DISEASE & THE SEARCH FOR CURES. Is it possible to find a cure without first knowing the cause?

If your car, or washing machine, breaks down, the mechanic you employ to fix it will first need to ascertain the cause. 

Only then will (s)he be able to fix the problem.

Yet this is not what conventional medicine does. Indeed, our doctors usually go out of their way to deny one of the most important causes of serious illness and disease - iatrogenesis.

I realised this first several years ago whilst starting to put together my DIE's (the Disease-Inducing-Effects of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines) e-book. Each page of this book focuses on an illness or disease in order to see whether conventional medicial drugs and vaccine can cause it. In doing so I found that conventional medicine routinely denies that their drugs and vaccines cause all kinds of illnesses. 

Indeed, time and time again, conventional medicine states that "there is no known cause".

At one level, perhaps, this is understandable ignorance. What car mechanic, for instance, would want to admit that your car was not working because a previous repair he had done had caused the problem?

But if the mechanic ignored the fact that his/her previous fault was causing the current problem, would he be able to fix the problem? It is unlikely.

But this is what conventional medicine does all the time. In writing each separate page of my DIE's e-book I used the UK's NHS website to see how they described the cause of serious illnesses and diseases. In some cases what they say is that "there is no known cause". In others they describe what is happening, what is going wrong within the body - and mistakenly present this as a cause. Here are some examples of both - all relating to illness that are running at unprecedented levels.

ALLERGY (cause not known)

          "Allergies occur when the body's immune system reacts to a particular substance as though it's harmful. It's not clear why this happens, but most people affected have a family history of allergies or have closely related conditions, such as asthma or eczema. The number of people with allergies is increasing every year. The reasons for this are not understood, but one of the main theories is it's the result of living in a cleaner, germ-free environment, which reduces the number of germs our immune system has to deal with. It's thought this may cause it to overreact when it comes into contact with harmless substances."

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Allergy.

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (mainly description)

          "Alzheimer's disease is thought to be caused by the abnormal build-up of proteins in and around brain cells..... Although it's not known exactly what causes this process to begin, scientists now know that it begins many years before symptoms appear. As brain cells become affected, there's also a decrease in chemical messengers (called neurotransmitters) involved in sending messages, or signals, between brain cells. Levels of one neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, are particularly low in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. Over time, different areas of the brain shrink. The first areas usually affected are responsible for memories.

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Alzheimer's Disease.

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS (cause not known)

          "Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune condition, which means it's caused by the immune system attacking healthy body tissue. However, it's not yet known what triggers this.

OSTEOARTHRITIS (mainly description)

           "As part of normal life, your joints are exposed to a constant low level of damage. In most cases, your body repairs the damage itself and you do not experience any symptoms. But in osteoarthritis, the protective cartilage on the ends of your bones breaks down, causing pain, swelling and problems moving the joint. Bony growths can develop, and the area can become red and swollen.
The exact cause is not known...." 

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Arthritis.

ASTHMA (cause not known)
          "The exact cause of asthma is unknown.People with asthma have swollen (inflamed) and "sensitive" airways that become narrow and clogged with sticky mucus in response to certain triggers. Genetics, pollution and modern hygiene standards have been suggested as causes, but there's not currently enough evidence to know if any of these do cause asthma.

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Asthma.

AUTISM (cause not known, and also denial)
          "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."

However, most unusually, conventional medicine knows what does NOT cause autism, including vaccines!

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Autism.

ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER - ADHD (cause not known)
          "The exact cause of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not fully understood, although a combination of factors is thought to be responsible.

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause ADHD.

CANCER (description, no cause discussed)

          "Cancer is a condition where cells in a specific part of the body grow and reproduce uncontrollably. The cancerous cells can invade and destroy surrounding healthy tissue, including organs."

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause cancer.

CHRONIC FATIGUE & ME (cause not known)

          "It's not known what causes CFS/ME, but there are a number of theories – for example, it may be triggered by an infection, or certain factors could make you more likely to develop the illness.

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause CFS & ME.

DIABETES (entirely description)

          "The amount of sugar in the blood is controlled by a hormone called insulin, which is produced by the pancreas (a gland behind the stomach).

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Diabetes.

IRRITABLE BOWEL (cause not known)

          "The exact cause is unknown – it's been linked to things like food passing through your gut too quickly or too slowly, oversensitive nerves in your gut, stress and a family history of IBS.

CROHN'S DISEASE (cause not known)

          "The exact cause of Crohn's disease is unknown."

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause Crohn's Disease

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (cause not known)

          "Exactly why someone develops multiple sclerosis (MS) isn't known. It's not caused by anything you have done and it's not clear whether it can be prevented.

Pharmaceutical drugs known to cause MS.

I could go on with a much larger list of illnesses, but the ones mentioned have become some of the most serious throughout the developed world, running at epidemic levels, and still on the increase.

What this clearly demonstrates is that the mechanic-doctor does not know what is causing these epidemic levels of disease, instead doctors are myopically working in the dark, either unable or unwilling to accept that the pharmaceutical drugs (s)he is using are (at the very least) an important contributory factor to all these diseases.

So does conventional medicine have any effective, of safe treatment for these epidemic illnesses?

The answer, from a previous blog, 'How effective is conventional medicine', again using evidence from the UK's NHS website, is clear that it does not

And part of the reason for this is that conventional medicine cannot bring itself to admit that the cause of most of these serious illnesses is iatrogenic - doctor induced.

And that conventional medicine ignores one effective treatment for most, if not all disease, is to stop giving harmful pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to patients!

Spina Bifida. A brilliant new operation? Or a drastic intervention for a condition that is often caused by conventional medicine?

Spina Bifida is a condition where the baby's spine and spinal cord fail to develop normally within the womb, causing a gap, called a neural tube defect to form. The neural tube is the structure that forms in early pregnancy, and normally closes about 4 weeks after conception. In spina bifida the closure is incomplete, and this can lead to defects in the spinal cord and vertebrae.

This can lead to weakness or paralysis in the lower limbs, muscle weakness that can affect bone development, causing dislocated or deformed joints, bone fractures, mis-shapen bones, and scoliosis. It can also lead to bladder and bowel problems, including incontinence, urinary track infections, kidney problems, constipation and/or diarrhoea. It can also cause hydrocephalus, and related problems.

Announcing a brilliant new operation?
So spina bifida is not a minor condition. For many years surgery has been used soon after birth to close this gap in the spine, but often the nervous system will already have been damaged by this time. So in more recent years the operation has been carried out several weeks before the baby is born, in the hope that this will improve some of these difficulties, and lead to better long-term health. In December 2018. in Britain, it's been announced that the operation is to become routinely available on the National Health Service (NHS).

So is this another example of a brilliant new surgical technique 

that will help transform our experience of health care?

Maybe - but as usual with surgical breakthroughs of this kind it is not as simple as that. Conventional medicine likes to tell us about their new 'wonder' drugs, and their brilliant new surgical techniques. They do so regularly. But the real situation is usually more complicated - as in this case.

The causes of Spina Bifida
It is thought that Spina Bifida has been with us since time began, although the condition certainly increased during the 20th century, but has since levelled off in more recent years because of earlier detection, and the recognition that prevention is possible by ensuring the mother has sufficient folate acid levels during pregnancy. So what causes spina bifida?

• Conventional medicine tells us that it is a congenital condition, and happens when pregnant mother's have low levels of folate acid during their pregnancy.
• What conventional medicine often does not tell us is that there is another known cause of Spina Bifida (and low folate levels) - pharmaceutical drugs prescribed to pregnant women during pregnancy.

Drugs that cause Spina Bifida?
Surprisingly, and untypically, NHS Choices does admit that "taking certain medications during pregnancy has been linked to an increased risk of having a baby with spina bifida or other birth defects". It specifically mentions epileptic drugs, such as valproate and carbamazepine (which are also used to treat bipolar disorder). Yet amazingly the solution offered is not to stop taking them, it is that "doctors will try to avoid prescribing these medications if there's a chance you could get pregnant while taking them", plus advice to women not to get pregnant whilst taking them! Or to take folic acid supplements!

The Health Prep website is a little more forthcoming, saying that "any time a woman is pregnant, the pills she takes can end up affecting her unborn child", including spina bifida. Again, it mentions anti-seizure drugs, "but some other types of drugs can also cause issues". It goes on to suggest that drugs cause spina bifida "because they alter the body’s ability to absorb certain nutrients" like folic acid. This reminds us that the cause of (rather than an explanation for) spina bifida is NOT a lack of folic acid, but the reason WHY there is a lack of folic acid in the first place. Anti-convulsant drugs, such as Topamax or Depokote, seem to directly affect the ability of the foetus, and the mother, to metabolize folate acid, so they are directly implicated in the reduction of folate levels.

The WebMD website, in an article published in 2010, refers to research published in the BMJ Online First journal, that found babies born to women who have taken the anti-seizure drug Carbamazepine have a more than twofold increased risk of a spina bifida child, but that this was better than another epilepsy drug, Valproic acid (which is marketed under a multiplicity of trade names). The study showed that among nearly 4 million babies born in Europe between 1995 and 2005, including almost 100,000 who had major birth defects, 2,680 were born to mothers who took carbamazepine during the first three months of pregnancy.

Yet it is not just anti-epileptic drugs that are known to cause spina bifida. The Spina Bifida HQ website states clearly that antidepressant drugs are also implicated. It says "... antidepressants that increase the concentration of serotonin available in a woman’s system (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) seem to especially increase a child’s risk for spina bifida" and that the SSRI's implicated are some of the most common antidepressant drugs prescribed, such as Prozac, Lexapro, Paxil, Zoloft and Celexa "among others". It adds that "the percentage risk of a child having spina bifida if the mother takes an SSRI during pregnancy has not been clearly established." Given the seriousness of this disease it might have been expected that conventional medicine might have done so by now!

Even the USA drug regulator, the FDA, has warned about the link between antidepressants drugs and spina bifida. Several FDA warnings given over the years have been outlined in this Drug Reporter website yet nothing has been done to protect women, and their unborn babies. The conventional medical establishment, whilst recognising the serious dangers of the drugs they use, continue to insist that they are necessary in order to treat other conditions. So dangerous drugs are never withdrawn or banned, and babies continue to be born with spina bifida and other birth defects, and they are dismissed as 'congenital' or a lack of folate acid!

Conventional medicine causes disease, and then produces expensive cures
The human cost of of these pharmaceutical drugs is immense, both to the damaged child, and to his/her family. So anything that can be done to ameliorate the tragedy of spina bifida should be applauded. So what about this new surgical breakthrough.

Yet there is also a huge financial cost too. This arises when conventional medicine knows, full well, that a significant cause of spina bifida is not congenital, but the pharmaceutical drugs doctors continue to give to pregnant women. The condition is caused, in many instances, by a so-called 'side effect' of earlier conventional medical treatment.

If this primary causation was properly admitted by conventional medicine the solution would NOT be a brilliant new operation. It would be to ban the pharmaceutical drugs that have caused the condition in the first place.

As in so many similar situations, if conventional medicine were able to accept the damage to health it is causing through its pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, an easier and simpler solution would be to stop this damage at source. To stop prescribing drugs that caused foetal harm. Coming up with expensive new solutions (however brilliant they might be) is not the best solution to problems conventional medicine has caused in the first place!

In part this explains why is conventional medicine in crisis? It is not under-funding. It is the inability of the conventional medical establishment to recognise that they have to continually invent new treatments to illnesses and diseases that they have created, or added to, in the first place.

ALLERGY. A Tragic Death. It's in the news and is being widely discussed. Yet no-one asks what is causing the allergy epidemic

The death of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse was undoubtedly a tragedy. Her story can be simply retold. She had a nut allergy, and ate an artichoke, olive and tapenade baguette at Heathrow Airport in July 2016, believing that it did not contain nuts. On the flight she went into cardiac arrest, and despite having two EpiPen injections (adrenaline) she died the same day. The baguette contained sesame seeds, an ingredient apparently not listed on the packaging.

At the recent inquest into Natasha's death the court focussed on food labelling. Pret A Manger did not label its baguettes as containing sesame seeds even though there had been six allergic reaction cases in the previous year. So the family is now campaigning for a change in food labelling laws.

An allergy is simply explained. "An allergy occurs when our immune system overreacts to what is normally a harmless substance, and triggers what, for the healthy human body, is an inappropriate and unnecessary response."

To eat a few sesame seeds, and die as a result, is most certainly "an inappropriate and unnecessary response", so whilst it is appropriate to look at food labelling, it is surely more important to discuss why Natasha's immune system, designed to defend and protect itself from attack from foreign substances, should react to a food it should have been able to eat in complete safety.

Allergy has become an epidemic in recent years. I have written about this in 'Epidemic of Chronic Disease', and in this blog from October 2012.

               "According to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology's report, published in July 2007, "the prevalence and incidence of allergic disease have markedly increased over the past 50 years", and that evidence presented to the Committee showed that "an increasing prevalence of asthma was first noted in studies of Birmingham school children, starting in the mid 1950s," and that since then "the prevalence of asthma and wheezing appears to have doubled "approximately every 14 years" until the mid 1990s. It added that the trends for other disorders such as hay fever and eczema are similar."

The 2004 report showed the scale of the "allergy epidemic" - that 39% of children and 30% of adults had been diagnosed with one or more of asthma, eczema and hayfever; and 38% of children and 45% of adults had experienced symptoms of these disorders during the preceding 12 months. Yet since then the allergy epidemic has continued to grow!

AND NO-ONE APPEARS TO WANT TO ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTION - WHY?

In the current debate about Natasha, no one seems to want to ask why she had this allergy in the first place. The cause of her death was her allergy - it was not a sandwich containing sesame seed, this was just the trigger. After all, we should all be able to eat sesame seeds without such a reaction!

The answer is agonisingly simple. One of the main causes of the allergy epidemic, if not the main cause, are pharmaceutical drugs. This link lists the drugs known to cause allergy - including painkilling drugs, antibiotic drugs, sleeping pills, and in particular, childhood vaccinations and the plethora of drugs that 'work' by interfering with our immune system.

Does conventional medicine know about this? Apparently not, although perhaps more pertinent questions might be "does it want to know", and "does it want us to know?" This is what the NHS Choices website tell us about the cause of allergies.

               "Allergies occur when the body's immune system reacts to a particular substance as though it's harmful. It's not clear why this happens.....

               "The number of people with allergies is increasing every year. The reasons for this are not understood....."

So conventional medicine claims not to know - even when its medical textbooks, the doctors bibles like the British National Formulary and MIMS, very clearly provides the evidence for the link with pharmaceutical drugs!

There is a fundamental problem with this. If conventional medicine refuses to acknowledge the serious side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, if doctors won't tell patients about the harm they can cause, if our mainstream media decides not to ask important questions about iatrogenic disease, there will be no solution to this problem, or any other health problem. 

The campaign being waged by Natasha's parents will be doomed to failure because it does not address the most important question of all. Why was Natasha body allergic to what should be a harmless food?

Before it is possible to reach a solution for any problem it is first necessary to know what is causing the problem. Identify the wrong cause and a solution is not possible.

Allergy Treatment

And there is another problem. Where should parents be looking for safe and effective treatment for allergy? Natasha's father used two EpiPen injections, and they failed. I have written about the conventional treatment of allergy - the antihistamine drugs, the steroids, the decongestants, the 'Leukotriene receptor antagonists', and of course immunotherapy (playing around with our immune system). In the same link I have written about the homeopathic treatment of allergy, which is altogether more effective, free of serious adverse drug reactions, and safer.

Indeed, conventional medicine has proven that homeopathy is an effective treatment for allergy, and nut allergy in particular. In January 1914 the mainstream media heralded a new and successful treatment for peanut allergy. This from a BBC article.

               "Doctors say a potential treatment for peanut allergy has transformed the lives of children taking part in a large clinical trial. The 85 children had to eat peanut protein every day - initially in small doses, but ramped up during the study. The finding, published in the Lancet, suggest 84% of allergic children could eat the equivalent of five peanuts a day after six months".

As I said at the time, this is a treatment based on the principle of 'like (in small quantities) curing like'. It is, in other words, based on the principles of homeopathy! Whilst Homeopathy prefers to use peanuts in potency (in high dilution), these researchers used minute doses of peanut itself. This is probably not as safe as homeopathy, and probably produces results more slowly, but it is nonetheless homeopathy!

Yet in the years since that research was heralded as a breakthrough treatment conventional medicine  is still not using. So perhaps we should all be asking why!

But then, in matters of health, the right questions are rarely asked. This is why the allergy epidemic continues to grow, year by year, and why so many more 'Natasha's' are likely to die. Her mother was quoted as saying that "nobody else should ever have to suffer such a needless death". No-one is likely to disagree. Hopefully the food industry will eventually get its labelling right.

I am less optimistic that conventional medicine will ever admit that pharmaceutical drugs are a significant cause of allergy. And it is this that will be the basis of future tragedies.

Cancer? Bad luck? The environment? Or Big Pharma drug 'side-effect'?

What is causing the epidemic of cancer, of all types, during the last half century and more? This is a topic that appears to be the subject of much debate at the moment. Perhaps little wonder, given the billions people have raised for charity over recent decades for research to find a cure.

The dominant view, over the years, has been that it is something that strikes at random, without reason or cause, a piece of random misfortune, or just sheer bad luck. Researchers at the John Hopkin's University appear to believe this in their study "The bad luck of cancer", published in January 2015. Their mathematical analysis suggested that over two-thirds of cancer were not preventable.

The paper immediately came under heavy criticism (see "Backlash greets 'bad luck' cancer study", published just two weeks later), not just of the authors, but the journalists who were accused of 'misinterpreting' the study's results. The conclusions, it was said, were both flawed, or oversimplified.

So, as usual, medical science appears to be at logger-heads, unable to agree. After all the resources the conventional medical establishment have ploughed into the causes of cancer over the years, no matter how big and profitable the cancer industry has become, there appears to be little or no agreement in what causes it, and certainly no successful treatment!

So perhaps a new study by a team of doctors from the Stony Brook Cancer Centre in New York, and published in the same magazine, Nature, "Substantial contribution of extrinsic risk factors to cancer development" will help. Basically, it questions the 'bad luck' hypothesis, suggesting that this only relates to about 10-30% of cancer cases. In the rest, it is 'extrinsic' and not 'intrinsic' factors that cause cancer. In other words it is environment and not luck that cause cancer.

First, we demonstrate

that the correlation between stem-cell division and cancer risk does not distinguish between the effects of intrinsic

and extrinsic factors. We then show that intrinsic risk is better estimated by the lower bound risk controlling for total

stem-cell divisions. Finally, we show that the rates of endogenous mutation accumulation by intrinsic processes are not

sufficient to account for the observed cancer risks. Collectively, we conclude that cancer risk is heavily influenced by

extrinsic factors. These results are important for strategizing cancer prevention, research and public health

As the BBC suggests, in its article "Cancer is not just 'bad luck' but down to the environment", it is down to factors such as smoking. It is about eating a healthy, balanced diet, maintaining a healthy weight, staying physically active, drinking less alcohol, protecting yourself from the sun, and similar factors.

At least this explanation leads to sensible advice. Yet is even this an adequate or sufficient explanation? 

There is another, well understood and documented explanation for cancer that is not mentioned anywhere, in the studies mentioned here, and in most others. And that is that pharmaceutical drugs cause cancer. So by all means look to your diet, and your exercise, drink less alcohol, and so on. But perhaps the best advice of all is to stay clear of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Drugs and vaccines cause cancer! This is not new, exciting, breakthrough news! Every doctor knows about it. Every drug regulator throughout the world knows about it. Every medical dictionary knows about it, and any cursory inspection of BNF (the British National Formulary) or MIMMs would highlight that most drugs can cause cancer. Here are just a few, random examples.

• Hormone Replacement Therapy, or HRT, has been prescribed for many millions of women throughout the developed world for menopausal symptoms before it was implicated in causing breast and cervical cancer. But it is still being prescribed.
• Cholesterol-lowering drugs, like Statins, are also implicated. As long ago as 1996 the Journal of the American Medical Association warned that these drugs can cause cancer in rodents.
• Tamoxifen, a drug widely used to treat breast cancer, is actually known to cause cervical and other cancers.
• Exubera, an insulin inhalant was approved in 2006, but withdrawn in 2007 because it has caused lung cancer.
• Omeprazole (Prilosec), a heartburn drug, is known to cause abnormal cell growth and stomach tumors in rats, although it appears that no one knows if it does the same for humans.
• Spironolactone (Aldactazide, Aldactone), a blood pressure medicine, also prescribed for hormonal imbalances and facial hair growth in women, is also known to cause tumors in laboratory rats.
• Elidel cream and Protopic ointment, topical skin treatments used for ezcema, are now associated with lymphoma and skin cancer.

Of course, open honest communication with the public is not something that the powerful conventional medical establishment is good at. No medical science study, no mainstream media organisation, is likely to highlight that pharmaceutical drugs are a known cause of cancer. No one is going to tell you that if you want to avoid cancer (as we all do), one of the most important things we can all do is to avoid the drugs conventional doctors want us to take, usually for less serious ailments and illnesses. So, let's say it here.

Good health is best maintained by avoiding conventional medical drugs and vaccines.

First, we demonstrate

that the correlation between stem-cell division and cancer risk does not distinguish between the effects of intrinsic

and extrinsic factors. We then show that intrinsic risk is better estimated by the lower bound risk controlling for total

stem-cell divisions. Finally, we show that the rates of endogenous mutation accumulation by intrinsic processes are not

sufficient to account for the observed cancer risks. Collectively, we conclude that cancer risk is heavily influenced by

extrinsic factors. These results are important for strategizing cancer prevention, research and public healthFirst, we demonstrate

that the correlation between stem-cell division and cancer risk does not distinguish between the effects of intrinsic

and extrinsic factors. We then show that intrinsic risk is better estimated by the lower bound risk controlling for total

stem-cell divisions. Finally, we show that the rates of endogenous mutation accumulation by intrinsic processes are not

sufficient to account for the observed cancer risks. Collectively, we conclude that cancer risk is heavily influenced by

extrinsic factors. These results are important for strategizing cancer prevention, research and public health