for doctors to prescribe drugs that have known serious side effects, like these weight-loss drugs. (I have written about this recently here).

“It was like buying groceries”. Woman calls for tighter weight-loss jabs checks. The woman had bought the drugs on a website, spending £118, which caused serious and distressing side effects. No need for a GP to be incentivised in this case. Yet this was the same drug, with ‘distressing side effects’, which is NHS is going to encourage doctors to prescribe!

Puberty Blockers Trial paused over concerns from medicine’s watchdog. Although these drugs had already been used for young ‘transitioning’ children, this belated trial was supposed to test their safety and efficacy. But they were found to be too harmful even to allow the continuation of the tests!

Single vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flu’s, researches say. Great news? But this is a typical ‘good news’ health story, greatly favoured by the BBC and the mainstream media generally, and its apparent desire to support the pharmaceutical industry. Yet note, the vaccine has only been tested on mice! And it might be available in 5-10 years time! (Or perhaps might never be heard of again)! But such stories gives hope and belief that conventional medicine is capable of overcoming illness and disease. Such ‘good news’ stories come regularly. The problem is that the actual outcomes rarely (never) corresponds with the much heralded new treatment!

Children injured by NHS can claim damages for lifetime lost earnings, court rules. It’s not just the pharmaceutical drugs are expensive. Increasingly the NHS us having to pay for the ‘side effects’ they caused patients, another ‘secondary cost’ of medical failure that has to be borne by the tax-payer funded NHS.

Woman’s regret over botched Brazilian butt life, and also Stop dithering on Brazilian butt life crackdown, say MPs. We are told, regularly, that surgeons can do such wonderful things that many people are prepared to pay for expensive plastic surgery that (allegedly) makes them look better. Surgeons receive the fee, patients pay the price, and once again, the NHS has to pick up the pieces!

Why are fewer people donating their organs? Perhaps a more pertinent question might be “why are more people requiring organ donation?”, and “why is demand for organs outstripping supply” Organ donation is required for patients who have organs that need replacing. Why do they need replacing? Because the medical system used by the NHS is not capable of supporting/saving the original organs.

There are several more articles on this BBC webpage, but these outline the health news diet that we get from the mainstream media. Each day the articles change (so have a look at the current day’s selection, and see if you can spot the ‘medical failure” that is not mentioned)!

Most people will read these articles and not interpret them as a ‘failure’, especially failure of pharmaceutical drug treatment. Instead they are discounted as isolated errors, unfortunate mistakes, or the result of NHS underfunding.

After all, if the mainstream media does not question the underlying competence of conventional medical practice why should their readers? But what this means is that the media’s misplaced allegiance to pharmaceutical medicine does patients no favours.

The NHS - the Failure is Medical not Political

But don't take my word for it. And don't accept what the medical establishment, medical science, media and government tell us. Instead we should all observe what is happening around us.

Hospital corridors, storerooms, offices and gyms are being use as ‘extra care’ areas. Patients collapsing, unseen by staff, in hospital corridors, posing a serious risks of falls, infections, etc. All this was reported by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) on 8th January 2006, and reported in the Guardian, the Independent and several other media outlets.

One year earlier, on 16th January 2025 a similar situation was reported by BBC News, and Sky News, which describes the situation at that time.

          "Patients dying and undiscovered for hours in hospital corridors: demoralised staff are caring for as many as 40 patients in a single corridor, unable to access oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment. Women are miscarrying while some nurses report being unable to carry out proper CPR”.

Clearly nothing has happened to change this unacceptable situation. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has pledged to end the practice by 2029 “though NHS staff groups are sceptical he will do so”. Perhaps this cynicism is based more on the experience of staff over the past year rather than any political (or even medical) optimism!

For decades the conventional medical establishment has complained that the problem is underfunding. Yet the annual NHS budget now exceeds £200 billion, with more funding being promised each year. In contrast, just £116 billion is spent annually on Education, £60 billion on Defence, and £34 billion on Transport.

Yet the solution to this is really quite simple.

• To prevent overcrowded hospitals the NHS has to engage a medical system that can receive sick people and with effective treatment get them back home both quickly and well.

• The NHS cannot continue to fund, year in, year out, a medical system that has consistently proven itself to be unable to do this, and has been largely ineffective.

• Moreover, the NHS needs to engage a medical system that does not actually make patients sicker - through drug-based treatments that cause serious adverse reactions.

If we are searching for solutions it is time to recognise that the foundations of the NHS are based on pharmaceutical drugs; and that these drugs are known to make us sicker, not better. (Yes, it is true, it is in the medical literature!)

Observing the NHS

We do not need to be medical scientists, or medical practitioners, to see what is going on. We just need to observe what is happening in a health service in which demand for services regularly outstrips the ability to provide them, where patients are left on trolleys for days. There are many other things we can observe. The massive waiting lists for treatment that the NHS is failing to reduce. The difficulty getting an appointment to see a doctor. And much more. What this tells us is that there are serious medical problems that need to be addressed.

To find the reason for these medical failures we have to look at what we can observe. After 70+ years of NHS treatment (treatment largely based on pharmaceutical drugs) are we getting healthier, or sicker? And again we do not need to listen to competing arguments - we just need to observe and understand what is actually happening on the ground.

Are we more healthy now than in 1948?

We do not have to look far to see that since the inauguration of the NHS in 1948 we have become increasingly sick. We can witness it all around us, in plain sight.

Arthritis. Significantly more people have arthritis now than was the case in 1948. Conventional medicine tries to excuse itself by saying that the population has aged, and has become more obese, and cites many other environmental factors.

However, the fact is that we know that many pharmaceutical drugs have ‘arthritis’ as a “side effect”, and that in the last 70+ years these drugs have been consumed in ever-increasing quantities.

Autism. In 1948 autism was rare, if not non-existent. Conventional medicine tells us that it did, in fact, exist, but it was either ‘misdiagnosed’ or not recognised. Parents in those days must either have been extremely dim; or this is an unacceptable argument that seeks to justify the explosion of Autism, to epidemic levels, that we have witnessed over recent years.

The fact is that many pharmaceutical drugs (and vaccines) are now known to cause autism as a “side effect”, and that in the last 70+ years these drugs/vaccines have been consumed in ever-increasing quantities.

Cancer. The number of people diagnosed with cancer has also risen significantly in the decades since 1948. Conventional medicine tries to explain this away by saying the population has aged (but younger adults, children and even babies are increasingly been diagnosed with cancer); and by pointing out that improved diagnosis and screening techniques (as if people did not know that they had cancer in 1948).

Again, the fact is that many widely consumed pharmaceutical drugs have ‘cancer’ as a known “side effect”), and that the consumption of these drugs have mirrored the increase in cancer during the last 70+ years”.

Dementia. The number of dementia diagnoses has also risen significantly since 1948. It was rare in 1948, but is now believed to be affecting over half a million people in the UK (probably an underestimate). Some sources now expect dementia to double every 20 years in future. The excuse of conventional medicine is that the population was smaller in 1948 (not that much smaller); that people did not live as long then (but now younger adults, and even children, are now being diagnosed); and the condition was not properly identified in 1948 (were people really this dim?)

And again, the fact is that many pharmaceutical drugs cause known dementia symptoms, like confusion, memory loss, disorientation, et al, as a “side effect”, And these drugs have been consumed in ever-increasing quantities during the last 70+ years.

I could continue with many more chronic diseases for which the same points can be made, chronic diseases, once rare, now running at epidemic levels. We suffer from more allergy, more diabetes, more heart, lung, kidney, liver, stomach disease, more anxiety and depression - more of every known disease than we did prior to the drug-dominated NHS was inaugurated.

What we can observe will explain what is happening.

This is why the hospitals are full, this why there are so many patients some have to be left in corridors, why doctors appointments are difficult to obtain, why waiting lists are so large. There is no need for complex, technical explanations or excuses.

• The drug-based medical system that has dominated the NHS for 70+ years is not making, and does not make people better; it actually makes them sicker!

• We are all able to observe what has been happening to our health during the pharmaceutical drug-taking bonanza of recent years, and come to our own considered conclusions.

• We do not need to rely on information coming from the NHS, from Patient Support groups, from the mainstream media, or from government.

We are all be able to observe that Pharmaceutical Medicine is not winning its ‘fight’ with disease; and it is not just losing it, it is making it worse.

We should observe that the NHS is not “under-funded”: it is actually close to bankrupting the economy; it does not need more (and more, and more) resources to spend on moe and more vaccines and drugs.

We should observe that medical charities have been arguing, (some for over a century) that “together we are defeating (this or that disease)”. Disease can be seen winning, hands down, in its fight with pharmaceutical medicine.

The mainstream media cannot continue telling us, ad nauseam, about new ‘medical breakthroughs’ that will ‘transform’ the treatment of disease. It has been doing so for decades, without effect or outcome.

In the end it will only be our observations of the real world, and our conclusions about those observations, that will determine the future of our own health, and the failed medical system on which we have depended on, and spent crippling amounts of money and resources on during the last 70+ years.

Medical Negligence is certainly contributing to bankrupting medical provision around the world. Yet the true nature of the negligence cannot be admitted, and so is never discussed.

“MPs have pressed NHS England and NHS Resolution on what concrete steps they are taking to tackle the rising cost of clinical negligence, warning that longstanding system failures - including poor complaints handling, maternity safety issues, and slow case progression - are driving avoidable spending”.

This is a quotation from the Medscape article (24 November 2025), “MPs probe NHS response to rising negligence costs” The article outlines the ever-growing scale of the problem.

• future liabilities for clinical negligence claims are now estimated at £60 billion.

• this figure quadruples in real terms the 2006-2007 figure.

• the National Audit Office (NAO) had shown that annual negligent costs had increased from £1.1 billion in 2006-7 to £3.6 billion in 2024-5.

And demands for ‘action’ were growing. MPs said that the urgent issue now was to put the clinical negligence bill on “a more sustainable path”. And the NAO said it had repeatedly warned governments about the growth, that that “so far, no government has succeeded in controlling the cost”.

Indeed, the call for action have long been made in Britain, and I have written about the subject many times in recent years.

July 2016. Medical Negligence. A huge cost to patients, the NHS, and the national economy

Feb 2018. Patient harm? Medical blunders are bankrupting the NHS! Or is it just dangerous medicine?

March 2022. The Scandal of NHS Maternity Care, Just one sector of the NHS that is failing because its medicine does not work safely.

Yet to take effective action in any situation requires first that the cause of the problem is identified accurately. And the main cause of ‘medical negligence’ is usually not negligence, it is the operation of a medical system that is inherently dangerous, and causes patient harm.

Unfortunately to admit this would require honesty. And the Conventional Medical Establishment (CME) is just not honest. To admit that their medicines, their treatments, cause patient harm would be anathema. But the CME is also sufficiently powerful to ensure that no-one else, politicians, mainstream media, dares raise the question.

The annual NHS budget for 2025-6 is £202 billion, due to rise to £232 billion in 2028-9. So these ‘negligence’ costs represent a significant strain on that budget. So it is little wonder that MPs, the NAO, and Medscape are addressing issue - yet again. But they are talking about “poor complaints handling”, “maternity safety issues”, “slow case progression”, and “legal costs” as the driving force.

There is no mention of a dominant medical system that is known to cause “side effects”, “adverse drug reactions”, and the like.

Negligence is the very tip of the patient harm iceberg. It is what can most clearly be seen. Underneath is the ever-increasing epidemic rise of chronic diseases, of all kinds, and a population that is sicker now than it has ever been. And no-one in the CME is willing to investigate this either, or even to allow anyone to mention it!

So it is likely that British MP’s, the NHS, and the NAO, et al, will be discussing the issue of medical negligence in the 2030’s and 2040’s, or until such time as we begin the look at the failure of Conventional Medicine with open eyes, and not closed minds. Moreover, we will be doing it not just in the UK, but in the USA, Canada, throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

It’s not negligence.

It’s the application of a failed medical system that harms patients.