The Contaminated Blood Inquiry. Is the focus of the media response misplaced!

We do not learn from our mistakes. History should teach us that scandals, disasters and fiascos are never recognised at the time, or even soon afterwards, but usually take 30-40, or even 50 years after they happen before they are accepted. We don't seem to understand this, even today, following the publication of the Infected Blood inquiry's final report. This is how the Guardian described the contaminated blood scandal.

            "The scandal has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. People treated by the NHS in the UK between the 1970s and 1990s were exposed to tainted blood through transfusions, including during complications in childbirth, or, in the case of haemophiliacs, given contaminated “factor VIII” blood products imported from the US".

I wrote about this scandal here in 2017, in "The Contaminated Blood Scandal. The worst cover-up in NHS history". It certainly has been a cover-up of massive proportions, one that has lasted for over 50 years after the issues were first known.

And now, hiding (as yet unannounced and unrecognised) in the background, is yet another scandal in the making - the Covid-19 vaccine scandal. This has concerned a mass vaccination campaign using a largely untested, and therefore experimental vaccines). And I predict that this scandal might also take another 30, 40 or 50 years before it is fully recognised by the UK's health and political establishments.

This 30+ year gap from 'event' to 'recognition/apology' is not restricted to conventional medicine. The Hillsborough tragedy, the Bloody Sunday massacre, and the Post Office scandal, are all demonstration of this laggardly timescale; and but there are many others. Nor will these scandals be the last; there will no doubt be many others to come!

Yet it is within the confines of the conventional medical establishment that most of these scandals happen. I wrote about several of these medical scandals in Chapter 9, "Medical Errors" in my "The Failure of Conventional Medicine" e-book. And if we are ever going to learn, it is important to understand what is going on, and why these decades-long time-delays are allowed to happen - time and time again.

There are influential people and powerful organisations implicated in each and every one of these scandals. They invariably, inevitably hold control the information about the situation within their sphere; within industry, within the conventional medical establishment, within government, and/or within the mainstream media. They are people with reputations to defend, and personal wealth to protect. And corporations or institutions with profitability at stake. When it is realised that there is a problem, they defend themselves, vigorously, through many tried and tested strategies:

• initially they ignore the situation (on the basis that it is best not to discuss the situation in case it attracts unnecessary or unwanted publicity),
• then they obfuscate (it is best that people are confused, or over-whelmed, rather than certain that something 'bad' has happened),
  
• they go into denial, they cover-up (they play for time, defending themselves with arguments like "there is no evidence", or the "correlation is not causality", et al,
  
• they discount the importance of the situation (there may be a slight problem, but only a few people people were 'involved; it's not a serious issue), and they excuse themselves by saying that the benefits of what happened far outweighed the risks.
  

These factors were all in evidence in previous scandals; Thalidomide, Vioxx, Opioid, Primodos, Sodium Valproate, were all defended using these strategies. The infected blood scandal was no different, just the latest example of a medical scandal that took decades before the truth was recognised, and the cover-up revealed.

I suggest that the Covid-19 vaccine scandal is at the very earliest stage of this process. Literally millions of people, around the world, have reported serious adverse vaccine reactions to national drug regulators, and they have not been recognised, investigated or acted upon. There is growing realisation by doctors and others within the Conventional Medical Establishment that there is a serious problem (stemming from the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration), and when the patient harm issues have been raised in Parliament, by a handful of MP's, they have spoken to an almost empty chamber, and received only an obfuscatory response from a government minister. The voluminous reports of serious patient harm from the Covid-19 vaccines are said to be greater than any other vaccine for the last 70 years. There have been 'excess deaths' each and every month for the last 3 years (since the vaccine roll-out), and questions about  links with the Covid-19 vaccines have usually been ignored, or denied. All these suggestions and allegations meet with institutional ridicule and denial, a refusal to investigate further, and the determination to continue with the Covid vaccination campaign.

Any similarities here with the contaminated blood scandal in the 1970's and 1980's? An industry not prepared to abandon a profitable vaccine? A health system unwilling to admit that it has caused serious patient harm? A government that does not want to compensate and pay damages to damaged patients?

The problem is that we might have to wait 30 years to find out! We are in the early stages during which the victims do not receive recognition, sympathy, support or compensation. They are the 'ordinary' people, with limited resources; they are not 'experts', and they find it difficult to penetrate 'the system' which insists there is no problem; and they certainly don't have the funds to take the issue to a court of law. 

On the other side of the fence they face people in positions of great power and influence, backed by powerful institutions. These are rich and powerful people, in extremis, who stick together. They present as a united front to protect themselves, to sing from the same song sheet. Corporate directors, senior government officials, and the mainstream media control the agenda, the information is (and is not) made available to the public.

Indeed, with health scandals in particular, one notable feature of these scandals is that no action is taken to correct the fault. The infected blood products continue to be sold; the opioid drugs are still marketed; Sodium Valproate continues to be prescribed; and even the infamous Thalidomide drug is still being used, today! These sales continue until such time that the scandal becomes bigger, when sales begin to fall, or the hitherto toothless, incompetent drug regulator bans it; or the drug company 'withdraws' it because it has become "uncommercial". One of the Covid-19 vaccines, the AstraZeneca vaccine, has suffered this fate - withdrawn for 'commercial reason' even though  it was never approved in some countries (the USA), was banned in about 12 European countries, and 'withdrawn' from the UK. The 'commercial' reason was that no-one wanted the vaccine because of 'suspicions' that they caused serious patient harm!

Another common thread that runs through most, if not all, these medical scandals is that drug/vaccine/treatment involved usually started life as a "wonder drug", a "game changer" that would transform the treatment of one disease or another. However, each one has moved from being loudly heralded "a miracle cure" to be quietly being dropped as a killer drug.

And then we are led to believe that such a thing has never happened before! 

Even at the very end of medical scandals, as with the 'contaminated blood scandal', the issue is usually discounted as being a 'one-off' issue, a single, isolated and terrible medical 'mistake' that must not be allowed to happen again. Also, they are presented as situations that would not be allowed to happen, not now, because things have changed, medicine has moved on. So, the defective, disease-inducing blood scandal product becomes "the worse disaster in the history of the NHS" - the implication being that something as bad as this has never happened before. And of course the Inquiry will insure that no such thing will never happen again in future!

So usually no-one is ever held to account for the scandal. This is the main purpose of the long drawn out history of obstruction and delay. If resolution can be delayed for 30, 40, or 50 years on, the people involved will either be dead, or too old; their scandal-driven profits already spent, or no longer available. The pharmaceutical industry will have re-organised, the old, often defunct drug companies will no longer be around to question, or prosecute. The politicians and civil servants involved with the scandal will have moved on, or died. Even some of the documentation might have been 'lost'. 

So it is the current government (that is, tax payers) who foots the compensation/damages bill, especially when drug companies have been given immunity from prosecution.

Conventional medicine is inherently secretive. This is because it relies heavily on pharmaceutical drug treatments, all of which are known to have serious side effects that can cause serious patient harm. This is at the heart of what makes the NHS defensive in all its dealing with the public. This is why conventional medicine does not, perhaps cannot, function openly, transparently, or honestly.

So there will be more health scandals, and with all the evidence available at this point it seems safe to predict that the Covid-19 vaccines, which are already suspected to have caused so much serious patient harm (heart conditions, cancer, damage to the immune system, to mental health, et al), will eventually grab our attention. But not, perhaps, for another 30 or 40 years!

So how can we identify a scandal 30 to 40 years earlier? I have a couple of tips.

• Watch for a new 'medical breakthrough', the promotion of a new 'ground beating' medical treatment by both government, and the mainstream media,
  
• Listen to who is speaking, and what they are saying. (i) the voice of the 'common' people who claim they have been harmed, but who remain largely unheard, or beaten back, and (ii) the denials and obfuscations of the medical and political establishments.

If these conditions apply then we just might have another medical scandal to witness - if we live long enough to see it unravel!

 

Note: When it was first published, Blogger removed this post. It was part of the Media's censorship campaign again the idea that pharmaceutical medicine was anything but "safe and effective". It has since been republished!

"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. UK Vaccine Network. News of a massive scandal involving the UK government, the Bill Gates Foundation, leading drug companies, all planning to profit massively from the pandemic

We are facing a new, and huge medical scandal, led by Bill Gates, and his 'philanthropic' foundation. Philanthropic? It appears that he is spending his fortune in order to 'earn' a much bigger one! What is going on involves a 'secret scientific group' (which is advising the government), and might explain some of the rather mysterious and nonsensical Government policies imposed on all of us during the coronavirus COVID-19 crisis.

               "The scandal involving the UK government and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation takes an even more sinister turn into the darkness of corruption, racketeering and crimes against humanity with the announcement of the UK Vaccine Network.

The secret scientific group includes many of the companies, organisations and leading players that we have all been hearing from, and reading about in recent months.

* Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation,
* The World Health Organisation
* Pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, Astra Xenica, Pfizer and Sanofi,
* The University of Oxford,
* Neil Ferguson; Imperial College,
* Patrick Vallance: Chief Scientific Advisor, formerly of GSK,
* Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, and also formerly of GSK,
* and many more

I was going to write a long blog about this but I changed my mind when I realised that the information is already out here, in the public domain; it is already published and the subject of much discussion - on the internet. The mainstream media, of course, will refuse to touch it.

So instead, let me point you to three links where the information can be found. All these links may in time be censored by the major social media platforms so it would be a good idea to look at them as soon as you are able to do so.

Bill Gates Foundation and the Covid-19 Vaccine Network Scandal

 

BARDA Whistleblower Links to Health Mafia

 

Bill Gates and the UK Vaccine Network Scandal

There is little doubt all this information will be dismissed as mere 'conspiracy theory'. This is a term now widely used by the conventional medical establishment to dismiss any need to engage in discussion with what is being said.

 

However, it is clear that we are faced with a powerful group of people and corporations who are set to make a massive killing in the development of a vaccine for coronavirus COVID-19. The above sources show that in the UK alone the vaccine could make a profit for them of some £45 billion.

 

So I urge you to look and listen to these links - in order to make up your own mind about whether these are 'conspiracy theories, or another example of conventional medicine and pharmaceutical medicine misanthropy.

 

Footnote

I heard on the news this morning that Astra Zenica had already begun to produce the COVID-19 vaccine - even though it is the early stages of testing, and it will be several months before any vaccine can be approved.

This is, of course, no problem as the pharmaceutical companies know that they have total control the MHRA, the UK's drug regulator. They will be obliged to approve the vaccine, regardless of what testing demonstrates about the dangers to our health of the new vaccine.

And there are already signs that the UK vaccine, and the USA vaccine, are already proving to be dangerous - more of which later.

The Contaminated Blood Scandal. The worst cover-up in NHS history?

The UK government has announced an inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal of the 1970's and 1980's. This gap represents the usual 30 year plus gap between a scandal, an Establishment cover-up, and a proper inquiry into what happened. This time-lapse is, for example, similar to the recent Hillsborough disaster, amongst many other scandals that usually results in a time span sufficient to ensure that people or organisations responsible for the scandal no longer have to face the consequences of what they have done, or they have lost their power and influence to prevent a full investigation.

It is now admitted that the contaminated blood scandal involved around 7,500 patients, and caused the death of at least 2,400 people. The prime minister, Theresa May, has spoken about the "appalling injustice" that happened when thousands of NHS patients were given blood products infected with hepatitis C and HIV. Indeed, many have called the scandal 'the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS'. Patients were not told about the potential risks, and May has said, after all this time (over 40 years in this case), that patients deserve answers about how it happened, and why.

• So is the contaminated blood issue a scandal? Yes, a serious one.
• Has there been a cover-up by the NHS? Almost certainly!
• Is it an important inquiry which can lead to belated justice for all those people who have suffered? Hopefully so.

Yet is this really the worst NHS scandal ever? Are there more serious, ongoing scandals associated with the NHS arising from their almost total reliance on dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines known and proven to be dangerous to our health? My 'DIE's (the 'Disease-Inducing-Effects' of Pharmaceutical Drugs and Vaccines) website picks out the drugs and vaccines that are known to cause serious illness and disease.

Each page demonstrates that there have been many more NHS scandals, affecting many more people, who have taken a vast number of dangerous drugs and vaccines, and as a direct result contracted these diseases.

So the NHS, and the conventional medical establishment generally, have been, and continues to be implicated in cover-ups involving most of the pharmaceutical drugs they have been giving to patients during the last 70 years. They have done so despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to a direct connection between pharmaceutical drugs and serious illness. They have rarely been subject to serious enquiry. Indeed, most drugs and vaccines have still not been recognised as a serious threat to our health.

• One exception was the Thalidomide scandal, which was difficult for the conventional medical establishment, or the mainstream media, to ignore.
• Another was the discovery that Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) caused cancer, although even now the conventional medical establishment are seeking to rehabilitate these drugs!

Despite these exceptions, it is more usual for drugs and vaccines to cause disease, only for the evidence to be denied by the medical establishment, ignored by the mainstream media, or countered with bland reassurances from doctors that the 'benefits' of the drug outweigh the 'risks'.

The result is that we are now experiencing chronic illnesses and diseases at epidemic levels - diseases like ADHD, Allergy, Dementia, Arthritis, Asthma, Autism, a whole host of Auto-immune diseases, Cancer, Chronic Fatigue (ME), Diabetes, Heart disease, Kidney disease, Liver disease, Osteoporosis, and many others. Add to this the rise of several killer Superbugs, and a variety of mental health diseases, like depression and anxiety, our society is probably sicker now than it has ever been.

All these disease are known to be caused, and/or exacerbated by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Each link, to each of the diseases listed above, gives details of the drugs and vaccines known to be associated with them.

• So how many children have been damaged by vaccines? 7,500. How many children have died as the result of vaccination? 2,400? Undoubtedly the figures are far higher than this.
• How many women have suffered breast or cervical cancer as a direct result of HRT treatment? More that 7,500? How many have died? More than 2,400?
• How many people currently taking Statin drugs have contracted the many serious illnesses and diseases associated with them, or will do so in the future?
• How many older people now suffer dementia because they have taken a combination of drugs and vaccines that are known to cause dementia. More than 7,500? How many have died as a result of drug-induced Alzheimer's disease? More than 2,400? Without any doubt.

It is often said that there are simple ways of keeping healthy, and avoiding illness. A good, well-balanced diet is one. Exercise is another. Without doubt, avoiding pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, at all cost, has become another - as well as finding a safer, more effective medical therapy for when we do become ill.

History of the Vioxx Drug Scandal. How can we ever trust conventional medicine again?

Vioxx was a NSAID painkiller and anti-inflammatory drug. It was one of the new, Cox-2 inhibitor drugs, developed by Merck, and approved as scientifically safe and effective by the FDA in May 1999. It was also marketed as Ceoxx and Ceeoxx. It quickly gained wide acceptance as a safe way of treating patients with arthritis, menstrual pain, and acute pain generally. When it was first marketed Vioxx was said to be a "wonder drug", safer and more effective than other NSAID's such as Aspirin and Ibuprofen. 

The conventional medical establishment told us that, unlike earlier NSAID drugs, Vioxx (and other Cox-2 inhibitors) relieved pain and inflammation without interfering with the protective stomach lining, a well-known DIE in the older drugs. 

After its introduction in 1999, Vioxx was withdrawn from the market, worldwide, in September 2004, after it was implicated in several fatalities, involving heart attacks and strokes. It has been estimated to have caused up to 140,000 cases of serious heart disease, and that up to 40% of these could have been fatal. Other serious DIEs included kidney insufficiency or failure, seizures, high blood pressure and peripheral edema. kidney and liver damage, pregnancy complications, birth defects, and high blood pressure.

Yet, for that short period Vioxx quickly became is one of the most prescribed, and most profitable pharmaceutical drug ever to be given to patients. When it was withdrawn from the market it was being prescribed to over 80 million people, and was a massive money earner for Merck, estimated to have been about $2.5 billion. So when it was withdrawn, after its short, but too long lifespan, it became the most profitable drug ever to be banned!

Yet the history of Vioxx is more significant than just another pharmaceutical drug that was found to be far too dangerous to give patients. 

It quickly involved Merck in massive litigation in the USA, and showed just how devious and criminal the Big Pharma industry can be when they are pushing dangerous drugs, and keeping the truth from the general public, and in this case, from conventional doctors too.

By 2007, Merck, was facing some 7,000 outstanding lawsuits in the USA, and experts estimated that the drug companies potential liabilities might be over $5bn (BBC News, 12 March 2007). Merck's legal and compensation costs have been estimated at about $6 billion, which probably meant that the company still profited from the sale of Vioxx!

Again, rather late in the day, medical scientists found that Vioxx (and drugs similar ro Vioxx) could cause heart attacks and strokes because they stop an enzyme producing blood-thinning agents, thereby leading to a greater chance of blood clotting. This highlighted the total and absolute failure of pharmaceutical drug testing, the incompetence and inability of medical ‘science’, and drug regulation, to protect patients from highly dangerous drugs.

As so often happens, it was not until many thousands of people had  been prescribed the drug, and suffered and died because of it, that its dangers became apparent to the conventional medical estabishmen, and were deemed to dangerous to continue giving it to patients!

Vioxx therefore demonstrates many aspects of the almost routine dangerousness of conventional medical drugs:

          • Vioxx was presented to us as a new 'wonder' drug. 

          • We were told that it had been 'scientifically' tested, and proven to be an effective and safe drug. 

          • But within a few years on the market it was found to be dangerous, a 'killer' drug. 

But the Vioxx scandal also demonstrated much more.

          • That medical 'science', that supportedearly claims regarding  the efficacy and safety of this drug, was not only wrong, but totally condemned by its total inaccuracy, its direct obfuscation of the facts, its blatent failure to disclose evidence, and what amounted to the criminal falsification of drug test results. 

          • That the drugs industry was based, not just on 'failed' medical science, but that it is based on a vast conspiracy of industrial, commercial and medical dishonesty too. 

During the court hearings it was revealed that Merck had known about the risks associated with Vioxx as early as 2000. Its response was to try to bury the heart disease risks of the drug. The Wall Street Journal revealed that Merck had been trying to bury the serious health risks of Vioxx as far back as March 2000.  The company was accused by the New England Journal of Medicine of 'manipulating' a study that claimed, incorrectly, that the cardiovascular risks did not arise until 18 months of use. Further, two medical professionals testified that they were pressured by Merck not to publish test results that showed increased rates of cardiovascular disease. By early 2005 a study calculated that Vioxx had caused between 88,000 and 140,000 cases of heart disease in the US, and thousands of deaths.

Dr Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet, summed all this up when he wrote: 

          "The licensing of Vioxx and its continued use in the face of unambiguous evidence of harm have been public health catastrophes."

Yet whilst Merck was eventually forced to pay large sums of money in compensation to its victims in the USA, the drugs industry can still demonstrate that it has a powerful influence within the court processes - at least in the UK. 

Vioxx victims in the UK, who also suffered heart attacks or strokes, were not compensated owing to the protection accorded to the drug companies. The Guardian report (29th November 2005) said that Lord Brennan, one of Britain's leading QCs, had warned of a "serious risk" that people injured by faulty drugs will no longer be able to mount compensation claims in the British courts. It said that more than 500 people who had suffered strokes or heart attacks following Vioxx treatment had lost an appeal for legal aid. Another QC said that the failure to get funding for the case spelled "the end of litigation against drug companies in the UK".  He added that British people may end up with no justice, no recompense, whereas in the USA Merck would probably settle the cases.

Merck has certainly done so. As with all drug companies, they cause mayhem, disease and death, pay victims compensation when they are forced to do so, then carry on plying their drugs to us as though nothing had happened!

The scandal of Vioxx was reported in the mainstream media, but not at any level commensurate with the damage to health, the disease, the deaths caused by the drug. As usual, the public were 'proteccted' from learning about the behaviour of the drug companies by their friends in the press! However, it is well reported on the internet, so for further details of the enormity of the Vioxx scandal, information can be obtained there.

Perhaps this should be the concluding thought about Vioxx. If the conventional medical establishment can prove itself to be so incompetent, devious and corrupt in relation to this drug, what evidence is there that it is any more competent, straightforward and honest about the claims it makes for drugs they are prescribing to patients today?