Drug Trial Results And Research Are Withheld From Doctors

A Lack Of Trained Doctors For Cancer Patients.
Thousands of cancer patients are being denied access to better treatment because of a lack of trained doctors, according to an ‘alarming’ Government report.
One in four cancer patients who receive radiotherapy in hospitals would benefit from the latest techniques, but some hospitals do not offer the treatment or provide it for only 0.1% of sufferers, officials say.
Intensity modulated radiotherapy treatment (IMRT) is more accurate, has fewer side effects and avoids damage to healthy tissue, enabling patients to recover more quickly.
But a Department of Health report found that only four cancer centres out of 50 in England offer the treatment to all those who might benefit, because many specialists are not trained in how to administer it.
On average, only 6% of patients are being given access to IMRT, which the report describes as ‘unacceptably low’.
To perform IMRT, doctors must complete a training course over several days and then be mentored when they return to hospital.
Hospitals do not need any additional equipment.
The report also highlights that 26 out of 265 radiotherapy machines in England are past their use-by date, and a further 59 will need replacing in the next three years.
A further 147 machines are needed to cope with expected demand by 2016.
The report estimates that the amount of radiotherapy provided to patients will need to rise by 67% in the next four years.
( Jo Macfarlane, 25.11.2012 )

The Needless Drugging.
Smack in the middle of our society sits a great and dangerous scandal, which you can help to stop by protesting against it and by refusing to be taken in by it any longer.
At present you are paying for it (at least £250million a year) out of your taxes.
Somebody you know, perhaps a close neighbour or a relative, may be the victim of it.
It involves the needless drugging of hundreds of thousands of healthy people, many of them children.
It is exposed this week in a new book that should be read by every doctor, and also by everyone in politics and the media, not to mention any concerned citizen.
The book, Cracked – Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, by James Davies, is calmly and clearly written in straight-forward layman’s English.
The author has serious academic qualifications which entitle him to take a view on the subject.
He has spoken to a wide selection of experts.
And he shows that most of what we believe about modern mental health medicine is wrong.
You will gasp with amazement at the sheer nerve of the medical profession, as you turn its pages.
Here is what it shows:
There is no objective scientific diagnosis (and so no objective treatment) for almost all so-called mental illnesses.
They are defined every few years by a committee, which once described homosexuality as a sickness (and now doesn’t).
It is currently seriously considering an illness called ‘Complicated Grief Disorder’, for those who grieve over a bereavement for more than six months.
There is no scientific proof, repeat, none at all, repeat none whatever, for the idea (still believed by millions) that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, though this is the whole basis for most antidepressant prescriptions.
Drug companies control the research into their own products.
They fail to publish results that suggest their pills don’t work.
They doctor results to make their pills look better than they are.
In most cases, there is no significant difference in effect on depression between antidepressant pills and dummy sugar tablets.
But the pills do have potent side effects (often these are most radical when people stop taking them, which is why they should only be given up under medical supervision).
Government regulation of this behaviour is feeble.
Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this.
Many medical journals gain substantial income from large orders for reprints, which come from the drug companies.
The profits from this industry are colossal.
Doctors who fail to toe the line lose valuable consultancy work, and in one case a leading psychiatrist had the offer of a major professorship withdrawn after he delivered a lecture criticising antidepressants.
There it is, going on near you, a grave disgrace that you can help to end.
Will you?  Or will you walk on by?
( Peter Hitchens, 12.05.2013 )

Emma Stones, a disabled 12-year-old, died in her bed at Tameside Hospital and was then left by hospital staff for so long she developed rigor mortis.
A coroner condemned the hospital after learning how Mike Stones found his daughter stiff and cold to the touch – despite being told by hospital staff she had died just minutes before.
The hearing was told that as well as not being given a blood test, Emma, who had cerebral palsy, had not been monitored in the early hours by nurses, who also failed to take her blood pressure.
Stockport coroner John Pollard said inadequate treatment Emma received played a part in her death from septicaemia.
Emma, who lived with her parents and twin sister Christina at Dukinfield, Greater Manchester, was taken to hospital on February 6, 2011, suffering from flu symptoms.
But hospital staff failed to diagnose a bacterial infection because they were too busy to carry out basic blood tests and neglected to check on her properly.

Lisa Sharpe was admitted to Basildon Hospital with nausea, vomiting and an inability to take food or water.
Three weeks later she was dead.
The 21-year-old from Billericay, Essex, died ‘crying and screaming’ two weeks after a routine operation to insert a feeding tube into her bowel.
Her death certificate stated she died from a combination of pneumonia and the symptoms of her special needs conditions, Reye’s syndrome and cerebral palsy.
But Lisa’s family says the poor standard of care at the hospital in January 2004 caused her death.
Her mother Mary, 54, said: “Lisa was still crying and screaming when she died. You wouldn’t leave an animal to suffer like that. My dog had a better death than my daughter.”

Two More Babies Contract Herpes Due To Jewish Ancient Ritual.
Two more babies have contracted the herpes virus after undergoing an ultra-Orthodox Jewish type of circumcision, which has been linked to the spread of the potentially deadly virus to newborn boys, according to the New York City Health Department.
In the ancient ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh, after removing the foreskin of the penis the person performing the procedure places his mouth briefly over the wound, sucking a small amount of blood out, which is discarded.
Antibacterial ointment is applied and the wound is bandaged.
The health department says the procedure is dangerous because the contact with the mouth could transmit diseases such as herpes.
Most adults are infected with the herpes simplex virus type 1, and while they may have no symptoms, the virus may be present in their saliva, according to the health department.
( Brittany Brady, 08.04.2013 )  ..  cnn.com

The Miracle Flu Drug?
Tamiflu is supposed to be the miracle flu drug.
Patients across the UK rely on it.
In medicine cupboards everywhere patients have eagerly stockpiled it, and in some winters there has even been talk of rationing.
The Government itself has spent £500million on stockpiling the drug to keep the country from collapse in the wake of a bird-flu epidemic, since it’s supposed to reduce the risk of pneumonia and death.
And yet for all we know, Tamiflu might be no better than paracetamol, because Roche, the company making it, still withholds vital information on the risks and benefits from researchers, doctors and patients.
As a result, we doctors are prescribing the pills in the dark, exposing patients to possible harm and potentially wasting vast quantities of public money.
But that is just the beginning.
Because, amazingly, there is nothing illegal about what Roche has done, and there is nothing unusual about it either.
Patients throughout the UK may be suffering – on a scale we are only just beginning to comprehend – because of a vast, ongoing ethical scandal in medicine.
Under current legislation, drug companies and researchers are perfectly entitled to withhold information about whether medicines work or not, even though doctors desperately need that data to make informed decisions.
As a doctor, I am passionate about ‘evidence-based medicine’.
GPs and patients making informed decisions about which treatment works best.
But this is undermined when we can see only the studies that companies and researchers choose to give us.
As a result, the effects of a drug may be wildly exaggerated, and the relative risks of treatment underplayed.
Even more astonishingly, despite 25 years of evidence that trial results are withheld from doctors and patients, the very people we trust the most have failed to act.
Not one of the ‘Royal Colleges’ of medicine, psychiatry or general practice has condemned this activity.
The patient groups – many of whom receive huge amounts of industry funding – have all remained silent, despite potential harm to their members.
And medicine regulators have even conspired with industry, withholding information from doctors.
The European Medicines Agency occupies a beautiful building in London’s Docklands where everyone must speak three European languages, and many of these 600 bureaucrats are on six-figure salaries.
They approve medicines for use in the UK and are supposed to protect us from the worst excesses of drug companies.
Yet they spent nearly four years withholding data on the risks and benefits of two weight-loss drugs.
Worse still, while the regulator insisted the public had no right to this information, one of the drugs – Acomplia – had to be taken off the market.
It’s harms outweighed its benefits.
As a doctor, I am ashamed of my profession’s inaction on the most important ethical issue facing us today.
( Dr Ben Goldacre, 02.12.2012 )

Melanoma In Young People.
I spread the word about staying out of the sun, about children being sun aware, about applying sun cream.
I do feel there should be legislation to ban sunbeds and much more emphasis on action.
Many schools do not have a shady playground.
It is hard to see people wilfully courting disaster with the lunacy of sunbeds or the deliberate baking of the skin on the beach.
I think that with the spread of melanoma people will think twice about these practises.
( Esther Allen )

MELANOMA, THE FACTS.
• Around 12,800 people in the UK are diagnosed with malignant melanoma each year, and there are around 2,200 deaths from the disease.
• Malignant melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK.
• More people die from skin cancer in the UK than in Australia.
• Melanoma is now the most common cancer in young people aged 15-34 in the UK.
• In the past decade, cases of the disease have increased by over 50%.
• Malignant melanoma has the biggest projected increase in incidence of any cancer by 2030.
• Over 80% of all skin cancers are caused by over-exposure to the sun and/or sunbeds.
• The majority of early melanomas, where there is no spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body, can be cured by simple removal.
• Melanoma is much more difficult to treat in the later stages.
• Using tanning beds before the age of 30 increases your risk of a melanoma diagnosis by 75%.
( Information taken from You magazine )