The Ages of Conventional Medical Drugs

This article was first published in my ebook, 

'The Failure of Conventional Medicine'

There is a regular pattern of 'new' drugs replacing 'old' drugs, always accompanied by strident claims about their miraculous capabilities for the new one - only for these new 'wonder' drugs to be withdrawn (as silently as possible) just a few years later. One of the recurring features of NHS-ConMed drugs is that each one appears to pass through a specific life cycle.

Birth. The new drug is announced as a 'medical breakthrough' that will transform the lives of patients who suffer from a particular disease. We are told that they have been 'scientifically' tested, and found to be both safe and effective.

Childhood. The drug is prescribed to patients, often in great anticipation. However, it is quickly discovered that the new wonder drug has 'side effects', or 'adverse reactions' (which should be known as Disease-Inducing-Effects, or DIEs). However, in these early, hopeful days these are usually considered to be unimportant. The argument is usually that the benefits of the drugs to patients greatly outweigh these ‘minor’ disadvantages.

Adulthood. As time goes on, evidence about the DIEs caused by the drug accumulates. The problems can no longer be entirely discounted, so it is reluctantly accepted by the ConMed Establishment that the use of the drug has to be restricted, that it can now be used only with caution, or even with severe limitations being imposed on its prescription.

Old Age. Patients begin to realise some of the problems being caused by the drug, and as a result their is increased resistance to taking them. Doctors are finally forced to accept that the drug does cause damage to patients. The use of the drug declines, and its profitability is severely reduced. By this stage, however, Big Pharma has often come up with a 'new' replacement drug.

Death. Finally, when the drug has been found to be either ineffective or unsafe (and has become less profitable too) it is removed from the market - as quietly and surreptitiously as possible. 

The old promises and claims for these former 'wonder' drugs, are also quietly forgotten. The drug is dismissed as 'old' technology. Patients are told that there are now new, more effective drugs available to take its place.

There is a long list of drugs / vaccinations / hormonal treatments and similar that have gone through this process - Melleril, Seroxat, Bextra, Tysabri, Vioxx, and HRT to name but a few. Even substances used in the general manufacture of drugs have had to be banned. For instance, in 2005, phenglpropalamine (PPA) was banned by the FDA. Amongst other uses, PPA was used in Alka-Seltzer products - so it is often to be found in popular, frequently used, over-the-counter medicines that have been found to be unsafe too.

A good example of the ageing process of drugs, that has happened to so many conventional medical drugs, are the ages of SSRI Antidepressant drugs, which include Prozac and Seroxat, and these can be used to demonstrate the typical life-cycle of Conventional Medical drugs.

Birth. SSRI drugs were introduced to replace a group of drugs that had reached ‘old age’, and coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism. These were the tranquilisers of the Benzodiazepine group, such as Valium and Ativan, which were found to have debilitating DIEs (and have left a hefty legacy of serious health problems behind them). The new SSRI drugs were supposed to be safer, non-addictive, and more effective. As usual, they were hailed as new 'wonder drugs' in the early 1990's, when they were popularly dubbed as 'happy pills'.

Childhood. Prozac and Seroxat, in particular, were prescribed on a major scale to many millions of patients worldwide, making enormous profits for their manufacturers.

Adulthood. A BBC Panarama programme in 2002 revealed 16 cases of suicide linked to Seroxat, 47 attempted suicides, and 92 patients who had thought about self-harming, and hurting others. Despite this the prescribing of SSRI drugs continued unabated. Manufacturers said they were happy that the drugs were 'well-tolerated'. And the drug regulators, the MHRA, were happy to allow the drugs to be prescribed. In 2003 a major enquiry was launched into these drugs following more reports of suicide, as well as nightmares, tremors, and feelings of violence, by patients taking them.

Old Age. Eventually, in 2005, Seroxat was banned in the UK for use with children. In 2006, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, who had hitherto denied there was a problem with the drug, sent a letter to all UK doctors warning of the potential risk to adult patients.

Death. This is still awaited!

This pattern is repeated frequently. It demonstrates that the Conventional Medical Establishment is quite incapable of protecting us as patients. It is important to understand that serious drug and vaccine DIEs are not usually predicted during the testing and licensing stage of drug regulation. Indeed, these are not usually discovered until the drug or vaccine has been marketed for many years, after millions of patients have suffered, or died as a result.

Each and every conventional drug or vaccine we might be taking at this moment is living its life somewhere along this spectrum, these ages. It means that any 'new' drug, in its infancy or childhood, in the midst of claims for the miracles it can produce, is in reality on a journey towards it death - its eventual withdrawal, or banning.

Cancer. Why are more younger people getting this 'old age' disease?

And is the Conventional Medical Establishment really serious about looking at the reasons?

The BBC (and other mainstream media platforms) seem to be convinced that it is, as evidence in their article “11 cancers on the rise in young people - scientists find first clue why it’s happening”. So the issue is being raised, but is the conventional medical establishment seriously investigating the reasons.

The article refers to a study published in BMJ Oncology, “Temporal trends in behavioural risk factors for cancers with rising incidence in younger adults: an analysis of population-based data in England”. The objective of the study was “to assess whether changes in behavioural risk factors could explain rising cancer incidence in younger adults in England, and to evaluate the extent to which established and suspected risk factors contribute to these trends”. The study was conducted by The Institute of Cancer Research and Imperial College London, and the study says it looked at various life-style factors, including:

• Physical activity.

• Obesity (maintaining a healthy weight).

• Consumption of Ultra-processed foods.

• Forever chemicals (or PFAS).

• Antibiotic use.

• Consumption of sweetened drinks.

• Air pollution.

• Gut bacteria.

• Pesticides.

The study admitted that there “was a lot we don’t know”. So we must believe, then, that the study authors were not aware that cancer is a well-known side effect of most pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Antibiotic drugs were mentioned - but even this is virtually dismissed! Instead they focused on Obesity.

          “The report said the only data that aligned with the increase in cancer was levels of overweight and obesity, which has been on the rise since the 1990s.”

What this means is that we have been presented with yet another ‘scientific’ study that is “selective” about what it prepared to investigate. There is no doubt that conventional medicine is fully aware of the link between cancer and pharmaceutical drugs (for people of all ages). The knowledge is contained within their own literature. The link is routinely published in the British National Formulary, and websites such as drugs.com.

I have listed the main drugs that are know to cause cancer, here, Iatrogenic Diease. The pharmaceutical drugs known to cause cancer. They include psychiatric drugs, Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), the contraceptive pill, Statin drugs, antibiotics, Proton Pump inhibitors, ACE inhibitors, most vaccines, and many, many more. So why was this well known, well documented cause of cancer omitted from the study? I hazard a guess.

If you don’t investigate you cannot implicate.

I hazard another guess: that the organisations that set up and conducted this research are funded by the pharmaceutical industry. So it was not so much that the authors were not aware of the link - it was that they were not permitted to included pharma drugs in the study. It would be bad for business. And bad for the funding that Pharma provides to universities, and ‘medical science’!

One of the problem that arises from such studies (and there are many) is that it sends conventional medicine on a wild goose chase. Their attention becomes focused on obesity. And worse, that it leads to treatment that involves patients taking more cancer-causing drugs that target obesity.

In this case, singling out ‘obesity’ will almost undoubtedly lead to the increased prescription of Pharma’s new ‘wonder drug’, GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wygovy, et al. At the moment, as part of the promotion of these drugs, medical science is suggesting that they might actually reduce cancer. I have serious doubts about this, not least because there are already early signs that GLP-1 drugs can cause cancer, see for example here, “Can Weight-Loss Drugs Cause Cancer?

Even in these early days of GLP-1 use, the drugs.com website is already giving this warning.

          “Additionally, animal studies suggest Ozempic has the potential to cause thyroid cancer, which may lead to lumps in the throat and dysphagia”.

It is likely that the link is yet to be made!

So watch this space!

Statins. From 'wonder' drug to 'killer' drug?

Statin drugs have rapidly moved from ‘Wonder Drug’ to ‘Killer Drug’. This is something that happens all too often within the world of Big Pharma, and the drug and vaccine-ridden world of the Conventional Medical Establishment.

Statin drugs were first tested in the 1970‘s, and were found to block substances used by your body to create cholesterol, and also helped the body to re-absorb the cholesterol it created. Lovastatin (brand name Mevacor) was approved for sale in 1987. By the mid-1990‘s Big Pharma produced evidence suggesting that Statin drug’s reduced mortality in people with high cholesterol. Statins had arrived, and soon many new Statin drugs were put on the market - pravastatin, simvastatin, fluvastatin, cerivastatin, atorvastatin and rosuvastatin, with trade names such as Lipitor, Lescol, Pravachol Zocor and Crestor. And no doubt many others!

Statins replaced drugs such as Bile acid resins (Questran, Colestid), which it is now admitted had dreadful side effects, causing gastrointestinal distress, especially constipation; and Niacin, which was not well tolerated because of itching, increased liver toxicity, and increased blood glucose levels. These drugs were also known to be ineffective - so Statins were treated as a welcome new ‘miracle’ drug by the drug companies.

Now, many millions of people take Statins throughout the world. They can cost about £150 per patient per year, and the NHS bill for statins approaches nearly £1 billion annually. What is worse, the UK was the first country to make Simvastin, the most used statin drug, available for sale ‘over the counter’, that is, a Statin drug that can be bought by people without the need for a doctor’s certificate.

Why have we got into this situation? For many years, our doctors have been telling us, unashamedly and unreservedly, that Statins were so safe, and so effective in treating heart disease, that everyone should be taking them! Indeed, we were all told this as recently as 2012. These articles, using almost identical language (no doubt the language of a Big Pharma press release), all appeared on 17th May 2012, each giving us the official message from the conventional medical establishment.

• see this Daily Mail article.
• and this Daily Express article.
• and this Guardian article.
• and this Telegraph article.
• and this BBC article.

“....the NHS should impose a blanket policy of prescribing up to 20 million people statins at a potential cost of £240million a year. Currently, the only people considered at high risk, those with a one-in-five chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years, are given the cholesterol-lowering drugs. Half of men aged 50 or over and almost a third of women qualify for statin treatment. About five million people are thought to take them. National guidelines should be amended to lower the threshold for treatment to those with a one-in-10 risk over a decade, the experts said”.

Clearly, and quite typically, our mainstream media continues to be willing to pass on to us Big Pharma, and Conventional Medical Establishment propaganda about drugs and vaccines.

• Statins are safe drugs, with only mild and acceptable ‘side-effects’ .

“Side effects of statins can include muscle aches, stomach disturbances, and altered liver function. Patients have also reported sleep and memory problems, depression and headaches.

• Statins prevents heart disease.

“The risk of a heart attack or stroke is cut by a fifth in those who have no sign of heart disease, shows research by scientists at Oxford University”.

• And Statins are so good we should all be taking them, even if are were perfectly healthy.

“The Oxford researchers says the NHS should consider giving statins to healthy people”. 

The Statins website confirms this simple message. Statins benefit everyone, we are told. Statins save thousands of lives (50,000 each year is mentioned). Treating people with Statins leads to huge savings, particularly in hospitalisation costs!

“.... the National Director for Heart Disease and Stroke said that a 'blanket approach' to give everyone above a certain age a daily dose of statins would save lives, NHS funding and doctors' time”.

The NHS appears to agree with this assessment, perhaps not too surprisingly as the NHS has become, over the decades, a monopoly, free-of-charge supplier of conventional medical drugs. This NHS Choices page is entitled “Statins may help even healthy over-50’s”, and it seems quite content to repeat this simple, positive message to its patients. However, it did at least admit that the study on which this message was based “did not include possible adverse effects” but it quickly returned to message, immediately adding that “Statins are safe drugs that have been associated with a small risk of side effects”. So that’s okay then!

This ongoing propaganda campaign about Statins has been going on for over 25 years now. They have achieved ‘super-drug status’, with claims that the drug can treat not only heart disease and stroke, but high blood pressure, diabetes, dementia, osteoporosis, arthritis, and even erectile dysfunction. 

Yet there are two truths emerging rapidly from this long-term, blanket advertising of Statin drugs within the NHS, and the mainstream media.

1. Cholesterol does not cause heart problems, and that lowering cholesterol levels has serious consequences to our health. (See for example these articles, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), and many more.
2. The ‘side effects of Statins are serious, causing both disease and death for patients.

In my book, the Failure of Conventional Medicine, I have written about the ages of drugs, from ‘wonder drug’ to ‘banned drug’, a journey every conventional medical drug has taken, or is currently undertaking (see also here), (and here).

It is becoming increasingly clear that conventional medical claims for Statin drugs are being overtaken by an increasing awareness of their inherent dangers. These dangers can be found elsewhere (see, for example, my blog "Statin Drugs. Why are they not banned?") where I outline the evidence that these drugs are known to be causing a number of serious disease-inducing-effects. These include:

• cataracts
• heart failure
• pneumonia
• nerve damage
• muscle pain, muscle tissue breaking down
• diabetes
• prostate cancer
• liver damage
• kidney disease
• memory loss (dementia?)

How many people suffer from these ‘side effects’? A Dutch survey of 4,738 Statin users were asked about side effects and found that just over a quarter (27%) said they suffered from them. Around 40% of these sufferers experienced muscle pain and almost a third (31%) had joint pain. It also reported that 16% had digestion problems and 13% had memory loss.

Other research shows patients who had definite or probable side effects from Statin drugs tended to be dismissed by their doctors, who denied any specific Statin-linked causality, and refused to appreciate the effect on their lives. This is not only unacceptable for individual patients, but unacceptable because serious adverse reactions are thereby not reported thus allowing the Conventional Medical Establishment to continue claiming that the drugs are safe!

And according to Malcolm Kendrick, in his book, ‘The Great Cholesterol Con’ (John Blake Publishing), there has been “no large trial of women statin users who already have cardiovascular disease has been shown to increase life expectancy by one day. More importantly, the use of statins in women at lower risk has not increased life expectancy nor prevented heart attacks and stroke”.

As Kendrick says, this raises the question whether women should be prescribed statins at all? His conclusion? They should not!

In addition to these ‘side-effects’, Statin drugs are also known to be dangerous for anyone with liver disease, pregnant and breastfeeding women. Alcohol and Statins also do not mix well!

Drug interactions are also now admitted to be a problem. There are known problems with Nicotinic Acid or Niacin; Bile Acid Sequestrants, Fibrates, Samdimmune or Neoral, Fluvoxamine, Anti-fungal drugs ending with “-azole”, Mycelex (miconazole), or Sporanox (itraconazole), Antibiotics ending in "-mycin", High blood pressure medications, Cordarone (Amiodarone), HIV Protease Inhibitors, Coumadin (warfarin), Prilosec (omeprazole), Tagamet (cimetidine), Zantac, Oral contraceptives, Lanoxin (digoxin), Antacids containing magnesium or aluminum hydroxide. 

Even St. John's Wort is said to decrease the effectiveness of some statins. With all this in mind, perhaps any patient might be better just taking St. John’s Wort!

Another little-known fact about Statin drugs is that at least 3 have had to be withdrawn either before, or after they were marketed. 

• Mevastatin was never marketed because of its adverse effects of tumours, muscle deterioration, and sometimes death in laboratory dogs (Wikipedia). 
• Compactin was also withdrawn from the market because of unwanted side effects. 
• And the muscle damage caused by one Statin drug, Cerivastatin (Baycol) was sufficiently severe and widespread (it killed several hundred people) it had to be withdrawn (quietly) in 2001.

Yet the drugs that remain on the market seem to be no better! But patients are expected to believe that other Statin drugs are sufficiently safe, or well-tolerated, for everyone to take them, without any risk or harm to our health!

Now, some doctors are beginning to take Statin drugs into its ‘old age’, and so closer to death. For instance, Dr Malcolm Kendrick argues that the disadvantages of Statins now outweigh the possible benefits for the majority of people.

“I tell patients with a cholesterol level of between 5 and 7 they’re healthy. If it’s above 7, it’s probably due to a family history of high cholesterol and if any relatives have early heart disease then it’s worth taking a statin. The body needs cholesterol - 25% of it is in the brain and is vital for it to function properly. For patients who have suffered heart attack or stroke or have existing cardiovascular disease (disease of the heart and blood vessels) taking a statin can benefit them. But, the real question is by how much?

“Patients should ask doctors, “How much longer will I live if I take a statin?” The answer is, not very long. If you’re at high risk of heart disease or stroke and you take a statin for 30 years, you’re likely to live an extra nine months.

I suppose that means as long as they don’t die of kidney or liver failure - or prostate cancer - or pneumonia - or suffer from dementia before this!

Undoubtedly, patients who are taking Statin drugs need more honest information. They are unlikely to get it from the Conventional Medical Establishment, including from our own GPs, who appear to be reluctant to tell us. So we need to demand this information of them, preferably before Statins are banned, or we suffer the serious DIEs now known to result from them.

Covid-19 Vaccines are pronounced "safe". How much can we rely on this? The Ages of Drugs: is a new saga beginning?

Anyone who is relying on conventional medicine to overcome the Covid-19 virus is probably ignoring the best defence we have, and even putting their lives at risk.

I am reminded of a story that a Christian friend once told me about "The drowning Christian". It concerns a man faced with imminent death by drowning. He is offered help; by someone in a canoe; another in a speed boat; and eventually by a helicopter. He refuses all these offers of help preferring instead to 'rely on God'. He drowns; and when he meets his God he asks why he did not help. God reminded him that he did send two boats and a helicopter! 

This modern-day parable is told by Christians to gently to encourage us all to help ourselves rather than to rely on any blind faith in God to solve our problems for us.

The fact is that we are all well equipped to help ourselves against viruses! My good, deeply religious friend would no doubt remind me that God has provided us all with an immune system, that we have been given natural immunity from disease. It is not necessary to wait for a vaccine, or indeed anything else that conventional medicine might offer as 'the only' solution to the problem.

The problem with pharmaceutical medicine is that it wants us to place our faith in vaccines. Throughout the pandemic conventional medical 'science' has focused on the need for a vaccine to the almost total exclusion of any mention of natural immunity.

The importance of our immune system is stressed by homeopathy, and most other natural medical therapies. There are two problems with reliance on the immune system. One is that we all have to work quite hard to support and strengthen our natural immunity (I have written about this recently, here). And second, it is not a profitable strategy for the pharmaceutical industry. So the conventional medical establishment wants us to believe that our salvation (literally, that word has been used) rests entirely with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, and that we should rely on them to the exclusion of everything else.

Reliance on the Covid-19 Vaccines - the beginning of a new saga?

Most people have been waiting for the Covid-19 vaccines. For months we have all been told these vaccines were going to be our saviour, they would return us to normal life, ending the need to wear masks, to socially distance, and to lockdown. Yet now, even after many millions of people have been vaccinated, this is not happening - even for those people who have been vaccinated. 

Then reports started to emerge about people dying shortly after they had been vaccinated. So most European countries suspended one of the vaccines. Days later the drug regulator, the European Medicine Agency (EMA) has assured us that despite the deaths, this vaccine is safe, and the vaccination programme should continue.

So are the vaccines safe? Are the reports of serious side effects, including blood clots and death, to be discounted this easily? And with such complete certainty?

There is little doubt that a new saga has started, as it does with most (if not all) pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. I have described the process before as 'The Ages of Pharmaceutical Drugs', and also when describing 'The Dangerous Drugs of Today'. 

            "There is a regular pattern of 'new' drugs replacing 'old' drugs, always accompanied by strident claims about their miraculous capabilities for the new one - only for these new 'wonder' drugs to be withdrawn (as silently as possible) just a few years later. One of the recurring features of pharmaceutical drugs is that each one appears to pass through a specific life cycle.

Birth. The new drug is announced as a 'medical breakthrough' that will transform the lives of patients who suffer from a particular disease. We are told that they have been 'scientifically' tested, and found to be both safe and effective. 

Childhood. The drug is prescribed to patients, often in great anticipation. However, it is quickly discovered that the new wonder drug has 'side effects', or 'adverse reactions' (which should be known as Disease-Inducing-Effects, or DIEs). However, in these early, hopeful days these are usually considered to be unimportant. The argument is usually that the benefits of the drugs to patients greatly outweigh these ‘minor’ disadvantages.

This is where the Covid-19 vaccines are at the moment - in their childhood - not such a wonder drug - and with the first signs of patient harm having emerged, albeit quickly denied or dismissed. Adulthood will follow, when more serious evidence of patient harm emerges which cannot be denied or ignored, and the use of the drug has to be restricted, prescribed only with great caution, alongside increasing patient 'hesitancy'. Old Age then follows when "patients begin to realise some of the problems caused by the drug, and as a result there is increased resistance to taking them. Doctors are finally forced to accept that the drug does cause damage to patients. The use of the drug declines, and its profitability is severely reduced. By this stage, however, Big Pharma has often come up with a 'new' replacement drug".

The final stage, Death, has been the ultimate fate of most pharmaceutical drugs throughout history. This now happens only "when the drug has been found to be either ineffective or unsafe (and has become less profitable too). But tragically this never happens before millions of patients have been allowed to suffer serious harm to their health, and the drug can be banned "as quietly and surreptitiously as possible" to avoid any negative publicity.

During all this time pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are kept alive by conventional medical science, and a drug regulatory system, both of which have fallen completely under the control of pharmaceutical interests. Both are supposed to protect patients from harm, but essentially they each now serve the interests of the pharmaceutical industry, providing assurances about drug safety. Add to this the fact that the pharmaceutical industry has a long history of dishonesty, corruption and fraud - briefly outlined here.

So this is not a medical system that anyone should trust with their health and well-being. Everyone has within them the means of protection. Like the drowning man we should rely on what we have, some might argue the things God has given us, rather than what is being offered, rather dubiously, by a pharmaceutical industry whose track record in treating illness and disease is quite appalling.

If conventional medicine had our best interests at the forefront of their agenda it would been emphasising the importance of each of us tending to our immune systems, developing our natural immunity through diet, nutrition and exercise, et al. Instead, it has been intent on forcing yet another vaccine on us. It won't be entirely clear, perhaps for many more years just how harmful these vaccines are.

CHRONIC DISEASE. The rise and rise of chronic diseases over the last 100 years; and the introduction of some new ones

As defined by MedicineNet, a chronic disease is a disease that persists for a long time, lasting at least 3 months, and usually much more, often many years, even decades. The most common chronic diseases are arthritis, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy/seizures, and obesity, but there are many more, including some that were previously unknown prior to the age of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. Yet despite their variety all chronic diseases have several undeniable features in common.

• The incidence of all chronic diseases (without exception?) have increased, often exponentially, during the last 100 years, and these rates are still increasing.
• Conventional medicine will offer explanations for these huge increases in sickness, but most of them are either irrelevant, or insufficient to explain the inexorable rise of these chronic diseases.
• Conventional medicine usually offer only palliative treatments for these diseases, but rarely any treatment that treats the disease successfully, or reduces the ever-rising numbers of people suffering from them.
• The side effects, the adverse drug/vaccine reactions to pharmaceutical medicine are known to cause the symptoms of all these chronic disease
  

As a population, after 70-100 years of burgeoning pharmaceutical medicine, we are not getting healthier. We are getting progressively sicker. We might be living longer (largely owing to improved sanitation, housing, diet, nutrition, and less poverty and destitution) but certainly most people are not able to spend these additional years positively, and in good health.

So let's examine the impact of some of the more common forms of chronic diseases, how they impact on our lives, how CHE explains them, and how it can cause them. But before doing so let's first consider an alternative view about what chronic disease is, and what causes it. This is broadly the view of homeopathy, and more broadly it is the view held by all natural medical therapies.

Chronic Disease and Homeopathy. Natural medicine believes that the human body has everything it needs to keep itself fit and healthy, long into old age. Chronic disease develops if and when we put our body under some kind of stress. Perhaps we have poor nutrition, and unhealthy diet; or we don't exercise sufficiently or sensibly; or we get into bad habits - smoking, drinking, insufficient sleep, and the like.

But chronic disease is also caused by suppressing illness, and this belief is one of the key differences between natural medical therapies and conventional medicine. For instance, homeopathy believes that suppressing minor ailments/illnesses/conditions with pharmaceutical drugs is ultimately injurious to our health. 

• So natural medicine recognises that pain is a sign that something is wrong, a warning, not something should be suppressed with painkilling drugs, that killing or suppressing pain actually worsens pain over the longer-term, and drives it deeper into the body. 
• It recognises that a fever is the body's natural attempt to fight off an infection, again, not something that should be suppressed by anti-inflammatory drugs.
• It recognises that suppressing, killing, blocking, inhibiting the normal functioning of the body in any way is what causes adverse drug reactions, and that this suppression can result in long-term chronic disease.
  

So one of the major insights provided by homeopathy, and natural medicine generally, is that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are likely to be a major cause of chronic disease. They are one explanation for the rising levels of chronic disease. So when examining each of the following chronic disease, we can examine whether conventional medicine is a possible explanation for the rise and rise of the disease. 

The last 70-100 years has seen pharmaceutical medicine become the dominant medical system, and during this time the consumption of prescription drugs has risen to levels never previously known.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

People with ADHD have trouble paying attention, have problems with concentration, daydream, have impulsive behaviour, act without thinking, have difficulty getting on with other people, or are just overly active. These traits are, to an extent, normal but for a diagnosis of ADHD to be made the symptoms have to be quite severe.

Incidence

There is probably little doubt that there have always been people in society, throughout history, that might have been diagnosed as ADHD. It is the scale that matters, and this Healthline webpage states quite clearly that ADHD was "first mentioned" in 1902, that it was not until the late 1960's that it was "formally recognised" in the USA, and that now it is "a common neurodevelopmental disorder most commonly diagnosed in children". In Britain, the NHS did not recognise ADHD as a condition until 2009. So ADHD is both common, and recent!

• The ADHD Institute in the USA says that "A mean worldwide prevalence of ADHD of about 2.2% has been estimated in children and adolescents (aged over 18 years). The mean prevalence of ADHD in adults (aged 18-44) from a range of countries .... was reported as about 2.8% overall".
• This UK website says that between 2% and 5% of school aged children now have ADHD, and that the prevalence of ADHD in the adult population is between 3% and 4%, but "the majorityof these individual are undiagnosed".
• This link refers to the Journal of Attention Disorder which published a UK research survey of 10,438 children between the ages of 5 and 15 years that found 3.62% of boys, and 0.85% of girls, had ADHD. It also says that the Lancet has estimated that the global prevalence of ADHD is now between 2% and 7%, with an average of 5%.
  

Conventional Medical Explanations

Most conventional medical websites suggests that there is not known cause of ADHD. For instance, the Journal of Learning Disabilities says that "there is no one cause of ADHD. It is considered to be a result of an often complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors" placing 70% to 80% of the blame on genetic factors. The CDC website does suggest that it might be caused by brain injury, exposure to environmental toxicity during pregnancy or childhood, premature delivery and low birth rate. 

However, none of these causes provides an adequate or convincing explanation for the rapid recent rise in the incidence of ADHD.

Pharmaceutical Drugs

The role of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines is rarely mentioned in the conventional medical literature, except that known adverse drug and vaccine reactions include many that accurately describe the symptoms of ADHD. I have written about the ADHD / Pharmaceutical Drug link elsewhere, and the drug and vaccines implicated include drugs now commonly prescribed, such as  painkillers, antibiotics, antidepressants, and a wide variety of childhood vaccines.

The increased consumption of these pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines, especially with children, almost exactly mirrors the increase of ADHD. It might be asked why this link has not been more actively investigated by the pharmaceutical medical establishment!

Allergy

There are many kinds of very different allergies, from hay fever to food allergies, from asthma to sinusitis, and so many more. Perhaps the one thing they have in common is that they have all risen to epidemic proportions during the last 70 to 100 years, and are still growing. Allergy UK bluntly states the dire consequences of this allergy epidemic to so many people.

            "Allergy is the most common chronic disease in Europe. Up to 20% of patients with allergies struggle daily with the fear of an asthma attack, anaphylactic shock, or even death from an allergic reaction".

Incidence 

Allergy UK says that the World Allergy Organisation (WAO) estimate of allergy prevalence of the whole population by country ranges between 10-40%; that more than 150 million Europeans suffer from chronic allergic diseases and the current prediction is that by 2025 half of the entire EU population will be affected; that the UK has some of the highest prevalence rates of allergic conditions in the world, with over 20% of the population affected by one or more allergic disorder; that a staggering 44% of British adults now suffer from at least one allergy and the number of sufferers is on the rise, growing by around 2 million between 2008 and 2009 alone; that almost half (48%) of sufferers have more than one allergy; and that in the 20 years to 2012 there was a 615% increase in the rate of hospital admissions for anaphylaxis in the UK.

The USA fares no better. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology delivers a variety of statistics including: about 7.8% of people 18 and over have hay fever, that worldwide, allergic rhinitis affects between 10% and 30 % of the population, that adverse drug reactions may affect up to 10% of the world’s population, and affect up to 20% of all hospitalized patients, that drugs may be responsible for up to 20% of fatalities due to anaphylaxis; that 8% of children (infant to 18) have a food allergy, and 38.7% of food allergic children have a history of severe reactions; that the prevalence of general allergy has continued to rise in the industrialized world for more than 50 years.

Allergies have, no doubt, always existed; but not to the enormous scale that is being witnessed at this time, and rising.

Conventional Medical Explanations

Conventional medicine appears to have no explanation for this prodigious and ongoing rise in allergy. An allergy is usually described as a reaction to a particular food or substance, but 'causation' is rarely addressed. It is often blamed on the immune system, whose role is to destroy harmful substances in the body; allergy happens when the immune system reacts to a substance that is not harmful, but still tries to  destroy it.

The fact that an allergy is a reaction to an allergen is a description, not a cause; because all identified allergens are normal substances that most people have always lived alongside quite happily. The 'cause' of allergy is something that makes an individual allergic to that allergen, or which makes the immune system turn against the allergen..

Pharmaceutical Drugs

Conventional medicine rarely mentions that the pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines now routinely prescribed, especially to young children, are known to cause allergy. Most drugs, and probably all vaccines, have 'allergy' acknowledged as a side effect in the Patient Information Leaflets. This is conventional medicine's own literature. I have written about the main pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines implicated as a cause of allergy, including most vaccines, antibiotics, painkillers, anti-epileptics, sleeping pills, and many others.

Alzheimers/Dementia

Incidence:

• Worldwide, nearly 50 million people have Alzheimer’s or related dementia, according the the Alzheimers.net website. It says that only 1-in-4 people with Alzheimer’s disease have been diagnosed, and that Alzheimer’s and dementia is most common in Western Europe, followed closely by North America. It says that there was an 89% increase in deaths due to Alzheimer’s between 2000 and 2014, that more than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and that by 2050 it is estimated there will be as many as 16 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s.
• Alzheimer's Research UK says that there are now 209,600 new cases of Alzheimer's disease diagnosed every year in the UK.
• The Alzheimer's Society, in a major study in 2014, said that the number of people with dementia in the UK was forecast to increase to over 1 million by 2021, and by over 2 million by 2051, that the total population prevalence of dementia among over 65s was 7.1%, which was equal to 1 in 14 of the population aged 65 years and over

Conventional Medical Explanation for the rise of Alzheimer's disease, and dementia generally, is that it is the result of an ageing population. However, the most serious problem with this explanation is that younger adults, and even children, are now contracting this disease, which is usually referred to as 'early onset dementia' for those under 65 years old. Alzheimer's Research UK admits this when it says that "it is a common misconception that dementia is a condition of older age, over 42,000 people under 65 years old have dementia in the UK." The Alzheimer's Society study in 2014 found that there were over 40,000 people with early-onset dementia in the UK.

It should also be noted that there is a widespread acceptance that conventional medicine has no effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

Pharmaceutical Drugs. Conventional medicine rarely admits that the adverse drug reactions of a large number of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines mention many of the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, such as confusion, loss of memory, disorientation, and others. I have listed some of these pharmaceutical drugs here, and they include vaccines, antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, statins, anticholinergic drugs, and many others commonly taken by older people.

Arthritis

Arthritis is a generic term incorporating many separately diagnosed conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, gout, and many others.

Incidence:

• In the USA, 2013 to 2015, the CDC estimated that 54.4 million adults (22.7% of the population)  had some form of doctor-diagnosed arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, lupus, or fibromyalgia. It further estimated that by 2040, an estimated 78 million (26% of the population) of USA adults aged over 18 years are projected to have doctor-diagnosed arthritis.
• In the UK, Versus Arthritis states that musculoskeletal conditions sch as arthritis and back pain affected an estimated 18.8 million people across the UK in 2017. This accounted for more than 22% of the total burden of ill health in the UK.

The Conventional Medical Explanation is usually that the massive increase in arthritis pain in past decades, and as well as future projected increases, are the result of an ageing population. Lack of exercise and obesity is also regularly cited as an important factor in the increase levels of arthritis.

It should also be noted that there is a widespread acceptance that conventional medicine has no effective treatment for arthritis.

Pharmaceutical Drugs. Yet arthritis is treated, mainly by painkilling drugs, often for many years. These provide (at best) temporary relief for pain, but in the long-term most arthritic conditions get progressively worse, patients need stronger, more toxic drugs.

Yet conventional medicine rarely recognises that most, if not all pharmaceutical drugs are known to cause 'pain' as a 'side effect'. I have listed some of these drugs here, and they include not only painkillers, but corticosteroids, antibiotics, and many others.

Summary of Conventional Medicine's contribution to the rise of arthritis? 

• No effective treatment.
• Lots of non-medical reasons/excuses.
• Pharmaceutical drugs that cause the condition.
  

Asthma

Asthma is a chronic disease of the airway to the lungss, where the bronchial tubes becomes inflamed, narrowed, thus causing a blockage and consequent breath difficulties. The disease is closely linked to the functioning of the immune system.

Incidence

Asthma is an ancient condition that can be traced back to 2600bce in China, and to ancient Egypt and Greece. Yet however far it goes back into history Asthma is not running at epidemic levels, and rising. It has been estimated that since the 1980's there has been a 60% increase in the incidence of asthma, and that the death rate from asthma has doubled during the same time.

WHO has estimated that more than 339 million people had Asthma globally in 2016, and that it caused 417,918 deaths.

The British Lung Foundation has found that 8 million people, over 12% of the population, have been diagnosed with asthma. They says that this means more people have had an asthma diagnosis than have been diagnosed with all other lung diseases combined.

Conventional Medical Explanations

As usual, conventional medicine has no adequate or sufficient explanation for this exponential rise in the incidence of asthma. It will often refer to 'risk factors' of inhaling substances and particles that may irritate the airways and provoke and allergic reaction.

Nor is there any indication that conventional medicine has any successful treatment, just treatments that can reduce the severity of asthma attacks.

Pharmaceutical Drugs

Yet it is well known that there are many commonly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs that have been prescribed over the last 70-100 years that cause asthma. To mention these alone - aspirin, and other painkillers, antibiotics, childhood and other vaccines - should leave little doubt that these drugs have played an important role in the asthma epidemic.

Autism 

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is usually described as a developmental disability. It can cause significant social and behavioural problems in young children, many have developed normally for the first year or two years of their lives. Its most notable features concern communication and interaction difficulties with other people. Autism affects children along a broad spectrum, with the ability to learn, think, and problem solving ranging from severely challenged to gifted.

Incidence

Autism was first described in the 1940's in the USA. Yet this unknown disease has become one of the most astounding stories of the last 70 years. From a virtually unknown disease, the CDC website gives the following statistics on the rise and rise of autism in the USA. In 2000, 1 in 150 children were diagnosed. In 2010 this had grown to 1 in 68 children. It is now thought to be 1 in about 45 children.

The situation is similar in other parts of the world, notably where pharmaceutical medical treatment is dominant, and the use of childhood vaccines has increased alongside the rise of autism.

Conventional Medical Explanations

Conventional medicine has no cure or indeed treatment for autism. Moreover, it usually states, quite unequivocally that it does not know what causes autism, although increasingly it is focusing on a 'genetic' aspect. Despite this, it does know that childhood vaccines are not to blame.

Pharmaceutical Drugs

There are many pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines implicated in causing autism, all of them heavily prescribed during the rise of autism. I have outlined some of these drugs and vaccines here, alongside some of the evidence linking the two.

However, such allegations are always met with resolute denials from the conventional medical establishment. The CDC, for instance, states that "some people have had concerns that ASD might be linked to the vaccines children receive, but studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD". They then provide a reference to a piece of research - paid for by the pharmaceutical industry!

A similar analysis can be done for many other chronic diseases - autoimmune disease, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease, and many others. In each and every case there is"

• a massive increase in the incidence of the disease,
• an inadequate explanation for these rise by the conventional medical establishment,
• pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines that are known to cause the disease, or the symptoms of the disease.
  

CONCLUSION
If we want to know what is happening to health, after 70 to 100 years when conventional medicine has been dominant, when vast sums of money has been spent on medical treatment, especially in the 'advance western world', we just have to observe what has been happening during that time.

• We are getting sicker,
• The medicine in which we have invested heavily is failing,
• A significant reason for the increased sickness we are witnessing is conventional medicine.

The failure of conventional medicine is the result of a medical system that believes it knows better than the body, that it can out-think and out-perform the body with drugs that 'kill', 'inhibit'. block', the natural functioning of the body. It has had its time.

Albert Einstein once defined insanity. It is a definition that can be ascribed to the health policies that have been pursued in most countries of the world through these decades, namely, to spend more and more on pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to deal with the ever-burgeoning levels of illness and disease.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

It is not more money, or more resources that is needed to reverse increasing levels of sickness. It is a change in what that money is spent on. The time for natural medical therapies has arrived. Natural medicine has a different understanding of what good health is. They are more concerned with wellness and well-being, more focused on the immune system, and supporting and strengthening natural immunity. Natural medicine recognises that our bodies have everything that is required to keep us well; that wellness requires sensible lifestyle choices, and that medicine is only successful if it supports, and works alongside the body.

This is why so many people are now choosing homeopathy, and other natural medical therapies, and positively rejecting pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

Mental Health. Why does the epidemic continue to grow bigger, why is more and more money needed to treat it?

"You can judge your health by your happiness". 

Dr Edward Bach. 

I wrote this some years ago, and unfortunately it is a relevant now as it was then. Mental health is another epidemic of chronic illness that we have been facing for many years, conventional medicine has been next to useless in treating it successfully, doctors us dangerous drugs with serious side effects to treat it, so we find the situation gets progressively worse. And so there are more demands for more money to be ploughed into the same old, failed medicine. Here it is, so how the situation has (not!) changed over the intervening years.

"Diseases that affect the brain, and reduce our mental capacity to cope with life, are becoming increasingly prevalent. Depression, for instance, is a problem that appears to be on the increase - not only in terms of numbers of people affected, but also the age at which people are now becoming affected.

The Mental Health Foundation provided these statistics about the problem.

• 1 in 4 British adults experience at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any one year and 1 in 6 experiences this at any given time (The Office for National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Report 2001).
• It is estimated that approximately 450 million people worldwide have a mental health problem (World Health Organisation 2001)
• Mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain, with almost 9% of people meeting criteria for diagnosis (The Office for National Statistics Psychiatric Morbidity Report 2001). 
• One in ten children between the ages of one and 15 has a mental health disorder (The Office for National Statistics Mental Health in Children and Young People in Great Britain 2005).
• Rates of mental health problems among children increase as they reach adolescence. Disorders affect 10.4% of boys aged 5-10, rising to 12.8% of boys aged 11-15, and 5.9% of girls aged 5-10, rising to 9.65% of girls aged 11-15 (Mental Disorders more common in boys, National Statistics on Line, 2004)
• Depression affects 1 in 5 older people living in the community and 2 in 5 living in care homes (Adults in later life with mental health problems, Mental Health Foundation, quoting Psychiatry in the Elderly (3rd Edition), OUP 2002.

Another UK web site (the link no longer works) described the situation like this.

• Major (or clinical) depression is a huge and growing problem. "(It is) the No.1 psychological disorder in the western world, it is growing in all communities, in all age groups, with the greatest growth being seen in the young, especially teens".
• Major depression is the 4th most disabling condition in the world, and 2nd in the developed world (the biggest consumers of ConMed drugs).
• The escalation in the problem, and the recurring episodes of depression show that "while the first line treatment of depression by antidepressants may sometimes control the symptoms, it usually does little to give sufferers depression-free lives".
• Clinical or major depression is growing at an incredible rate.

The website went on to make two important points about the reasons for the depression epidemic.

               First it claimed that there is 10 times more major depression in people born after 1945 than in those born before.

               Second, it said that this increase is not due to more people telling their doctor, and that misdiagnosis and undiagnosed cases would indicate the problem is much bigger than the statistic showed.

• Depressive disorders affect approximately 18.8 million American adults or about 9.5% of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year (including major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, and bipolar disorder).
• Everyone, at some time in their life, will be affected by depression - their own or someone else's, according to Australian Government statistics (its states that depression statistics in Australia are comparable to those in the US and the UK)
• Pre-schoolers (children under 5?) are the fastest-growing market for anti-depressants, with at least 4% - over a million children being clinically depressed.
• The rate of increase of depression among children is an astounding 23% per year.
• In developed countries 15% of the population suffers severe depression.
• 30% of women are depressed. Men's figures were previously thought to be half that of women, but new estimates are higher.
• 15% of depressed people will commit suicide.

So is this evidence of yet another ‘epidemic’ of illness that has occurred over recent decades? Or is there something else that needs to be understood about this increase in mental illness? Whilst the statistics found on these two websites demonstrates the size of this epidemic, another important question needs to be asked.

               Is it a real epidemic of real disease?
               Or is it an epidemic that has been constructed by a health industry that has come to see Mental Health as a source of income and wealth?

Mental Illness has become a big money earner for the pharmaceutical industry, and in recent decades there has been a rapidly increasing supply of suitably diagnosed patients who are said to have a ‘Mental Illness’ of some kind. Indeed, where individuals show no sign of disease the conventional medical establishment appears to be willing to invent new mental disorders (for more on how conventional medicine regularly comes up with new diseases, see "The Creation of Illness".

Conventional medicine has developed, and relies upon the theory that mental health problems are caused by a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain, and that mental illness arises when someone has low levels of serotonin in their body. And as should be expected the pharmaceutical industry just happen to have the drugs to correct this imbalance. The theory is unproven and unsound, and the drugs that interfere with our serotonin levels, antidepressants and antipsychotics, may be dangerous, but never mind it is a good business opportunity!

The sale of both antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs have been, and continue to be, a major source of revenue for the the pharmaceutical industry for many decades. (And of course this has continued right up to today)!

The ability to persuade us that we are ill, and that, as a result, we need conventional medical treatment, especially pharmaceutical drugs, has been one of the main reason for the rise of our drug-dominated NHS. It is more difficult to persuade someone they have the physical symptoms of illness, but it is not so hard to persuade them that they are not thinking properly.

And the ability of conventional medicine to persuade so many people that they are ‘mad’ or ‘sad’ or ‘bad’ has certainly proven to be a lucrative ploy. Who was it that said, with amazing insight, that you have to be mad to be able to live in the modern world! It is certainly true that traditional communities are less susceptible to depression. And major depressive illnesses are apparently almost unknown in the Amish society in the USA.

Perhaps it also needs to be noted that one feature of traditional communities, including the Amish, is that pharmaceutical drugs are not used or approved there.

Indeed, it can also be argued, very strongly, that pharmaceutical drugs can contribute to to the mental health epidemic. (Postscript, 10 years + on, it is quite obvious now that drugs DO contribute to mental health problems).The link between mental health and suicide is often sited, on the basis that depression leads to people taking their own life. For instance, it has been estimated that 80% of suicide victims suffer from major depression. But it is equally true that most people who suffer from ‘major depression’ are taking antidepressant drugs. The question arises, therefore, about whether it is the depression, or the antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs that is causing the massive increase in suicide rates.

It certainly means that antidepressants are not stopping people from taking their lives!

So now, 10 years on from writing this piece, it would appear that nothing ever changes in the world of conventional medical treatment, other than that we pour more and more money into useless and harmful treatments, and the epidemic of mental health continues to grow.

State of the Nation's Health. The NHS Crisis and the Failure of Conventional Medicine (October 2021)

Britain places considerable importance on health. It spends huge amounts of money on the National Health Service (NHS), of which it is extremely proud. The Office of National Statistics (ONS) provides us with the figures that demonstrate this.

In 2018 total current healthcare expenditure was £214.4 billion, equating to £3,227 per person. 

• This accounted for 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 9.8% in 2017, and 6.9% in 1997.
• Total healthcare spending more than doubled, when adjusted for inflation, between 1997 and 2018. In 2018, it grew by 3.2%, its biggest rate of annual growth since 2009. 
• Government-financed healthcare expenditure was £166.7 billion in 2018, accounting for 78% of total healthcare spending. 
• Government-financed healthcare expenditure, in real terms, grew by 2.0% in 2018, and accounted for the largest contribution to growth in total healthcare expenditure, while non-government healthcare financing grew by 7.6%, largely driven by an increase in out-of-pocket spending.

The UK's National Health Service (NHS) was formed in 1948, it's objective being "to provide the best medicine for all the people, free at the point of need". However, the NHS now provides only conventional or pharmaceutical medicine for its patients - conventional medicine has become a monopoly provision within the NHS. This maans that (i) patients have no alternative, (ii) the success or failure of the NHS is entirely in the hands of the quality and performance of pharmaceutical medicine. 

Natural medical therapies, such as homeopathy, herbalism, acupuncture, chiropractor, et al, have been effectively excluded from the NHS.

For the last 10 years, I written many blogs on "the NHS Crisis". Access to these blogs can be found by doing a search at the top of this page - "NHS Crisis".

In addition, my E-Book, "The Failure of Conventional Medicine", has charted in considerable detail why the NHS, year after year, has been falling ever deeper into crisis.

This is the first "State of the Nation's Health" blog but in future it will be published on a regular basis, in October every year. It will look at the performance of the NHS during the past year.

The Essential Characteristics of "Successful" Medicine

The NHS was formed to tackle and overcome illness and disease. So how can its performance be assessed? This must surely be done primarily on the basis of patient outcomes.

• A 'successful' medical system is one that can reduce the incidence of illness and disease.
• A 'failing' medical system will fail to do this. Instead, there will be an increasing number of people becoming ill; and people who are sick will not get better.
• A 'failing' medical system will cost ever increasing amounts of money and resources each year as a direct result of increased illness and disease, and the demands this makes on health resources.

These factors have become regular features of the NHS, with a depressing circulatory - an increase in illness and disease, increased and increasing patient need for treatment - and as a result an increased need for more money and resources.

The Covid-19 Pandemic

This pandemic has further highlighted that the medical system that dominates and controls the NHS is failing badly, not only in the ways it has dealt with virus itself, but in its dire social and economic consequences too. 

The pandemic has not changed the nature of the ongoing annual NHS crisis - it has just exacerbated it further.

Yet the government, the NHS, and the mainstream media (MSM) are now presenting the current problems of the NHS as the direct result of the virus. The virus has dominated every discussion about health for the last 20 months, or more, during which time British people have had to endure policies like social distancing, lockdowns, masks, experimental vaccines, the threat of enforced vaccination, and now vaccine passports. They have all caused severe social disruption, emotional distress, loss of employment and livelihood, small business failure, the disruption of education, and the loss and withdrawal of our freedoms and liberty.

Yet this so-called pandemic has really had little impact on the general nature of the health crisis.

• The monthly 5-year average death rate has not risen significantly in any month since the beginning of the pandemic. Certainly it has not been another Black Death, Great Plague, or even a Spanish Flu.
  
• Most of the 130,000 deaths attributed to the virus (defined as people who had a positive Covid-19 test 28 days prior to their death) were people with "underlying health problems", that is, people who were seriously ill when they contracted the virus. For most of the people who died, if the virus had anything to do with their death at all, it was 'the last straw, the straw that broke the camels back'. It was the cause of death in relatively few cases.
• It is also notable that official figures have shown that no-one died of 'normal' flu during the winter of 2020-2021, an extraordinary fact that raises suspicions about the manipulation of Covid-19 statistics, whether they have been exaggerated out of all proportion - for whatever reason pharmaceutical medicine had for doing so.
• The fear campaign frightened most people into believing that the pandemic was (i) "a serious threat to everyone", (ii) that there was "no available treatment" (meaning no conventional medical treatment). The campaign created a fearful population who were thereafter consequently prepared to forego their normal lives, and their freedoms.
  

The entire medical strategy to deal with Covid-19 is now being used to demonstrate that the NHS crisis was not the endemic, long-term problem we have witnessed for decades, but the unfortunate consequence of a new, deadly, rogue virus.

This medical strategy, imposed by government on the advice of conventional medical 'science', can be clearly seen (for anyone who wishes to see). Yet response to, and the outcome of the pandemic have been little different to any other NHS crisis in recent years - just more focused, and slightly more severe.

Patient Waiting Lists

The hopeless and inadequate response of the NHS to the Covid-19 virus has meant that medical treatment for other areas of healthcare has been utterly disregarded. Staff who would normally have provided these treatments have been diverted to deal with the virus, and hospital beds have been kept free in case Covid-19 patients needed them. The consequence has been that patient waiting lists for medical treatment are now the longest since records began.

The number of patients waiting for treatment surged by over 200,000 in the month of June alone! The total number of patients on waiting lists has risen to an estimated 5.5 million. Most of these patients are waiting for treatment conventional medicine itself deems to be urgent and/or essential, treatments for cancer, brain surgery, heart and kidney failure, eye treatment, limb and organ replacement, and the like.

Moreover (if this was not bad enough) the government's Health Secretary has recently warned that patient waiting lists are likely to increase rather than decrease in the short term. Some estimates I have seen predict a phenomenal 14 million people could soon be waiting for 'essential' treatment by the autumn of 2022. 

Such dire predictions have one of two purposes. They are either genuine warning about the NHS crisis. Or they are statements generated in order to extract even more money from the government. We will see.

• Patient waiting lists are a good measure of the size of the sick population, and the failure of the NHS to cope with their illness.
  
• Waiting lists that grow year on year demonstrate a population that is getting sicker, despite the medical treatment they are receiving.
• A government that has to ask the people 'to save the NHS' indicates it has little confidence in the medical system in which they are investing heavily.
  

The timescales for dealing with patient waiting lists are daunting. The Institute of Public Policy Research has estimated that 19.5 million people, who they estimate should have been diagnosed with cancer, have not been because of cancelled or missed referrals. They predict that thousands of cancer patients will die over the next decade "because of the devastating treatment backlog". They have calculated that it could take more than a decade to clear the backlog, that if hospitals could achieve a 5% increase in treatments over pre-pandemic levels, it would take until 2033 to clear the backlog. But of course they concluded that increasing activity levels would require yet more resources for more staff and new equipment.

This is what always happens with the NHS. Chronic disease increases, more money and resources are demanded, and provided; only in time for an increased incidence of disease, leading to yet more demands for money and resources. It is a familiar merry-go-round!

Epidemics of Chronic Disease

One of the main features of the NHS over the last 70 years has been epidemic increases in chronic diseases, such as allergy, arthritis, asthma, autism, auto-immune disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, mental health, osteoporosis, and many more. These epidemics, which show little indication of declining, raises important (but usually unasked) questions. 

• Just how healthy is the UK's population today, especially when compared to 73 years ago when the NHS started, and particularly in recent decades when conventional medicine has taken complete control of the NHS?
• Is conventional/pharmaceutical medicine making us better, or sicker? 
• Is the NHS winning, or losing the war it regularly declares on illness and disease?

I have charted the rise of these chronic disease epidemics here. What needs to be emphasised is that almost without exception the epidemic are still increasing, and are usually predicted to rise even further in the years to come. Just a few months ago I charted the rise of chronic disease on this blog, a just few months ago. The Daily Skeptic (one of the alternative media I look to for some honesty about health issues, entirely absent in the mainstream media, has updated some of these underlying trends. I will use some of their statistics in "Chronic Disease: Still no Cures in Sight" here, with thanks.

Obesity. In the UK 2019 figures show that 28% of adults are obese and a further 36.2% are overweight. Obesity incidence is now occurring at considerably younger ages, with 2019 data showing that 10% of children aged 4-10 are obese and 21% at age 10-11. The incidence of obesity is rising rapidly: there were four times as many hospital admissions with a diagnosis of obesity in 2016/17 compared with 2009/10. 

Diabetes. 10% of all people aged over 40 in the UK are now living with a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes; this amounts to 4.7 million of us, expected to reach 5.5 million by 2030. This compares to 1.4 million in 1996. The problem is global; the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimated that the number of people with diabetes rose from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 5% increase in premature mortality from diabetes.

Autoimmune conditions. Many autoimmune conditions are becoming more common, with some increasing in incidence by as much as 9% each year. In the UK 4 million people are known to be living with at least one autoimmune condition, and many with several autoimmune conditions at the same time. Rheumatoid arthritis is increasing at 7% per year, Type 1 diabetes by 6.3%, coeliac disease by up to 9% per year.

Cancer. According to Cancer Research U.K., there are over 164,000 cancer deaths in the UK each year, which is about 450 each day. One in two people in the UK, born after 1960 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime. In the USA cancer incidence increased by 12% between 1994 and 2016; in the 1940s, one in sixteen had a cancer diagnosis; this had increased to one in three by 2018.

Dementia. There are currently around 850,000 people with dementia in the UK but this is projected to reach 1.6 million people in the U.K. by 2040. The global number of people living with dementia more than doubled from 1990 to 2016, while in the USA deaths from AD have risen 145% between 2000 and 2017. The USA Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report that the number of people living with the disease doubles every five years beyond the age of 65. Most worryingly, those with early onset dementia have increased by 200% since 2013.

Cardiovascular disease. For some years cardiovascular disease mortality has been declining, despite increasing incidence of disease. However, in recent years, the rate of decline in CVD mortality has slowed in most developed countries, particularly at ages 35-74 years, and is now rising in 12 out of the 23 nations studied in 2017, including the UK, the USA and Germany.

Autism. In the UK there was a sharp increase in the prevalence rates of autism in UK schools between 2010 and 2019. Autism currently affects 1–2% of the UK population - that is 1 per 100 children and 2 per 100 adults. According to the USA CDC, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the fastest growing developmental disability, affecting 1 in 59 children (1970s: one in 5000). Prevalence has increased 10-17% each year over the last several years. It has been described as an ‘autism tsunami’.

These medical statistics present us with a stark picture. What is never done is to ask why such diseases are increasing so rapidly, so consistently, and why the £billions being spent on the NHS does nothing to reduce disease, or even stop the continual increase.

 

The Rise of New and Rare Diseases

One of the features of modern conventional medicine is the regular diagnosis of 'new', 'rare' diseases in children - for which there is no known cause - and no effecting treatment. I have listed some of these in this blog, and outlined my suspicion that they are caused by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines.

These new and rare diseases continue to appear, without explanation, without effective treatment, and always without any investigation into their links with pharmaceutical drug and vaccine treatments.

What usually happens is that expensive new treatments, costing huge amounts of money per patient per year - without them ever offering effective treatment.

The Role of Pharmaceutical Drugs in the Failure of Pharmaceutical Medicine

Pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are known to cause "side effects", or "adverse reactions", which I prefer to call 'disease inducing effects' (or DIE's). The link between pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines remains unrecognised by the conventional medical establishment (CME), so it is not properly understood by the vast majority of people. As I have argued elsewhere, the increased consumption of pharmaceutical drugs over the last 70 years has exactly mirrored the increase in chronic disease. Yet there may be early  signs that the link is being recognised.

The UK government commissioned a review that has just reported. The review highlights the serious problem of the over prescription of drugs, and the problems caused by the known adverse effects caused by prescription medicines. 

• It found that about 10% of all doctor prescriptions should not have been prescribed, 
• that 15% of people are now taking 5 or more medications daily, putting them at an increased risk of suffering "adverse effects".
• It found that 1 in 5 hospital admissions of people over-65 were caused by the adverse effects of prescribed drugs.
• Doctors were told to reduce drug prescriptions in favour of social prescribing, and encouraged a ore 'holistic approach to individual health and well-being.

This may be the start of a growing realisation that increased chronic disease is, in large part, fuelled by pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. But the problem is far larger and more serious than the review suggests. Moreover, it is unlikely to change doctors prescription habits. It has certainly never done so before.

For instance, in 2016, an article published in the British Medical Journal by Peter Gøtzsche, argued that prescription drugs had become the third leading cause of death. His article highlighted psychiatric drugs, and particularly antidepressant drugs. He quoted studies that "tells us that the system we have for researching, approving, marketing, and using drugs is totally broken". At the same time he questioned the efficacy of these drugs. He also highlighted the lethal qualities of painkilling drugs, especially NSAID painkillers, that are now taken by so many people, and which "carry a huge death toll", primarily by causing bleeding stomach ulcers and myocardial infarction.

Despite this article, and many other similar articles which have been studiously ignored, it made no difference to the prescribing habits of doctors, to NHS policy, or to the understanding of government about why they constantly increase NHS funding, yet continue to face demands for even more NHS funding.

NHS Resources and Demands for Increased Funding and Resources

This has been going on since the inauguration of the NHS in 1948. There is always too much sickness for the NHS to cope with, and when the government provides more money and resources, levels of sickness continue to rise. 

So what about NHS staff who are under constant, and increasing pressure to deal with spiralling levels of sickness and disease. How are they faring?

The morale, retention and recruitment of staff, at all levels, and in every part of the NHS, continues to deteriorate. This has been happening for many years now. It is typical of any industry that is not doing well. If medical staff were working with sick patients, are making them well, these pressures would not exist. The job would not be easy; but the job satisfaction would make the toil worthwhile. 

Yet this is not the case when patients get ill, and remain sick for many years, even a lifetime. So when the number of sick patients grows without end, and so never go away. When the treatment they have at their disposal does not treat patients successfully, there is a loss of morale. It is utterly depressing, and this can be seen in many of the things happening within the NHS now.

Doctors and Primary care

• There is an ongoing and worsening shortage of doctors, with 1 in 7 GP posts unfilled.
• GP retention is a long-term problem for the NHS.
  
• A Record number of GPs seeking mental health counselling amid media abuse.
  
• There are warnings that GP practices could close or reduce services this winter as pressures mount. 

Patients are finding it increasingly hard to get an appointment with an NHS doctor, face-to-face, or on the telephone, many are becoming dissatisfied, and many resort to abuse and violence. 

• Some patients are now so desperate they have been violent towards health workers.
• The BMA has called for patient expectations to be "managed" - as over half of GP's are now suffering abuse.
  

It is unfortunate that too many patients continue to believe the NHS is able to offer them something that will make them well again, not realising that the problem is a lack of effective treatment, not doctors and other medical staff, denying them access to treatment that will make them better.

Mental Health Provision

Mental health provision has been a problem, part of the NHS crises, for many years. It might now prove to be one of the worst consequences of NHS Covid-19 policies which have further exacerbated the mental health epidemic. It may be one of the worst 'own goals' it has scored.

• Children's mental health referrals are reported to have doubled during the pandemic.
• There has been a 50% increase in the number of children going to A&E with serious mental health issues since the start of lockdown.
• When added to the mental health epidemic prior to the pandemic, this means that almost a quarter of a million children now being prescribed antidepressants, and as this article explains, this number is expected to increase because of the disruption of children's lives and education caused by Covid-19 policies.
  

Hospital and Accident and Emergency Departments (A&E)

The failure of primary care doctors to offer treatment is then transferred within the NHS. Patients go elsewhere, transferring the workload from GP surgeries to Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments, and to hospitals generally.

The situation in A&E units is bad and getting worse. A monthly analysis undertaken by the British Medical Association (BMA), on "Pressure Points in the NHS" says that emergency department waiting times have risen, even though demand was lower owing the Covid-19 restrictions.

    "Prior to the pandemic, the situation in A&E was increasingly catastrophic with demand soaring, the number of trolley waits being highest on record and performance against the four-hour target reaching an all-time low over the past winter." (My emphasis).

Hospitals also report a similar situation. The BMA analysis estimated that between April 2020 and July 2021, there were 3.79 million fewer elective procedures, and 26.02 million fewer outpatient attendances. The evidence of pressure is clear, so, for example, we have

• statements from acute medical doctors warning of unprecedented pressures, even during the summer period.
• Hospital are suspending all inpatient surgery because of bed shortages - again, in the summer period.
  
• Hospitals are already reporting that staff are "hanging on" prior to the usual 'winter pressures'.

The ambulance service is also under severe strain. One of the regular features of modern life is the ever-present sound of ambulance sirens, getting to sick patients, or rushing them to hospital. So it is not surprising that they, too, are under severe pressure.

• NHS Providers have mapped the pressures on paramedics, and the ambulance service.  
• The Welsh ambulance service has asked for assistance from the army to relieve pressures.

Of course most of these pressures are now being blamed on the Covid-19 pandemic. But these pressures have been around now for many years, they have not changed, they have increased, but they they have been increasing, incrementally, for many years - with ambulances queueing outside hospitals, unable to discharge patients to free up capacity. The pressures always seem to be getting worse, despite increased spending and staffing. The residential care sector usually take the blame. Now it is Covid-19.

Financial. Funding Crises and the NHS

NHS resources, and huge amounts of additional government spending, were directed towards 'chasing' the Covid-19 virus. Always the demand is for more, and each new £ will be spend on the same, failed and failing treatment.

Despite the 'whatever it takes' policy adopted by the UK government at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and an additional input of some £2 billion, plus the £37 billion on the 'Test and Trace' fiasco, and much else, there are now further demands for more financial assistance for the NHS.  

• NHS Frontline Bodies Issue Urgent Appeal for More Health Service Funding.

The NHS now gets some 44% of all government spending. The proportion of GNP (Gross National Product) spent on health has risen every year since 1948. Yet it is still insufficient.

 

The social care budget (for day care, and residential care) has been widely accepted as inadequate for many years. In September 2021 the government announced a spending commitment of £5.5 billion for social care. However, for the next 3 years this vast sum of money will be spent on the NHS, not on social care. It leaves me wondering whether, in 3 years time, this money will be removed from the NHS and returned to social care? Given the performance of the NHS hitherto this seems highly unlikely.

The Future - Conclusion

The NHS focus during the Covid-19 virus has been the delivery of vaccines. It has totally ignored the value of innate and natural immunity. It has never informed people about the importance of our immune system, and what they can do to support and strengthen it. Only vaccines would save us, we were told. The importance of the immune system, which natural medical therapies have always placed at the very centre of their medical practise, has been completely ignored.

The vaccines will save us. Nothing else can. Or so we are told!

This means that there is little prospect of change for the future other than more money being poured into the NHS, and being spent on the same, failing pharmaceutical medicine. So little will change.

So the crisis will deepen. The government is already warning us that the NHS may not be able to cope with another Covid-19 spike, so we are now being asked "to save the NHS" again, and to save Christmas too! It is we patients who now have to save the doctors! It is a dire situation which is unlikely to change.

• I will re-assess the state of the nation's health again in October 2022. And before that, in March 2022, I will describe the 2021-2022 NHS winter crisis. 

• If my hypothesis is correct it will be the same old story. Except that it is likely to be even worse!

• If my hypothesis is incorrect I will be apologising to everyone. Conventional medicine can work successfully, it is not failing.