Coronavirus COVID-19. Everyone has gone through lockdown. but ''Shielding' patients have had it much worse. So who are these people?

The madness of conventional medicine's response to coronavirus COVID-19 (and the government admits it is conventional medical science that is determining their policy) is that everyone has suffered lockdown, regardless of their personal health and fitness. If Natural Medicine had been directing government policy things would have been very different - lockdown policy would have been determined by an assessment of the strength of our immune systems. Only those people who have been described as 'shielded patients' would have been directed to lock down.

The reason is simple. It is these 'shielded' people who are most at risk of catching COVID-19, and most at risk of dying from the infection.

Everyone else could have been asked to to continue with their life normally. They could have been asked to take important self-protective measures, and be given information about how they could support and enhance their immune systems, which if robust would have been sufficient protection. In this way our economy would not have been damaged to the extent that it has - something we will learn more about in the coming months.

So who are these 'shielded patients'? And why do they need special treatment?

This UK Government website, 'Guidance on shielding and protecting people who are clinically extremely vulnerable from COVID-19', informs us exactly who they are.

               "This guidance is for people who are clinically extremely vulnerable, including children. It’s also for their family, friends and carers..... It’s for situations where a clinically extremely vulnerable person is living at home, with or without additional support. This includes clinically extremely vulnerable people living in long-term care facilities for the elderly or people with special needs."

It goes on to describe 'clinically extremely vulnerable people', and what is noticeable from this description is that these people are all on conventional medical treatment, and taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that have a harmful impact on natural immunity.

1. Solid organ transplant recipients (that is, people who are on immunosuppressant drug treatment to stop the immune system expelling the foreign organ).
2. People with specific cancers:
   • people with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy
   • people with lung cancer who are undergoing radical radiotherapy
   • people with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma who are at any stage of treatment
   • people having immunotherapy or other continuing antibody treatments for cancer
   • people having other targeted cancer treatments which can affect the immune system, such as protein kinase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors
   • people who have had bone marrow or stem cell transplants in the last 6 months, or who are still taking immunosuppression drugs
3. People with severe respiratory conditions including all cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and severe chronic obstructive pulmonary (COPD).
4. People with rare diseases that significantly increase the risk of infections (such as severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), homozygous sickle cell).
5. People on immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase risk of infection.
6. Women who are pregnant with significant heart disease, congenital or acquired.

So the last thing any one of us needs during this coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic is to be taking pharmaceutical drugs, particularly those that seek to interfere with our immune systems.

• It is natural immunity that protects us from infections
• The last thing any medical system should do is to interfere with our natural immunity
• And conventional medicine is the only medical therapy that does this

The panic surrounding this pandemic has been necessary not so much to protect 'us', but to protect conventional medicine (notably the NHS in the UK). It's really a reputation thing. It's not just that there is no conventional treatment for coronavirus, which is bad enough. It's because doctors don't want us to know it is 'tinkering' with our natural immunity with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that harm us, leaving us grotesquely vulnerable to any infection.

Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to have caused an epidemic of hundreds of new autoimmune diseases. So it should not take a serious viral epidemic, like COVID-19, to draw our attention to this.

We all need to be aware that conventional medicine is failing, it is making us more vulnerable to illness; it is making us sicker; and it is certainly not 'winning the war' against illness and disease as it so often claims. It is not only losing the battle - comprehensively. It is contributing to our sickness.

The NHS. A health system run for vested interests, not for patients

What is happening within the NHS, and other national health services around the world, does not make sense - unless and until you realise what is driving events. First, let's put various observations about the NHS out there for consideration. Similar observation apply to most health services around the world.

1. NHS Funding. The NHS is always struggling to stave off bankruptcy. However much money is poured into the organisation patient demand always outstrips resources. I have written about this recurring NHS crisis for many years - it has become one of my regular tasks every winter!
2. NHS doctors are on their knees. Indeed, physician burnout has become a global crisis, according to this Lancet article. There are not enough doctors, many of whom are retiring early because of the pressures, medical schools are having difficulty filling their training places, and the number of new doctors does not match the number of outgoing doctors. So the workload for those remaining increases. The average number of registered patients per doctor in England has risen to 2,087, an extra 56 people compared to last year. It has been rising like this for many years now. Registered patients in England increased by over 723,000 (1.2%) between July 2018 and July 2019, but the number of doctors fell by 441 between March 2018 and March 2019.
3. Patient Safety. It is recognised within the conventional medical establishment that this situation, which is happening around the world, is putting patient safety at serious risk. Doctors are warning that the increasing numbers of patients they have to see each day is 'concerning', and that this is putting patient safety under threat.
4. Homeopathy. At the same time the NHS is seeking to reduce (from next-to-nothing to nothing) the amount of money that it spends on homeopathy. The same in happening in France, where reimbursement for homeopathic treatment is set to end in 2021. And German health insurers are now being urged to do the same thing, threatening the livelihoods of 7,000 qualified homeopaths. Australia is doing the same, and no doubt there is, or there will be, pressure in many other countries to do likewise.
5. Many homeopaths run busy practices, but most homeopaths could increase the number of patients they see every week. So why are they not being asked to take up some of this burden, in the interests of the mental health of doctors, and the safety of patients?

This sequence of circumstances does not appear to be rational. And indeed it is not. No health service would face this situation and not take sensible common-sense action to relieve doctors of some of the burden they face. It is proof, if proof is still needed, that the NHS is run by, and for powerful vested interests, namely the conventional medical establishment, and in particular, the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Not only do they want to maintain their monopoly, they want to avoid another medical therapy from the recognition that this would give them.

So the NHS is not being run for patients, and moreover, there is evidence that this is the case. There have been innumerable studies that have shown clearly that patients love homeopathy - when they are able to get access to it. I outlined a number of these studies from a variety of countries in this blog. And there is also evidence that access to homeopathy provides good patient outcomes. One such study which looked into this, concluded as follows:

               "Patients seeking homoeopathic treatment had a better outcome overall compared with patients on conventional treatment, whereas total costs in both groups were similar.'

So if doctors offered their patients a referral to a homeopath the likely

outcome for both doctors and patients would be beneficial.

It will not happen though, not yet anyway. The failure, and eventual collapse of conventional medicine, will have to be much closer before such common sense decision making comes to the fore in the provision of the NHS, and national health services around the world. 

In the meantime, homeopathic treatment will increasingly become a treatment available only to those patients who can afford to pay for it - something which is entirely alien to the inaugural principles of the NHS.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". But do we know the truth about health care? And do we want to know the truth? Or are we just looking for reassurance? Is it true that many people don't care about how dangerous and ineffective conventional medicine is?

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

John 8:32

I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme on 26 November 2018. It was part of a series called 'Thought Cages", an episode called "Be successful or be loved? The NHS Agenda". It's message was amazing. Rory Sutherland, the presenter, began by asking what I thought was a silly question.

• Do people visit their doctor in order to get well?
• Or do they go in order to check that someone cares about them?

The programme sought to answer this strange question. Basically, it said that we, as patients, were seeking re-assurance, that someone is listening to us, that someone cares enough to take our illness seriously, and to treat us.

This motivation, the programme said, is hidden, buried deep inside us - it was called the 'Elephant in the brain'. We do not care so much how we are treated, just that we are treated. We are not looking for the best medicine, the medicine that provides the best outcome, the best life expectancy. How we are treated, medically, is less important than how we are treated, socially. It is not the quality of the treatment we care about, more the process of receiving it.

To begin with I was sceptical about the whole idea. Perhaps I did not want to believe it. After all, I spend a lot of my time trying to convince people the conventional medicine provides us with poor patient outcomes, that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are both ineffective and unsafe. But then, Sutherland gave this stunning example of the process at work.

Harold Shipman was a doctor convicted of killing 15 patients in 2000, and there seems little doubt that he killed many more. Yet his patients loved him. He treated them respectfully, he was friendly, and he was prepared to visit them at home. In the end it was not his patients that realised what he was doing, it was a taxi driver who noticed that he was losing a lot of patients. So he went to the police. Apparently, many of Shipman's patients did not change their doctor, they changed their taxi driver!

Is this why so many people are reluctant to abandon conventional medicine, despite the enormous harm it is doing, and has been doing to our health over the last 70 years and more? Aren't we looking for the best, most effective, and safest medicine. Are we unconcerned about the outcomes of the treatment we are given?

One contributor gave another example, a piece of research undertaken with patients who were about to undergo heart surgery. Would patients be prepared to pay a small amount of money to find out which surgeon had the lowest mortality rate. The study concluded that people were not interested in this. Very few agreed to pay. So the conclusion was that it is not medical competence we care about. The treatment we are given might kill us - but as long as we feel the doctor cares, and is doing the best he can, we are content.

People want to trust their doctor, and forget about everything else. We hand over responsibility. The outcome of the treatment is not important. There is research that shows most patients do not want to know about divergences in health care standards. Easy access to treatment, amenably offered, is more important. Do we like the doctor, do we warm to him or her.

It was, the programme suggested, better for the surgeon to be friendly than competent!

Unfriendly doctors lose patients, they will go elsewhere, presumably to other doctors where they receive a warmer welcome, a more positive response. The NHS is indeed measuring patient experience, and as a result producing league tables. These tables do not concern patient outcomes but the social experience of the patient. It is more about being treated courteously, a friendly staff, keeping waiting times as brief as possible.

In particular, research has demonstrated that people don't like waiting, they hate the uncertainty, the doubt whether anyone is ever going to see them. One strategy, adopted by airports apparently, is that we are now made to walk a couple of miles to the luggage carousel so that we do not have to wait! Hence the importance the NHS gives to waiting lists.

So, although conventional medicine is ineffective and unsafe, this is not how most people are judging it. The programme discussed whether patients were looking for expensive medicine (a medicine that is effectively bankrupting the UK's NHS), or a surgery waiting room with snazzy colour schemes, up-to-date magazines, and comfortable sofa’s. One research study asked patients whether they thought that ALL drugs should be available to them, regardless of cost, and even if they did not work. They did!

So presumably many patients also wanted to be given pharmaceutical drugs even if they caused disease, even if they killed patients. Patients, the programme said, show little interest in patient outcomes, little interest in mortality.

Patients were looking for reassurance. This also struck a bell for me. Most people, when they feel unwell, want to get better, but most importantly they want to know what is wrong with them. They want a diagnosis. I have often noticed this. "I feel so much better now that I have a diagnosis, now I know what is wrong with me". When it is pointed out that a diagnosis does not make them better, they still need safe and effective treatment, that is NOT what is important. Even if the diagnosis is that the patient has only 6 months to live it is reassuring. At least they know!

So forget safe treatment. Forget the dangers of treatment. Forget the ineffectiveness of treatment. As long as the experience of accessing treatment is good, as long as there is a good explanation, as long as access treatment is easy - that is what matters.

The programme ended with a remark that while £billions were being spent on health there appears to be little or no improvement in patient outcomes, in life expectancy. One contributor said that if USA health spending (the highest in the world) could be halved, and it would make little real difference to the nation's health.

The programme explained for me a little more about the irrationality of how we provide health services, something I have written about in depth before. If homeopathy is superior to conventional, drug-based medicine in terms of effectiveness, safety, cost and patient outcome it makes little difference. We have to understand that this is not necessarily what many people are looking for.

Yet I am not sure that this is the whole story. We are tricked into thinking we do not have to worry about the safety and effectiveness of conventional medicine.

• Governments promise us 'the best medicine available'. 
• The conventional medical establishment tell us that they are winning the battle against disease.
• Our doctors, in the main, are very friendly and kind, and we do believe that are trying to do the best for us, and certainly would not harm us. 
• The mainstream media plays its role in reinforcing, and failing to question all these messages.
• Television portrayals of conventional medicine frequently support these messages (something I will be blogging about very soon - have you noticed how many medical soap operas there are on television these days?)

So we trust our doctors and the medicine they give us. It is time for everyone to wise up. Yet to wise up means we have to start questioning everything we have been told about health throughout our lives. And that is not easy. But we need to do it before conventional medicine makes us sick, and sicker, and then kills us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homeopathy, and other traditional medical therapies, is just bad business. They make patients better, so they are no longer a source of income!

               "Drug companies are avoiding developing drugs that work well especially if they provide one-off cures because they will lose on-going revenue."

               "Biotech companies innovating in the field of healthcare are struggling to get investment if their products are too effective (even with sky-high pricing) and provide an actual cure for disease."

These are two of the amazing conclusions reached by Milton Packer MD, Distinguished Scholar in Cardiovascular Science at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. This Alliance for Natural Health article says that he is "a top-level cardiologist and clinical researcher". As such he is a member of the Conventional Medical Establishment, someone who does not usually speak negatively about the pharmaceutical industry. Apparently, it is Packer who has drawn up and tested the heart failure protocols used throughout the Western world, and he is "a firm advocate of ARNi drugs for heart failure".

During the years I practiced homeopathy I often said that, as a business, alternative medicine was its own worst enemy! Patients would consult with me about their illness, I would treat them, and some 70-80% would get significantly or entirely better. As they left, I would write up the case notes, and smile....

"There goes another customer!"

But this is what healers do, and have always done. They see their task as making people better, and the satisfaction of the job is that patients DO get better, and they CAN get on with their lives - without need of further medical attention. It is, though, bad for business!

The pharmaceutical industry realised this a long time ago, and this is what Milton Packer is saying. They are not interested in developing 'wonder' cures, 'miracle' drugs - this is just the propaganda needed to sell more drugs, more vaccines. They know that the best business strategy is to keep patients sick, and not make them better!

Read this Health Impact News article, "The Drugging of American Seniors: Big Pharma Profits Depend on Sick Seniors" which is making exactly the same point.

               "..... it is estimated that about one out of every four Americans over the age of 55 are currently being prescribed cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, in spite of the evidence that these drugs do not prolong lifespans, and have very serious side effects. Studies have confirmed that dementia, especially early onset dementia, is often caused by too many pharmaceutical drugs."

The article goes on to outline the long list of drugs known to cause dementia (also outlined here), the strategy of expanding prescribing guidelines to get more healthy people on drugs like Statins, and drugs to lower blood pressure, and the side effects (that is, illness) they cause as a result. The outcome of taking drugs are serious and inevitable.

• Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines all have serious health side effects, most of which need treating with other drugs, which have side effects, which need treating - and so on.
• It is the ineffectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that is causing the continual crisis in the UK's NHS, and other national health services. Patients just do not get better.
• It is the adverse drug reactions, which I call DIE's (or Disease-Inducing-Effects), that have caused the epidemic levels of chronic disease, of all kinds, that we have been experiencing for decades.

Apparently Goldman Sachs have also recognised this problem, and as a result they are reluctant to invest in trendy new 'gene therapy' research. They think it might be too successful, and they have asked the question

"Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" 

The conclusion is clear. Conventional medicine is an illness service, not a health service. The NHS, which is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry, is in constant crisis because it is failing to make patients better, its treatments are actually making them sicker - because this is a better business model!

If the NHS, and other health services, were dominated by homeopathy rather than by conventional, drug-based medicine, there would be no ongoing NHS crisis, there would not be patients with long-term, incuarable sickness, or patients who need to take drugs for a lifetime, and disease would not be increasing so rapidly, year on year.

Patients do always have a choice of medical therapy, and it is important that people who are sick, and those who are well, begin to exercise this choice. Their health depends upon it.

Patients love Homeopathy! Big Pharma, the Conventional Medical Monopoly, and the NHS hate it!

Patients love homeopathy, when they are able to access it. This has been demonstrated over and over again in clinical outcome trials, and observational studies, conducted around the world. In these patients were asked whether they enjoyed and/or benefitted from the experience of being treated with homeopathy for their illness. Here are just a few of the studies.

2000. Carlisle, Cumbria
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.518.4702&rep=rep1&type=pdf
An  audit  was  conducted  of  829  consecutive  patients  presenting  for  homeopathic treatment  of  a  chronic  illness,  conventional  treatment  had  either  failed,  plateaued  in effect, or was contraindicated by adverse effects, age or condition of the patient. Of  the  829  patients,  503  (61%)  had  a  sustained  improvement  from  homeopathic treatment, of these:

• 357 patients (43%) had an excellent response;
• 146 patients (18%) had a good response;
• 6 patients (0.8%) became worse.

2001. Liverpool, England

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11479784

An Outcome Survey carried out at Liverpool Regional Department of Homoeopathic Medicine between 1 June 1999 and 31 May 2000. If found that overall 76.6% of patients reported an improvement in their conditions since starting homeopathic treatment, while 60.3% scored +2,+3 or +4 on the scoring system used. 52% of patients were able to reduce their conventional medication.

2005. Bristol Homeopathic Hospital, England
https://www.britishhomeopathic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/JACM_11_5_p793-798.pdf
The aim of this study was to assess health changes seen in routine homeopathic care for patients
with a wide range of chronic conditions . It was was a 6-year outpatient study. Over 70% of patients with chronic diseases, often of many years duration, said they had improved with the homeopathic treatment. 6,544 patients were involved in the study and 70.7% reported positive health changes with 50.7% recording their improvement as better or much better.

2005. Sheffield, England
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15970019

Sheffield's National Health Service community menopause clinic ran a homeopathy service from 1998. The service provided alternative treatment option for those women who cannot take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), did not want it, found it ineffective, or were advised to stop it. Patients received homeopathic treatment for up to six sessions, and patients referred between 2001 and 2003 were involved in this study. Patients reported 'significant benefit' from the service, with the greatest benefit seen in patients reporting headaches, vasomotor symptoms, emotional/psychological symptoms and tiredness/fatigue as their primary symptoms.

2005. Norway
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15751329
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the patient reported effects of homeopathic care 6 months after first consultations. It found that 7 out of 10 patients visiting a Norwegian homeopath reported "a meaningful improvement" in their main complaint 6 months after the initial consultation.

2006. UK NHS Research
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17015190
Over a 6 month period, 14 homeopathic physicians collected clinical and outcomes data in their practice setting. Almost 80% of the 958 patients who had two or more appointments reported  a 'positive outcome'.

2008. Germany and Switzerland
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2630323/
In a multi-centre study, information was collected from 3,079 first-time patients from 103 different centres across Germany and Switzerland. The patients were observed over an 8 year period, and it was found that

• On average, disease severity decreased dramatically and improvements were sustained
• Those who were sickest at the beginning of the study often noticed the greatest improvement
• Three in ten patients stopped treatment because of major improvement
• Mental and physical quality of life scores increased substantially
• Children improved more rapidly than adults

The conclusion of the study was that the findings demonstrated that patients who seek homeopathic treatment were likely to improve considerably, although this effect must not be attributed to homeopathic treatment alone, and that the effects persisted for 8 years.

2008. Switzerland
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/8/52/abstract
This study was conducted by the Swiss government. It main objective was to investigate patient satisfaction and perception of side effects in homeopathy compared with conventional care in a primary care setting. The conclusion reached was that overall patient satisfaction was significantly higher in homeopathic than in conventional care. Homeopathic treatments were perceived as a low-risk therapy with two to three times fewer side effects than conventional care

2008. Northern Ireland
http://www.australiannaturaltherapistsassociation.com.au/downloads/news/2009/SMR-Report_CAM-Pilot-Scheme.pdf
This was a study undertaken by the Northern Ireland Government following a pilot study in which patients were allowed access to a variety of CAM therapies. The study involved 713 patients and found that alternative and complementary therapies offered significant health benefits for patients, and savings in government healthcare costs. Many therapies, such as acupuncture, chiropractic, osteopathy, reflexology, massage and aromatherapy were used, but homeopathy did the best of all.

2008. British Homeopathic Hospitals
Five_hospital_study_2008.pdf
In a pilot study published in 2008, data from 1,602 follow-up patient appointments at all five NHS homeopathic hospitals were collected together over a one month period. At just their second homeopathic appointment, 34% of follow-up patients reported an improvement that affected their daily living. For patients at their sixth appointment, the corresponding improvement rate was 59%.

2011. Germany
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2958565/?tool=pubmed
This postal survey was sent to parents in 2004 in collaboration with ... the German Childhood Cancer Registry). The study included all parents in Germany with a child under the age of 15 years diagnosed in 2001 with one of the diseases registered and systematically recorded by the GCCR. The conclusion of the study was that homeopathy is the most frequently used complementary therapy in pediatric oncology in Germany, that most parents had used homeopathy before the cancer, and would further recommend homeopathy to others in a similar situation.

2012. Dorset NHS, England
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22226315
A study at the Dorset NHS Community Homeopathy Clinic led to 84% of patients experiencing an improvement in their health with 81% saying it was due to the homeopathy. A wide variety of conditions were seen, the greatest in incidence being depression, anxiety and grief. iii

2014. Lanarkshire NHS, Scotland
http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/Involved/consultation/homoeopathy/Documents/NHS%20Lanarkshire%20Review%20of%20Homoeopathy%20Services%20Final%20Consultation%20Report.pdf
This was a public consultation exercise following a proposal to stop referring patients to the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital. In response to the question “Should NHS Lanarkshire refer patients to the Centre for Integrative Care (Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital), 80.6% of the responses of nearly 6,000 people was 'Yes'. It was an overwhelming vote in support of homeopathy.

The decision, typical of the conventional medical establishment, was to stop referring patients to the Homeopathic hospital!

2018. India
https://www.homeobook.com/90-people-trust-homeopathy-imrb-international-study/
This study was conducted in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Kolkata. It found that 90% of people perceived homeopathy as a trusted form of treatment, and its usage is higher than any other form of treatment. Among homeopathy users, 91% were satisfied with the treatment and 93% were willing to recommend homeopathy to others.

And it is catching too! In March 2018, one regional Indian government, where homeopathy is offered to patients, reported that there was a rise of 50% in the number of people seeking homeopathy treatment in the past five years.

There are many, many more of these studies. Whenever it is offered, wherever it is available, patients like homeopathy, and benefit from it. Yet everywhere homeopathy is under attack, not only from the conventional medical establishment, but from the mainstream media too. Wherever public money is being spent on homeopathy within national health service provision there are moves to stop it, regardless of whether patients want it or not.

What this demonstrates is that it is only the conventional medical establishment, and the powerful pharmaceutical lobby that dislikes homeopathy, and want desperately to restrict our access to it. You don't really need to ask why, do you? They are protecting their vested interests, their dominance in national health services in Britain, the USA, Australia, and most other countries around the world.


POST SCRIPTS
2017. More evidence from this German survey. It showed that 70% of German patients were satisfied, or very satisfied, with the efficacy of homeopathy. The German population believed that health insurance companies should cover and reimburse homeopathic treatments.

 

2021. Two more studies from Germany that show the patients love homeopathy, when they give it a chance.

Does Conventional Medicine prefer patients to die rather than refer them to Homeopathy?

Does conventional medicine prefer patients to die rather than refer them to Homeopathy?

Does conventional medicine prefer patients to suffer rather than offer them another treatment?

This might appear to be an extreme question, perhaps even a silly one to some people. Yet any cursory examination of conventional medical practice has to answer with a clear and definite "Yes".

So let's examine the evidence. During the past few months I have been writing my Why Homeopathy? e-book, which seeks to compare conventional with homeopathic treatment of a variety of illnesses and diseases. Although when setting out on the project I knew that conventional medicine had little to offer when compared with homeopathy, I did not expect to find, time and time again, illness after illness, that conventional medicine frequently and openly states

• that it does not know what causes a particular illness or disease
• and that they have no treatment for so many of these!

On each page of the book I always use the NHS Choices website to ascertain what conventional treatment is for each of the illnesses I research. This is a highly reputable agency within the UK's conventional medical establishment so its descriptions are authentic, definitive statements.

• ADHD. "there is no cure for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder".
• Ankylosing Spondylitis. “There is no cure for ankylosing spondylitis..."
• Arthritis. "Osteoarthritis cannot be cured...."
• Autism. "There is no cure for the condition...."
• Blepharitis. "The condition cannot usually be cured...."

And so it continues, for an amazing number of illnesses that have now been covered in 'Why Homeopathy?'. All conventional medicine can claim to do for so many of these conditions is to enable the patient to live with it, or to treat specific symptoms, or to provide pharmaceutical drugs, with all their inherent dangers, for the rest of our lives.

Given that homeopathy can treat and cure almost any condition I was surprised to discover the extent of this failure. But then I began to wonder about more deadly diseases, ones that ended, inevitably, in the death of the patient? I cast my mind back to a situation that occurred soon after I had qualified as a homeopath. A man had contracted Rabies, and this made national news headlines. This is what I wrote about the situation soon afterwards.

A Case of Rabies

I remember in about 2002 listening to news story about the man in Dundee who contracted Rabies from a bat. He was treated in hospital, presumably by conventional medicine, and it was reported that 'there was no cure' for this condition, but they were making him "as comfortable as possible".

I wrote to the Department of Health asking whether anyone within the health service in Dundee had bothered to see whether there was any traditional therapy for the condition, and in particular, whether they had contacted a homeopath in the area. I pointed out that homeopathy treats 'like with like' using substances in high dilution/potency, and that the remedy Lyssinum was made from the saliva of a rabid dog.  I said that, if asked, any homeopath could have tried this remedy, or indeed several others used by homeopaths for the treatment of this disease.

The response I received was that was a matter of patient confidentiality, and the could not give me the information I required.

The man’s death was announced a few days later.

It is extremely unlikely that any homeopathic treatment was requested or tried in this case, despite the fact that homeopathy is used regularly to treat rabies in Eastern Europe, and elsewhere in the world.

The only assumption I could draw then, and now, was that when people contract illnesses that conventional medicine cannot cure, absolutely no effort is made to check with other medical therapies about whether they are able to treat the condition – even when, as in this case, death was the outcome!

There are probably not many people in Britain who die of rabies, but there are many serious illnesses and diseases that do kill patients, many of them conditions for which conventional medicine has no successful treatment.

• Cholera, where treatment is limited to oral rehydration.
• Haemophilia. "There is no cure for haemophilia..."
• and many others.

In addition, there are many other deadly conditions that are only treated with antibiotic drugs, resistance to which is rapidly becoming total. Or treated with drugs with dangerous side effects. When this happens, the conventional medical establishment just throw in the towel.

• Doctors tell us that an illness is 'terminal', that the patient will die. 
• There is nothing further that can be done for them.

As I have often said, such statements mean only that there is nothing further conventional medicine can do for the patient. So when this happens, do conventional doctors refer patients on to other medical therapies, such as homeopathy? Never. As with the man who contracted rabies and died, patients with terminal illness are left to die. There is an assumption that if conventional medicine cannot cure an illness, no-one else can!

This is lethal medical arrogance! They might be correct, after all we all die, eventually, of something. And no medical therapy can save everyone from everything at all times. Yet homeopathy has the distinct advantage of recognising the principle of 'treating like with like'. So to make a homeopathic remedy with the saliva of a rabid dog is a potential cure for rabies. But apparently it is not one that conventional medicine is prepared to offer its patients.

In fact, there are several remedies that homeopaths have used for the treatment of rabies, and some of these remedies are outlined in the Dr Makkar Family Clinic website.

For any doctor, or any medical system, to claim that they have a monopoly on effective medical treatment, for any illness, is unacceptable. For anyone to do so, especially when they realise that they have nothing else to offer a patient, especially when that patient will die, is inexcusable. 

Nor is it just death. It is also conditions that cause constant, permanent discomfort and pain. It is conditions that patients have to suffer from, for a lifetime, without the prospect of relief. Maybe there is nothing further that conventional medicine can offer for these patients, but quite clearly it is not prepared to offer anything else, even when that 'something else' might be more successful.

Perhaps especially if that 'something else' might be more successful. Conventional medicine never offers itself up for comparison. It has a dominant role in most health services around the world. If homeopathy did, actually, cure a case of rabies, when conventional medicine couldn't what would this tell people? It is best that people are allowed to die!

Yet this is what conventional medicine does, throughout the world. They tell us that their medical system is the only one based on 'science'. They tell us they are winning the 'war' against disease. They announce new wonder drugs, miracle cures, almost every week. It is as if conventional medicine cannot admit failure, or even take a chance that another medical therapy might be able to do something they cannot do! So patients suffer and die without any thought of referring them on.

What patients want of their doctors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Informed Consent and Homeopathy

Conventional medicine usually fails to provide patients with sufficient information about the effectiveness and safety of their treatments, and so fails to provide patients with a situation in which they can give their 'informed consent' to medical treatment. So what information should Homeopaths give to patients to ensure they are able to give their 'informed consent'. As 'the Black Duck' (a medical fundamentalist, supporter of conventional medicine) said, in response to my previous blog:

          "Perhaps you might like to tell us how homeopaths tackle the tricky issue of informed consent? Do you set out some of the controversial aspects of homeopathy, the current lack of understanding of how homeopathy might work, and so on? Do you allow patients to make their own informed decisions on the back of this information, or do you make that decision for them?

Most new Homeopathy patients fit into one of two categories. Some arrive at an early stage of their illness because they have already decided that they do not want to go through the conventional medicine route of drug-based treatment. Others have used conventional medicine, some for many years, and found that their health has not improved, or has gradually declined. In neither category can the homeopath take for granted that the patient knows enough about their illness, and its treatment by homeopathy, to ensure that they can make an 'informed choice' about it.

What do you know about homeopathy?

This opening gambit is probably a sensible one in any initial homeopathy interview as it will ascertain just where the patient is in terms of his/her knowledge and understanding. And it is always important to start from this point rather to make any assumptions. Increasingly, I am finding that potential patients have already done considerable research into homeopathy, and/or have heard about it from former patients who have been treated successfully. But nevertheless the question remains important. What patients say in response to it will determine what the homeopath needs to say to enable them to made an 'informed choice' about proceeding with homeopathy.

How does homeopathy work?

The Black Duck feels that this is important. Actually, for most patients, it is not important! Indeed, it is probably not important for patients who seek help from any medical discipline. Patients know that they are ill, and that they want to get better. Most conventional doctors would be hard-pressed to explain how their drugs are supposed to work! And it is not my experience that patients want to sit through a long, philosophical lecture on the working mechanism of any particular medical therapy!

So I usually keep the explanation (or answer) to this question quite brief, mentioning the homeopathic principle of 'treating like with like', and briefly describing 'remedy pictures', and 'symptoms of illness', and the importance in Homeopathy of matching the two together. If patients want to ask further questions about this (and most don't) I will try to provide them with answers, based on my understanding.

However, one important point should be made in response to this question. This concerns the nature of the healing process, and how this will be driven by the body, and not by the homeopathic remedy. All the remedy does is to seek to assist the body to do so - it will not do so in its own right. Remedies are not 'wonder cures', all they do is to 'nudge' the body towards its self-healing task.

In addition, every patient should be told that homeopathy works best when it is used as part of a 'holistic' strategy, which stresses the importance of good diet, exercise, and other life-style factors. 

Primarily, most patients want to know about two things. Is homeopathy an effective treatment for their condition or illness? And how safe is it?

Safety

I usually begin with the latter - safety. I tell them that homeopathy is safe, and will not cause 'side-effects', 'adverse reactions', or indeed, cause disease or death. To support this, I will give a brief description of how remedies are made - by serial dilution and succussion. I may then tell them about the 'mass suicide' demonstrations undertaken by 'homeopathy denialists', like 'the Black Duck', in order to show that remedies cannot harm patients in the same way as Big Pharma drugs. I will then affirm that if, together, we arrive at the wrong remedy it will do absolutely no good whatsoever - but likewise it will do no harm!

Effectiveness

It is then quite easy to move on to discuss effectiveness. I have always felt it important to tell patients that in order to be effective, a correct or 'similar' remedy has to be found. If such a remedy is found there will be some measure of improvement in the condition or illness. If it is not there will be no improvement. At this stage I always feel that it is important to manage expectations. There are no guarantees. This is especially important, perhaps, when a patient has arrived after homeopathy has cured or successfully treated a friend or relative (the source of most new referrals).

The Working Partnership

This quickly introduces another vital piece of information the patient needs to know about homeopathy, that the treatment process needs to be a partnership, and that it is not an 'expert-client' relationship. Although the Homeopath may have all the training and knowledge needed to determine a remedy that is 'similar', he/she can only arrive at this if the patient is able to openly, honestly and with insight, explain and describe their symptoms. 

This means that the patient is a vital part of the process. Even the most skilled and experienced homeopath has to depend on the patient for the treatment to be effective. It is a partnership.

Normally I will also tell patients that I am likely to ask some strange, and sometime intimate questions, and that these questions will often appear to have little relationship to the illness or disease being treated (at least, not in conventional terms).

In my experience, homeopathy works best when it is conducted within a professional relationship that is open, honest and transparent. And I know of no reason why the homeopath-patient relationship should be based on anything else!

Qualifications

It is always important for 'non-doctor' homeopaths, like myself, to explain that we are 'homeopaths' and not 'medical doctors' - that, for instance, we do not diagnose disease - that our skills are about matching the patients' symptoms of illness with remedies. I will usually tell patients that if they tell me anything that suggests that a formal diagnosis is necessary, or advisable, I will ask them to see their GP.

Do they wish to continue on the basis of this information?

At this point, I feel it is important for Homeopaths to ask the question - do they wish to continue? Often, this question is asked and answered during an initial telephone, or email enquiry. However, in my experience, few people who have bothered to ask these questions, when given these answers, have then decided to decline treatment. Most are content with the explanations given, and genuinely keen to proceed at this stage.

And in response to 'the Black Ducks' implied criticism, I don't know of any patient who has been forced to accept Homeopathy. Nor am I aware of any decision that I, or any other homeopath, 'make on behalf of patients'. 

Perhaps I can remind him that most patients who choose Homeopathy pay for it privately. This is quite different to the approach most patients find within the NHS: "you are ill, we are only going to offer you conventional drug-based treatment, and we are not going to tell you much about it"!

Providing the remedy.

I will always tell the patient about the remedy I would like them to take (I don't think I have ever told a patient to 'take a remedy' - I have always said 'I would like you to take this remedy'). Normally I will tell the patient what the remedy is, share some of the key symptom that it is known to deal with, and tell the patient why I feel this is important in their case. 

I will also tell the patient that if, after taking a remedy, the symptoms get worse (what we call an aggravation) to contact me in order to discuss the situation, and what to do about it.

Thereafter, the process of homeopathic treatment is concerned with the patient and homeopath working closely together, discussing changing symptoms, modifying the potency of remedies, and moving to other remedies when necessary.

Conclusion.

Providing the patient with this information, honestly and openly, enables them to give their 'informed consent' to Homeopathic treatment. And as we have seen, Informed Consent is also important to the very process of providing patients with homeopathic treatment.  So it is not 'tricky' to do so, as 'the Black Duck' suggests. It is actually quite easy, and essential to the process of healing.

Of course, it is true that providing this information to patients is easier for homeopaths as we have nothing to hide. Our remedies do not cause 'adverse reactions', disease or death. Our treatments do not involve potentially dangerous chemicals, invasive surgical procedures, or dangerous X-Rays or Radiation.

Homeopathy works alongside the body, helping it to achieve what it usually does quite naturally - keeping us healthy. Homeopathy has an easy, straight-forward and honest message that most patients, when they hear it, will understand and readily accept.

Informed Consent - the Dark Heart of Conventional Medicine

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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