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.

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.

• Once upon a time, this autism epidemic was discussed as "an urgent public health concern" - but no longer. The new approach is to develop "enhanced infrastructure to provide equitable diagnostic, diagnostic, treatment, and support services for all children with ASD".
  

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.

Neurodiversity. A valuable concept: but it has an inherent danger

When faced with a failing, but still powerful and highly manipulative medical system, it is necessary to examine any new terminology that suddenly appears with regard to health. One such medical term is "Neurodiversity". It has been variously described, but the 'Genius Within' website provides a good comprehensive definition.

    "Neurodiversity is the concept that all humans vary in terms of our neurocognitive ability. Everyone has talents and things they struggle with. However, for some people the variation between those strengths and weaknesses is more pronounced, which can bring talent but can also be disabling.

    "Neurodiverse / neurodivergent people tend to find some things very easy and other things incredibly hard. This usually leads to an inconsistent performance at school or work.

    "Neurodiversity can be a competitive advantage when the individuals are in the right environment, making use of their strengths, instead of constantly trying to overcome challenges. To achieve this we must create inclusive spaces to work and learn that reduce disabling factors and amplify diverse abilities.

Given this definition I have no problem with the concept of Neurodiversity. Indeed, it is an approach to life that seeks to adopt a positive view towards all people, focusing what what every person has to offer than any deficit they may have. It seeks to avoid the problem of dealing with people as a merely a member of a 'minority' group, and all the stigma this can entail. Genius Within say that its aim "is to work towards a world where all variations in the rich tapestry of human cognition are accepted and enabled."

Yet Neurodiversity has been controversial among disability advocates. Those opposed to, or have doubts about the concept point out that it does not reflect the realities of individual lives, especially those people who have high support needs. I share this concern; but my issue is somewhat different.

I wholeheartedly applaud any other effort to avoid and overcome the problem of stigmatising minority groups whether this be through sociability, learning difficulties, attention span, changeability of mood, and other issues regarding mental functioning. Indeed I welcome anything that removes the social barriers to the acceptance and full involvement in social life of any individual.

Genius Within says that neurodiverse, or neurodivergent conditions include a variety of physically 'invisible', but ever-growing conditions such as:

• ADHD (affecting 5% of the population)
  
• Autism (2% of the population)
  
• Dyslexia (10% of the population)
  
• Dyspraxia (5% of the population)
  
• Tourette syndrome (2% of the population)

They add that 7% of the population now have mental health needs, and 5% of the population have an acquired brain injury. So the neurodiverse population is a significant, and a growing one.

My quite specific problem with the definition of neurodiversity is given by the 'Understood' website which states that:

 

    "Neurodiversity is a viewpoint that brain differences are normal, rather than deficits."

The conditions listed above as neurodivergent are not "normal" conditions. They have a relatively modern rise to prominence. They are essentially new diseases, either previously unknown, or whose incidence have become more widespread in recent decades. Why is this? What is the pathology. Something has caused them. And my argument is that it is always vital we seek to find the causation of any illness.

• If we had not discovered that rickets was caused by a lack of vitamin C that disease would still be rife amongst the population.
• If we had not discovered that most 19th century epidemics (for measles, cholera, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, et al) were caused by poverty, poor nutrition, inadequate overcrowded housing, bad sanitation and water supply, we would still be experiencing these epidemics at regular intervals.
• If we had not linked the use of DDT, and other toxic chemicals, as the cause of poliomyelitis, we would still be in the midst of a polio crisis.
  

So if neurodiversity is used to challenge the view that neurodevelopmental disorders are pathological, that knowing about the causation is not important, if we accept that they are "normal", medicine will be unable to progress.

My first contact with the concept of neurodiversity was in response to a blog I wrote, several years ago now, on the link between autism and childhood vaccines. I was taken to task by someone who told me that autism was NOT a disease, or an illness, but a gift. She said that she loved her son, and did not want him to be associated with being sick, or in any way abnormal. 

This made me realise that we were speaking about two quite different things. She was talking about the love she had for her son, and how he should be treated. I was talking about the pathology of the condition with which her son had been diagnosed.

There should be no conflict between these two approaches, the one can progress alongside the other. She should be able to love her autistic son, and I should be able to look at the cause of her son's condition. The two tasks were not mutually exclusive.

Treating the person as "normal" is important. Treating the condition itself as 'normal' risks failing to examine the cause of the condition - and doing away with it.

I understand that neurodiversity is especially popular within the autism rights movement. And this is my worry. My concern is that 'neurodiversity' will be used by the Conventional Medical Establishment (CME) to deflect attention away from the causation of these conditions, not least autism. 

The CME already denies vehemently any connection between autism and childhood vaccination. The rise of autism has been alarming, and it continues to rise. Yet when asked about the cause of the autism epidemic the CME says (quoting the UK's NHS):

          "The exact cause of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is currently unknown. It's a complex condition and may occur as a result of genetic predisposition (a natural tendency), environmental or unknown factors."

How a disease, unknown prior to the 1940's, can have a 'genetic' cause is not explained. Yet it would appear that the CME does know that it is NOT childhood vaccines. It dismisses any link out of hand!

          "In the past, a number of things were linked to ASD, but extensive research has found no evidence to suggest that any of these contribute to the condition."

Yet there are, in fact, 160 research papers that supports the vaccine / autism link.

I would hate to think that the neurodiversity movement would be taken over by the CME. There is a real danger that the pharmaceutical industry might want to 'support' the neurodiversity movement, another part of its programme to deny medical harm caused by adverse drug and vaccine effects. It provides them with an attractive argument. "Autistic children are lovely, loveable people; we should spend our time loving them, not asking questions about why they developed autism".

So Neurodiversity could become an excuse for pharmaceutical denial. We don't need to look at the pharmaceutical causes of autism, in case links are found with vaccines, or paracetamol, or antidepressants, or any other drug. We do not need to look at the pharmaceutical causes of Tourette's, in case links are found with drugs like Amphetamine Sulfate, Benzphetamine Hydrochlorideor, Cylert, Pemolline, or vaccines.  

And the same applies to any of the other conditions under the umbrella of neurodiversity.

The CME message would be clear. "We have to accept that we will all be ill, and that there is no treatment for these conditions. We don't need to know about causation. It is sufficient just to love people, don't bother to look at cause. And if you (the neurodiversity movement) do this, we will support you movement with money."  This is exactly what it has done with many health charities, and patient support groups. 

The pharmaceutical industry is highly profitable, the most highly profitable industry of all; and it uses its money to divert attention from its direct culpability in the causation of illness.

I have never known anybody who has purposely set out to have a child who suffers from any condition, neurological or any other, because they are lovable. Good parents will love them, of course; and value them, of course.

But causation should never be dismissed; we should not allow anyone who has caused any medical condition to deflect attention away from their culpability; we should not allow drug companies to get away with any patient harm that may have been caused by their highly profitable drugs and vaccines.