Manchester – corruption and politics within diet and healthcare
On Tuesday 26th November 2024, Politics in Pubs Manchester met at The Welcome Inn for a discussion on corruption and politics within diet and healthcare and how to fight back.
Introduction
The speaker Andrew Weighell, one of our own members, is not a healthcare practitioner but has researched this topic extensively and addressed his own health issues in positive ways. Andrew approaches his research following a long career in engineering – a discipline which focuses on finding solutions to problems.
Please note that none of the talk or discussion that follows should be treated as personal healthcare advice, and any action you might take as a result of this talk must be carried out in consultation with a professional healthcare practitioner.
Corruption in Healthcare
Corruption in its broadest sense exists in healthcare because practitioners are human with human fallibilities. To start with, there is a power imbalance between the patient and the practitioner because the patient depends on the practitioner for help. Practitioners are vulnerable to corruption because of financial incentives from pharmaceutical and medical industries, because of regulatory bodies like MHRA and NICE which control what treatments should be made available, and because of the desire to maintain one’s own individual status by being ‘right’ and by not being questioned by patients or peers.
The Hippocratic oath sworn by doctors contains an agreement to ‘first do no harm’. Andrew interprets this to mean that even as far back in time as 400BC creation of the oath must have been in response to a problem with medical care and negative effects upon patients.
Pharmaceutical and medical companies are relatively new. They don’t prescribe their products directly to patients – that is a doctor’s role. But there have been instances of bribery and incentives which can influence a doctor’s prescribing habits away from solely being in the patient’s best interests.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/22/antidepressants-prescribed-mental-illness_n_2527337.html
Adverse Drug Reactions
In 2012 an EU Regulation was enacted which required member states to monitor the side-effects of medicines, following the deaths of 127,000 people from adverse drug reactions. Andrew has looked into the UK’s ‘Yellow Card’ monitoring system and discovered that it is difficult for both health professionals and patients to use. Ten years after insisting that a Yellow Card was submitted for a side-effect Andrew himself experienced, he asked the MHRA what action they had taken – they said none, the card had simply been filed. It has been estimated that for every Yellow Card relating to a side-effect of the Covid injections 50 cases have not been reported.
What is happening to Scientific Methodology?
Until the 17th Century, medicine was based upon expert opinion and theory. Then a more organised, more scientific methodology began to evolve, with the formulation of hypotheses, research proposals, evidence review, data collection, analysis, peer review and publication. Unfortunately, this process can be corrupted by sponsors, competitors and peers prioritising their own profits and reputations over the needs of patients. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54636002
Referring to his professional background, Andrew explained how engineers use research to explain how things work whereas medical industries don’t seem able to do that i.e. no-one knows how statins work. Causation is always preferable to correlation. ‘Absolute risk’ cannot be exaggerated in the same way that ‘relative risk’ can when promoting drugs and treatments.
Think for Yourself
Andrew grew up on a farm and clearly remembers a piece of advice he received as a child from one of the farmhands. The man told Andrew he would meet many people in his life – some more clever, some more senior, some more experienced – but that Andrew should never assume they were smarter than him and that he should always think for himself.
Andrew has followed this advice and used it to research, observe and address his own health issues. He studied government data on Covid 19 infections and found it wanting. As a result, Andrew decided to lose weight, increase his fitness and change his lifestyle and his health has increased as a result – he no longer needs to take some of the medication he was on. Andrew has found that medical people sometimes privately agree with his conclusions even when they are at odds with accepted medical practice.
Discussion
A measure of integrity in scientific research can be demonstrated if its methodology yields the same results when replicated. Medical research seems to suffer from the same issue as climate science where only 50% of of the latter’s findings can be replicated.
British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra highlighted the difference between absolute risk and relative risk in healthcare. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_oQox1YqE
Cancer, dementia, heart disease and other major illnesses are often portrayed to be diseases of ageing but this isn’t necessarily the case – lifestyle choices play a significant role in health.
Andrew is not medically qualified but neither is Bill Gates and the latter seems heavily involved in medical matters and health policy these days.
TV Doctor Hilary Jones ripped up a leaflet designed to make people aware of the Yellow Card reporting system on live television. What message did that send to patients and their doctors about monitoring adverse reactions to medical products?
Bodies like MHRA receive significant funding from pharmaceutical companies.
Research and development of new drug treatments is very costly and resource intensive. The polio vaccination took 53 years to perfect. It can take tens of years for the owner to make any profit. Therefore there is great pressure upon companies to get new products onto the market – with the potential for a conflict of interest when they are funding the trials, analysing the data, and potentially understating the risks and side effects. Fat loss injections seem to be a prime example. Pharmaceutical companies seem to expect and budget for fines of billions of dollars in their business plans which is concerning.
Most pharmacists and prescribers are not corrupt – they are simply toeing the line. Many try to do their best to advise patients but they are heavily constrained and sometimes attempts are made to silence them: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2018/jun/low-carb-guru-professor-tim-noakes-again-found-not-guilty-of-misconduct-94449754.html
There seems to be a huge lag between new medical knowledge and changes in practice – advice and information sometimes seems to be out of date, such as the generic advice to cut down on all sources of saturated fat.
One acid test of a practitioner’s integrity and medical knowledge is to ask practitioners if they recommended anti-bacterial hand gel as a protection against the Covid 19 virus…
GPs receive 10% of their income from their scores on the Quality and Outcomes framework which counts patients with specific conditions often associated with life long medication like statins:
Is healthcare all about keeping people ill in order to profit? Where are the morals?
The human body evolved over a long period of time. Healthcare would be much better if it referred to how our bodies are designed to function (like using a car manual to diagnose and rectify faults). For example, the role of Vitamin D is a crucial aspect in health – it speeds up and slows down the immune response to injury and infection. The importance of Vitamin D was highlighted again in 2020 when it was reported that no-one with Vitamin D levels of 125 nmols/L died of Covid 19.
Vitamin K2 and calcium are key to activating the building of bones yet practitioners are focused upon biphosphonates in the treatment of osteoporosis – with accompanying unpleasant side-effects. Some medical experts seem uninformed or incurious about the role of phagocytes in clearing out dead cells in the brain after a stroke and whether it can be enhanced.
Media advertisement campaigns seem determined to convince us all we are sick from heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory illnesses.
The power imbalance between some practitioners and patients can definitely act against the patient’s best interests: research carried out by a palliative care cancer consultant found that in specific cases patients received no benefit from their treatment.
It is important not to trash all medics and carers as we all need their help at different points in our lives. The best thing to do is to be aware of factors which might be influencing their advice.
Recommended viewing:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001ys7b/dopesick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hO7fniCbmw
Thank you Andrew, for introducing a fascinating discussion. Thank you also to our wonderful hosts at The Welcome Inn. Cheers all!
Forthcoming events in 2025
Comedy Unleashed Thursday 9th January 7.30pm, Impossible, 36 Peter Street, Manchester M2 5QR. Book tickets here:
Cancelling Cancel Culture, topic and date TBC 2pm, The Britons Protection, 50 Great Bridgewater Street, Manchester M1 5LE.
Politics in Pubs, topic TBC, Tuesday 21st January 7.30pm, The Welcome Inn, Whitefield, Manchester M45 6TA.
