Positive Health Online

Rarely do I recall such a momentous month of events within a single issue of PH Online – media scandals, nefarious revelations in complementary medicine, mass murder, and deaths of dear and esteemed colleagues. Not to mention this issue of authoritative, timely and ‘top drawer’ features: about the Damaging Effects of Electropollution, Alzheimer’s Disease, Lifestyle Intervention Programmes and Biomechanics for Functional Training, Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation and Management.

What to mention first? It must be the very sad news that two Positive Health PH Online authors have recently died of cancer: Philip Salmon, who, together with Anna Jeoffroy  worked with, published information and taught about Bach Flower Essences. Philip and Anna were also mentioned in Sheila Hicks Balgobin’s article in this issue:

www.positivehealth.com/article/flower-essences/how-i-got-by-with-a-little-help-from-my-flower-friends-a-student-s-journey-with-flower-essences

www.positivehealth.com/author/anna-jeoffroy/anna-jeoffroy

www.positivehealth.com/course/bach-flower-profess-practitioner-training-courses

www.energyworks.co.uk

And Angela Caine AGSM LRAM, specialist in the development and training of both speech and singing and in the physical exercise required for voice maintenance, author of The Devil Within: the Story of Recovering a Lost Voice, and owner of Voice Gym.

www.positivehealth.com/author/angela-caine/angela-caine

www.positivehealth.com/review/the-devil-within-the-story-of-recovering-a-lost-voice

www.voicegym.co.uk/index.html

The Rupert Murdoch News of the World / News International phone voicemail interception / hacking scandal which has riveted much of the UK, and to some extent the USA, has revealed murky, entangled webs enveloping politics, print media, broadcasting and which has spread to the police, involving corruption among many previously respected professionals. The sums of money involved, the wining and dining, the political patronage and how social networking sites can overturn super injunctions protecting rich sportspeople and celebrities have all created a firestorm revealing the public’s insatiable thirst for gossip and the no-limit means to satisfy it used by journalists and proprietors.

While the majority of hard-working and very modestly paid complementary health practitioners struggle to keep their courses, clinics and themselves solvent, we have discovered how large newspapers including the Times and the Sunday Times have been losing £40million+ per year. As a co-owner of Positive Health PH Online who has had to plunder everything built up over 20+ years – home, savings, even pension to maintain PH Online – the survival of PH Online after 17 years doesn’t seem that bad. We haven’t earned £40million, let alone lost that amount every year!

The above is mentioned in conjunction with Martin Walker’s latest book Dirty Medicine The Handbook which I have now finished reading. Talk about scandals, tangled webs, political cronies and corporate funds to destroy – this book is a revelation of the nastiest suspicions that have never occurred to you. As one of many victims of campaigns by the Establishment, and fully engaged with Natural Health and Medicine with Positive Health PH Online, I have known and have seen attacks in the newspapers, broadcast media and through the courts against a multitude of individual practitioners, schools and organizations. You too will have witnessed many a documentary against homeopathy, theta healing, nutrition for cancer and observed reputations destroyed. However, until I read this book, I did not know the identity nor power or influence of the many individuals, organizations, website ranged and funded against natural medicine.

Martin Walker, in his latest book has forensically researched, with voluminous footnotes, the individual Health Corporatists as they are called, with an A to Z of names, with whom they went to school, of which organizations and political parties they were members, their corporate alliances and the funds of these organizations. Be prepared for a complete alphabet soup of organization names – you will be amazed at how many government, health and media names are listed.

Not only are the individuals named – and these go far beyond the most obvious individuals you might suspect, but also organizations, groups and political organizations linked to government. A bit like the Rupert Murdoch web discussed above, but also with funds and monies paid to whom. Even more sinister are the attack websites set up to target, harass and ultimately finish off individuals, therapies and professions. We may have heard the term 'quackwatch', but Walker presents an entire A-Z chapter, annotated with his comments of a myriad of websites with a mission www.badscience.net  http://holfordwatch.info/holford-myths  www.ministryoftruth.me.uk

One of the most serious issues in Martin Walker’s book concerns the frankly alarming situation of Homeopathy: the step-by-step saga of how the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH) was taken over and engulfed by University College London Hospital (UCLH), and re-named Royal London Hospital for Integrated  Medicine (RLHIM), neatly removing the word homeopathy. And read Martin Walker’s analysis of how the rational tactics of Dr Peter Fischer, who honestly believed that presenting the medical professional establishment with the evidence regarding the efficacy of homeopathy, would convince the skeptics proved wrong. Other dramatic battles are also discussed, including vaccinations, nutritional supplements, environmentally sensitive individuals, cfs / me. Hear the flip side of everything that has been published in PH Online, but from the other side.

I also sadly discovered in the reading of this book that several stalwart fighters for natural medicine have since died, including Isla Bourke (Bristol Cancer Help Centre), Dr Hulda Clarke and Mark Purdy.

I may not agree entirely with Martin Walker’s political analysis; my left-wing political days are in the distant past; I spent much of my professional career as a molecular biology scientist attempting to belong to the organizations Walker describes. Perhaps I now have a greater insight into why my work appears to have been sidelined. However there is nobody else apart from Martin Walker of whom I am aware who has dug up the intricate dirt and colluding trails which point to why such negative stories are broadcast and printed in newspapers such as the Guardian and on Newsnight. Read it to find out for yourself.