Patients pressurising doctors to give them more drugs. Why? And is honesty with patients the best solution?

Public Health England (PHE) is concerned that patients are pressurising doctors to give them more antibiotic drugs (Pulse 18 October 2018). This is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, it has become a feature of the National Health Service in the UK. Patients, it seems, can never get quite enough of the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are on offer to them - even when doctors do not think they need them.

Another recent post in Pulse may be relevant here, it suggested that if patients were aware of the cost of the treatments they received they would appreciate them more. So perhaps if patients were aware of the cost of antibiotic drugs they would appreciate them more? Unfortunately, antibiotics are not particularly expensive. And they are already too popular, in too much demand it seems, and PHE feels it needs to take action.

So PHE is going to reintroduce its 'Keep Antibiotics Working' campaign. In doing so it has the approval of doctors because "93% of those surveyed said that it supported them in refusing patient requests for antibiotics" - by informing the public about the risks of antibiotic resistance, and to urge them to take their clinicians advice on antibiotics.

As this blog has regularly reported, there are two major problems with antibiotic drugs. One of these is, indeed, resistance - the creation of superbugs - their inability to treat the conditions, illnesses and disease that once they were able to treat - an increasing number of patients no longer responding to them.

The other problem is the serious side effects they are known to cause. For my previous blogs on the dangers of antibiotic drugs, go to the top left-hand side of this page and search 'antibiotic drugs'. Alternatively, go to my webpage on the dangers of antibiotics drugs.

So why do patients continue to demand antibiotic drugs, given that they are now known to cause such serious side effects? The answer is, of course, patients are not told. To a large extent the conventional medical establishment does not accept that they cause harm, even though the evidence is there, published and available within their own information base. Certainly doctors do not admit, publically, the harm they cause. And the mainstream media does not ask questions about the dangers of antibiotic drugs. So how do we ever get to know?

Since the 1940's we have all been told that antibiotics are wonder drugs. Once we were told they were wonder drugs with no side effects! This is the information most people still understand and believe. They have never been told otherwise - so why should they know that they are dangerous?

So whether the '‘Keep Antibiotics Working' campaign works remains to be seen. Pulse states that in 2016 antibiotic prescribing decreased by 6% over three years, but that research continued to show that between 8% and 23% of antibiotic prescriptions are still inappropriate. They want to reduce this by half.

I believe that this is unlikely to happen. It will not happen until we are all told the real reason we should not pester doctors for drugs - that they are dangerous to our health.

As long as doctors tell us that the problem with antibiotics is a 'technical' one, concerning 'resistance', whilst we continue to believe they are effective and safe, patients will continue to demand them, and doctors will feel pressured into prescribe them. Patients need to be told that antibiotics are UNSAFE, and HARMFUL to our health.

So the solution to this particular problem is an easy one - HONESTY! 

But actually honesty is a problem for conventional medicine. Most of their drugs are largely ineffective. All of them are dangerous. And perhaps even more important, antibiotics are the very drugs upon which the reputation of conventional medicine has been built for the last 70 years. This base is becoming increasingly flimsy, at best, and it crumbles a bit more every time a doctor prescribes another drug to another patient.

What patients want of their doctors

The general public has been subject to the propaganda of the conventional medical health system for over a century. In more recent decades the harm caused by, and the failings of, conventional medicine has been kept from them - by governments, by doctors, by the drug regulators, by drug companies, and by the mainstream media.

So when a member of this misinformed and ill-informed public becomes a patient, what does he or she want from their doctors?

A recent article in the doctors e-magazine, Pulse, says "that half of the public think that their GP should always give them the prescription, treatment, or referral to a specialist that they request, a survey has indicated".

Is this really a surprise? Is it not the result of years of indoctrination by the conventional medical establishment? In a recent BBC series, 'The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs' I recall one patient telling the GP that if he did not give him the drug he thought he needed he would 'not feel safe leaving the surgery'. Clearly the man thought that his health, even his life, depended on the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs!

The Pulse article referred to a YouGov poll that interviewed 2,000 British adults. It was commissioned by a doctors organisation called 'Medical Protection'. These are the main findings:

• 47% of the public have looked up their symptoms online before visiting their doctor.
• 50% think doctors should give them the treatment, referral or prescription they want.
• 21% of the public have challenged their doctors diagnosis.
• 80% of the public agree their doctor meets their needs and expectations.
• 86% of Medical Protection GP members sometimes, most of the time or always have challenging experiences with patients when they do not provide the prescription, treatment of referral to a specialist they request.

Much of the blame for this situation was placed on patients who search their symptoms, and diagnose their illness online, and do so prior to visiting their GP. One doctor is quoted as saying that patients doing this "may have a preconceived idea of what their diagnosis is and how the condition should be treated".

Yes, perhaps. Yet this is no more than patients being told to leave everything to their doctors, because only they know what they are doing, they know best, and they would do nothing to harm us. Apparently, according to the conventional medical establishment, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!

Yet the real blame for this situation is not the patients, and the little knowledge they may glean from the internet, but the health information the public is given, in great quantity, regularly, routinely, and on a daily basis!

• Only conventional medicine is based on 'science', it is the only system of medicine that has been proven to work.
• Only conventional medicine is safe and effective, medical science has proven pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to be effective and safe, and the drug regulatory system ensures that they continue to be effective and safe.
• New pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are presented to the public as 'wonder cures', 'magic bullets', which will be future 'game changers' in the treatment of illness and disease.
• News about the disease-inducing-effect of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are rarely publicised - the public is just not told about them!
• Old pharmaceutical drugs, which have proven to be harmful to patients, causing side effects, adverse reactions, disease and death, and quietly buried. The public rarely get to hear about them.
• Conventional medicine is winning the war against illness and disease. Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are working.
• Rising levels of numerous chronic diseases, many now at epidemic levels, are also largely ignored, except when they are used as an argument for spending yet more money on conventional medical treatment.
• The role played by drug 'side effects' in these disease epidemics is studiously avoided, and blamed on anything other than the vast increase in consumption of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines during the years the epidemics have developed.

So is it any wonder that patients demand their doctors prescribe pharmaceutical drugs for them? Is this really a surprise? How can anyone expect patients to make an 'informed choice' if the information they have to rely upon comes exclusively from doctors, the conventional medical establishment, and a compliant media?

And when faced with this patient-led demand for pharmaceutical drugs, do the doctors prescribe them? In the main they seem to do so, even when the drugs and vaccines concerned are one's they have been told to prescribe only with great care because of their known dangers to patient health. Conventional doctors have little else to do other than to prescribe these drugs, and they are under great pressure from the drug companies to do so!

Perhaps some doctors know the harm their prescriptions are doing to patients, and are seeking to protect themselves. "We only prescribe these drugs because our patients want them!" This research, after all, was conducted on behalf of a doctors organisation called 'Medical Protection'.

Perhaps informed patients should set up an organisation called 'Patient Protection'. It is much needed!