Increasingly, those at the very centre of Establishment medicine are joining the ranks of whistleblowers like What Doctors Don’t Tell You in shining a light on the dirty secrets of mainstream medicine.
One of the largest spotlights at the moment is Peter Gotzsche, the head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, the Scandinavian arm of the independent research centre known as the Cochrane Collaboration, which promotes ‘evidence-based’ medicine.
Gotzsche is also acknowledged as one of the world’s leading interpreters of medical research. His latest book, entitled Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare (Radcliffe Publishing, 2013), details how the drugs industry uses virtually every tactic used by the mob to sell its products, from extortion, fraud, bribery and embezzlement to obstruction of justice.
In our News Focus this month, we present his findings and suggestions for a full overhaul of the entire system used for evaluating drugs (page 18 of December issue of WDDTY).
One of Gotzsche’s most extraordinary disclosures concerns his research into non-steroidal anti-inflammatories while medical director at Astra-Syntex. After studying his company’s products and carrying out his own investigations on 244 such studies, he discovered that the drug companies were manipulating evidence for their own products to produce favourable results.
In the process he made an even bigger bombshell discovery: anti-inflammatory drugs don’t reduce inflammation. That was just public relations spin made up by marketing men to give their products the edge over simple painkillers like paracetamol, he concludes.
Gotzsche’s light on this dirtiest of medical secrets has prompted this month’s cover story together with perhaps the greatest light ever to be shone on osteoarthritis, a condition that afflicts one-quarter of us aged over 40. Research from Stanford University makes the extraordinary suggestion that most osteoarthritis does not result from old age and wear and tear, as doctors have always maintained, but from inflammation (page 34 of December issue of WDDTY).
This and other new evidence may soon kick away the central platform of medicine’s approach to osteoarthritis, which is that joint destruction is largely caused by physical loading and wear and so can only be treated by painkillers and, eventually, joint-replacement surgery.
This is not news to doctors using an integrative approach, who attempt to isolate the cause of the inflammation and so arrest the damage. We offer a checklist of what they’ve found to be the most common sources of inflammation in the diet and environment, and the top natural anti-inflammatories shown to successfully put out the fire.
We’re in the middle of the cold and flu season, but you may want to think twice before heading to the chemist for an over-the-counter medicine. In this issue, we also shine a light on new evidence showing not only that few of them actually work, but that they’re especially dangerous for children, particularly the very young. If you’d prefer to go natural, here are the alternatives shown to work-cutting colds by up to four days (page 46 of December issue of WDDTY).
And speaking of making light from darkness, read former ad man Chris Woollams’ heart-wrenching story of how he came to start the cancer charity, CANCERactive, after his daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer (page 62 of the magazine).
One of the most powerful healers of all may be nothing more substantive than the thoughts inside your head. Doctors have long recognized the power of the mind-body connection and this month, we explore all the ways thoughts and emotions can make us ill, change our bodies and help us heal (page 25 of the magazine).
‘Tis the season to get some rest after all that pre-Christmas hustle and bustle, and our electrosmog expert Guy Hudson shows you the best ways to get sweet dreams unplugged, free of electropollution (page 58 of the magazine).
And if you’ve still got Christmas presents to buy, check out our Healthy Shopping section, bursting with non-toxic gift ideas for all the family (page 71 of the magazine).
From all of us to all of you, please accept our heartfelt holiday thank you for supporting us this year. May you have a healthy holiday season and may WDDTY continue to light your way in 2014.
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