SICKNESS? Going to see your doctor? Ask your GP these questions before accepting any medical treatment

Most people, when unwell, go to their doctor for diagnosis and medical treatment. And when their doctor prescribes treatment, especially when this involves pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, we usually take them, reluctantly. We do so on two assumptions

1. They are effective, and will make us better
2. They are safe, and will not harm us.

More and more people now seriously question both these assumptions. So when our doctor offers medical treatment, so when we are uncertain about what we should do we have two main options. To accept, and hope that the drugs work and do no harm us. Or we can just dig in our heels, and refuse the treatment being offered.

A third option is to ask questions, not just for our satisfaction, but to emphasise the point that our position is open-minded, logical, and that if it can be demonstrated that pharmaceutical medicine is safe and effective we will be happy to accept it. But not otherwise.

So we should be prepared to ask important questions, not to be 'awkward', but to protect ourselves from potentially harmful treatment, on the following basis:

• you will accept the treatment offered - as long as you can be assured that it is both safe and effective.
• you are not opposed to pharmaceutical drugs, as long as they are effective, and will not cause you personal harm.
• you we are not 'anti-vax', guided by 'disinformation' or 'conspiracy theories', but wish to ensure that the treatment offered is effective and safe.

Diagnosis and Treatment Plan
Once your doctor has diagnosed your illness treatment is usually offered. This treatment may, or may not, involve taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

• Ask your doctor to explain his/her diagnosis of your illness, and the future prognosis.
• Ask your doctor about whether there are any non-pharmaceutical ways of treating your illness (there often are).
• For example, ask your doctor if there is any dietary or nutritional advice that is helpful in treating your illness which can be used without having to resort to pharmaceutical intervention.
• If the problem concerns mental health, ask whether there are talking therapies that can be used without having to take pharmaceutical drugs.
• Similarly, ask your doctor about physical and mental exercise, and other life style changes, that you can make to treat your illness before resorting to drug treatment.

Often conventional doctors will be able to recommend a treatment plan that includes these non-drug treatments, and may even refer you to a dietician or nutritionist, to yoga or swimming classes, to talking therapy sessions, and similar. All these can be positively helpful to the doctor too, they often complain that they feel under pressure from patients to prescribe pharmaceutical drugs, and are often happy to offer this kind of help.

Pharmaceutical Drug Treatment
If your doctor still feels that pharmaceutical intervention is necessary, inform him/her that you want to make an informed decision about the safety and effectiveness of the drug treatment being offered.  

 

You should remember, at all times, that the decision to accept or refuse the treatment offered by your doctor, is entirely your own; doctors cannot force you to accept any treatment.

• Ask your doctor how long you will need to take the prescribed pharmaceutical drug treatment.
• Ask your doctor about any contraindications to the pharmaceutical drug treatment offered, and whether there is any reason why you, personally, should not take the prescribed drugs.
• Ask your doctor to tell you about all the known side effects, adverse drug reactions, of the prescribed treatment.
• Inform your doctor that you will need to see the 'Patient Information Leaflet' (PIL) that accompanies every packet of prescribed drugs. If the doctor does not have a copy of the PIL, ask for an online link so that you can read them.
• Ask your doctor if there are any additional side effects of the prescribed drug treatment, including suspected, but not yet proven side effects, so not included in the PIL. 
• Ask your doctor for time to study the prescribed drugs on websites like drugs.com  or rxisk.org.
• Ask you doctor if there is any guarantee that you will not experience the side effects listed for the drug(s) that are being prescribed. Not unreasonably, (s)he will not be able to do so.
  

All pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines have side effects, and some of them can seriously damage our health. Doctors do admit this, but routinely prescribe them on the basis that "they do more good than harm" or are "well tolerated". So we all need to make an informed choice about whether the drug(s) prescribed are likely to do more harm than good; and whether we are prepared to take the risk of suffering from the side effects. After all, it is our health that is being discussed.

 

Natural Medical Treatment
With an illness or disease there are many medical therapies that will offer alternative medical treatment, principally from natural medical therapies. Doctors will not usually mentioned this, and if they do it should be remembered that conventional doctors are not usually qualified in these therapies, and know little about them. However, these questions might be useful to ascertain if your doctor is aware of alternative medical therapies, what (s)he thinks about them, and whether (s)he can refer you on for treatment.

• Ask your doctor if there are natural medical therapies that would be able to treat your illness, safely and effectively, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, herbalism, acupuncture, et al.
• If the doctor makes critical or disparaging remarks ask whether (s)he is qualified to make such judgements on medical therapies.
• Ask your doctor whether (s)he can refer you to a qualified local therapist who can explain these alternative natural treatments, and offer treatment.

Drug Side Effects
If, after asking all these questions, you decide to take the prescribed drugs or vaccines, there are still important questions to ask. It is not just 'balancing' the benefits and the harm that needs to be questioned, but the reporting of drug and vaccine side effects. 

 

Studies have shown that only between 1% to 10% of side effects are ever reported. So when you decide to take the prescribed drugs, and you do experience side effects, you need to know that they will be reported - if only for the sake of future patients.

• Ask your doctor about the process of reporting side effects should you experience them, and whether (s)he will guarantee to do so should you report them.
• Ask your doctor to sign a form that guarantees the safety of the pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines that have been prescribed.
• Ask your doctor about arrangements in your country for injury compensation should the prescribed treatment cause personal harm.
• Ask your doctor whether it is possible to take legal proceedings in your country against medical authorities, or pharmaceutical companies, in the event of being damaged by the prescribed drugs.

MANDATORY MEDICATION
At the moment, the decision to take any pharmaceutical drugs or vaccines is entirely a matter for the individual. However, asking these questions will become increasingly important in a world in which governments, national health services, and powerful pharmaceutical and commercial interests, are seeking to remove patient choice and health freedoms. 

 

We will then need to protect our liberty, and our health, by justifying our refusal to accept medical treatment, not least to maintain our right to refuse pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

• We need to make the conventional medical establishment aware of our concerns.

• We need to insist that no medical treatment is allowed to harm us.

• We have to be clear we will accept medical treatment ONLY if it is safe and will not harm us.

However, the problem is that trying to link pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines with 'safety' and 'effectiveness' is an oxymoron! They just don't go together.

The evidence for this can be found firmly embedded within the literature of the conventional medical establishment itself!

 

And it is this medical evidence that will enable us to make an informed choice, and firmly place responsibility for causing harm on the conventional medical establishment.

"Decades of Medical Scandal". The persistent dishonest assertions of conventional medicine that their treatment is safe.

• A report written at the request of the government that is critical of the medical safety. 
• The Guardian newspaper, abandoning its more usual slavish support for pharmaceutical medicine, publishing a story that is critical of the conventional medicine. 
• BBC News actually daring to publish a criticism of the UK's NHS. 

These facts alone represent an important, highly unusual news story! But still there is much to be said about medical scandals.

"Denial of women's concerns contributed to decades of medical scandals, says inquiry" .

The Guardian

Lives ruined as damage viewed as 'women's problems'.

BBC News

The Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, was asked in February 2018 by Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary, to undertake a review into how the NHS responds to patient reports about the harmful side effects of drugs and medical devices. The chair has said this about the report:

               "I have conducted many reviews and inquiries over the years, but I have never encountered anything like this; the intensity of suffering experienced by so many families, and the fact that they have endured it for decades. Much of this suffering was entirely avoidable, caused and compounded by failings in the health system itself."

The review followed several patient-led campaigns against unsafe and harmful medical treatments which had, as usual, been ignored for many years by conventional medicine. "Just problems women have to accept" was the message. So immediately I must ask some pertinent questions. 

• What is unusual about these three campaigns? Does it not happen all the time with conventional medicine? 
• Why have these campaigns been identified - when every single pharmaceutical drug and vaccines, and most non-drug treatments, are known to cause serious patient harm?
• Why do all these harmful treatments continue to be used, without review?
• And why do doctors continue to assure us routinely that they are 'safe'?
• And why has our government, the NHS, our doctors, and the mainstream media hitherto ignored these campaigns, and denied them?
• And why do they all continue to deny all the other known harms caused by conventional medicine?

1. Primodos

Primodos was a hormonal pregnancy test, withdrawn from the market in the 1978 when it was associated with birth defects and miscarriages. I do not remember that this withdrawal received any significant coverage - by anyone. And as usual, the link has always been denied by Schering, the manufacturer (now part of Bayer) and by the entire conventional medical establishment.

One campaign was led by the Association for Children Damaged by Hormone Pregnancy Tests, whose website claims to "...reveal the cover up by the drug companies Bayer/Schering and Sanofi/Roussel and expose the deliberate suppression of evidence by the current U.K. Regulators, the MHRA and Commission on Human Medicines". 

In 2017 the use Primodos was investigated by Sky News who discovered "how documents were destroyed and information withheld about a drug that may have deformed and killed babies in the womb". Yet, as so often happens, this was presented as a one-off 'error' or 'mistake'; and certainly it did not encourage the mainstream media to look further into the damage cause to patients by pharmaceutical drugs.

2. Sodium Valproate - the anti-epileptic drug
Sodium valproate, and other antiepileptic drugs, have long been known to cause serious side effects. These drugs are supposed to be effective for preventing seizures; but it is not a new revelation that pregnant women who take the drug can cause physical abnormalities, birth defects, to the foetus, as well as developmental delay and autism in children. And this is not all these drugs do. They cause serious harm patients in many other ways - there is a long list of known serious side effects.

Yet doctors continue to prescribe them, and regardless of this review, they will no doubt continue to prescribe them on the misguided, and unquestioned assumption that 'there is no alternative'.

3. Surgical Mesh

Pelvic mesh implants have been used to treat prolapse and incontinence for a long time. Yet many women have been left with internal damage, and agonising chronic pain. As a result, in recent years, its use has been restricted; but conventional medicine has never been stopped using it despite the harm it is known to cause.

The failure of medical implants is a story that has been ignored, even more perhaps than the failure of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. But the evidence ihas been well  known for a long time, but systematically ignored by government, the NHS, and the mainstream media, despite the patient harm it has caused; mesh, and other implants, have continued to be used.  

I have blogged about the harm caused by inplants before, in 2018 - but patient damage is something that conventional medicine appears to think is necessary, even inevitable. So do these three stories represent "decades of medical scandal" as the Guardian asserts? And have "lives have been ruined" as BBC News reports. Most certainly, but the issue should not end there.

• Why is there no government backed review on the unprecedented levels of chronic disease, why they have reached epidemic levels, and the role that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines have played?
• Why do mainstream media organisations continue to refuse to tell their readers/listeners/viewers about the patient damage caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Health Minister Nadine Dorries is reported as saying she is determined to make the changes needed to protect women in the future, that "our health system must learn from those it has failed. We will now give this independent review the full and careful consideration it deserves before setting out our full response." Well, the NHS, and other national health services, have learnt few lessons about patient harm over the last 70 years, and nothing has been done.

The reason for this has often been mentioned on this blog. Conventional medical treatment might damage patients - but doctors have nothing better, nothing safer, nothing more effective to offer them. So they just continue. What else can they do? Move towards natural medical therapies? They would never, ever do this.

So what does the review recommend? The main one is the appointment of an "independent patient safety commissioner" whose task would be to talk and act "from the perspective of the patient", and "hold the health system to account". Patient advocacy sounds like a good idea. 

However, like every other attempt that has been made to supervise and control the conventional medical establishment it is unlikely to work. 

The pharmaceutical industry, as it has done throughout the last 70+ years, both within the NHS and in health services around the world, with medical science and drug testing, and with drug regulatory agencies, will immediately move to ensure that any such commissioner comes under their firm control.

And government, the NHS, and the mainstream media (asleep on duty as they are) will not notice when this is achieved. They will continue to tell us that conventional medical treatment is safe; that anyone who suggests otherwise is peddling 'conspiracy theories', and that their views are strictly censored. 

Conventional medical wisdom will continues to be unchallenged, alternative viewpoints will continue to be ignored, censored, and routinely attacked. Only when patients start to say "NO"; only when patients begin to look at alternative medical therapies will the situation change.

The Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, is a start; but it deals only with a minor part of the patient damage that is being routinely caused by the conventional medical establishment.
 

Coronavirus COVID-19. Why is conventional medical science in such a mess? Why the political hysteria? Why the total media compliance?

The coronavirus panic has led to a shambles, the self-infliction of a ludicrous set of social rules and regulation that make no logical sense. COVID-19 is just a virus, albeit one that may have been created in a bio-laboratory somewhere that experiments with mixing animal and human viruses. Yet a more sober assessment of the virus seems to suggest that COVID-19 is no more lethal than any other 'ordinary' flu virus.

The problem that has caused the shambles is conventional medicine. We should all have been asking the question decades ago - what sort of medical system do we have...

• that kills cows, and complete herds, when they contract TB?
• that kills entire flocks of birds when there is an outbreak of bird flu?
• that kills and burns cattle that contract Foot and Mouth?
• that fells and destroys trees when they are diagnosed with a disease?

I have often wondered what would happen if a serious viral epidemic threatened humanity - and now we know! In Britain (and no doubt throughout the rest of the world dominated by pharmaceutical medicine) we have been getting blanket, wall-to-wall news coverage about coronavirus. It is panic stations.

• The mainstream media in the UK is consulting with health 'experts' - all of them from the conventional medical establishment.
• The government is consulting health 'experts', all providing (we are told, and one assumes) the best information that conventional medical science can provide. No one from outside conventional medicine is consulted. Anyone with a contrary message are not listened to, they are ignored. It is as if they did not exist.

So it is not surprising that the conventional medical message about this virus has taken a firm grip on the nation's thinking.

• Coronavirus is a serious and deadly infection.
• It is estimated that hundreds of thousands (not just thousands) will die.
• The government has a responsibility to do anything and everything to protect us.
• So we must all self isolate.
• We must undermine normal social relationships.
• We must lock down the economy.

Three months into the pandemic and still no-one really knows how long it will last. No one knows whether people will accept social lockdown for any extended length of time. No one knows whether it will lead to serious mental health problems, mass disaffection, or whether there will be rioting in the streets. No one knows what it will do to the economy, to our jobs. No one knows what it will do to our children's education. And so on.

We are on a journey into the unknown - courtesy of the conventional medical science.

Government and Media are doing what medical science tells us to do. They are the 'experts'. No-one is allowed to challenge their wisdom. What medical science says is sacrosanct, unchallengeable.

Indeed, I suspect that the current state of fear and panic is such that many people, indeed most people, will not want to read this! They will find such a contrary message hard to accept. When a message is repeated often enough, however irrational the message, people will believe it, especially when they are not 'experts' in the field. This is not surprising perhaps - it is the basis of all advertising and promotion. We tend to believe what we are told to believe.

The message we are receiving about the coronavirus epidemic, the only message we are getting, is one of fear, enough to make most people hysterical with panic. If conventional medicine wanted us to panic, to be hysterical, it has succeeded. We are doing things we would not volunteer to do in normal circumstances. There is a lack of cool, rational thinking. There is no suggestion that we should not self-isolate, that we should not close down or personal and social lives, or put our economy at serious risk. TINA rules - There Is No Alternative.

It is certainly a fact that pharmaceutical medicine has no viable response to this (or indeed any other) virus, either preventative or treatment. It has openly admitted as much. So perhaps the only thing they can do is to get us to panic. It is better to stress how awful the virus is than to admit they can do nothing about it.

And the conventional medical establishment has demonstrated that it is sufficiently powerful, and influential, to control the government, and ensure that the mainstream media does not do its job - to delve, to question, to investigate. The result is that there has been no discussion about the 'closing down' message from anyone. The mainstream media does not challenge medical 'experts' who predict imminent doom. People have accepted that they must isolate, close down their social lives, act in a way that will probably impoverish them, and make us reliant on government largesse.

Everyone should panic - and panicking we most certainly are.

Few questions are being asked about where this policy is leading. Is the personal, social and economic cost of conventional medical policy commensurate with the size of the threat we face from the virus? We are being asked to do things we have never done before, never, in human history. Stop socialising with other people; don't visit sick and elderly relatives. Don't get married. Close down every imaginable recreational pursuit.

How long will it last? How long will people be willing to comply? 3 months, 6 months, to the end of the year, perhaps sometime in 2021.

We all have to wait. The only prospect is that the pharmaceutical industry will soon come up with a vaccine. And vaccines are, of course, the answer to all health problems. This has been stated regularly, and it has gone unquestioned since the start of the pandemic!

So are there alternatives? Do we have choices? Does what we are doing make any rational sense? Is the policy of medical science a commensurate response to the threat?

Yet there is a further question. Why should the conventional medical establishment want us to panic in such a way? Panic arises whenever there is a sense of helplessness, an inability to control a situation that threatens us. And this is the position conventional medicine now finds itself in, and they don't like it.

After all they always present themselves as health 'experts', a medical system that has the answers to ill-health, that is overcoming sickness and disease. Regular readers of this blog will know that the reality is different. So when faced with coronavirus, when they realise they have no effective treatment, they panic. It's a natural reaction. Their reputation is at stake. And all they can do is to get us to panic by over-emphasising the threat to our health, and appear to be doing something, anything, even if it is to wash our hands, in response to it.

So whilst pharmaceutical medicine may appear confident, it is anything but confident. It is scared stiff. And they have scared our government into abject fear. And persuaded the mainstream media not to go 'off message'. 

At no other time, in all human history, has any government, in any part of the world, been prepared to put normal social relationships, and our economy, at such risk. Yet of course we are lucky.

• If we were birds we would be culled. 
• If we were cattle we would be slaughtered. 
• If we were trees we would be felled.

Or maybe we should start looking at natural medical therapies,

 to see what they can do to save us from complete insanity.

Five million drug errors kill or seriously harm Britons every year. Be safe. Save the NHS. Insist on Homeopathy.

This is the headline of WDDTY News yesterday (24th June 2020). The article says this has been discovered by "a shocking new report". The problem with this, however, is that shocking as this may be, it is certainly not 'new'. It is the 'every year' of the title that is pertinent here. This is just the latest report (which politicians, government, mainstream media, and the conventional medical establishment will go out of their way to ignore. So what is the latest evidence on an on-going story?

               "Researchers have identified 237 million medication errors that happen every year in England, and 2 percent of these—4.74 million—do serious harm to the patient, and a further 86 million errors are 'clinically significant', say researchers from the University of Manchester. Serious harm ranges from life-threatening adverse reactions to death."

This is NOT shocking. It is routine. It happens every year. Researchers study it year by year and come up with the same conclusion. Yet nothing changes. I wrote this in March 2018, the result of another WDDTY News report. 

               "22,000 people die every year in England as a result of medical errors. How many more die from pharmaceutical drugs that are NOT given in error?"


In this piece I asked whether patient harm is caused by 'drug errors', or by the operation of a system of medicine that is inherently dangerous. And if these are the 'errors' that have been admitted, how much more harm is being caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that go unreported and unrecognised.

So I ask the same questions again!

I also ask about the ongoing silence, the apparent unwillingness of the conventional medical establishment to do anything about it.

The Precautionary Principle?
It is not applied to conventional medicine, who can continue harming patients, year by year, without anything changing to protect patients.

First do no harm?
This is part of the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors sign up to, but which is simply ignored, year by year, by doctors who continue to prescribe the same dangerous pharmaceutical drugs.

               "Around 80% of deaths from the errors are the result of gastrointestinal bleeds from NSAIDs (non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs) such as aspirin and the blood-thinning agent, warfarin."

The research found similar rates of 'error' being reported in the USA, and in other European countries. The problem is, apparently, has even been acknowledged by the World Health Organization (WHO). And it costs the UK'S NHS about £98m a year.

Yet, year by year, nothing is done. In any other industry there would be a major investigation, patients would be warned, and the practices that kill and harm millions of patient would have been banned.

And it's always the same drugs that are found to be causing the harm - NSAIDs; antiplatelet drugs, anti-epilepsy drugs, diabetes drugs; diuretics, inhaled corticosteroids (inhalers); and heart drugs, such as beta blockers.

And this year, next year, and every year, these drugs will continue to seriously harm, and kill patients until in time, more researchers will discover that drug 'errors' are killing and seriously harming patients - in yet another new and shocking report.

The solution will have to be a personal decision, as conventional medicine will not change.
We will ALL have to refuse to take these dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines; we must start saying 'No' to doctors. We have to insist on safe and effective medicine, and look for safer natural therapies, like homeopathy.

Be Safe. Save the NHS. Insist on Homeopathy.

Medical Science. The dishonesty continues - PubMed - the concealment of research data - next to useless as a scientific database and resource

The Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH) has discovered yet another strategy being used by the pharmaceutical medical establishment, with medical science, to keep the truth about health and medicine from us. Click on this link to see the full details of ANH's research into this. ANH says it has long been concerned about the concealment of research data "that prevents independent analysis and therefore scientific interpretation". They state that this means "clinical decisions and health policies are routinely made without full consideration of all relevant scientific data".

PubMed is the online National Library of Medicine database, owned and operated by the USA National Institutes for Health. It is the common starting point for evaluating biomedical literature, with PubMed claiming that its database comprises “... more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.” 

In its article, dated 17th June 2020, AHN discovered that PubMed is involved in concealing research data which will prevent independent scientific analysis/interpretation. This is serious.

               "..... PubMed is used by ... researchers, doctors, other clinicians, health policy makers, health journalists and even some citizens, including patients with serious diseases who are looking for answers and independent views of the science around their treatment options. Major public health decisions including those made by governments during this Covid-19 pandemic are based on science that is found in PubMed. It’s been the go-to engine for biomedical scientists for years – it is in many ways the Google of the biomedical world."

The detailed research can be found, in detail in the ANH article. Its conclusion was starkly ominous - "we've demonstrated that PubMed is next to useless as a database and resource for the kind of subject areas central to our mission and vision." ANH ponders on why this situation has come about, but noted that PubMed Central, a sister index, is funded by a list of private and international partners, at the top which is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

               "We simply don't know if this Foundation or any other interests were involved in the redevelopment of PubMed or the way in which PubMed is found by the internet search engines like Google."

Most alarming to me, personally, is that search engines other than Google are also complicit in this unethical scientific conspiracy, including DuckDuckGo, which is the search engine I usually use - but perhaps not for much longer now.

ANH are being characteristically tongue-in-cheek about 'not knowing' who is behind this! Everyone should realise that the wealthy pharmaceutical medical establishment, in all its many branches and guises, has been subverting the honesty of medical science for decades.

Coronavirus COVID-19. A failure of medical science that has resulted in social and economic mayhem. "Save the NHS" or "Save Lives"?

Governments around the world have admitted they have no policy on the COVID-19 pandemic. They have made it clear that they have been guided by "the science" - conventional medical science. Initially this advice was trite - washing hands et al - but worrying because it demonstrated that 'medical science' had no effective treatment.

A contagious and lethal virus, combined with a lack of effective treatment, produced panic. Doctors had nothing to offer their patients. So in time 'the science' became more extreme; it moved to social distance, and the 'lock down'. Now, several weeks into the epidemic, we are beginning to learn about the personal, social and economic distress and mayhem that is being caused by this policy. The policy was given a mantra.

"Save the NHS. Save Lines"

Interesting that order - with 'saving the NHS' taking priority. Patients are, apparently, not the first consideration. Initially it is the NHS, and the medicine that dominates it, that must be saved. Otherwise our GP's and hospitals would be overwhelmed with sick patients and unable to cope. The whole system might disintegrate.

This was undoubtedly a reasonable assumption. Readers of this blog will know that every year since 1913 I have been publishing blog entitled "NHS in Crisis". It happens every year, each winter. And now there was this pandemic. The NHS could not be allowed to fail: too many people would be asking "Why?" If it had not been for the coronavirus panic this year, and the excuse and justification to spend additional £billions, the NHS would almost certainly have been in deep crisis, and those 'why' questions would be asked.

So, once again, money has been generously, but foolishly poured into a medical system that admits it has no treatment for the most serioius epidemic we have faced for over 100 years.

So the priority was to save the NHS; and then to save lives. Except, of course, that the NHS could not save lives - it had already admitted it had no treatment for coronavirus COVID-19. So if there was no treatment perhaps, instead, we could be asked to praise the staff, who were putting their lives at risk by caring for us. We all did so, and quite rightly so. The primary response to this pandemic has been led by nurses, other hospital staff, residential and home care staff, and (where lockdown has allowed) by the family. It has certainly not been led by the doctors, and their medicine.

• So let's praise what needs to be praised - the staff and care workers, mostly on low, often minimum wages, providing sick people and families with whatever support they could, and putting themselves at risk doing so. Let's praise their courage and commitment; but not the medicine they are obliged to practice.

• Instead, let's question the failure of those who determined that 'there is no treatment' for this virus; usually well paid and influential health 'experts' and scientists, all part of the conventional medical establishment; who have been advising our governments.

Medical scientific advice has been not only trite and crass; but wrong. It has demonstrated that conventional medical science has come a long way during the 70-100 years of its increasing influence, and now its dominance. The journey has all been done in reverse! I suggest that my mother was more knowledgeable, a better scientist ( although she would have been amused at any such suggestion) as she did know better than medical science appears to know today.

• she, along with other parents, took me to a measles party - to ensure that I picked up the infection. Like most parents of her generation she understood the importance of a strong immune system, and the natural immunity that getting an infection gives the child.
• perhaps she, and her generation, were lucky - there were no vaccines to promote then.

During this entire crisis there has been little mention of the importance of our immune system. The absurd term 'herd immunity' has been mentioned; but this concept has more to do with persuading us all that we must get ourselves vaccinated "to protect others" than any close relationship to natural immunity.

How much easier it would have been if our medical system had focused on our ability, as individuals, to withstand and overcome infection. There would have been no need to panic, in a desperate attempt to kill an invisible enemy that could attack, and potentially kill, everyone. One moments reflection would have told us - no epidemic throughout world history has ever come close to doing that!

• We needed to do was to protect the vulnerable - not everyone. 
• It was the vulnerable who needed 'social distance' and all the other protections. 
• There was no need to lock down social life, and potentially wreck the world's economy.
• We needed to test our immune systems; not the presence or absence of a virus.

Instead of panic, the NHS could more usefully have spent time and money teaching all of us how to support and strengthen our immune systems.

• the food we should be eating, the vitamins and supplements we should be taking, how we should exercise, the lifestyle habits we should be avoiding.
• the natural medical therapies that had preventative treatments, and treatments for the disease itself.
• the use of homeopathy in Cuba, India, and elsewhere, could have been examined, and indeed offered to patients who wanted to use it for themselves. 
• patient outcome studies could have been conducted which assessed the value of natural therapies, for future reference.

But, of course, none of this fits with the objectives of the conventional/pharmaceutical medical establishment. A crucial part of their strategy is to preserve their monopoly within the NHS, and other national health services. What if these alternative treatments did work? What if they saved life? People must never know. Much better for them to use their dominance of medical 'science', their control of the NHS, their unrestrained influence over government, and their financial control of the mainstream media, to ensure that no-one knows about these things. Otherwise they might have to admit there was an alternative to the knowledge and expertise of conventional medical science.

• Much better to allow people to contract COVID-19,
• better to let them die without any knowledge of effective treatment,
• better to stop the routine treatment of cancer, kidney disease, et al, patients.
• better to close down social life,
• better to wreck the national economy,
• and the economy of the world.

Medical science, and the pharmaceutical medical establishment, have failed. What has happened to medicine during the last 70-100 years may be likened to allowing 'flat earthers' to dominate and control all navigation across the world. No one would ever get anywhere.

Conventional medicine, and the financial interests that control it, has been, and is leading us in completely the wrong direction. So perhaps the most important outcome of this coronavirus COVID-19 panic will be to recognise this - and to do something about it.

Coronavirus COVID-19. Will it lead to a re-assessment of a system of medical care that kills, or allows patients to die, destroys economies, and social life, as the result of an infectious disease?

Amidst the panic of coronavirus COVID-19, there is a recognition that nothing will ever be quite the same again. This infectious disease, and the way it has been dealt with by government, conventional medical health services, and the mainstream media, has certainly raised important issues - although unfortunately the most fundamental issues have not been identified, or even ascertained by any of these bodies.

A moment's reflection, the kind of reflection possible only if we are prepared to step outside conventional medical wisdom, will provide a very different picture to the one we are currently being presented with.

• the conventional medical establishment, with its monopoly position within most national health services around the world, has no effective treatment to offer. This has never been denied.
• it bemoans the fact that it has no preventative vaccine, which it sees as the only possible solution to the problem; although it seems confident it will have soon, most likely after the pandemic has run its course!
• government policy has responded to the pandemic by slavishly conforming to the best scientific advice, all of this emanating from the conventional medical establishment. Above and beyond this government appears to have no independent policy.
• the mainstream media has never seriously questioned this position, and have certainly not investigated any alternative explanation about what is happening. Meekly, it has never bothered to look outside the information government, and medical science, has told it.

The result is that there has been no independent thinking throughout the crisis, no alternative voice beyond what conventional medical science wants us to know. Medical science has dominated government thinking. It is totally dominant within mainstream medical services. And it dominates and controls the mainstream media. So everything we are being told comes from a single, unquestioned, and uninvestigated  source.

For many years I have wondered what pharmaceutical medicine would do if and when a serious infectious disease threatened humanity. I have watched what conventional medicine does when such diseases affects animals, and/or plant life.

• When cows and sheep contract Foot & Mouth the herds and flocks are slaughtered, usually in vast numbers; and this is called medical treatment!
• When a cow contracts TB it is slaughtered, along with the rest of the herd; and more recently the local badger population too. This is done in the name of medical treatment!
• When sheep contract scrapie there is no treatment available so they are usually destroyed too. Perhaps as an alternative to medical treatment!
• Avian flu outbreaks amongst domestic birds, chickens, turkeys, ducks, et al, is 'treated' by the culling entire infected flocks. This is the prescribed medical treatment!
• When a tree is diagnosed with a disease it is usually destroyed, chopped down. There is no medical treatment available!
• and so on, ad infinitum.

Conventional medicine is ruthless in its response to infectious disease, especially when it has no effective treatment - which unfortunately seems to be more often the case than not. So what would happen if an infectious disease, for which there was no conventional medical treatment, threatened humanity. How would medical science respond? Well, after COVID-19, we now know!

• Conventional medicine is prepared to spend any amount of taxpayers money to prevent the disease from spreading, to develop new vaccines, or to come up with drugs that have the smallest imaginable chance of having any impact on the disease.
• Conventional medicine is prepared to put at risk, and potentially to ruin entire national economies around the world.
• Conventional medicine is prepared to destroy people's lives and livelihoods, indeed, the very fabric of social life.
• Conventional medicine is prepared to allow people to die rather than look outside its own resources and territory for possible treatments.

More people are now prepared to speak out, still voices in the wilderness, stating that such a policy is ridiculous, senseless, and self-destructive.

And adherents of natural medicine, who espouse the importance of natural immunity, and maintaining health through strengthening our immune system, have look on incredulous at the non-sense of what is happening, the sheer absurdity of conventional medicine's fear of germs.

When considering the current state of affairs we must remember that it is the pharmaceutical medical system that claims to have defeated infectious diseases, from smallpox, to measles, mumps, rubella, and much else. Over the years it has successfully wrestled the credit for this achievement from vital public health policy, increased affluence, improved living circumstances, et al. The actual performance of conventional medicine has never matched their claims, and COVID-19, if it has done anything, has demonstrated that such claims are a lie.

Indeed, given the performance of conventional medicine in response to this epidemic it is no better, no more effective than it was 102 years ago - with the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.

Hitherto, as regular readers will know, my main concern about pharmaceutical medicine has been about chronic diseases, such as allergy, dementia, arthritis, asthma, autism, autoimmune disease, COPD, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, epilepsy, heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, and many, many others - including mental health conditions. They have all, at least in part, been caused by the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that conventional medicine have been prescribing to us now for decades.

Now, following COVID-19, acute disease has been highlighted as another cause for serious concern about the validity and usefulness of conventional medicine - and the urgent need to rethink our approach to health care.

After some 70-100 years of dominating health care services around the world pharmaceutical medicine has not been improved health - it has massively increased the amount of illness and disease from which we suffer.

• all chronic disease is now running at unprecedented epidemic levels, and increasing.
• every chronic disease is known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs and/or conventional medical treatment, not by allegation, but by reference to conventional medicine's own medical literature.
• there has been a long history of pharmaceutical drugs that have been withdrawn, or banned, following the harm they have caused to patients, often over decades.
• all currently used pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to have seriously damaging side effects, again referred to in conventional medical literature
• even former 'wonder' drugs, not least antibiotics, are failing, and will soon be worthless.

The situation will not improve until we completely rethink our understanding of health, what health is, our attitude to illness and disease, what illness and disease is, and where they come from. And most important, the way we can actively improve our wellness and well-being without resorting to toxic pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Central to doing this will be two things.

First, there must be a new focus on natural immunity, our immune systems, and how we can best keep them functioning in order to protect us from bacterial and viral infections. This alone would lead to a different approach to staying well, as so brilliantly outlined recently in this Arnica Parents Support Network leaflet, Ideas to Avoid Viral Infections and to Support Recovery naturally. Anyone who is interested in looking at what 'natural health' is all about should read this leaflet.

• No more chasing after invisible viruses, or trying to kill 'problem' bacteria; and being scared stiff that they might randomly attack us. Just the simpler, more straightforward task of ensuring we are all taking personal responsibility for our health, and that our body is ready to face the trials and tribulations of living in the real world.

Second, that medical intervention should not seek to second-guess our immune system, not to tinker and interfere with it, or close it down. All medical treatment should support the body in its primary task of keeping itself well, to cease using drugs to 'kill' pain, or to 'block' or 'inhibit' some natural bodily process. We must move to natural therapies which believe in the body's ability to maintain its own health, and to get better when it becomes sick; and when sick to use medical therapies that do not cause us harm.

• No more thinking that good health comes from a bottle of pills, or a vaccine injected into our bloodstream. Just the understanding that we have everything within us to protect us from illness, so long as our lifestyle choices maintains it rather than undermine it.

Many people have already arrived at this brave new world. Many more people are joining us every day.

And after this epidemic those numbers will only increase.

NHS Crisis (2019-2020). It gets worse each winter. But the real cause is never identified

The NHS winter crisis happens every year. I wrote about it first in 2011, and the subject has become a regular annual blog. The 2019-2020 season is nothing new, except that it has had two distinguishing features.

• The General Election of December 2019 saw all the main political parties falling over each other to promise NHS more and more £billions because the NHS was on its knees.
• The Coronavirus epidemic has drawn attention away from just how bad patient care has been during this winter.

My argument remains. It does not matter how much money is thrown at the NHS, it will always continue in crisis because it is monopolised by pharmaceutical medicine; and it is a medical system that is not making us better, it is making us sicker.

I will not repeat my argument here, or the evidence to support it here. If anyone wants to do so, and to trace this sorry story I suggest that you put in a search above - "NHS Crisis" - and that will bring up all my blogs written over the last decade on these crises.

It is BBC News that has come up with statistics supporting this year's sorry story, one which never changes, regardless of how much additional money is ploughed into the NHS. "Sickest NHS Patients 'face hours on trolleys'." They based their analysis on NHS England data.

               "Many of the most seriously ill patients are waiting for hours on trolleys and in corridors as the NHS struggles to find them beds, BBC research shows. Nearly a quarter of patients admitted on to wards during December and January in England faced delays of more than four hours before a bed could be found. It has created a backlog outside hospitals with patients brought in by ambulance facing long waits too."

The BBC stated that 199,000 patients had four-hour 'trolley waits' in hospital corridors after being seen in A&E (no mention about how long that wait was) and before a bed could be found, and that this was more than twice the numbers seen 4 years ago. In some hospitals 50% of patients had waited more than four hours.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is quoted saying the situation was unacceptable, that treating patients in this way was undignified, and put them at risk.

NHS England, speaking in their defence, said that extra money was being invested which would help hospitals recruit staff and cut waiting times. 

Indeed, there is always 'extra money' but a BBC graph demonstrates just how the problem has escalated since I first wrote about the NHS crisis in 2011. Then there was about 20,000 patients waiting in trolleys for over 4 hours. So in 8 years this number has grown ten-fold.

And, as usual, year by year, there is no analysis about why the crisis is happening; just concern this year the coronavirus epidemic was likely to make the situation a lot worse. Even the usual, routine excuses - under-funding, an ageing population - et al - are not to be found in the BBC article, although they will no doubt be trotted out again, when necessary.

So I repeat. The NHS crisis has nothing to do with funding, or an ageing population. As I have argued, at length, elsewhere, this is a medical failure. It is one of the clearest signs that pharmaceutical medicine, which dominates the NHS, is failing, not only in its inability to make sick people better, but actually making them sicker. The queues never get shorter - they get longer.

So no doubt I will return with another crisis bulletin for the winter of 2020-2021, with exactly the same message! 

The Quality of Medical Science. What does this BMJ campaign tell us?

The next time a doctor tell you that a pharmaceutical drug or vaccines is safe, ask them to read the British Medical Journal's (BMJ) campaign "to produce better evidence".

And the next time you are told the conventional medicine is 'evidence based', and supported by medical science, tell them about the BMJ's opinion on the quality of that science.

What follows are passages taken direcctly from the BMJ website.  It concerns the BMJ's campaign to produce "better medical evidence" for such claims. What the campaign proves, without any doubt, is that the conventional medical establishment are aware of the situation that has led to so much patient harm over the last 70 years, and demonstrates that the BMJ, at least, are trying to do something about it.

     "The BMJ believes that the design, conduct, and reporting of healthcare research should better serve the needs of patients and the public: better evidence leads to better healthcare. To produce better evidence the BMJ aims to:

     • Expand the role of patients, health professionals, and policy makers in research and healthcare
     • Increase the systematic use of existing evidence for better decision making
     • Make research evidence relevant, replicable, and accessible for healthcare professionals, patients,
  and the public
     • Take a stand on financial interests by reducing questionable research practices, bias, and conflicts 
of interests.

What are the problems with current research evidence?

Patients are being let down by serious flaws in the creation, dissemination, and implementation of 
medical research. Too many research studies are poorly designed or executed. Too much of the 
resulting research evidence is withheld or disseminated only piecemeal. As the volume of clinical 
research has grown the quality of evidence has often worsened, which has compromised medicine’s 
ability to provide affordable, effective, high value care for patients. There are many problems. 
In our editorial launching the manifesto we describe the following:

     • Results from half of all trials are never published, and positive results are twice as likely to be 
published as negative ones.

     • 85% of research spending currently goes to waste.

     • Over four fifths (86%) of a sample of Cochrane reviews did not include data on the main 
harm outcome.

     • A systematic review of 39 studies found no robust studies evaluating shared decision making 
strategies.

     • The drug industry has been fined for criminal behaviour and civil infringements, but little 
happens to prevent such problems occurring again.

     • Despite repeated calls to prohibit or limit conflicts of interests among authors and sponsors of 
clinical guidelines, the problem persists.

     • A third of scientists report questionable research practices, including data mining for statistically 
significant effects, selective reporting of outcomes, switching outcomes, publication bias, protocol 
deviations, and concealing conflicts of interest.

     • More than one in 10 authors and reviewers has first-hand knowledge of inappropriate adjustment, 
alteration, or fabrication of data. More than one in 20 admits having lied in authorship statements.

These flaws have been known about for many years. I wrote about them in my E-Book, 
"The Failure of Conventional Medicine".  Ben Goldacre wrote about them in his book, "Bad Pharma". 

So it remains to be seen if the BMJ campaign will make any difference on this long-standing problem.