The 'Normalisation' of Chronic Disease Epidemics: how Conventional Medicine ignores them

There has been an ongoing epidemic of all chronic disease (eg., arthritis, autism, autoimmune disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart/liver/kidney disease, and many more) for over 70 years. Indeed it is difficult to name a chronic disease whose incidence has not risen exponentially during this time anywhere in the world in which pharmaceutical medicine reigns supreme. The data is often shared with us, information about how the disease is out-of-control, but when it is the purpose is usually to make an urgent case for yet more resources to be found for yet more conventional medical treatment. The rise and rise of chronic disease, however, is rarely considered in a broader, more general context.

    Invariably, conventional medical treatment is being, and has been used, but we are never told why this treatment has not been successful in dealing with the disease, and why despite treatment the disease is getting more common?

    The fact is that in the last 75 years chronic disease epidemics have all been running parallel to enormous and increasing resources being ploughed into conventional, drug-based medicine, but the treatment has not been able to stem the tide of chronic disease. Indeed, in most cases epidemic levels of disease continue to increase.

It is therefore logical to assume that if pharmaceutical medicine was able to treat these illnesses and diseases successfully there would be no ongoing epidemic. Certainly the incidence of the disease would not be expected to rise, often exponentially! And in fairness, the conventional medical establishment is probably well aware of this, even though it is particularly difficult for it to explain this to us, other than pleading that they need more money, for more of the same treatment. 

Yet whenever additional resources are ploughed into medical provision, the epidemics seem only to increase in size, and even in matters of health there has surely to be a time-limit on how long they are given to redeem their promise of effective treatment!

For instance, Cancer Research UK has been using the slogan "Together we are beating cancer....." for as long as I can remember! And they continue to use it. Their latest campaign is to raise more money for cancer research to avoid the annual number of cancer deaths from rising to 20,000 by 2040. One might ask how much further we will be asked to run, swim, cycle in order to raise yet more money for the charity! Cancer Research UK has roots going back to 1902, and the slogan might be nearly that old!

Other charities have similar slogans, full of hope and optimism. The British Heart Foundation uses the similar slogan, Together, we can beat heartbreak forever....". And there are many, many more similar slogans calling us to provide drug companies with more funding for drug/vaccine research.

The problem for the conventional medicine is that there is another explanation, one that does not involve the need for more money and greater resources, but questions the efficacy of the medical system on which most countries have built their health services for the last 70 years - pharmaceutical medicine. Conventional medicine know this, and it knows that it needs to justify itself, and increasingly they have devised strategies to do so.

1. See no evil, hear no evil

If you don't look for something you won't find anything. If you don't hear criticism, you won't have to respond to it. The pharmaceutical industry know this, and have used this time-honoured strategy whenever it has been confronted with questions about the chronic disease epidemics.

The failure to look for evidence of iatrogenic (medically-caused) patient harm, especially if that evidence might implicate pharmaceutical treatment (or the selling of drugs) has been going on for many years. Silence will often mean that the original question will not be heard. A lack of dialogue means that nothing will be heard. If nothing is said, especially when faced with an awkward question, no debate will ensue.

Initially you don't even deny allegations. Silence reigns supreme. For instance, even if it's alleged that a pharmaceutical drug has been used intentionally to kill sick patients, the accusation remains unanswered. The silence is only broken when an issue or problem refuses to go away. Then denial becomes necessary. But denial should never be too vociferous for fear that too many people become aware of the issue. No publicity is the best publicity for an industry seeking to defend itself from bad news.

Yet when denial becomes necessary the pharmaceutical knows that it can minimise any damage by doing several things.

• To get 'medical science' on your side, not difficult as you provide science companies with the major part of their income.
• To get government on your side, not difficult if you are able to entice their support with promise of industrial investment.
• To get the mainstream media on your side, not difficult when your advertising means survival to news organisations, and news companies can be infiltrated and controlled.
• To ensure that health charities and patient support groups on your side, not difficult if you provide them with both funding, and personnel.

And even if medical science fails to comply with supportive research, stop the research. This happens regularly, most recently when the journal Cureus retracted a peer-reviewed paper that called for a global moratorium on the Covid-19 vaccines following an investigation into vaccine trial data, and post-injection injuries suggested that they were not "safe and effective". Or if the research cannot be stopped, at least ensure that harm is minimised, like when a study of adverse Covid-19 vaccine reactions was studied, serious patient harm was found, but they were adjudged to have been "very rare".

The strategy is all about damage limitation to the industry. The pharmaceutical industry is not alone in adopting the strategy, as demonstrated by this research concerning the dangers of cellphone radiation which was cancelled after safety risks were uncovered. If an industry has enough wealth, power and influence, it can ensure that evidence that is "bad for business" does not reach the eyes of the world.

But such are the current difficulties of the pharmaceutical industry they are having to move beyond silence, denial, and the financial control of information sources. It seems that they are developing new, more subtle strategies.

2. Munchausen's Syndrome

This BBC television programme explains one such justification. This suggests that patients are not really sick at all, they are faking their illness/disease in order to get attention! Munchausen's syndrome was originally explained as a rare form of child abuse (Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy), where a parent or carer exaggerates. or deliberately causes symptoms of illness in a child. In this context, the illness has been fabricated, or induced, to draw attention to himself/herself.

This new form of Munchausen's syndrome appears to suggest that people are feigning sickness rather than being sick. Perhaps Conventional medicine sees this a a new form of defence against criticism, a way of explaining away the rise and rise of so many chronic diseases?

3. The Normalisation of Disease

The normalisation of disease is yet another strategy Conventional Medicine seems to be using to discount and minimise the spiralling levels of illness and disease. Illness and disease is just something that happens, bad luck perhaps, an unexpected, surprise attack by a some virulent virus or germ. No matter. Let's get on with life. Let's not worry ourselves about the cause the disease. Never mind if there is no effective or safe treatment. 

Mental health conditions have been particularly subject to this normalisation (and I have written about the normalisation of disease with regard to Autism recently).

But cancer, once described as a disease of old age, is now affecting babies, children, young people, and adults of all ages; and this spreading  of cancer through the age groups has been accepted as quite 'normal' now. This article, for instance, decries the attempt to dismiss cancer as "a natural disease of ageing", that we should be actively getting rid of the toxic exposures that are known to cause cancer rather than normalising the disease.  

And of course, this 'toxic exposure' should include exposure to the many pharmaceutical drugs that are known to cause cancer! But this is something that the drug companies wish to avoid!

Similarly, dementia was once thought to be a disease of old age, but describing younger adults as suffering from "early onset" dementia seems to have become a sufficient and satisfactory explanation for the extension of dementia to people in their 30's, 40's and 50's. The disease has just happened a few years earlier than it should have done, nothing usual, all quite normal - or so we are wanted to believe. 

And again it is certainly not necessary to look at the toxicity of pharmaceutical that drugs that are known to cause dementia!

4. Neurodiversity: living with and accepting illness

Neurodiversity is a further extension of the 'normalising' of disease, and has been especially used to justify the epidemic of autism. We should accept the disease, embrace it, and positively celebrate our differences. So we are asked to ignore the illness, we should not worry that something has made him or her 'different' to other people, or worry about the culpability of iatrogenic origins of the disease, and conventional medicine's their inability to do anything to treat it effectively. We are being asked to look at the individual, not his/her incapacity or disability, and just to get on looking after him/her properly!

So the pharmaceutical conventional medical establishment is asking us to accept illness and disease as a 'normal' part of life; accept it and just get on with living. Don't worry about the absence of effective treatment. And certainly don't worry about causation.

So don't be fooled into this malaise. We are dealing here with a medical system that not only fails to treat illness and disease effectively, but one that secretly (deep down) must accept at least partial responsibility for creating these epidemics of illness and disease.

Autism, the Failure of Conventional Medicine, the constant cover-up of medical harm

I have written extensively about the Failure of Conventional (or Pharmaceutical) Medicine. What is happening to the health of our nations is not a failure to invest sufficiently in conventional medicine. It is not a matter of "invest more, and get healthier"; indeed quite the opposite is true; the more we invest in pharmaceutical medicine, the sicker we have become.

Equally important, however, is the way conventional medical authorities have hidden this failure, and how it continues to do so. This cover-up is the reason most people are not aware of the medical failure, and indeed why, despite continuing medical failure, most people demand yet more resources for yet more of it!

And here we need to pay tribute to the one, most important, single success of conventional medicine - its enormously successful (but pernicious) propaganda.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than how conventional medicine is currently manipulating our understanding of the autism epidemic.

Autism was unknown in the 1940’s. In many ways, this was the decade that finally confirmed and reinforced the dominance of conventional, or pharmaceutical  medicine. In the UK, in 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) was created. Henceforward everyone would be able to access pharmaceutical medicine, free at the point of use. In most other western nations similar medical schemes were introduced to ensure that populations had access to "the best drugs" available. 

The result, over the years, has been an exponential increase in the consumption of pharmaceutical drug. For the last 80-100 years we have taken them in the belief that they would make us better, that the outcome would be improved health, and less illness and disease.

Adverse drug and vaccine reactions have been less well discussed. Yet any survey of any chronic disease shows clearly that they have all risen, consistently, rapidly since the drug-fest began. They have become epidemics. And it is known, in conventional medical literature, that pharmaceutical drugs are known to be a major cause of diseases like arthritis, cancer, dementia, diabetes, heart/liver/kidney disease, and many more. 

The rise of autism is just one of them - but it is an important one. Autism rates have risen rapidly since the first case was identified in the 1940's. I wrote about this in  March 2019.

        "Autism is a disease unknown before the 1940’s, prior to mass vaccination campaigns. Since then it has risen, exponentially. And it has done so in exact parallel to the increased use of vaccines. The CDC website (a pillar of the conventional medical establishment) gives the following statistics about the rise and rise of autism in the USA.

          2000          1 in 150 children
          2002          1 in 150 children
          2004          1 in 125 children
          2006          1 in 110 children
          2008          1 in 88 children
          2010          1 in 68 children
          2012          1 in 59 children

A CDC study, published in March 2023, shows that the incidence of autism continues to rise, and shows no sign of abating.

        "For 2020, one in 36 children aged 8 years (approximately 4% of boys and 1% of girls) was estimated to have ASD. These estimates are higher than previous ADDM Network estimates during 2000–2018".

In England alone, the Nuffield Trust estimates show that there are about 1.2 million autistic people, and 2-2 million people with ADHD now. There has been a huge rise in demand for both diagnoses and support, and providing this support in going to be a huge task - the secondary costs of conventional medical failure.

• Once upon a time, this autism epidemic was discussed as "an urgent public health concern" - but no longer. The new approach is to develop "enhanced infrastructure to provide equitable diagnostic, diagnostic, treatment, and support services for all children with ASD".
  

If you examine conventional medical literature three things become clear. First, the cause of the epidemic of autism remains unknown (after 80 years)! Second, autism is NOT caused by vaccines (it could be any other factor, but it is definitely not our vaccines)! Nor will we look at the cause. Third, there is no effective treatment. These are some comments made on the UK's NHS website and it demonstrates conventional medicine new, blase, apathetic, unconcerned approach to autism.

    * Autism is not an illness. Being autistic does not mean you have an illness or disease. It means your brain works in a different way from other people. It's something you're born with. Signs of autism might be noticed when you're very young, or not until you're older. If you're autistic, you're autistic your whole life. Autism is not a medical condition with treatments or a "cure". But some people need support to help them with certain things. Being autistic does not have to stop you having a good life. Like everyone, autistic people have things they're good at as well as things they struggle with. Being autistic does not mean you can never make friends, have relationships or get a job. But you might need extra help with these things. It's not clear what causes autism. Nobody knows what causes autism, or if it has a cause. It can affect people in the same family. So it may sometimes be passed on to a child by their parents. (It is) not caused by vaccines, such as the MMR vaccine.

For a failed medical system this new strategy makes eminent sense. Doctors do no understand what is causing the disease; they have no treatment for it; they are embarrassed because links with vaccine damage will not go away; so they ask us to 'accept' the disease, that nothing can be done, that it is something we must just accept.

So 2nd April 2024 was officially pronounced by the USA President as "World Autism Acceptance Day". I wonder how many of us noticed how the word "acceptance" was skilfully slipped in there? Autism is no longer an "urgent public health concern", it is something we have to accept. Why? Conventional medicine can do nothing about the condition - so all we can do is to look after all those on the "autistic spectrum" properly. 

I have no problem with with the idea that autistic people have to be properly looked after. My problem is that in doing so conventional medicine fail to recognise the seriousness of the condition, and in doing so  the failure of conventional medicine - its role in creating autism, its failure to identify the cause, its inability to treat autism, and its recognition that nothing can be done to prevent an even higher incidence of the condition in future. This is what the Childrens Health Defense organisation described it.

            "The CDC has “taken action” by promoting April as “Autism Acceptance Month” from “Autism Awareness Month. But “acceptance” means different things to different people. For us, the term is, in fact, unacceptable.CHD “ accepts” and supports all efforts to improve the lives of children and families affected by autism. We accept individual differences. But we don’t “accept” the refusal by our taxpayer-funded public health agencies to investigate the real causes behind this tragic epidemic."

Pharmaceutical medicine wants to take our minds off both the cause, and the treatment of autism. We have just to accept it. Autism should be celebrated and embraced. Forget the possibility that autism might be caused by vaccines, recognise that a diagnosis of autism is a sign of social inclusivity. Let's normalise the disease. Let's celebrate neurodiversity. Autistic people are just 'different', and we should appreciate those who are different, and not consider autism to be a disease.

Yet there is a difference between celebrating and normalising an individual with autism, and celebrating autism itself. As one father of an autistic child has said, he wants to celebrate his autistic daughter, but he does not want to celebrate her disability, or what will happen to her when he, and her mother, have gone.

        "My daughter's disabled for life. Don't cheapen that disability by pretending that the fact that you're a little nerdy makes you autistic."

This is exactly right. He continues by saying that early in life autism is very costly to parents, including mothers who are often obliged to stay home and abandon their careers. Over time those costs shift, as the parents retire, and eventually die.

        “Most autistic individuals in adulthood are unemployed and unemployable … Then they’re going to have to be housed somewhere and they’re going to have to have something to do during the day. Someone’s got to watch over them.”

So 'normalising' autism might be a good strategy for the pharmaceutical medical establishment, but not for the person who has autism, or their family - especially severe autism. 

It is also fundamentally dishonest. There is no effective treatment for autism, but whilst developing the case for normalising and celebrating neurodiversity, the drug companies have also noted that autism provides them with a huge opportunity - a multi-billion market for autism drugs! The global Autism Spectrum Disorder treatment market is projected to reach $11.42 billion by 2028, according to a new report by 360 Research Reports.

So the pharmaceutical industry is riding two horses simultaneously. 

    (i) Accept autism as a normal condition, whose cause in unknown; and 

    (ii) take antipsychotic drugs, like Risperdal and Abilify to treat this 'normal' condition! 

And whilst families are doing this, they want us to ignore that the toxicity of antipsychotic drugs is only matched by their ineffectiveness! So an industry that profited from harming the children initially now want families to ignore this, to accept what has happened, accept that they will profit again - by selling them more toxic drugs that are likely to cause further patient harm.

The NHS Crisis (Spring 2024): now there is no more money!

The NHS Crisis is developing fast, getting worse by the day, and has become a year-long event. I have been writing about this crisis for over 11 years now. The underlying pattern of the crisis has never changed:

 >>> increased sickness >>> followed by increased spending on pharmaceutical treatment >>> followed by even more sickness >>> and then even more demands for even more money. 

During this time the NHS has never changed its explanation for the crisis. They don't have enough money, they need more, lots more, for more pharmaceutical drug treatment, for more adverse drug reactions, for more sickness - for which the NHS will want more money for treatment. It is a merri-go-round!

It has always been thus. It is contained within the 14+ blogs written over the last 13 years on the NHS Crisis, all listed and linked at the foot of the page.

And no one (outside this blog) has EVER questioned whether it is wise to spend more and more money on a medical system that is so demonstrably failing to provide an effective response to the constantly expanding levels of sickness. Yet the right questions are beginning to be asked. The NHS has routinely told us that it does not have enough doctors and nurses. Yet doctor numbers have risen by 37%, and other staff by 45%, in the last 10 years. This Expose article asks "How does the the NHS do so little with so much". It fails to come to the inevitable conclusion, but it does provide some useful statistics from the Office for National Statistics.

• The number of doctors increased by 37,467 (up 37%) from 101,137 in 2013 to 138,604 by 2023.
• The number of nurses and midwives increased by 68,063 (up 23%) from 295,163 in 2013 to 363,226 in 2023.
• The number of scientific staff increased by 42,938 (up 13%) from 123,912 in 2013 to 166,850 in 2023.
• The number of support staff increased by 125,510 (up 45%) from 279,579 in 2013 to 405,089 in 2023.
• The number of infrastructure staff increased by 62,758 (up 41%) from 152,437 in 2013 to 215,195 in 2023.
• The number of ambulance staff increased by just 1,721 (up 10%) from 17,537 in 2013 to 19,258 in 2023.

Even the BBC is beginning to ask questions about the viability of the NHS. In July 2023 it wished the NHS a happy 75th birthday - but asked whether it could survive to 100 years old. They are right to ask the question, but as usual, wrong in their assessment of what the problem is. They mentioned the "dire warnings" that it could not do so "without drastic change". A change in the medical system, dominated by pharmaceutical drugs, that dominates NHS treatment? No, let's blame the patient instead!

            "When the NHS was created the main focus was on short bouts of treatment for injury and infection, but now the challenge is completely different.The ageing population means huge numbers of people are living with chronic health problems, such as heart disease, dementia and diabetes that require long-term care and for which there is no cure. It is already estimated about £7 out of every £10 spent in the NHS goes on people with these conditions. On average, those over 65 have at least two. And the situation is only going to worsen. "The numbers are going to grow," Health Foundation director of research and economics Anita Charlesworth says. "The baby boomer generation is reaching old age."

Predictably the BBC fails to spot that heart disease, dementia and diabetes have grown to epidemic proportions during the 75 years of NHS treatment, but fails to take the comment "... for which there is no cure" any further!

It does, however, provide graphs about health spending as a percentage of day-to-day public service spending, indicating that this rose from 27% in 1999-2000, to 32% in 2009-2020, to 42% in 2019-2020, and to 44% in 2024 to 2025. More and more money for health clearly indicates that there is less and less money for any other public service - education, police, local government, defence. We are gradually, progressively, robbing Peter to pay Big Pharma!

This Medscape article outlines just how bad the situation has become, focusing on the situation in Northern Ireland.

            "Record-breaking waiting lists and emergency department times – the worst across the UK, healthcare staff at breaking point and leaving the region, GP practices closing due to financial issues, and a scheduled junior doctors' strike this week have seen the situation hit crisis point. The health service in Northern Ireland is now in “absolute meltdown” say clinicians working in the region, with even the Minister for Health acknowledging that the situation is “deplorable” and “unprecedented”."

            "Northern Ireland's Minister of Health, Robin Swann issued a stark warning of an "extremely difficult and worsening" financial position for health and social care ... (as usual) ... calling for increased resources and multi-annual budgeting".             "We have a system that is in very real trouble. Every part of it is in profound distress.... The risks of service breakdown are real and growing in a range of areas. I do not say this to frighten people but to help build a shared understanding. We continue to have expectations and demands of health and social care that we cannot currently meet, and on the current trajectory the situation is getting worse rather than better".

In other words, there is no more money, no more handouts for a failing medical system can be expected. The Westminster Government continues to trickle money into the NHS; but it recognises that taxes are too high, that more borrowing is untenable, and in a recent budget, has said that they are expecting more productivity from medical staff (blame the staff?). The Opposition Labour party, which might find itself in government by the end of this year, tells a similar story; they will not break their fiscal rules, which effectively means - no more taxes, no more borrowing, no additional money for the NHS.

This is what has changed since I last wrote about the NHS Crisis. Both government and opposition has now accepted that there is no more money. The NHS is not going to be bailed out, again, as has happened routinely during the last 75 years. The magic "NHS money tree" is dead!

Another new factor is that key NHS staff have gone on strike; senior doctors, junior doctors, nurses, ambulance staff - people who have never been on strike before. Why? Despite the money thrown at the NHS little of it has apparently gone to staff. So not even those who deliver pharmaceutical medical treatment are content. A newly qualified doctor, after 5-6 years of training, has a starting salary is about £33,000. And it has been estimated that junior doctor's salaries have fallen by about 30% in the last 15 years.

So the NHS has not only devoted itself, entirely, to a system of medical treatment that does not work, which is actually making us sicker, it cannot even treat its clinicians, the people who operate the NHS, properly. Staff morale within the NHS is not only poor, it is getting worse.

In a health service that cannot cope with the pressures it faces, recent news from the GP Magazine, Pulse, on 12th March 2024, reported alarmingly that "swathes of GP's were at risk of redundancy". Watch this space! Is the NHS facing self-destruction? A BMA spokesperson has recently warned general practice that it has suddenly gone from a recruitment crisis to an employment crisis. 

Surely the NHS crisis cannot get any worse! But I haven't mentioned NHS dental services, which in many parts of the country are now virtually non-existent. The Guardian reported, in October 2023, that there were a record numbers of patients complaining to the NHS Ombudsman about poor care, exorbitant fees and gaining accept to NHS dental services in England. The Ombudsman said that poor dental care leaves patients frustrated, in pain and out of pocket. The number of complaints received every year has risen by 66%, and the proportion of complaints being upheld has increased from 42% to 78% over the same period. The ombudsman is currently receiving about 100 calls a week from people worried about poor treatment, an inability to access NHS dental care, and being removed from a dentist's practice list.

So the NHS crisis continues and deepens, as it is likely to do so long as we fail to recognise the main reason for the crisis. No problem is ever resolved unless and until the cause of the problem is accurately identified. The NHS, and the Government, have been singularly unable, or unwilling to do so to recognise that it has invested in pharmaceutical medicine, a medical system that just does not work. So, bad as the current crisis is, it will only get worse.

According to the USA Department of Health and Human Services, as many as 1 in 3 hospital admission each year are linked to adverse drug reactions, and inter-reactions. The situation in the UK is similar, as it is in other countries with a so-called 'advanced' or 'modern' medical system. So we have the evidence that prescription drugs, legitimately prescribed, cause patient harm, and make them sick, can even lead to death. 

In fact, many do lead to death. This is from a paper published by Imperial College London, "National State of Patient Safety, 2022. What we know about avoidable harm".

            "In 2019 there were more than 130,000 avoidable deaths in Great Britain - more than 22% of all deaths. Of these, 64% were classed as preventable and 36% were classed as treatable"

The problem is that the conventional medical establishment is skilled at discounting any such evidence. They are the result of under-performance, mistakes, errors, accidents, all of which can be avoided by improved management practices. The motto of the NHS seems to be "carry on, regardless".

 

NHS Crisis: links to previous blogs

• The NHS Debate (NHS in Crisis 2011)
• Our doctors in Crisis (NHS in Crisis 2015)
• Britain's NHS in Crisis (2016)
• NHS in Crisis (2016)
• NHS in Crisis (2017)
• NHS Crisis (Winter 2017)
  
• The NHS Crisis (2017-2018)
• NHS in Crisis (Summer 2018)
• NHS in Crisis (2018-2019)
• NHS Crisis (2019-2020). It gets worse each winter. But the real cause is never identified
• NHS in Crisis 2020. Another routine annual winter crisis notwithstanding Coronavirus Covid-19
• NHS in Crisis (Autumn 2020). Covud-19 is confirmation that conventional medicine is failing us
• The NHS Crisis (January 2021). The Covid-19 Pandemic, and an organisation heading for new levels of serious medical failure.
• The NHS in Crisis (March 2022)

 

 

Good Health. If Conventional Medicine has failed, what is the alternative? A new NHS - a 'Natural Health Service'?

For over 100 years now most people have relied on Conventional or Pharmaceutical for their health care. Most people have become dependent upon it.

Most countries now have some form of subsidised health care service that dominates and controls the treatment we look to when we are sick. Today, most people rely entirely on conventional medicine because we believe it to be the best, if not the only system of medicine available to them.

Yet regular readers of this blog will realise that conventional medicine is failing, and failing badly, to meet the health needs of people around the world - for three main reasons. 

    (i) Conventional medicine costs the earth.

Spending on conventional medicine has risen, year by year, for decades now. And the demand for even more money and resources continues, year by year. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that health care costs are in the process of bankrupting the economies of many wealthy nations, and is already out of reach of many less affluent nations.

    (ii) Conventional medicine is ineffective.

Despite this epidemic of health spending, the rising levels of medical costs have not run parallel to improved health but to epidemic levels of chronic diseases, ranging from allergy, Alzheimer's disease, autism, autoimmune diseases, cancer, dementia, diabetes, epilepsy, heart, kidney, and liver disease, mental health complaints, and much more.

    (iii) Conventional medicine is dangerous.

Pharmaceutical medicine has also added to the national burden of sickness and disease through the 'adverse drug and vaccine reactions' known to be caused by pharmaceutical drugs. These adverse reactions are more than mere 'side effects', as they are usually described; they are often fully blown diseases, and they clearly contribute to growing levels of sickness, and to those epidemics of chronic disease.

So what is the alternative to conventional medicine?

Many more people are now realising this, especially since the health fiasco of the Covid-19 pandemic. For over a year conventional medicine had no treatment to offer us, except for the the ludicrously inadequate entreaty to hand wash, social distancing, face masks, lockdown, test and trace, et al. 

Thereafter we were pressured to take vaccines which we are now learning have caused such enormous patient harm.

So what do patients do now, when illness strikes, and we want to avoid the dangers of conventional  medicine? Our first thoughts are to consult a doctor, or go to hospital, with the almost inevitable outcome of being prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. If this is not a good idea, if it is no longer something we want to do, what are the alternatives? What can people do to get better, or maintain good health?

Fundamentally, for anyone who recognises the failure of conventional medicine, there is only two choices available: (i) to take the risk, and continue to trust the pharmaceutical medical establishment, or (ii) to start to trust your body again, and recognise the power of our natural immune system.

The Immune System

During the Covid-19 pandemic the pharmaceutical medical establishment (supported by government and the mainstream media) told us that only their vaccines could save us from the illness, that without it millions of people around the world would.

Strange that we have barely had vaccines for 200 years, with most being developed over the last 60 years. So the question arises. What previously 'saved us' prior to the introduction of vaccines?

The answer, of course, is natural immunity. Even during the gravest epidemics in human history most people survived! The 13th century Black Death is reputed to have killed 1/3rd of the population - which means that 2/3rd of the population survived! And it has always been thus, through the Great Plague, the multiplicity of 19th century epidemics, and the Spanish flu of 1918. During this time we did not understand how the immune system worked. This knowledge has only developed comparatively recently. Yet the pharmaceutical health services discounted this during the Covid-19 pandemic - only vaccines would work!

The science of immunology is comparatively young, starting really only during the 19th century. Our understanding is now more detailed. It is recognised that the immune system is an important branch of the medical science, that natural immunity protects us from infection and illness through many different lines of defence. Unfortunately, as has become so common within conventional medicine, immunology focuses more on the immune systems that is not functioning properly, rather than to study what can be done to ensure that natural immunity continues to function properly. In other words immunology has focused on why 1/3rd of people die, rather than why 2/3rd survive epidemics!

What is now understood is the damaged or compromised immune systems result not just in susceptibility to infection, but in diseases such as autoimmunity, allergy and cancer, and many of the other epidemics of chronic disease mentioned above, as well as many common disorders not traditionally recognised to be caused by immunity, including metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative conditions.

So in looking for a 'new' approach to medical care should be based on relying on the immune system, and in particular, why 2/3rds of the population survive. We need to return to a medicine whose purpose is to upon our own natural immunity, recognising that ill-health always strikes down those people whose natural immunity is weakest. It is not that germs kill us, it is more that germs seek out the weakest, the most vulnerable. It is people with weak, compromised or suppressed immune systems that become ill and die. It is the survival of the fittest.

Therefore, any successful medical system has to be able to do just one thing - to support and strengthen our natural immunity.

How do we support our Immune System?

We now know the principles of supporting and strengthen our immune systems. I have written in more detail about this before, here, basically outlining 4 fundamental strategies that are known to be important in supporting and strengthening our natural immunity.

1. Diet and Nutrition
2. Exercise
3. Freedom from stress
4. Refusal to take pharmaceutical drugs

Each of these components concern life-style, they are not dependent upon complicated or expensive medical interventions. But each requires a medical system that disseminates this knowledge, and provides professional guidance about life-style choices. It is this that would form the basis of any new, more successful medical system: not a National Health Service but a Natural Health Service.

Yet it is exactly this kind of medical advice and guidance that has not been available to people during the Covid-19 pandemic. If the NHS had offered this it would have been an alternative to face masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and test and trace, all of which depend upon identifying and "chasing" an invisible virus! And almost certainly this would have meant that we would not have had to endure the human tragedy, socially, economically, and in terms of health, that has resulted from the Covid-19 vaccines. 

Most people, apart from those people with a compromised immune system (usually the result of poor life-style choices, including the taking of pharmaceutical drugs) would have been able to continue leading their social and work lives quite normally. In turn this would have meant that the economy would have not been damaged. Our mental health would not have been harmed, And much, much more.

Natural Immunity as an individual strategy

The National Health Service will not transform into a Natural Health Service very soon! But the good news is that those people who are looking for an alternative to pharmaceutical medical care can adopt this strategy TODAY. We do not need to be advised to eat a better diet, or adopt a sensible exercise regime, to reduce the levels of stress (often the self-imposed stress) in our lives, and to stop taking pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. We can all learn about it, and do it NOW.

People with Compromised Immune Systems

People with a compromised immune systems would need more medical support that goes beyond advice and guidance on the immune system. Yet they do not need medical support from the medical system that prescribes harmful drugs and treatments that are known to compromise immunity. Indeed, they have even more reason to avoid the drugs and vaccines of pharmaceutical medicine. 

Immediately, they might need to be protected by strategies such as hand washing, social distancing, and lockdowns. They would need to be protected from the germ, whilst measures are put in place to strengthen their immunity. But other therapies are available, all of which are based on supporting and strengthening natural immunity.

Natural Medical Therapies

All natural medical therapies, from acupuncture, homeopathy, herbalism, naturopathy, aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, reflexology, yoga, et al., are based on the principle of supporting and strengthening natural immunity. Indeed, pharmaceutical medicine is the only medical system that does not (more interested in promoting drugs and vaccines).

Any Natural Health Service would gradually have to transfer its attention, and some of its resources, to these natural medical therapies. They are not as expensive as conventional medicine. They are all safer than conventional medicine as the 'adverse reactions' to treatments are limited, and certainly not disease-threatening, or life-threatening. And their effectiveness in terms of patient outcomes could easily be monitored, and compared with conventional medical outcomes.

Again, there is no need to wait for these therapies to be offered. They are all available right now, although not usually within a national health service, which means that the therapist would need to be paid directly. All the individual has to do is to learn about them, and initiate contact.

The Remnants of Conventional Medicine in a new NHS

The organisation of the NHS (from national to natural) would obviously be subject to enormous but gradual change, but it is important to understand that much medical care that is usually encompassed within the heading of "conventional medicine" would continue.

Drugs. The use of pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines would gradually be reduced by any medical health service that focused on supporting and strengthening the immune system. This is happening, and will happen anyway, as more people realise that drugs are one of the major causes of serious disease epidemics that we are experiencing now. 

Many more natural therapists would be needed, and many fewer doctors (whose expertise is necessarily dominated by a knowledge of pharmaceutical drugs) would be needed.

Testing. The ability to recognise what is going on within the body would continue to be required within a revamped NHS, albeit it a modified way. Much of the current testing would not be required, especially when therapies like homeopathy are used, as natural therapies do not necessarily need an illness to be diagnosed. For instance, in an viral epidemic, testing to prove the presence of a virus would less important than the ability to test the strength of an individual's immune system. So all testing would gradually be refocused on assessing and supporting the patient health rather than fighting unknown, and unseen pathogens, or similar.

Surgery. Most surgical activity would need to continue for those patients who require it. However, with patients taking fewer drugs, thus ingesting less toxicity, there would likely be a reduction in the need for operations such as organ and limb transplantation (which usually result from many years of failed pharmaceutical treatment).

Regarding health there appears to be three inexorable and inevitable processes going on. 

    First, people will always want to avoid being sick, and will look to the safest, and more effective medical system available to them. This has always been so.

    Second, people are realising that pharmaceutical medicine, after 70+ years of dominance, is no longer one of those medical systems that can guarantee wellness to anyone.

    Third, this leaves people have two choices; to continue to rely on pharmaceutical drugs; or to rely on our immune system, which we has always protected us (whether we knew it or not), which is understood better now, and which, ultimately, is the only thing we have that we can rely upon.

An Asthma Drug Kills: so the Drug Regulator does another "Review". Is this enough?

Montelukast is an asthma drug, better known as Singulair. It has caused the death of patients who have taken it. This Guardian headline (3 March 2024) says that "a healthy kid dies and there has been no change": parents’ anger over lack of warnings for blockbuster asthma drug. Teenager Harry Miller took his own life two years after being prescribed montelukast. His family say they were not made aware of the reported psychiatric side-effects of the drug".

The parents were not told about the "side effects" of the drug? (And is death really a "side effect"). I am surprised that anyone should be surprised at this statement! Too many people trust their doctors, implicitly, and put their complete faith entirely and completely into the hands of a medical system that has always peddled dangerous drugs and vaccines. 

I checked to see what the NHS website now says about the "side effects" of this drug - 4 years after Harry's death. It highlights Diarrhoea, High Temperature, Headaches, stomach pain, feeling or being sick, and a mild rash. Then it goes on to mention, under 'serious side effects', that a doctor should be called if "you notice changes and you become depressed, aggressive or you're thinking of harming yourself".

This is presumably the doctor who prescribed the drug and omitted to tell the parents about the 'side effects' of aggression and self-harm (suicide) that it was known to cause. 

Yet what does my go-to website for pharmaceutical harm, Drug.com, say about Montelukask? It's all there, within a black box warning.

        "Warning: Serious Neuropsychiatric Events. Serious neuropsychiatric (NP) events have been reported in patients taking montelukast. The types of events reported were highly variable, and included, but were not limited to, agitation, aggression, depression, sleep disturbances, suicidal thoughts and behavior (including suicide). The mechanisms underlying NP events associated with montelukast use are currently not well understood. Because of the risk of NP events, the benefits of montelukast may not outweigh the risks in some patients, particularly when the symptoms of disease may be mild and adequately treated with alternative therapies."

So the problems of this asthma drug are known by conventional medical authorities. Yet the drug has been prescribed in most countries since 1998, over 25 years! And as the Guardian article intimated, until recently it was a 'blockbuster' drug. In 2020, two years after Harry's death, Montelukask-Singulaire was still the 14th most commonly prescribed drug, and therefore, highly profitable for the drug company.

Montelukask-Singulaire is yet another example of the dishonesty of the pharmaceutical industry, another medical tragedy waiting to be made public. Informing patients about serious adverse drug reactions means that they will be more cautious about taking it, thus harming the attractiveness and profitability of the drug. Yet Merck, the drug company, knew that its asthma drug could lead to suicide. Indeed, a group of parents have been trying to sue the company for many years, but as this Children's Health Defense link said, in June 2023, the legal action was unsuccessful, “stymied by an effective corporate liability shield: the doctrine of federal pre-emption”

What this means is that drug companies are prepared to harm us for profit! They have, after all, been doing so for many decades, with many other pharmaceutical drugs, and if you believe this is an over-statement of the situation I have listed some of the more serious medical scandals that demonstrate the assertion at this link. And, of course, there have been literally hundreds of pharmaceutical drugs that have been banned or withdrawn over the last 70 years, and more; I have listed many of these at this link.

Yet such is the parlous state of drug regulation now it would seem that pharmaceutical drugs that harm patients are no longer banned or withdrawn. As with Montelukask-Singulaire they are "placed under review", and doctors are restricted to when, and to whom, they can be prescribed! But what this means is that highly profitable drugs continue to be prescribed. This asthma drug was highly profitable: which, of course, is probably the main reason for it not being banned, or withdrawn. And why people like Harry are dying.

Drug Regulation around the world is now dominated, under the firm control, of pharmaceutical interests. Originally, the main purpose of drug regulators like the MHRA in the UK, the FDA in the USA, and the EMA in Europe, was to protect patients. They now fail to do so. In the UK this possibility has, at last, been recognised by a small group of MP's in the UK Parliament, where an all-party group have stated that the MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues arising from the Covid-19 vaccines were known about as early as February 2021, but did not highlight the problems for several months. 

The result of this concern, perhaps coincidentally, has been that the Chief Executive of the MHRA has suddenly announced her resignation from the post! This was reported in the Telegraph 0n 27 February 2024. The MP's have also warned that the MHRA's Yellow Card reporting system, which encourages patients and doctors to report their concerns about adverse drug reaction, "grossly underestimates" the size of the problem of patient harm by pharmaceutical drugs, in some instances picking up just 1 in 180 cases of the harm drugs have caused.

I have been writing about the problem of pharmaceutical drug regulation, and the patient harm caused by these drugs, for many years. Perhaps, now, at long last, something will be done, although this issue too will probably have to be 'reviewed' many times before any effective action is taken! Perhaps it will make parents, like Harry's, more aware that pharmaceutical drugs are dangerous, and that no-one within the NHS will protect them. 

And during these interminable drug reviews there will undoubtedly be many more "Harry's", people who pay the ultimate price for the mayhem being caused by pharmaceutical medicine.

 

Health Freedom: a vital principle we need to fully understand and defend with passion

Health freedom is under serious attack, mainly by the conventional medical profession, which thinks it knows best, and politicians who believe they know what we all need to protect ourselves. The Covid-19 Pandemic was, of course, the most recent and most serious attempt to undermine our right to choose how we treat ourselves when unwell. The pharmaceutical medical establishment tried to mandate (force) vaccines on people who wished to remain vaccine free.

The pandemic campaign to impose vaccines us all (when we were not ill) was tragically successful, perhaps not with those who had good reasons to support their view that they did not want the vaccine, but with those who were less certain. After all, we were all told to take the vaccine, we were not given any good reasons for refusing it. The Covid-19 narrative, repeated ad nauseam by government and mainstream media for over two years, gave us no reason to assume the vaccines were anything other than "safe and effective".

Whenever a Political Establishment wants to impose something on its citizens there is always a government willing to force it on them. The pharmaceutical industry, and powerful player in the politial establishment, wanted to force their vaccines on the entire population in order to maximise sales. They had sufficient influence and control within government, and politicians willingly gave their willing, unquestioning and active support. The mainstream media went along with it all, meekly accepting the imposition and enforcement of mass vaccination without demur.

History should teach us that this has always been so. Even in times when the political establishment was headed by war lords, or kings, or emperors, or an aristocracy, or an industrial elite, remaining “in power” has meant that the wishes of the rich and powerful had to be enacted. Today, governments around the world are dominated and controlled by immensely rich and powerful global corporations; and of these there is none more powerful as the Pharmaceutical Industry.

The Covid-19 pandemic, and the forced medication that was permitted, has demonstrated that the pharmaceutical establishment controls governments, conventional medicine, and the mainstream media. During the last 3–4 years it has been able to convince us (frighten us) that there was a pandemic, so awful, so deadly, that only the vaccines could save us, and that people just had to be forced into taking one of these untested, experimental vaccines. So as far as implementing vaccine mandates were concerned, most governments were quite prepared to put the necessary legislation into effect.

Yet the governments of the rich and powerful have their problems. There has always been a small but significant part of the population who are able to think for themselves, and recognise that what is being imposed (forced) on them is not in their best interest. Not even the strongest war lords survived forever; not even the most powerful empires and kingdoms. In time they have all fallen, usually through their own incompetence, privilege and arrogance.

Imposing drugs and vaccines seems always to have been attractive to autocracies (whether a real autocracy, or one masquerading as a democracy). Perhaps one of the earliest, and best examples of this can be seen in the history of the smallpox vaccination in the mid 19th century - click on this link to read an outline of this history, rarely told. Your will see that, as with Covid-19, smallpox was a frightening disease; people were scared; conventional medicine, even then, was arrogant enough to believe it had the solution; and the governments of the day were willing to pass the necessary legislation to enable the imposition of a vaccine mandate. 

However, as with Covid-19 vaccines, the smallpox vaccine caused so much patient harm that eventually the population rebelled against it, refused to take it, to the extent that within just a few years the first mandatory vaccine was quietly dropped (although conventional medicine did not drop the propaganda that the failed and harmful vaccine had been successful in eradicating the disease!)

Similarly, more people are now realising that the Covid-19 vaccines have caused serious patient harm. This will only increase, not least when we are all told that the much lauded Oxford University, AstraZeneca vaccine is now effectively banned around the world. People will resist again. They are already doing so; the drug companies cannot sell the vaccines as they had hoped, and their profits are falling. 

People have always, and will always resist ‘medical mandate’ imposed on them, and with good reason.

Imposing health mandates is attractive to drug companies. It enhances their profits. They have the power to influence and control politicians and governments, conventional medical authorities, and the mainstream media. But in promoting forced drugging it goes completely against the concept of health freedom, which has long and distinguished roots in human history. Here are just a few of the many sources.

Hippocrates Oath (460-377bce)
    “I will not give anyone poison, if asked, nor take the initiative of such a suggestion”

Code of Medical Ethics
Article 36: article R4127-36 of the Public Health Code
    “The consent of the person examined or treated must be sought in all cases. When the patient, in a state of expressing his will, refuses the investigation or treatment proposed, the doctors must respect this refusal after informing the patient of his consequences”.

Nuremberg Code (1947)
    “The consent of the human subject is absolutely essential, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights resumed this ban against unintentional experimentation, in its 1966 test, which states:
    “No one may be subjected without his consent to medical or scientific experiment”.

Geneva Statement for Doctors (1948)
    “I will respect the autonomy and dignity of my patient. I will not use my medical knowledge to infringe human right and civil liberties, even under force. I will keep absolute respect for human life, from conception. I will consider my patient’s health as my first concern”.

Helsinki Declaration (1996)
The Declaration of Helsinki is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed originally in 1964 for the medical community by the World Medical Association. It is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics (Wiki).

    “The participation of persons capable of giving informed consent to medical research must be a voluntary act. No person capable of giving that informed consent can be involved in a search without giving their free and informed consent”.

Oviedo Conventional (1997)
Article 5:
    “An intervention in the field of health can only be carried out after the data subject has given free and informed consent. This person is given prior adequate information about the purpose and nature of the intervention, as well as its consequences and risks. The data subject may, at any time, freely withdraw his consent”.

Loi Kouchner (2002)
Article 111-114:
    “Every person shall make decisions concerning his health with the healthcare professional and taking into account the information he provides him/her.The doctor must respect the will of the person after informing them of the consequences of their choices. If the person’s willingness to refuse or discontinue treatment puts his or her life and risk, the doctor must do everything to convince him or her to accept the much needed care. No medical or treatment can be practiced without the free and informed consent of the person and this consent can be withdrawn at any time”.

Salvetti Stop (2002)
    “No medical treatment is mandatory in the European Union: “as a non-voluntary medical treatment, mandatory vaccination is an interference with the right to privacy, guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”.
(Salvetti v Italy - ECHR decision of 9 July 2002. No 42197/98).

French Civil Code
Article 16-1
“Everyone has the right to respect their own bodies. The body in inviolable”.

Yet governments around the world have been content to repudiate these principles and policies in pursuit of enforcing vaccine mandates on behalf of the Pharmaceutical industry.

UK Government (2012): "Shared Decision Making: Liberating the NHS: No decision about me without me"
    “Making shared decision making a reality: no decision about me without me”.

Council of Europe
Resolution 2361 (2021)
    “Advisory opinion: the Assembly urges member states and the European Union".
Article 731:
     “To ensure that citizens are informed that vaccination is no mandatory and that no one is under political, social or other pressure to get vaccinated, if he or she does not wish to do so personally”.
Article 732:
    “To ensure that no one is discriminated against for not being vaccinated, due to potential health risk or not wanting to get vaccinated”.

(Note. Most of this information on the principles of health freedom was put together by a source that I have since lost. Please advise if you are aware of the source. I am happy to add a full reference to it here).

Health freedom is a vitally important principle. For the future we need to recognise that powerful corporations will want to undermine it, that governments are willing to concede it, and that the mainstream media is likely to meekly acquiesce to it. The most recent example of this, the mandating of untested, experimental Covid-19 vaccines, is as invidious as anything perpetrated by the German Nazi regime in the 1930's and 1940's, and condemned at the Nuremberg trials. In both cases large numbers of people were subjected to experimental medical treatment, without their informed consent, and with the grievous suffering that resulted.

There is little doubt that it will happen again, possible in the near future. We should use the intervening time to ensure when it does more people are aware that their health freedom is a precious gift that they should treasure, and defend with some passion.

Wygovy; weight loss, and pharmaceutical drugs

The obesity/diabetes drugs, Wygovy and Ozempic have become a pharmaceutical best sellers. They are making the drug companies very wealthy! The active ingredient, semaglutide, helps control blood sugar, lowers appetite, and makes patients feel "full". The current claim of medical science is that these semaglutide drugs can lead to weight loss of more than 10%.

Given the burgeoning epidemic of obesity around the world this claim is an attractive one for so many people who find losing weight difficult. The sales of these drugs increased rapidly in 2023 following their promotion by the mainstream media's on behalf of the drug companies. They were "breakthrough" drugs, we were told by all media outlets.

(Have you noticed how little advertising the pharmaceutical industry has to do for itself? A press release usually does it, with the media content to pass on the advertising, free of charge, without any apparent investigation into the claims being made).

The drawbacks of these drugs are already well known:

• When patients stop taking the drug they put this weight back again.
• The drugs are not recommended for more than two years (so they have to be, or should be stopped within that time, making any gains reversible).
• Such are the concerns about these drugs the UK's NHS only prescribe them to patients who fulfil certain criteria, within a limited number of specialist weight-loss management clinics.
• Semaglutide is already known to cause serious side effects, these including anxiety, bloating, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, confusion, constipation, diarrhoea, depression, fever, headache, indigestion, nightmares, seizures, tightness in the chest, trouble breathing, unusual tiredness or weakness, acid/sour stomach, heartburn, and much more.
  

To date these disadvantages have not slowed down burgeoning sales, especially as some pharmacies are selling them directly to the public, at a monthly cost of around £100 to £200.

Have we been here before?

For anyone who believes they have heard this before, can I refer you to one of my previous blogs, written in March 2018: Acomplia. What happens to all the 'wonder drugs' and 'miracle cure's of conventional medicine?"  Read the blog for a fuller description of events, but broadly this is what happened to Acomplia.

• Acomplia was an obesity drug, approved in 2006, and hailed as a new 'wonder drug'.
• In 2008 the drug was refused a licence in the USA, and withdrawn in the UK and Europe, particularly over fears of serious adverse reactions, particularly depression and suicide.
• The medical science, which had proclaimed this wonder drug, was found to be 'faulty'.
  

         "one study discovered that one-third of people on the drug lost 10% of their body weight, and 60% lost a less impressive 5%. Apparently, what the study did not say was that everyone in the trial was also on a low-calorie diet, and virtually everyone put the weight back on once they stopped taking the drug".

I will copy the conclusion of the Acomplia episode here, and predict (with a high degree of confidence) that this will be the conclusion of Wygovy/Ozempic story within the next few years.

 

"The European Medicines Agency (EMA) commented that the drug had proved less effective in 'real life' than in clinical trials. Patient hopes raised in the 'science' laboratory but dashed in real life. So it had been decided to suspend the licence for Acomplia as:

               "New data from post-marketing experience and ongoing clinical trials indicated that serious psychiatric disorders may be more common than in the clinical trials".

So Acomplia demonstrates better than most pharmaceutical drugs the many aspects of the hopelessness of medical science and drug regulation, which in the interests of selling drugs raise hopes, but lead only to further patient damage.

• The NHS resorts to a drug for a condition that would be better treated via life-style and dietary treatment.
• The drug is significantly less effective than the trials (the medical 'science' funded by the pharmaceutical industry) suggested.
• The full side effects of the drug remain unknown through all the 'scientific' drug testing, the regulator process, the licensing, and the prescription of the drug.
• The side effects turn out to be considerably more serious than the original condition or illness.
• And a drug thought to be unsafe in one country (the USA in this case) is considered to be perfectly 'safe' in others (indeed, most of Europe) - before it is withdrawn there too.

There is no such thing as a wonder drug, or a miracle cure, there never has been, and there probably never will be (on the basis that future performance is best predicted by past performance). So the next time the mainstream media, or your doctor tells you about a remarkable new treatment - run a mile, very, very quickly!"

There are already signs that these drugs will soon have to be withdrawn, with one pharmaceutical consultant saying that Ozempic, "the hot new weight-loss drug", poses medically dangerous gastrointestinal and mental health risks but fails to address the root causes of metabolic conditions.

So I will get back to you when pharmaceutical drug history repeats itself, as it so inevitably does. In the meantime it seems that these new obesity/diabetes drugs are going to cause a lot of patient harm in the years to come.