Why is Public Trust in Conventional/Pharmaceutical Medicine Waning?

• Could the under-performance of drug-based treatments (ie, people don't get better), and the rising epidemic of chronic disease (ie, linked to serious adverse drug reactions), be responsible?

  For over 100 years we have been living in the hope (even the expectation) that ‘scientific’ medicine would successfully overcome the threat and personal tragedy of disease. Epidemics of infections of influenza, measles, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, et al, pervaded the 19th century, and were massively destructive in post-industrialised societies. They killed thousands and conventional medicine at the time (and since) had no treatment that dealt with them adequately.

  Yet by the early 20th century science seemed that it might be the answer. Just as it had given us the wonders of the internal combustion engine, flight, new means of telecommunication, photography and film, and much more, it was not unreasonable for people to assume that ‘scientific’ medicine would soon develop new drugs and vaccines that would vanquish the scourge of infectious disease.

  This expectation was brilliantly supported by the propaganda of pharmaceutical companies, and the growing medical establishment that it created. Medicine, we were told, was going to win the battle against illness and disease.

  So for the last 100+ years medical science has been the great hope. It seemed initially to be building on this confidence with the development of new drugs, like antibiotics. Yet most of all it has consistently and confidently paraded the development of new treatments - that would be available within the next 5-10 years. Yet always we have had to wait rather longer. 

  It was largely on this promise pharmaceutical medicine become the dominant feature of modern medicine throughout the developed world. Other medical therapies, including herbal medicine and homeopathy, were sidelined, dismissed as old-fashioned, irrelevant in the modern world of scientific medical advance. It would be drugs that would overcome disease - we just had to be patient!

  The debate over the origins and causes of infectious disease appeared to be settled too. According to Pasteur they were the result of germs, bacteria and viruses, and the pharmaceutical industry would soon be able to control these dreadful enemies with drugs that would kill them. Later we were sold the idea that other health factors, considered important with little evidence, could be controlled too, like cholesterol, blood pressure, pain, et al. Drugs developed to control them were seen to be the future of medicine.

  And this optimism seemed to be supported by improved health. 19th century epidemics were no longer happening. Surely this demonstrated the success of medical science? 

  Yet it became clear, to those who examined the history, and questioned the claims of the pharmaceutical medical establishment, that improving health had been brought about by other factors. These included greatly improved living standards, more progressive public health policies like better housing, cleaner water supply, better sanitation, et al. Whilst this provided a more coherent explanation for the spectacular decline of infectious disease than any effective pharmaceutical drug or vaccine available during this decline.

  Unfortunately, the brilliance of pharmaceutical propaganda successful convinced us that it was drugs and vaccines that we had to thank, not public health policies. It was Pharma that had freed us from deadly infections. So the optimism of conventional medicine continued, unabated. The Pharmaceutical Establishment persuaded us that their drugs and vaccines vanquished smallpox, overcome measles, etc. 

  And on a weekly basis the drug industry, courtesy of the mainstream media, has reinforced this message by telling us about new miracle drugs, and ground-breaking medical breakthroughs, that would ‘transform’ our experience of disease - soon.

  At the same time, however, chronic disease began to grow to unprecedented (epidemic) levels. If public health measures had largely freed us from infectious disease, it was now the rise of chronic diseases (arthritis, autism, cancer, dementia, diabetes, and much more) that now confronted us. These diseases arose in almost exact step with the consumption of the new ‘ground-breaking’ pharmaceutical drugs. The each began from a relatively low level but have increased prodigiously in the last 70-80 years, during which pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines have dominated medical care. As I have argued many times on this platform, the link between these two factors is clear to anyone who wishes to look - pharmaceutical drugs have all these chronic diseases listed “side effects”. 

  The links between chronic disease and pharmaceutical drugs is clearly written in literature of conventional medicine, It is cause and effect! And chronic disease shows few sign of abating, or even stabilising.

  Indeed, with the support of burgeoning ‘patient support groups’ and ‘health charities’, drug companies continue to feed and support the medical optimism on which it depends, repeating, ad nauseam, the same decades-old promises.

  • “Together we will beat cancer”! (Cancer Research UK).

  • “It will take a society to beat dementia”! (Alzheimer’s Society).

  Slogans like this have been used for decades. They emphasise the seriousness of the disease, encourage us to raise money by walking, running, swimming, cycling, etc., all in order to provide more money for the development of yet more pharmaceutical drugs! 

  However, these oft-repeated charitable and medical promises are beginning to wear thin, especially when no new, effective drugs have appeared, and diseases like cancer and dementia have continued to rise - quite regardless of the cleverness of charitable mottos, and despite the incredible money-raising prowess of well-intentioned, energetic health campaigners.

  At the same time the National Health Service (NHS) has become sacrosanct, inviolable in the UK. Every political party supports it, not least as, for 80 years or more, no party has been able to gain/retain power if they did not promise to spend more and more money on it. Indeed, no government has been able to spend enough money on the NHS to satisfy growing levels of sickness, and the public demand for more and more conventional, drug-based medical treatments. 

  And as the NHS is entirely dominated by pharmaceutical medicine, this has led to an unending 80-year “drug fest”, during which time the medical establishment have become excessively rich, and in almost complete control of the medical agenda.

  Yet Change is Beginning to Happen.

  Have you noticed that conventional medicine is increasingly using nutrition, exercise and ‘social prescribing’ now, often before, and in preference too, the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs, or even vaccines? As the harm caused by adverse drug effects have become clearer to more people, as older drugs are withdrawn/abandoned, and no new drugs come through to replace them, doctors are having had to resort to other prescriptions - to join a society, to spend more time in the countryside, or to pursue hobbies. And, of course, this social prescribing is proving to be as effective, if not more effective than any treatment offered by the drug industry!

  Yet many more factors are now in play. Our Members of Parliament (MP’s) are asking serious questions about the performance of the NHS. and therefore the health outcomes of the drug-dominated treatment that dominates it. As long ago as 2015, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee questioned the huge, and growing amounts of money being paid for the ever-rising ‘negligence costs’ of the NHS, saying that “the focus must shift from describing the scale of the problem to delivering action”. It said that “future liabilities for criminal negligence claims are now estimated at £60 billion - a quadrupling in real terms of the 2006-2007 figure”.

  This level of negligence, seen wherever pharmaceutical medicine dominates health provision, has clearly been breeding patient dissatisfaction over the years. It is all contributing to a general feeling that pharmaceutical medicine is failing, that it is unsafe, that the trust and optimism we have place on it has been misplaced.

  Patient dissatisfaction with ‘scientific’ medicine seems to have been increasing for some time. The Kings Fund carried out a survey on public satisfaction with the NHS in March 2026, and these are some of their findings:

  “In 2019, 60% of respondents said that they were satisfied with the NHS and this figure had been spiralling downwards, reaching a record low of just one in five (21%) in 2024”.

  “Optimism that care will get better is lower than at any point in the past. Less than a sixth (16%) say they think the standard of NHS care will improve in the next 5 years”.

  “People under 35, ….. were significantly less satisfied with the NHS than the average”.

  This latter finding is significant. As this BBC article, “Young people less satisfied with the NHS”, emphasises the importance of younger people argues, they are less committed to the NHS’s ‘sacred cow’ image, and that it will be these new, dissatisfied generations, less aware of the hopes and expectations of the past, who will ultimately decide on the future of the NHS, and the conventional medicine that dominates it.

  And even doctors are noticing the trend. They are now complaining that patients are increasingly refusing to take their advice about the treatment they offer. So why, they ask, do patients prefer to trust “unsupported claims” (on the internet) but not their professional advice? Perhaps this is the result of decades of conventional medicine failing to tell us the truth!

  The promises made by the Pharmaceutical Medical Establishment have not been delivered, so the hope and optimism about conventional, drug-based medicine is declining. Conventional medicine is on the defensive. When negative reports about the NHS medical treatment appears the usual excuses are trotted out. 

  • The population is ageing. 

  • Increased disease is the result of improved diagnosis. 

  • And so on. 

  The dreadful experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic, of course, adds greatly to the increasing scepticism! The medical panic (social distancing, lockdowns, et al) that pharmaceutical medicine resorted to to deal with the virus, plus the patient harm caused by the mandating of ‘experimental’ vaccines to protect us from it, has been one of the most visible/obvious self-inflicted medical disasters of all time.

  Nor is the situation any different in the USA, as this Medscape article, “Doctors say patients are losing trust in their treatment advice”.

  “Nearly half of the physicians believe that patients have less trust in their treatment recommendations today than they did several years ago, a possible reflection of growing public distrust in science.”

  So vaccination rates throughout the USA are declining, alongside the deepening mistrust that has been generated in conventional medicine generally after a century of broken promises, and medical failure. Moreover, patients there have to bear the spiralling costs of pharmaceutical drug treatments, with some of the new ‘wonder’ drugs now costing tens of thousands of dollars per patient per month.

  Yet another question needs to be asked. Is the growing dissatisfaction with medical treatment more to do with the inability of the conventional medicine to be honest about what is causing increasing levels of chronic illnesses, and its lack of success in treating them? Regardless of how much we spend on pharmaceutical medicine we seem only to get sicker, and rates of chronic illnesses continue to rise.

  If the Pharmaceutical Medical Establishment wants us to trust their treatments it needs to deliver more positive clinical outcomes - not just more excuses for failure, or more promises of better tomorrow.