People who hate Health Freedom

These are pen-pictures of the people who hate Health Freedom, who want to deny you Patient Choice, who want you to continue taking conventional pharmaceutical drugs, without asking questions, people  who don't want you to know their dangers, sometimes the lethal dangers.

These are the people who head up, or belong to, Big Pharma funded and/or supported groups. They attack alternative medical therapies, like Homeopathy, and seek to perpetuate the failing, dangerous conventional, drug-based health system that so dominates our National Health Service (NHS).

They are people who don't want an NHS dominated by Big Pharma drugs. They want an NHS in which Big Pharma drugs have a complete monopoly.

These pen pictures were first published by the magazine, "What Doctors Don't Tell You" (WDTTY). They are trying to stop its publication because it seeks to tell us the truth about conventional medicine. They are trying to stop its sale in major retail outlets.

This is not a hall of fame, it is a hall of infamy. These are people who believe that their drug-based medicine will only prevail if you and I don't get to know what it is doing to us!

• that it is making us ill
• that it is causing epidemic levels of chronic disease
• that it is bankrupting the NHS.

If you would like to know the 'quality' of their argument, and the abuse they aim at people who seek to find out the truth about conventional medicine, read these blogs. Some of the people described below are regular abusers of this blog!

http://safe-medicine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/militant-skepticism-and-homeopathy.html

http://safe-medicine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/militant-skepticism-and-homeopathy-what.html

http://safe-medicine.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/quack-just-another-personal-attack-from.html

"Meet the people who would dictate your health care"

As you know, we have been the target of a concerted campaign to get the store chains to stop stocking us. The architects of this campaign are the same people who spend a good deal of time attacking and harassing alternative practitioners of every variety.

Their numbers aren't large (there're only about 80 of them in total), and they aren't well followed (Alan Henness of the Nightingale Collaboration, for instance, has just 462 followers on Twitter; Simon Singh, just 44 actively following him), but they are well organized and fuelled by a good deal of self-righteous passion about their mission, which is to stamp out what they view as quackery (ie, natural medicine of every variety, particularly the likes of homeopathy).

So we thought we should shine a light on the qualifications of the most vocal proponents of a group who believe they have the right to determine what you can or can't read about your health or indeed the kinds of medical treatments you should be allowed to have access to.

Simon Singh.  
Singh is not a medical doctor; he has a Ph.D in particle physics.  As he often signs his letters 'Dr Singh' when writing to Tesco or our distributors, most stores and media naturally assume that he has medical qualifications.  He does not, nor does he have a history of studying or writing about conventional medicine. He's written books about mathematical problems and patterns, codes and code-breaking and even cosmology, but nothing to date about conventional medicine - only one co-authored book (Trick or Treatment?- the clue to the slant is in the title) largely trashing alternative medicine. Singh is the public face of Sense About Science, a charity set up by a holding company in India, whose trustees include Simon Singh and his older brother, Tom, who founded the high street chain New Look. Sense about Science reports that it is supported by donations from a variety of sources, including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and many pharmaceutically backed charities, such as Cancer UK.

 'Josephine Jones'. 
 'She' is the pseudonym for two people: Michael and Laura Thomason, who live in Warrington. Mike works as a database developer at Catalent Pharma Solutions; there is a Laura Thomason on Linkedin who works as a supervisor at an Esquire's Coffee Shop, but we can't verify if they are one and the same. If so, there can't be many people popping in and ordering cappuccinos because she and her husband seem to have the time to catalogue WDDTY's every move, which they circulate on Josephine Jones' blog as a constantly updated 'Master List'. Presently, they are carrying out a survey of stores we're in, presumably in hopes they might be able to pick us off, one store at a time. Neither professes to any medical qualifications.

Guy Chapman, who created a website called 'What What Doctors Don't Tell You Doesn't Tell You', and writes a good deal of bile-filled statements about alternative practitioners, is a software developer for Dell Computers. He's also a member of a choir.

Jo Brody works two days a week as a public engagement coordinator for a research project which runs across four sites, including UCL, Queen Mary, City University and Swansea University), studying how to make medical devices safer. Jo's job is to update the website and expand the project's online presence.  For the rest of the week she works as an information officer at Diabetes UK. Previously she worked as a secretary for Professor Stephen Wharton. As she freely admits:
'I am not medically trained.'

Alan Henness. 
He and his wife Maria MacLachlan, who live in Harrow, are effectively the Nightingale Collaboration, a tiny organization that was given seed money by Sense About Science, but that spends a prodigious amount of time reporting advertisers and practitioners of alternative medicine to The Advertising Standards Authority. Despite the name, the ASA is not a government body; it's an advertising-industry-sponsored organization with no teeth. The best it can do is place advertisers it deems out of line on the naughty step, listing them on as a 'non-compliant advertiser' on its own website. Evaluations of the advertisements of alternative medicine or practitioners through the ASA are a stacked deck; they are evaluated, as our ads were, by known skeptics like Dr. Edzard Ernst, Simon Singh's co-author of Trick or Treatment?

Henness does not report any other employment, at least on his Linkedin page; previously he was R&D manager for Honeywell Security and Customer Electronics.  Although he appears to have no background in evaluating or studying medicine or alternative medicine, as he writes, "the Nightingale Collaboration was set up to enable my wife, Maria MacLachlan, and I to share our knowledge and experience in challenging misleading claims in healthcare advertising and to encourage anyone who is concerned at protecting the public from misinformation in healthcare promotion to join us in challenging it."

Maria Maclachlan herself is the Community Services Officer of the British Humanist Society, which campaigns 'for an open society and a secular state with no religious privilege or discrimination based on religion or belief,' according to its website. (Alan was former Convenor for the Humanist Society.) On the website Think Humanism (http://www.thinkhumanism.com/humanism2.html), Maria wrote, in a short précis of what it means to be a humanist: 'Humanists embrace the moral principle known as the Golden Rule. This means we believe that people should aim to treat each other as they would like to be treated themselves - with tolerance, consideration and compassion.'

I wonder if this 'Golden Rule' also includes harassing groups, practitioners or organizations who advocate or advertise alternative medicine?

Andy Lewis. 
Set up the 'Quackometer' site, which he claims to be an experiment in 'critical thinking'. Doesn't reveal what his credentials, education or employment history are - says they 'don't matter' nor does an honest debate of the issues because the wording on websites will, through his own use of critical thinking, offer prima facie evidence of 'quackery'. 

That's who they are. WDDTY, on the other hand, has seven medical doctors on its editorial panel, plus several PhDs and highly qualified practitioners of a number of alternative disciplines. Thousands of doctors and health practitioners of every persuasion regularly read WDDTY and comment enthusiastically. The two editors of our magazine have been medical science writers for 25 years, and every word in our pages is checked by a science editor with an extensive history of writing and editing medical studies for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Do you want these eight people to be the ones to determine what you can read about your own health care?

If not, write to Tesco today and ask them to re-stock What Doctors Don't Tell You.  And tell them a bit more about the people who fire off 'complaints' -  that they are neither true customers nor people with either the training or experience to evaluate the information in our pages:
customer.service@tesco.co.uk

Who needs Animal Testing?

Drug testing drugs on animals is an emotive subject, but there is much evidence to suggest that it is ineffective, often ignored, and often results do not translate to human health. Ever since the Thalidomide tragedy, and before, the issue has been hotly debated. 

Thalidomide, like many other Big Pharma drugs, was tested on animals, with no benefit to those who suffered from that horrendous drug.

In March 2007, the magazine, 'What Doctors Don't Tell you', (WDDTY), reported that in 2005 around 3 million tests were carried out on animals in the UK for medical research, and that a study had shown that most of it caused needless suffering to animals. It said that researchers had studied 6 separate animal trials, and found that none of the results were replicable in humans. The research team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine also reported that many animal studies were poorly prepared, and most ignored even the most basic parameters fro proper scientific testing. Their report also pointed out the very obvious fact that the biological differences between animals and humans are often so great that any results become meaningless

WDDTY had earlier reported (23 June 2006) on a study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that discovered drugs were still used - even when animal tests had uncovered problems. Professor Ian Roberts discovered that animal testing is "a covert, and secretive, activity", and that despite the enormous suffering endured by the animals, results were often ignored by drug companies if they suggest a problem with the new drug. The study reviewed six medical treatments - on head injuries, blood clotting, stroke, disease in premature babies and osteoporosis - and re-examined the initial findings from the animal tests.

     * In assessing the use of steroids for patients with head injuries, the initial animal trials had discovered mixed results. Nonetheless, the therapy was approved for use in humans, and was found to increase the risk of death and so was stopped.

     * Two other studies on stroke showed that the animal test results didn’t translate to humans.  In both cases the drug improved the animals condition - and yet the same drug increased the risk of death and disability in humans.

Most studies indicate that animal testing provides only misleading and conflicting results, and that often they are dangerously unreliable.

So Big Pharma companies might need animal testing, but no-one else does - least of all the animals who die an irrelevant death, or the humans who die because their death is ignored!

WDDTY. The Bully Boys are now attacking them too.

I went into my local newsagents last week to buy a copy of the new 'What Doctor's Don't Tell You' magazine - and could not find a copy anywhere. I didn't think too much more about it, other than that it was new, so I would try again - and if necessary ask the retailers to stock the magazine in future. I should have known better! Bryan Hubbard, from WDDTY, has just sent me an email - and the Bully Boys, employed bb Big Pharma, are apparently at it again. This is what Brian has said: "'What Doctors Don’t Tell You' has just launched a 100-page glossy version in UK stores – and already it’s being targeted by the bully boys who want the title banned.  They’ve even contacted our distributors, asking them to stop supplying the title. These champions of free speech include Simon Singh (co-author with Edzard Ernst of the book ‘Trick or Treatment’) and his chums, including ‘paranormal researcher’ Hayley Stevens. Singh has written to our distributors, Comag, to get them to stop supplying the title, while Singh, Stevens and fellow trolls are busy complaining about the title to retailers who stock it". Singh inspired the Nightingale Collaboration, which seeks to stop all alternative practitioners (and especially Homeopaths) from making any claims whatsoever on their websites. Bryan is asking us all to support WDDTY and help ensure that the magazine remains on the shelves for everyone to read. He asks us to let the retailers know they are doing the right thing in stocking it - so please write to the following: WH Smith Customer.Relations@WHSmith.co.uk Waitrose customersupport@waitrose.co.uk Sainsbury’s customerservice@sainsburys.co,uk But I think we need to write, not just in support of WDDTY - but in support of Free Speech, and Press Freedom - as well as to support medical therapies such as Homeopathy. The 'bully boys', like Singh and Ernst, are trying to suppress every non-Pharma voice. Big Pharma is using its financial influence to attack not only our right to know, but our right to information, and our right to alternative medical therapies. This is quite unacceptable - so please take action right now.

Informed Consent - the Dark Heart of Conventional Medicine

"Doctors are deliberately withholding information about the dangers of some routine screening and clinical procedures - often because they fear patients would then refuse treatment".

So begins a Special Report on 'Informed Consent' in the magazine 'What Doctors Don't Tell You' (WDDTY), May 2012. The report discusses the inadequacy of information patients are given about their treatment, and raises the important question:

Are patients giving their true, informed consent to medical treatment?

          "Although it happens every day in surgeries and hospitals, the failure to inform is against the law and a breach of human rights legislation - which gives the patient the absolute right of autonomy over his or her body. It also leaves the doctor open to a legal challenge of negligence, assault and battering, and possibly even manslaughter if the drug or procedure goes wrong"

Given the dangers of Conventional Medical treatments, not least through Big Pharma vaccines and drugs, this is important, if not vital information that every citizen should know. After all, if there is a danger to the patient arising from any medical treatment, patients have the right to know, and to say "NO" if they wish to do so.

 

The report goes over all the reasons doctors give their patients for NOT telling us this information, all of which are entirely illegitimate, insisting that patients have the right to know, and that if they don't know, they cannot make an 'informed choice' about having, or not having the treatment. The information being withheld from us is legion, and the report mentions just a few of these:

    * CT Scans cause cancer through radiation in 1 in 270 people screened by them.
    * 5.7% if patients undergoing surgery for ulcerative colitis will die.
    * Bronchoscopy (when a tube is threaded down the nose) results in a death with every 2,500 procedures.

As the report states, not many patients know this kind of negative information about pharmaceutical drugs, largely because doctors are reluctant to give the information to their patients.

          "Even after the Vioxx drug scandal had become public - eventually, tyne manufacturer agreed to pay out $4.85 billion to the families of around 50,000 people who died while taking the painkiller - doctors were still asking, 'What should we tell our patients?'"

The answer is probably simple! The truth! But as the report describes in detail, medical paternalism is rife within the Conventional Medicine Establishment (it is so very different in homeopathy and other alternative medical therapies). The result is that patients are rarely told about the dangers of the treatment they are prescribed by doctors. The report suggests that patients should ask the following questions before agreeing to take any prescription drugs:

1. How long has the drug been on the market (if less than 2 years ask for an 'older generation' drug)?
2. Can you confirm I am not taking part in a drug trial?
3. Is the drug suitable for my age/gender/condition?
4.  Are you using this drug 'off-label' or for the condition for which it was originally licensed?
5.  Are there any special warning or 'black-box' alerts for this drug?
6.  Can you explain to me the known side-effects and the likelihood of me suffering them?
7.  Has the drug been tested among people similar to my own age/gender?
8.  Do you know if the drug has been banned from use in other countries? (Note, many drugs prescribed in this country have been banned in other countries)
9.  Have you given this drug to other patients? If so, have they reported any adverse reactions?
10.  Is the dose you are recommending within the guidelines of the manufacturer for my age/ gender/ condition?
11.  Do you know if the new drug will react with other drugs I am currently taking?
12.  If I start to suffer from health problems when I take the drug, I shall stop immediately, and come to see you again. Do you agree this is the best course of action?

However, the report goes on to question how many of these questions the average doctor is actually able to answer. In other words, it questions how well informed doctors are about the drugs they prescribe to us, and how reliant they are on inadequate and partial Big Pharma information.

The report goes on to consider, in some detail, what informed consent should consist off, and asks another set of questions, with the guidance - don't give your 'informed consent' to treatment or procedures without the answers to each of the questions. One of these questions is:

           "Are there alternatives of which you are aware that could also be considered?"

The report states that it is highly unlikely that most doctors will recommend the patient to try homeopathy  or any other form of natural medical therapy! The reason for this, of course, is that most doctors will not be qualified to pass any judgement on these questions. Indeed, many of them are known to consider homeopathy to be akin to witchcraft!

* Even 'alternative' advice on diet and nutrition may be a stretch too far for the doctor. Medical students in the US receive around 19 hours of education about nutrition during their five-year medical training".

As the report says, informed consent for the patient infers that the doctor is 'informed' and able to pass on the required information.

          "Informed consent infers that the doctor is informed ... not only is this far from the truth, it is also untrue even for specialists".

So an informed doctor, capable of answering important questions for you, is certainly not something that can, or should be automatically assumed! Certainly, the vast majority of doctors are informed only about conventional (pharmaceutical) medical practice. And even within this single medical discipline, they appear to work mainly on the information provided to them by the pharmaceutical industry, and other commercial medical interests. 

 

Little wonder, then, that many doctors have a limited knowledge about the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, and other treatments and procedures!

However, the problem of getting informed consent is probably even more difficult than the report suggests. 

 

• National medical services, like the NHS in the UK, have become virtual pharmaceutical monopolies, and so equally unlikely to provide patients with the kind of information they require to make an informed decision about medical treatment. 
• Successive governments have failed to challenge the conventional medical establishment, and appear more interested in funding and supporting it than asking serious questions about its efficacy and safety. 
•  And the mainstream media is entirely supine in matters relating to health, parroting the 'good' news of 'medical breakthroughs' that are expected tomorrow - but ignoring the conventional medical disasters of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

So no-one appears to be able or willing to provide patients with the information they require for informed consent. The questions are not being asked, the investigations are not being carried out, that will lead to a greater understanding and awareness of the problems associated with medical health treatments being routinely offered to us today.

I would encourage everyone to read WDDTY on a regular basis. It is a magazine which is full of information about conventional medical treatment, and about alternatives to it. And it really does include material that 'doctors don't tell you', so it can lead to you, at least, becoming more aware of health issues, and therefore capable of making an informed choice.

The Sham of Conventional Medical Science

The sham of medical science is again revealed in this study, reported by What Doctors Don't Tell You.

http://www.wddty.com/scientific-drug-trial-caught-out-as-yet-another-marketing-exercise.html

It needs little commentary. Medical science is supposed to tell us that Big Pharma drugs are effective and safe, and that is what most people think it does.

But what this study, reported in 'the Archives of Internal Medicine' reveals the following:

          "Up to 80 per cent of ‘scientific’ papers that research the effectiveness and safety of a drug are nothing but marketing pieces, designed to drum up sales – and a new example has come to light this week. A study on the epilepsy drug Neurontin (gabapentin) was a ‘seeding trial’ – it was marketing dressed up as science.

Why medical science does not protect us

Avandia: still on sale!

Avandia is banned in most of Europe. But it is still being sold. This disgraceful fact has been highlight in a WDDTY (What Doctor's Don't Tell You) report, based on new research published in the British Medical Journal
http://www.wddty.com/avandia-still-not-banned-and-still-killing-people.html

The drug is known to be responsible for 1,250 heart attack, heart failures, and deaths for every 100,000 people taking it, with an increased heart attack risk of 16%, and an increased risk of congestive heart failure by 23%, and an increased risk of death of 14%.

And around 3.8 million people in the USA are taking it. WDDTY estimate that this will mean that about 47,500 of them will die, or suffer heart problems as a result.

Who cares? Not, apparently, the drug companies; or the regulatory agencies.

Aspirin - a Miracle Drug?

Certainly the mainstream media wants us to believe that Aspirin is a miracle drug; but do they tell us the truth? The Guardian, for instance, was quick to broadcast the news that Aspirin, "the world's humble true wonder drug"(http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/12/aspirin-cancer-wonder-drug-lancet) has been shown by researchers to offer real defence against many forms of cancer.

Yet as What Doctors Don't Tell You (WDDTY) pointed out, the same Oxford University professor, who made these headlines in most mainstream media, was the same person who 3 years ago discovered that Aspirin was a major cause of stroke in older people.
http://www.wddty.com/aspirin-reduces-cancer-risk-but-raises-chances-of-stroke-says-same-researcher.html

Nor did the mainstream media tell us what he said about the study:

"We can't say with absolute certainty that there won't be some unknown harm in taking aspirin for 30 years ... people have to accept there's some uncertainty here".

Uncertainty? He demonstrated that aspirin caused a 7-fold increase in stroke over the past 25 years among elderly patients; and is on record as warning that aspirin could soon replace high blood pressure as the leading cause of stroke with the over-75's.


And as WDDTY point out, a study from Eastern Virginia Medical School discovered the drug is killing 20,000 Americans every year from gastrointestinal bleedings - when official records put the figure at just 59.


We need publications like WDDTY. They remind us, constantly, that we are not being told the truth about drugs and health, not just by doctors, or Big Pharma, or the NHS, or the government - but by our mainstream media.

How spin takes the science out of medicine

Conventional Medicine prides itself on being an "evidence-based" science. Yet most studies on which doctors rely have been created by marketing companies, who are working for Big Pharma.

So says the Magazine 'What doctors don't tell you', usually shortened to WDDTY, is excellent for doing just that - it tells you what you GP does not usually, or willingly tell you. This particular piece can be found at WDDTY Vol 21 No 8. Page 7-8, and examines why it is that for decades we have been led to believe in conventional medicine, and its ability to cure disease.

          "Around 90,000 so-called 'scientific' drug trials, published over the past 10 years in journals, have  been nothing more than public relations (PR) dressed up as research".


WDDTY calls this a scam, that makes a mockery of the idea that conventional medicine is 'scientific', and describes principally the activities of the drug company, Wyeth. Wyeth is being sued by 14,000 women who developed breast cancer after taking its HRT drug, Prempro. They have been forced to reveal 'secret' documents that have shown just how 'scientific' ConMed is.

Yet, as the report says, the Wyeth documents are "but the tip of the iceberg of a practice carried out by most drug companies".

I have written about this before, in The Failure of Conventional Medicine, or more specifically at Medical Science. The failure to protect, where the use of 'cheque-book science', 'ghost' writing, and much more, is described in some detail.

The fact is that ConMed drugs are no more than a confidence trick, a massive deception on patients who are not told the truth, but Government, the NHS, our doctors, and the mainstream media. The dangerous failure of a succession of pharmaceutical drugs, over the last 50-60 years in particular, demonstrates they have no 'evidence base' whatsoever.

The evidence that patients look for is that treatment is effective, and safe. Medical Science has proven itself to be totally ineffective in safeguarding our health; indeed, it has contributed to our ill-health. It is outcomes that are important:

I am ill; I am treated; I get better

It is homeopathy, and other natural CAM therapies, that have provided patients with good outcomes - and this is why so many people are turning to medical therapies that have such an evidence base.