Are the Covid-19 vaccines working? Are they reducing the number of cases yet?

I have consulted my crystal ball in order to answer this question. In terms of the present situation the question has already been answered in another blog; but what of the future? The Covid-19 epidemic has been with us for over a year now. The new vaccines have been with us for just a few weeks, and many millions of people throughout the world have already received the vaccination. 

So what of the future? How will the pandemic be viewed in terms of what saved us from the terrible ravages of Covid-19?

Of one thing we can all be absolutely certain - that the number of new cases, hospitalisations, and deaths, will all reduce over the coming weeks and months.

Why am I so certain of this? Because in the historial past this is what has exactly what has happened in any and every epidemic there has ever been! An epidemic starts, suddenly, it causes death (usually amongst those people who less able to cope with the virus, or the bacteria), and just as suddenly it goes away. This has always been so, and unless someone can tell me why this pandemic is any different, Covid-19 will do exactly the same.

But there will be a twist as far as Covid-19 is concerned. People are now getting vaccinated in their millions. We already know the vaccines are causing harm, and killing people around the world. This website is seeking to collate the damage that has been reported, thus far. But no matter. As the number of new cases, hospitalisations, and deaths decline (as they inevitably will), the conventional medical establishment will take the credit for this reduction; they always try to claim the credit now, for example, as they have done so brilliantly with measles.

So we will overcome Covid-19 in the weeks and months to come, and we will be told that our immunity has been entirely the result of the new vaccines. It will have nothing to do with the natural immunity gained by the millions of people who contracted the virus, and survived; or the many more millions who had a strong immune system capable of dealing with the virus either without any symptoms, or without getting seriously sick.

Perhaps this is why the World Health Organisation (WHO), a creature of the conventional medical establishment, has recently changed its definition of 'Herd Immunity'. Herd immunity occurs when sufficient people acquire immunity to an infections disease so that it no longer spreads widely in the community. This definition was once supported by WHO, but in October 2020 it quietly revised the definition to remove natural immunity, and immunity through infection, in favour of vaccine protection. As the Dr Mercola link above states, "immunity developed through previous infection is the way it has worked since humans have been alive" but in the modern world of conventional medicine this no longer applies.

            "This perversion of science implies that the only way to achieve herd immunity is via vaccination, which is blatantly untrue."

The perverse logic is that all those people who survived the Spanish ‘flu outbreak in 1918 did so because of a vaccine - that did not exist at the time! Our survival had nothing to do with natural immunity. Similarly, all those people who survived the Black Death in the 14th century, or the Great Plague of the 1660’s, did so because of a non-existent vaccine! This is ludicrous, of course, but it is a message that we will all be hearing soon.

We will be deluged by claims of vaccine effectiveness, offered to us by our governments, the conventional medical establishment, the NHS, and the pharmaceutical industry. And the mainstream media (MSM) will go along with this medical nonsense, as meekly and compliantly as they always do now with any claims being made by conventional medicine.

The question is - will we be naive enough to believe it? 

Are the Covid-19 vaccines working? Are they reducing the number of cases yet?

This is the answer to a question above, asked on the Quora website, and answered by Sean Ballington. I have asked his permission to publish it on my blog - as it is not only a brilliant answer - it is entirely accurate.

According to the government...

If I get vaccinated:

1.- Can I stop wearing the mask?

        Government Response - No

2.- Can they reopen restaurants, pubs, bars etc and everyone work normally?

        Government Response - No

3.- Will I be resistant to covid?

        Government Response - Maybe, but we don't know exactly, it probably won't stop you getting it

4.- At least I won't be contagious to others anymore?

        Government Response - No you can still pass it on, possibly, nobody knows.

5.- If we vaccinate all children, will school resume normally?

        Government Response - No

6.- If I am vaccinated, can I stop social distancing?

        Government Response - No

7.- If I am vaccinated, can I stop disinfecting my hands?

        Government Response - No

8.- If I vaccinate myself and my grandfather, can we hug each other?

        Government Response - No

9.- Will cinemas, theatres and stadiums be reopened thanks to vaccines?

        Government Response - No

10.- Will the vaccinated be able to gather?

        Government Response - No

11.- What is the real benefit of vaccination?

        Government Response - The virus won't kill you.

12.- Are you sure it won't kill me?

        Government Response - No

13.- If statistically the virus won't kill me anyway ... Why would I get vaccinated?"

        Government Response - To protect others.

14.- So if I get vaccinated, the others are 100% sure I'm not infecting them?

        Government Response - No

So to summarise, the Covid19 vaccine...

• Does not give immunity.

• Does not eliminate the virus.

• Does not prevent death.

• Does not guarantee you won’t get it.

• Does not prevent you from getting it.

• Does not stop you passing it on

• Does not eliminate the need for travel bans.

• Does not eliminate the need for business closures.

• Does not eliminate the need for lockdowns.

• Does not eliminate the need for masking.

• So...what the fook is it actually doing?

So according to Sean the vaccines are a waste of time and public money. I could not agree with him more!

Coronavirus COVID-19. The vaccines are arriving. So where are we now? And in what direction are we travelling?

So we now have 3 COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, and now Oxford) awaiting approval by Drug Regulators around the world. Yet is this not the first mystery about how this situation is being presented to us? Surely there's a 4th? The Russian vaccine? But this vaccine is not receiving one mention from our mainstream media (MSM). I wonder why? Perhaps I will return to this rather strange omission later in this blog.

So the future is being made very clear to us, quite definitively clear in fact. The vaccines will save the world, save us all, from the dreadful coronavirus pandemic. They will enable us to return to our normal lives by Easter 2021.

So where are we now? And in what direction are we travelling. There is every reason for our future being marked out in this way.

• First, conventional medicine has invested everything in these vaccines. It had no treatment when the virus first appeared. It has watched on as thousands have died, unable to offer anything beyond care and compassion for them. So there is absolutely doubt that all 3 (4?) vaccines will be approved by the regulatory authorities around the world. Considerable sums of money have been spent on their development. Moreover, each of the vaccines are now being manufactured, even before approval has been given to any of them. And wealthy governments of the most wealthy countries have already bought millions of doses, at vast expense.

• Second, we (the public) are waiting anxiously for them. Government, medical authorities, and the MSN have been studiously prepared us to expect the vaccines over the last 10 months. We have been told that they are the only answer to the pandemic; they will save us from death: and save the world from an horrific fate.
  

• Third, the direction of travel has already been mapped out - for the months to come. As long as sufficient of us (the public) are vaccinated these 3 (4?) new vaccines will ensure that we will all be able to return to normal life; indeed, they are the only way we will ever be able to return to normal life.

Moreover, all this is self-evidently true, for two reasons. 

(i) The vaccines will work, they will be effective; and we all know this because all vaccines are effective, and they have saved us from deadly diseases before - have they not? 

(ii) The vaccines will be safe, they will not harm us; and we all know this because medical experts regularly assure us that all vaccines are entirely safe! So what could possibly go wrong?

Perhaps the only possible problem might be that vaccines are neither effective nor safe.  

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have written about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines now for over 10 years. By using the search facility at the top of this page, and typing in 'vaccine safety', and/or 'vaccine effectiveness', or even just 'vaccines', the reader will be able to see what I have previously written. Moreover, and perhaps more alarmingly, you will see that my stance on vaccines does not rely on 'disinformation', 'fake news' or 'conspiracy theory', but has been largely based on three sources of information.

    (i) conventional medical literature, most notably the Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) that comes with each vaccine; 

    (ii) individual and family reports that have stated that they have been harmed by vaccines; and that prior to vaccination they were fit and healthy;

    (iii) government compensation agencies who have paid out £$millions to those harmed by vaccines who have been able to prove that it was a vaccine, and not something else, that had harmed them.

So my concern about the new COVID-19 vaccines is based on one of my usual presumptions; namely that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. And on this basis the world is almost certainly not going to be saved by the new vaccines. Instead, quite a different scenario is more likely to present itself during the coming months.

1. The Drug Regulators

All the new vaccines will certainly be approved. The Drug Regulators will agree with the pharmaceutical companies that (i) the vaccines are safe and effective; and (ii) that the public will not be harmed by them. This will happen because it is what has always happened! The commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry has usually been sufficient reason for drug approval, as drug regulatory agencies are run by people with close professional and financial links with the pharmaceutical companies. So although they are tasked by the law to place the safety of patients, first and foremost, they rarely do so, and only when the evidence of patient harm caused by a drug or vaccine has become undeniable.

2. The Public Response

The majority of the public have been primed to accept the wall-to-wall propaganda of the MSM during recent months - that vaccines are the only solution of the pandemic. Most people will accept the assurances of their doctors, supported by the medical experts and government spokesmen by the MSM, that the new vaccines are safe and effective. Any evidence to the contrary has been, and will be censored, and most people will never hear such evidence. It is, we are assured, all disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theory. It can be ignored.

3. Vaccine Effectiveness

So the vaccine will be given to millions of people around the world, and (if past performance is indicative) it will have a marginal or limited impact on COVID-19. Some vaccinated people will still contract the virus; but the reason for this will be denied or discounted; it was a bad batch of vaccine; it was caused by those who refused to be vaccinated; or not enough people will have been vaccinated to reach 'herd immunity' levels; and the like.

4. Reports of Vaccine Damage

After a short time, reports of vaccine damage will emerge. The conventional medical establishment will deny and discount this too, in the same time honoured way they have always done in the past. The MSM will not report them. And anyone who does hear about vaccine harm will be told, as they are always told:

• drug regulators have declared the vaccines to be safe; so they are safe; medical science has said so; the harm must have been caused by something else. 
• Each report is 'anecdotal', it is not scientific.
• The harm was coincidental; the patient may be seriously ill, but this had nothing to do with the vaccine. 
• Perhaps it was a bad batch of vaccine. 
• Or the vaccine was improperly administered by the medic who injected the vaccine; it was his, or her mistake, an error. 
• Or the patient is responding in accordance with the 'nosebo' effect.
• Or we will be told that millions were given the vaccine, only thousands were harmed, and only hundreds died. 
• So the benefits of the vaccines have outweighed the harm they caused.
  

5. The Decline of the Pandemic

When the pandemic dies down (as eventually all epidemics do, over time, as our natural immunity to the virus, or bacteria, kicks in) this improvement will be declared to be solely the result of the vaccines, that vaccination alone has brought about this conclusion. Natural immunity will have played no part, whatsoever.

The Game and the Playing Field

So the future of the COVID-19 pandemic is destined to be played out on a playing field on which only one team is allowed to play. All other teams will have had no voice, little ability to suggest an alternative agenda.

In this way, we (the public) are being 'played' by the conventional medical establishment. They own the field on which the game is played; they are in control of the ball being used; and they dictate the rules by which the game is played. The result of the game may be a foregone conclusion; but it is in everyone's interest to play the game, and support the winning team!

The game will be played by only a few people, and the players allowed to play must be part of the rich, powerful and influential in-crowd. Russian players are NOT wanted, as they lay outside the American/European heartland of pharmaceutical insiders. Fortunes are going to be made. And winning the game will mean untold wealth for the winners. We (the public) are allowed to be spectators; we are allowed to watch the game; but only if we behave ourselves, accept the rules as laid down, and see only the game that is played in front of us. 

We must NOT be distracted by disinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories. After all, we do all want to be part of the winning team - don't we?

So, let us all get in line, get vaccinated, and accept our health passports. It is what is expected of us. Anyone who disagrees will be punished, ostracised from social, recreational and economic life.

The Remaining Question

But what if these vaccines are not effective? What if they do cause more harm than good? What if the past performance of vaccines does accurately predict the performance of these new vaccines? The same questions will have to be asked.....

Where will be be?

In what direction are we travelling?

Pharmaceutical Medicine. How effective are doctor-prescribed drugs and vaccines? How long should you continue taking drugs?

Just how effective are pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that our doctors prescribe to us? Almost every week we hear about some new drug that is a 'miracle' cure for some illness; and currently we are all waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to deliver a vaccine that will be the answer (the only possible answer) to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. 

We have all been programmed to believe that conventional medicine has all the answers to illness and disease - but does it?

There has been a meta-analysis (June 2019), a comprehensive review of randomized clinical trials published in three of the main medical journals. It revealed a total of 396 'medical reversals'. 

A medical reversal is described as a medical practice that is found to be "no better than a prior, or lesser standard of care", a 'low level' medical practice that is "either ineffective or that cost more than other options but only offer similar effectiveness". Conventional medicine seems to use these meaningless terms or phrases in order to ensure that most people don't understand what they are talking about. Well, let's put it more simply.

What this meta-research has shown, yet again, is that most conventional or pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are of little value. They are ineffective. They don't work.

• This is why, year by year, more people get sick, take pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, but they do not get better. 
• Instead, more patients are prescribed these useless drugs, on the basis that they have to be taken for a lifetime. In other words - they just do not work.
  
• This is why, year by year, the NHS (and conventional medical organisations around the world) cannot cope with the rising levels of illness and disease, always need more money, and routinely complain about the 'lack of resources'.
  

 I wrote about the over-hyping of drug effectiveness, and the consequences, in my E-Book, 'The Failure of Conventional Medicine'. I reproduce part of this here.

            "The conventional medical establishment regularly overstate the claims they make about drug and vaccine safety and effectiveness, particularly when a new drug or vaccine is about to be marketed and taken by patients. The drug companies have a financial interest in doing so. We are told, regularly, that some new treatment will transform the lives of people suffering from this illness, or that disease.

            "Yet the reality is that most drug tests reveal something much more modest. For instance, drug testing may have indicated that a drug will give a 25% reduction in symptoms for about 20% of people suffering from a disease. What this means is that 75% of the symptoms will remain for 20% of sufferers, and 100% of the symptoms will remain for the remaining 80% of sufferers!

            "Rarely, if ever, has a pharmaceutical drug merited the iconoclastic headlines that regularly appear in our mainstream media, which inform us that they are 'miracle cures', or ‘magic bullets’, that will free mankind from the ravages of some illness or disease. The mainstream media is always ready, if not eager to submit the propaganda of pharmaceutical companies to us, usually without question or demure. They meekly cooperate in the pharmaceutical industry's effort to persuade us about the magical qualities of every new drug or vaccine, and they hide anything that might suggest they might be ineffective or unsafe.

            "The result is that many sick people, suffering from incurable diseases, wait patiently and expectantly for medical science to come up with a cure before they die.After all, this is what we have all been led to believe, scientific medicine will eventually conquer disease. Sadly, most people have been, and will continue to wait in vain for a future that never arrives!

            "A more sober and realistic experience suggests pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are rarely as effective as claimed, and in time most of them are soon found to be ineffective, unsafe or dangerous. And sometimes quite lethal. Perhaps they are as safe as the drug testing and drug regulatory regimes throughout the world can make them - but as will be seen this not very safe at all.  

So if you are one of the many, many patients who have been ill for a long time, when nothing your are prescribed makes you better, when you get sicker week by week, when you are on drugs which have serious side effects, you need to discover natural medical therapies. They are all more effective - and certainly safer. 

Why Homeopathy? is my E-Book that looks at specific illnesses and diseases, and compares conventional and homeopathic treatment of them. You will be surprised at the number of illnesses conventional medicine openly admits it has no effective treatment. This is why more and more people are switching from pharmaceutical medicine - particularly in the longer term it just does not work! It is ineffective.

Just how long would you consider using a car, or a washing machine, that did not work?

 

How effective is conventional medicine?

This blog's primary purpose is to encourage patients, 

sick people, to examine closely how safe and effective their medical treatment is, and to consider safer alternatives.

When conventional medicine is investigated in this way, the most disturbing finding is that it is an inherently dangerous form of medical treatment. So it is perhaps not surprising that it is the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is the focus, and not their effectiveness.

Doctors always admit that their treatment always comes with risks (although these are usually heavily discounted). But these risks, we are told, are far outweighed by their benefits (although these benefits are usually heavily exaggerated). And (we are told) all conventional medical treatments are based on evidence, on science. In other words, they are assumed to be, and have been proven to be effective. So how true is this claim?

In 2012 the British Medical Journal's 'Clinical Evidence' website attempted to give us an answer to this question.

               "We want to identify treatments that work and for which the benefits outweigh the harms, especially treatments that may be underused. We also wish to highlight treatments that do not work or for which harms outweigh benefits. For the research community, our intention is to highlight gaps in the evidence – where there are no good RCTs or no RCTs that look at groups of people or at important patient outcomes."

A laudable objective indeed, and Clinical Evidence went to considerable lengths to find the evidence. About 3000 treatments were selected that had been evaluated in research for analysis, and divided them into categories for their effectiveness. This is the resulting graph.

• So just 11% of conventional medical treatments were considered to be 'beneficial'.
• Another 24% were 'likely to be beneficial'.
• Another 7% traded off benefits and harms'.

(And I suspect that these figures may be based on an optimism that conventional medicine is invariably guilty of)

However, the rest of the treatments, 58%, were "unlikely to be beneficial" - or worse.

When the study was first published it came as a shock to the conventional medical establishment. They did nothing about it, of course, and have done nothing about it during the years since it was published. The problem is that if conventional medicine did not have these 'ineffective' treatments to offer patients their cupboard would be almost completely bare.

So conventional medicine did what it always does. They ignored the evidence. They carried on regardless, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps no-one would realise.

So when patients go to see their doctor, or visit their local hospital, they should realise that the treatment they are offered is more likely to be ineffective than effective.

Indeed, the only thing that can be certain is that the treatment given, ineffective as most of it might be, will still have the dangerous side effects and adverse reactions likely to harm rather than improve our health!

So next time you see your doctor, ask him how effective his/her treatment is, which of the above categories it falls into. (S)he will not know because the 3000 treatments, and the categories into which they were placed, remains unknown.

CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE AND RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Will it be effective?

Will it be harmful?

Will it kill you?

No-one really knows, and certainly no-one will tell you!

The Flu Vaccine - it just does not work!

According to the GP e-magazine, Pulse, January 2018, the flu vaccine has not worked again this year, particularly with the over 75's, who conventional doctors believe to be the most 'at-risk' group. As a result, doctors have been advised by NHS England to order a separate vaccine for them next year.

               "A letter from NHS England’s Public Health Commissioning Team instructed practices order a separate flu vaccine for patients who are over 75 years of age, after PHE announced in September that last year’s vaccine was not ‘significantly effective’ in older patients."

The NHS England's letter goes on: ‘The adjuvanted trivalent flu vaccine is currently considered to be the only licensed cost-effective option for this group.’

This should not come as a surprise. The lack of effectiveness of the flu vaccine has been reported for several years now, and Australia has already reported that during its winter the vaccine had been hopelessly ineffective.

Dr George Kassianos, GP and RCGP immunisation lead, is reported as advising GPs to follow NHS England's advice.

               'We know from the PHE publications that last year, the effectiveness of the conventional influenza vaccines in the over-65s was not apparent. Over-75s fared particularly badly to the point that the JCVI called the effectiveness of the conventional vaccine in the elderly “disappointing”.

When the effectiveness of a vaccine "is not apparent" it is disappointing indeed! But conventional medicine continues to recommend the flu vaccine, regardless of its ineffectiveness, its safety or its cost. The gravy-train continues - unabated!

The article also reported that the UK "is in the grip of the current flu season, with rates of GP consultations and hospitalisations increasing week by week" which confirms my oft-repeated argument that the reason for the NHS crisis every winter is that conventional medicine just does not work, it is not effective, £billions is paid out every year on drugs and vaccines that fail to make us better, and through their side effects actually make us sicker.

So, what is the excuse for this year's failure? Have the wrong flu strains been selected this year, yet again?. It does not appear so.

               "In Scotland, early testing showed just over half of the circulating strains were the same as those for which this season's vaccine offers protection."

This suggests that the right strains were selected - but that the vaccine still does not work! Quite an amazing admission.

I scoured the article to see if there was any report that this year's vaccine has been any safer than it has proven to be in past years. I could find no such reassurance! So what is the outcome?

               "... (English) data on hospitalisations suggested the dreaded 'Aussie flu' H3N2 was on the rise - with 112 hospitalisations in 19 hospitals last week, compared to five across 12 trusts the week before - for which there was no vaccine made available to patients."

So the flu vaccination the NHS offers to patients continues to be ineffective, harmful to our health, and expensive. So it provides us with the worst of all worlds!

Yet at the same time, the NHS is trying to stop doctors using homeopathy (for any condition). Homeopathy has safe, effective and inexpensive strategies to both prevent and treat influenza. It is time for us to all start using them. It is time to abandon conventional medicine, and its almost total dependance on useless, harmful and expensive pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

POSTSCRIPT
One of my regular complaints about the conventional medical establishment, which controls the NHS, and the Department of Health, is that the information it provides to patients is neither open or transparent, and sometimes it is downright dishonest!

Given the information given to GP's, discussed above, I watched the Chief Medical Officer,
Professor Dame Sally Davies, speaking on television about the NHS crisis yesterday, and in particular, the significant part flu related issues were playing in it. She spoke about the importance of the flu vaccine for NHS staff, and suggested that in order to provide patients with the best service possible there was good reason to make the vaccination COMPULSORY. I consider her remarks to be dishonest.

• She did not take the opportunity to tell patients what the NHS has already told doctors - that the flu vaccine is not effective.
• What she said implicitly implied was that the vaccine worked, and would ensure that NHS staff were not absent from work because of flu, which does not correspond to the letter to doctors.
• She is suggesting that doctors and nurses are FORCED to take the vaccine, quite regardless of the government's policy on PATIENT CHOICE.
• She said nothing about the serious side effects associated with the flu vaccine - not a surprise, conventional medicine never does, and the media never asks!

Lying to patients is one thing. Lying to doctors and is quite another, and the mixed messages they are receiving will surely be noted. The take up of vaccines by doctors and nurses is always significantly lower than the general population. Perhaps they already know about the effectiveness and dangers of the flu vaccine! If so, perhaps they can start telling their patients.

How effective is conventional medicine? Do Big Pharma drugs work?

Conventional medicine does not defend itself when it is accused of causing disease and death through the pharmaceutical drugs it promotes and prescribes!

Conventional medicine is unable to defend itself when it is accused of being the most expensive form of medical therapy!

So how effective is conventional medical, and the drugs it promotes? In constructing my new website, "Why Homeopathy?" I have regularly been amazed at how doctors are quite aware about the ineffectiveness of the drugs they prescribe, and it has led to to ask many questions.

• Does conventional medicine cure illness and disease, or does it just ameliorate? 
• Does conventional medicine treat conditions so that they go away, or does it just deal with symptoms?
• Does conventional medicine offer sick people a long term answer, or just temporary amelioration on a long-term basis?
• Does conventional medicine just allow illnesses to run their course.

So let's allow NHS Choices to inform us. I have used only their words, directly from their website. The British NHS is, after all, a leading exponent of conventional medicine, and it is led, and indeed dominated by conventional medics - so they should know!

ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)
          "Treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can help relieve the symptoms and make the condition much less of a problem in day-to-day life."

Ankylosing Spondylitis
          "There's no cure for ankylosing spondylitis (AS), but treatment is available to help relieve the symptoms."

Arthritis (Rheumatoid)
          "Treatment for rheumatoid arthritis can help reduce inflammation in the joints, relieve pain, prevent or slow joint damage, reduce disability and enable you to live as active a life as possible."

          "Although there's no cure for rheumatoid arthritis, early treatment and support – including lifestyle changes, medication, supportive treatments and surgery – can reduce the risk of joint damage and limit the impact of the condition."

Arthritis (Osteo)
          'There's no cure for osteoarthritis, but the condition doesn’t necessarily get any worse over time and a number of treatments are available to help relieve the symptoms."

Asthma
          "There's currently no cure for asthma, but treatment can help control the symptoms so you're able to live a normal, active life."

Alzheimer's Disease
          "There's currently no cure for Alzheimer's disease, although medication is available that can temporarily reduce some symptoms or slow down the progression of the condition in some people."

Autism
          "There's no 'cure' for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, a range of specialist educational and behavioural programmes can help children with ASD."

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
          "Treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) aim to help relieve the symptoms."

Dementia (Vascular)
          "There's currently no cure for vascular dementia and no way to reverse the damage to the brain that's already occurred, but treatments can help prevent further damage and may help slow down its progression."

Haemorrhoids (Piles)
          "Haemorrhoids (piles) often clear up by themselves after a few days. However, there are many treatments that can reduce itching and discomfort."

Eczema
          "There is no cure for atopic eczema, but treatments can ease the symptoms. Many children find their symptoms naturally improve as they get older."

Fibromyalgia
          "Treatment for fibromyalgia tries to ease some of your symptoms and improve quality of life, but there's currently no cure.

Gout
          "Treatment for gout includes pain relief to help you cope with a gout attack, as well as medication and lifestyle changes to prevent further attacks.

Osteoporosis
          "Treating osteoporosis involves treating and preventing fractures and using medication to strengthen bones. An important objective for health services across England is to try to prevent falls and fractures, particularly in people with osteoporosis and those with risk factors for osteoporosis."

Parkinson's Disease
          "There's currently no cure for Parkinson's disease, but treatments are available to help relieve the symptoms and maintain your quality of life."

PMT (Pre-Menstrual Tension)
          "Treatments for premenstrual syndrome (PMS) may help you manage your symptoms so they don't interfere with your daily life.

Prostatitis
          "Treatment for chronic prostatitis usually aims to control the symptoms. Painkillers such as paracetamol or ibuprofen may help relieve your pain."

Psoriasis
          "Treatment for psoriasis usually helps to keep the condition under control."

Sciatica
          "Treatment for sciatica isn't always necessary, as the condition often improves naturally within around six weeks..... However, it's not clear exactly how effective many of these treatments are at treating sciatica."

Shingles
          "Treatment for shingles can help ease your symptoms until the condition improves. In many cases shingles gets better within around two to four weeks.

News about new wonder drugs
The news media brings us news, on a regular basis, about new pharmaceutical drugs that will soon be able to treat disease - wonder drugs, magic bullets, treatments that will a 'game changers' in the treatment of disease. Apparently, these are all about the future, they are not currently available for sick people. Perhaps next year. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years time.

Or perhaps never!

If pharmaceutical drugs are so ineffective, whilst at the same time causing so many serious side effects (which are really new illnesses and diseases), it is little wonder that conventional medical systems throughout the world are in serious financial trouble. Conventional medicine depends hugely on Big Pharma drugs, which means it is relying on next to nothing. Or, perhaps more accurately, something that it worse than nothing.

The Health Debate (2). The effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs.

(This is a continuation of this previous blog)

So what are the elements of the health debate that the mainstream media is refusing to consider, and almost entirely ignoring? What are the questions an open, honest and 'free' media should be asking, and informing us?

The first question that the Media should be researching and discussing with the public concerns the the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and the claims of conventional medicine about them.

Drug Effectiveness

• Why are there so many ‘good news’ stories regularly coming from the conventional medical establishment? And why is the Media happy merely to slavishly report these pharmaceutical news releases without serious question. Indeed, why does the media continually fail to question how realistic, or how honest conventional medicine's claims are for these new drugs and treatments?

• What is known about the effectiveness of existing pharmaceutical drugs being prescribed to us by doctors, in ever-increasing amounts? Why is research that raises questions about drug effectiveness routinely ignored by the media?

• Are claims for the efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs reflected in actual patient outcomes? And if such treatments are as effective as the media is happy to report, why are levels of chronic disease continuing to increase to epidemic levels?

• Why have so many pharmaceutical drugs eventually been found to be ineffective, often after being prescribed for many years, and usually at great expense? Why is the ineffectiveness of drugs never reported?

• Why does the media fail to ask questions about medical science, drug testing procedures, and the statutory process of drug regulation, which regularly fail to discover that pharmaceutical drugs are ineffective, or have limited effectiveness?

• Why is the media content to report pharmaceutical propaganda about new 'medical breakthroughs' and the promise effective new drugs - which will happen in 5, 10, or even 15 years time? And why does the media fail to ask about what happened to the medical breakthroughs that were announced 5, 10 and 15 years previously?

• Why, if pharmaceutical drugs are so successful in treating illness and disease, has there been epidemic increases in a wide variety of serious illness and chronic disease (including Arthritis, Heart, Liver and Kidney disease, Alzheimers, Autism, Depression, Diabetes, mental health, et al) during the past 60-70 years?

• Why does the media not report when conventional medical drugs and treatments are failing? Indeed, why does the media fail to tell us about the failure of conventional medical treatments when they are found to be ineffective, or are withdrawn?

• Why is the media hostile to other medical therapies? If conventional medicine is unable to deal with illness and disease effectively, why does it not ask what alternative therapies, such as homeopathy, can offer patients? Why is it not honestly looking into how effective these alternative treatments are by examining patient outcomes, and comparing these with conventional drug treatment?

These issues are regularly raised in this blog, and indeed, elsewhere on the internet, and in magazines such as 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'. 

However, they are rarely, if ever raised within the mainstream media

The third part of this series will focus on the safety of pharmaceutical drugs, and other forms of conventional medical treatment. Whilst the effectiveness of treatment is crucial, the safety of treatment is equally important. Ineffective treatment raises hopes, and wastes out time. It also costs the country vast sums of money. But if medical treatment is also unsafe, it it causes illness and disease, if it can actually lead to death, then this is even more serious, and the failure of the Media to tell us, more shameful. Part Three will be published soon.

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THE HEALTH DEBATE 

These are the links to other blogs in this series

(1) WHY DOES THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA REFUSE TO TAKE PART?

(2) HOW EFFECTIVE ARE PHARMACEUTICAL DRUGS?

(3) THE SAFETY OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

(4) THE COST OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

(5) THE EPIDEMIC RISE OF CHRONIC DISEASE

(6) WHY DOES MEDICAL SCIENCE, DRUG TESTING & REGULATION, FAIL PATIENTS?

(7) HEALTH FREEDOM, PATIENT CHOICE & THE CONVENTIONAL MEDICAL MONOPOLY