Too much medicine is killing us
If someone would say to you that “too much medicine is killing us” would this ring true to you? This is the discussion that’s slowly gaining momentum outside doctor’s surgeries. In 2015 Sir Bruce Keogh, Medical Director of NHS England and former cardiac surgeon, admitted that 1 in 7 NHS treatments including operations are unnecessary and should not have been carried out on patients. Professor Peter Gøtzsche MD (research design and analysis at the University of Copenhagen) voices deep concerns over the impact of psychiatric drugs including antidepressants and dementia drugs. Consultant Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra says commercial conflicts of interest are contributing to an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients.
Is this the stuff of conspiracy theorists and alarmists or are these sensible people calling for sensible action? Despite NHS funding having gone up under every successive government (Labour/Conservative/Coalition), NHS hospitals are 930 million Pounds overspent in 2016 and we see junior doctors taking to the barricades. To put £930m in perspective: Tamiflu, a flu drug the NHS spent 473 million Pounds stockpiling, proved no more effective than paracetamol… the final conclusion in this evidence based medicine Cochrane Report stated “The influenza virus-specific mechanism of action proposed by the producers does not fit the clinical evidence” which means that it doesn’t do what it says on the tin… £473m profit for pharmaceutical industry, £473m heamorrhaging of NHS funds. Worldwide Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) has generated sales in excess of £11bn ($18bn; €13bn) for Roche since 1999. And that’s just one example from the mountain of prescribed medications!
With the current “more medicine is better” culture coming to an end (is it?), your question may be what do I do instead. The best prevention and frequently even the cure comes from a different lifestyle. The cure may be in the kitchen and outdoors.
If haemorrhaging money from our NHS budget isn’t bad enough, “more medicine is better” increases the NHS workload. The FDA reports that adverse events from prescribed medications have more than tripled in the past decade in the United States (more than 123,000 deaths in 2014 and 800,000 total serious patient outcomes including hospitalisations and life threatening disability). Of course the FDA is America but the pattern in the UK is the same. That is why The Queen’s former doctor Sir Richard Thompson has called on the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to conduct an urgent public enquiry into drugs firms’ ‘murky’ practices, he is one of six eminent doctors to raise the alarm:
- Professor John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health
- Professor Rita Redberg, Cardiologist and Professor of Medicine, Chief Editor of JAMA Internal Medicine
- Professor James McCormack, a pharmaceutical scientist
- Sir Richard Thompson KCVO, Consultant Gastroenterologist and past president of the Royal College of Physicians
- Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Honorary Consultant Cardiologist
- Dr. Jaswinder Bamrah, Consultant Psychiatrist and Chairman of the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin
One of them, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, explains that “institutions such as universities, medical journals and doctors collude wittingly or unwittingly with the medical industry for financial gain” and, in case you wonder how such a systemic error can seep into a public healthcare system, you need not look further than follow the money [motion picture All The President’s Men]. For example, the NHS drugs rationing watchdog NICE lowered the threshold for prescribing statins in 2014 to encourage GPs to prescribe these drugs to more people. But it later emerged that six of that twelve-strong panel received funding from drugs manufacturers – either by being paid directly to give speeches or ‘advice’, or through funding for research. Precisely this is what Dr. Peter Rost MD (former marketing vice president of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer) explains in the below video. What doctors are taught, what doctors read in medical literature, what subsequently you are being told, is subject to what the former editor of the British Medical Journal Dr. Richard Smith MD calls research misconduct…
There are safe low-cost answers to many medical problems and one such 100% safe alternative for asthma for instance is Buteyko breathing. Dr Gerald Spence MD (a British General Practitioner) said this slashed his surgery’s asthma medication bill by two-thirds. All it takes is for registered healthcare providers to suspend their prejudices and disbelief, and encourage patients to try it.
The One More Girl documentary is a response to Merck Pharmaceutical Company – which developed the Human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil – marketing campaign “One Less Girl” for Gardasil. The parents who encouraged their daughters to get the HPV vaccine did so on the advice of their doctors, their government, and their belief in the pharmaceutical industry. They were not ‘anti-vaccine’, they played by the rules, and now they are paying the price. One More Girl is a documentary about stories of futures destroyed and families reduced to financial ruin by medical costs brought on by the Gardasil vaccine. This is a documentary that has several experts from the industry, doctors and university researchers speaking out about the vaccine.