Positive Health Online

The extent to which all endeavours have now been reduced to an Accountant-like bottom line mentality is breathtaking and despicable.

As I am certain everyone is aware, the funding of healthcare and potentially life-saving treatment is based upon analysis by NICE, a postcode lottery of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) or other bureaucratic considerations. I recently listened to a Radio Five Live program in which a man with terminal kidney cancer was being denied funding from his PCT for a drug which could prolong his life, possibly for weeks or months, on the basis of excessive cost (£3,000 per month).

When we consider that the UK annual spend on the military is about £32 billion, a good part of which may be spent on destroying rather than saving life, the idea that a human life isn’t worth a mere few thousand pounds per month is disgraceful.

Fortunately for this patient, David Longman’s charity Killing Cancer (www.killingcancer.co.uk)  was willing to fund at least the first month of treatment. PH published a Case Study in Issue 122 by David regarding the successful treatment of his daughter’s vascular tumour using Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) (www.positivehealth.com/author-view.php?authorid=994)

In fact, following the broadcast and subsequent embarrassment it caused to the PCT, they changed their mind and decided to fund this man’s treatment as of going to press and will be returning the generous cheque to the Killing Cancer charity.

Expert economists among PH readers may point out that I can’t compare healthcare spending with the military budget; the apples and oranges argument; however at the risk of being labelled an economic ignoramus, I simply don’t accept that all human activities have to fit into the free market Accountant’s paradigm. If we decided to do everything on the basis of the bottom line and whether we could afford it, just about everything in the world which is beautiful, grand, inventive, innovative and exciting would simply not happen. Having and bringing up children, looking after our aged, sick and disabled children, parents and relatives, [perhaps we should just shoot them all]  continuing our education, doing unpaid or charitable work. Would we build architectural masterpieces, perform musical and dramatic productions, publish magazines such as Positive Health (PH)? If all human endeavour were based solely on utilitarian and economic criteria, everything we do would be down to its usefulness and affordability. A highly drudge-filled world, a human race of automatons, run by the bureaucratic priesthoods of government. Nobody said it better than Orwell in his famous book 1984.

The free market, Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest, is certainly one paradigm, but one that I fervently argue cannot apply to human beings. Even Sir Michael Jackson, arguing for a 10% increase in the military budget so that soldiers could feel better validated, gave as his reason that soldiers were human beings and not market commodities. Other paradigms other than the find a market niche and fill it mentality include follow your heart, do what you love to do, and the money will follow philosophy. A variation on this theme was espoused in the book The Cosmic Ordering Service – A Guide to Realizing Your Dreams by Barbel Mohr, reviewed in PH Sept Issue 139 (www.positivehealth.com/book-view.php?reviewid=203).

Thus I am supremely proud to say that virtually everything published in this Oct Issue of PH does not fall into the utilitarian category; rather the majority are splendid demonstrations of the human creativity spirit of what is possible, not simply what is affordable. Hence, uplifting articles such as Not Superhuman After All: Recovery from Burnout (see page 9); Spiritual Empowerment (see page 17);  innovative applications for health conditions (Walking Around the Cotton Reel – Using NLP to Teach Drawing (see page 14); Sunflower Therapy for Children and IMP for Adults: Holistic Treatment for Learning and Performance Disorders (see page 20); Rhythmical Massage Therapy for Crohn’s Disease (see page 37); and The Trager Approach – Discovering the Mind/Body Link (see page 40).

Every month I speak with and correspond with hundreds of authors, practitioners and individuals running businesses across the Complementary Medicine spectrum; I gather from many individuals’ responses that budgetary constraints are biting, and that these are reining in their promotional campaigns for courses, products and services. PH of course is equally straight-jacketed and in need of resources to reach the greatest number of interested people in Complementary Medicine. PH is now distributed across the USA within the Wholefood Markets Chain of organic health stores, and I am seeking an appropriate partner/investor or publisher to produce a North American version of PH, which would be more meaningful to North American practitioners and PH readers. Now that I have put this out to the Universe, I can test the premise of The Cosmic Ordering Service!!