Positive Health Online

I am somewhat amazed, and exceedingly proud to announce that Positive Health is now 10 years old and about to enter its second decade of publication.

To celebrate this significant milestone, we have totally revamped our massive internet site www.positivehealth.com with our archive of thousands of published articles, research updates, book reviews, links. We have been on the internet for 10 years; our new site is designed to make it easier to subscribe to Positive Health, purchase back issues, books and other selected products. Only subscribers will have access to the full article archives; everyone else will be able to read short summaries once they have registered on the site.

I don't have to tell Positive Health readers how much in the world of complementary medicine has transpired during the past 10 years. When we started publication in 1994, I had just completed setting up the Cancer and Nutrition database at the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, which had narrowly escaped closure due to the scandalous and widely misreported Chilvers study, which alleged that cancer patients visiting Bristol were twice as likely to die compared to those who had never been to the Centre.

In due course, and following some tragedy (suicide by one of the study's authors) this research was shown to be flawed, Bristol has thrived and grown from strength to strength. Today, many other centres have taken their lead from Bristol, who remains a leader in the field of cancer care.

The entire mission of Positive Health has been to publish authoritative information about all aspects of complementary medicine, to demonstrate that there is research, there are clinical results, there is significant progress using complementary therapies, even with conditions with dismal prognoses such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, and chronic miserable conditions such as eczema, allergies, back pain and irritable bowel syndrome.

There is no shortage of such results; our millions of words and thousands of articles and research studies demonstrate this good news.

The bad news, in my opinion, is that these clinical results, these research studies, these authoritative published books seem to be out there in a parallel universe to the one populated by the conventional healthcare system.

For example, despite a sustained campaign of many years against the fluoridation of water in the UK, the UK parliament has recently approved the fluoridation of water supplies.

I never used to be obsessed by conspiracy theories. In my PhD naivete, and at the outset of writing my first books about organic germanium and vitamin C, I assumed that once results were demonstrated, the world of medicine and healthcare would be beating a path to the door of natural medicine if they could cure or at least alleviate people's suffering. What a mug I was! Organic germanium, for which I was attempting to fundraise to conduct clinical trials for HIV/AIDS, was banned in 1989 and has never been tested. In fact, almost 20 years after AIDs appeared, the only treatment which seems to be available internationally, is retroviral drugs, courtesy of the mega pharmaceutical industry.

Even twice Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, now deceased, still suffers (posthumous) ridicule for his views about the efficacy about vitamin C. Having written a book myself about vitamin C and having read many hundreds if not thousands of research studies and incredibly authoritative books about vitamin C's clinical attributes, I must say that the attitude of most of the medical professional about vitamin C is still much the same as it was 10-15 years ago: an expensive waste of urine.

Despite tens of thousands of research studies and much clinical evidence regarding important roles of nutrition, herbs, meditation, visualization and other disciplines in cancer treatment, I don't see adequate progress in incorporating such effective and safe treatment modalities into cancer treatment.

Having now benefited from the miraculous benefits of email and internet communication, I have seen the light that the same 'blocking' and ignoring procedures have been going on all over the world – in Canada, the US, Australia, as well as the UK. Vide the concerted international action to attempt to banish supplements at CODEX, the EU Supplement Directive and the UK parliamentary vote to permit water authorities to fluoridate UK water supplies. Read the astonishing correspondence between Dr Barry Durrant-Peatfield and the BMA and the BDA regarding fluoridation on the letters pages of this issue (pages 53-57) to decide for yourself whether you are in agreement with this decision.

The next decade, for Positive Health and for everyone involved in the fight for the freedom of complementary medicine, will see the battle to set complementary and natural healthcare free. Watch this space!