Morley Acupuncture Clinic
1 Queen Street, Morley, Leeds LS27 8EG, UK
tel/ fax 0113 2380208
John P. Heptonstall, M.D. (M.A.), D.Sc. (M.A.), B.Sc. (Hons.), D.Ac., M.I.Ac.S., M.B.Ac.C., M.R.S.M.
Traditional Chinese Medicine - Acupuncture & Moxibustion Specialist
Articles/papers
Traditional acupuncturists do not merely stick needles 'where it hurts', 'in nerve endings', or via a book-delivered prescription. Needles should only be applied 'when and if it is right to do so'. A comprehensive appraisal of the patient through the application of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) principles is essential before acupuncture is considered. From time to time we hold short courses or talks on the Philosophy and Applications of TCM with the intention of promoting deeper understanding of the need for the application of traditional principles when applying acupuncture & moxibustion alongside Western and other Complementary Medical practices.
If you wish to develop a better understanding of TCM contact John ( heptonstall@googlemail.com ) for details.
ARTICLES/PAPERS to stimulate interest and debate in the TCM arena......
1. Thoughts on Evidence-based medicine
2. Traditional Chinese Medicine - Beyond Reasonable Doubt
3. Contrails or Chemtrails, That is the Question
4. Vaccination - is compulsion an option in a civilised democratic society?
5. Swine Flu
1. Thoughts on Evidence-based Medicine
Abstract
Other branches of science, such as biophysics, offer equally valid scientific paradigms and may be more appropriate for certain forms of medicine which do not carry the chemistry of the human body at the center of their frameworks. TCM is one of these. There is no reason why biochemical assessments of TCM cannot be utilised in appropriate circumstances, or why biophysics assessments of WM cannot be utilised in similar manner, to enhance the current scientific understanding of aspects of both. TCM has stood the test of time over several millennia such that its interventions are valued by billions of people globally.
Key Words
Evidence, medicine, science, TCM, EBM, EBV (Evidence-based Value), ADR, ECE (External Clinical Evidence), supersede, outcomes, follow-up, constitution, anecdote, cohort studies, case histories, prospective, retrospective, modalities, acupuncture & moxibustion (A&M), patient-centered, modality-centered.
Introduction
Combining definitions of medicine and evidence from the Concise Oxford Dictionary, Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) may be broadly defined as the science or practice of diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease where a drug or preparation, or a spell, fetish or charm thought to cure afflictions, is used for the treatment or prevention of disease where the available facts, circumstances etc., supporting a belief, proposition etc., or indicating truth or validity beyond reasonable doubt (or at least more likely than not) show that intervention treats, prevents or cures a disease or affliction.
The quality of any evidence is only as good as the abilities, agenda and integrity of those producing it. Industry, research, production, marketing, prescribing, patient tolerance to, the effects of, and outcome evaluation provide essential witness evidence with which to confirm or refute the claims of evidence-based value (EBV) based on trials performed before widespread use.
In a court of law the sum of evidence must prove a fact beyond reasonable doubt (criminally) or on balance of probabilities (civilly). All medical evaluation schemes for WM and TCM should apply a similar standard of proof as the basic law. The medical fraternity are privileged to appear as expert witnesses in courts of law, it is essential that they adopt the same definitions as the statutes.
Thoughts on the Evidence-Base of Western Medicine
Evidence-base
Despite scientific, regulatory and methodological processes, which have changed little over decades, WM has a low Evidence Base (EB). In 1978, and 1983, the US Office of Technology Assessment of US Congress (OTA) concluded that only 10 to 20% of conventional treatments have been shown to be efficacious in controlled trial (Ellis et al 1995).
A research trial must show that a medical intervention is safe, efficacious and effective for a specified disorder prior to widespread prescribing. The risk/benefit ratio must favour the patient. The intervention, once licensed, is mass prescribed and if it fails to meet expectations it should lose the EBV assigned through trials. Every time a patient is failed by the intervention that EBV must theoretically diminish therefore outcomes are an important factor in the continued assessment of EBM.
Adverse reaction (ADR) reporting by physicians is generally inadequate, research bears this out (1), and hence the risk/benefit ratios of many mass-prescribed medications cannot be accurately determined. There is no system in place to statistically quantify outcomes for most medical interventions, and long-term follow up is rarely performed. The inadequacies of these three requirements, ADR, outcome evaluation and long-term follow up, make many published EBM studies invalid as they do not take into consideration the true impact of medical interventions on the masses.
The fact that WM has been shown to be the 3rd to 5th biggest killer and maimer of humanity suggests that its scientific and regulatory framework is seriously flawed. This carnage is caused by both ADRs and medical mistakes.
- In the USA President Clinton recently called for a nation-wide system of reporting of medical errors which are believed to claim 44,000 to 98,000 lives each year (2). The incidence of fatal drug ADRs in hospitalised patients in the USA for the year 1994 was assessed as 106,000 (96% CI, 76,000-137,000) (3).
- 20,000 to 30,000 patients are probably killed by medical error in the UK each year (4).
- A 1995 study revealed that 16.6% of hospital admissions in NSW and S. Australia were associated with ADRs; 77.1% resolved within one year, 13.7% were permanent and 4.9% were fatal (5).
If a physician prescribes a drug to a patient which is ineffective, another drug is tried; this process is repeated endlessly without recording drug failure such that patients are constantly prescribed medicines whose post-trial EBV long since dissolved; an enormous number of drugs are available on prescription which never obtained an EBV as there was no licensing practice available when introduced (6). They are prescribed by a system that fails to report ADRs, never record outcomes, and rarely follows up patients long-term. They are not EBMs.
General practice is perhaps the most important and heavily used part of a health service; in the UK the GP assesses for treatment virtually all patients. It is very important that the GP gets it right. However, the following piece of research suggests all is not well with EBM and GPs. The paper reflects the attitude, abilities and facilities enjoyed by the average GP who may or may not wish to entertain EBM.
General practitioners perception of the route to evidence-based medicine. McColl et al, BMJ 1998 Jan 31st; 316(7128): 361-5 concludes that
1. Only 302 of 452 GPs actually responded to the questionnaire designed to assess their perceptions of the route to EBM.
2. Only 40% knew of the Cochrane database of systematic reviews and
3. Even if aware, many did not use them
4. In their surgeries 20% had access to bibliographic databases and
5. Only 17% had access to the www
6. Most had some understanding of the technical terms used
7. The major perceived barrier to practicing EBM was the lack of personal time
Any theoretical EBV gained from trials declines rapidly when the intervention cannot then be located, understood, or correctly prescribed by a physician. EB values quickly diminish when only 7 out of 10 GPs are interested in EBM; about 1 in 5 have data available locally, few of these have time to research and many could not understand technicalities nor know what databases exist. An EB system is also very dependent on accurate diagnoses and an understanding of how, when and why to mete out that treatment.
Any theoretical EBV gained from trials declines rapidly when the intervention cannot then be located, understood, or correctly prescribed by a physician. EB values quickly diminish when only 7 out of 10 GPs are interested in EBM; about 1 in 5 have data available locally, few of these have time to research and many could not understand technicalities nor know what databases exist. EBV assessment for any intervention is a complex process. Evidence required confirming an EBM beyond reasonable doubt or on balance of probabilities must be collected, collated and analysed from various sources not least the public. Current wisdom suggests that most WM interventions are failing the public in this regard. With a low EB for prescriptions, high incidence of ADR and error, totally inadequate ADR-reporting, very limited statistical evaluation of outcomes and hardly any long-term follow up for many interventions the EB of WM, if calculable, must be extremely low. Is it any wonder an EB value of about 15 to 20% was reported in researching GP procedures?
Expert Defined EBM
Experts have emerged, whose theories are widely published since attempts to quantify the poor evidence-base for WM began in the mid 90s. They suggest a number of definitions for EBM, for example
1. EBM has been criticised as being a dangerous innovation perpetrated by the arrogant to serve cost cutters and suppress clinical freedom.
2. It is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients
3. The practice of EBM means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence (ECE) from systematic research.
ECE is clinically relevant research, often from basic sciences of medicine, but especially patient-centered clinical research into accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests (including clinical examination), the power of diagnostic markers and efficacy and safety of therapeutic, rehabilitative and preventive regimes. External clinical evidence that provides for a better, safer, more efficacious alternative to a current EBM supersedes it, the latter then loses its EBV say Sackett (8).
Historically most interventions have eventually been banned, withdrawn or superseded by better. WM is a shifting sea of temporary EBMs into which patients dive for assistance, many outcomes remain unpredictable. Fortunately, much illness is self-limiting, driven by the stresses of a complex modern world; many EBMs have limited value in promoting recovery while others are powerful tools with which to treat disease (but they may convey equally powerful side effects). This ought to suggest that medicaments are withdrawn that are no longer EBMs. The Berlin based Stiftung Warentest, a foundation carrying out comparative tests and surveys on products and services, concluded that a quarter of Germanys 5000 most commonly prescribed drugs are not to be recommended. Half the 45,000 drugs on the German market have never been officially approved by the appropriate agency as they were already in use in 1978 when the current pharmaceutical law came into force, and many drugs have never been tested (6). Well over half German prescriptions may not be of an EBM.
One must collect best evidence from all witnesses, from every stage of the development, for each intervention. One should not exclude political, commercial and social considerations that are likely to modify research trial recommendations for the prescribing of a particular intervention such as: -
1. Public requirement: Each patient has an expectation when requesting a physician to provide a prescription. An unbiased, accurate account of the options available is essential. If the treatment fails to achieve a patients reasonable expectation some EBV is lost.
2. Physicians expectation: If a physician is not prepared to administer an intervention, or that intervention fails to achieve reasonable expectations of the physician, it loses EBV (8) - as the physician has decided that the intervention is to be superseded by another.
3. Industry expectation (profit): A medicine may be marketed such that the original trial-defined EBV is voided. eg. The drug is used for disorders other than those specifically trialled. A company may create a remedy for a non-disease (eg. HRT for menopause). According to the dictionary-derived definition of EBM that remedy is not an EB medicine.
4. Government expectation. If an EBM is restricted from the public for political or financial reasons the EBV of any treatment used, which has been superseded by the restricted treatment, may be voided.
5. World Health Organisation agenda. WHO encourages governments to employ non-EBM strategies by insisting on the deployment of medicines (eg vaccines) without proper consent gained from the public, eg. deployment by the WHO of an anti-fertility hormone contaminant in vaccines given to Philippines women (11), who were not informed and did not give consent. Whenever the WHO deploys vaccines or medicaments that have been superseded by better versions elsewhere it fails to provide EBM (8).
Thoughts on the Evidence-Base of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Evidence-base
WM scientists have stated that TCM is not supported by science. The House of Lords recently placed TCM in Category 3 which is a low grouping for scientific validity while acupuncture, part of the TCM modality Acupuncture & Moxibustion (A&M) whose use is defined by TCM, was placed in the high group for scientific validity Category 1. This is analogous to a screwdriver being accepted for the manipulation of electronic circuits whilst the science of electronics, which underpins the safe effective use of that screwdriver, is deemed unscientific.
This occurred because the HoL appears to have accepted evidence for the validity of both acupuncture and TCM largely from WM scientists (who use the screwdriver to manipulate body electronics whilst remaining ignorant of the underpinning electronic theory TCM) rather than from TCM scientists. Clearly one can only assess the scientific validity of a doctrine and its modalities when one understands that doctrine, and evaluates its modalities in accordance with essential principles of the doctrine. Such evidence is only available to any significant extent from Chinese research scientists; the HoL did access this essential source as necessary to reveal the realities and values of TCM so the decision made is questionable.
The evidence base for TCM is available from various sources. WM depends largely on clinical trials, for its mainly drug-based interventions, using controls, blinding and randomisation. Some TCM modalities can be evaluated using similar techniques, others cannot, so more appropriate methods are used to effect proper scientific evaluation of its modalities.
A main focus of research trials in WM is a drugs effect on specific biochemical pathways through the correction of which one may safely and effectively treat a disease (usually defined as a single entity eg. headache). A number of patients suffering this disease are given similar doses of the same drug and resulting changes in the biochemistry are recorded along with any change in disease state.
The design of research trials for TCM modalities assumes a different focus. Patients are central to a design along with their particular disharmonies (disorder), a conglomeration of signs and symptoms that define how each individual patient has reacted to internal and/or external environmental pathogens. This results in a variety of differential diagnoses that reflect the condition of the patient with respect to internal and external factors as described by TCM. Pathogens include emotional, lifestyle, environment, cosmological, climate, temporal fluctuations and other considerations relative to TCM, a unique understanding of disease patterns and processes. TCM research involving treatment of the WM disorder headache may result in the initial identification of several patterns of disharmony revealing a variety of differential diagnoses such as Blazing Liver Fire, Stomach Yang Excess, Hyperactive Kidney Yang, Hyperactive Liver Yang, and Deficient Kidney Yin amongst a cohort of trial subjects suffering from WM defined headache. Having identified unique patterns for each individual, TCM then applies individualised treatments as patient centered interventions at every stage.
WM exists as an ever-changing sea of drugs, that change human body physiology in ways often unimaginable, through which old and emerging diseases are treated. It is encumbered with an incomplete but evolving understanding of the biochemistry of the human body; and uses this to evaluate a bodys response to pathogens, old or emergent, in order to select a new drug regime, the product of the WM marketplace. WM sees old and new pathogens entering a human body and focuses on the introduction of new biochemical weapons to fight these diseases.
TCM has existed for millennia with an almost unchanging range of modalities (eg. acupuncture & moxibustion, tui na, herbal remedies) to use effectively against old and emergent diseases; it is able to do this because there are two fundamentally unchanging entities in its scientific appraisal of disease, the human body and the pathogen. Almost all pathogens, even emergent and mutating pathogens, will cause known patterns of disharmony in the almost never changing human body that TCM understands so well. A disease is characterised by well-understood patterns of disharmony, whatever the pathogen, which TCM recognises and treats with long tried and tested techniques to correct these disharmonies.
Trial types which assess the EBM of TCM
With such fundamental differences in appreciation of disease, approaches to treating disorders and the understanding of a bodys reaction to old and new pathogens, one requires research trials for TCM to maintain the focus specified by the doctrine. WM relies heavily on research trials that limit avenues for bias and corruption; a necessary practice because the medicaments (drugs) are constantly changing as knowledge of body and pathogen biochemistry evolves. Drug research costs and potential profits are enormous, a phenomenon alien to TCM which has always relied on very effective but relatively simple and inexpensive interventions, and this leads to the equally enormous temptation for fraud and corruption. Most new drug treatments have not been evaluated in the human body before a research trial so care is essential to avoid serious injury to research subjects. TCM need not rely on the same trial philosophy for various reasons: -
- Any TCM modality will have been used on the human body safely and effectively for many generations; it will be trialled according to TCM principles and practices that have stood the test of time. The research looks at known patterns of disharmony identified in patients having the disease studied; the treatment will be designed to treat these patterns using well-used modalities such as A & M. This is analogous to WM treating a new disease with a well-understood medication such as aspirin - researchers would already know general safety and efficacy limits for the use of aspirin in humans and are merely testing its abilities against a new disorder. This is a very different situation from trialling a new drug, whose capabilities and dangers are little understood.
- A TCM trial must account for all patterns of disharmony identified amongst research subjects despite these patients having been defined by WM as suffering one disease. Each diagnostic pattern must be treated according to TCM principles and practice, which provides an individualised prescription for each patient; this may in part be unique to that patient, but will also contain similarities to every other patients prescription.
- In the clinical setting, patterns of disharmony may suggest environmental, emotional or lifestyle factors that contribute to the disorder. The TCM practitioner will automatically consider various ways to mitigate these pathogenic insults for each patient. A research trial should to take this into account because the degree of success of any treatment depends on being able to identify and neutralise these pathogens. This is no different from WM requiring the identification, usually through laboratory testing, of any external pathogen or internal disharmony before utilising medication to treat the disorder.
In the European Journal of Oriental Medicine (EJOM) Vol 2 No. 6 Winter 1998-99 Dr. Adrian White listed his Hierarchy illustrating the different forms of clinical evidence. These were
- Systematic Reviews
- Randomised controlled trials
- Controlled trials
- Cohort studies
- Case histories, anecdote, testimonials
No doubt there are WM researchers who would disagree with this particular hierarchy but it is the kind that favours WM research. It is unsuitable for TCM-based studies that hold often very different priorities to WM in methodology, the interpretation of research trial procedures and results: -
- Systematic reviews, and the meta-analysis of multiple research projects
This method is only suitable if one excludes all WM acupuncture studies which are not based on TCM principles, in fact acupuncture does not exist in TCM, the modality is acupuncture & moxibustion where an intervention must always consider appropriate deployment of both methods to achieve health balance. Pooling TCM studies is not an easy option as one finds a variety of types of TCM study with varying complexes of adherence to traditional diagnostic principles and more modern diagnostic measures. The use of controls differs. One may find studies where a proprietary drug treatment, for which a typical range of outcomes is expected, is used as control. In some cases no treatment is used as control. In others a different, already evaluated, TCM modality is compared with that tested. Some studies use a large cohort without controls, an appropriate treatment is given as designed according to TCM principles; and so on. Technically, one could locate a number of similar study types, analyse and review these to assess the effectiveness of A&M in certain disorders, but this may be an onerous task due to complications of required translations (if done by Westerners not conversant with the Chinese language) and the current lack of a suitable database. A good review necessarily takes at least 5 years. (12).
- Randomised control trials
Once referred to as the gold standard of WM the Double-blind Crossover RCT (DBCRCT) has seen its standing diminished during recent debates on EBM; a more sensible consensus has emerged which demands that a trial type must be designed to answer a question posed recognising that the RCT answers some but not all typical questions posed by the various research trial aims. For example, a DBCRCT is of little value in assessing the safety and efficacy of existing vaccines amongst a large cohort of children. One prefers retrospective or prospective studies with or without randomisation, remembering that randomisation, blinding, crossover and controls contribute little to the calculation of the efficacy and safety of a treatment. This is especially true for a completely individualised TCM-based system of diagnosis and treatment. Historically TCM has avoided no treatment controls as this was seen as unethical, better to treat everyone with a modality known to be safe, after millennia of experience of use, than leave people suffering when improvements are a general expectation and adverse effects are known to be highly unlikely?
- Cohort studies
TCM provides a very suitable philosophy and range of traditional interventions for evaluation of its modalities through the use of cohort studies. WM uses cohort studies in vaccination research, vaccines being seen as a traditional intervention rather like TCM modalities. Many TCM researchers in the 70s and 80s used cohort studies to show the value of A&M on a large population of sufferers with follow up for months or years. To stand alone a cohort study must large enough, have a lengthy period of follow up, and be clear enough in methodology and result to state with certainty the effectiveness of the treatment tested.
- Case histories, anecdote, testimonials.
Research data is not collected from a single research trial carried out by a specific dedicated team, but the information these sources provide is similar to that collected from trial subjects in a single trial. Subjects have been diagnosed, evaluated and treated according to TCM principles by a professional. Outcomes were recorded along with input from TCM investigation and the subjective anecdote and testimonials of each patient plus any WM evidence collected during diagnosis, treatment and evaluation phases. The attending physician has made an assessment of effectiveness.
A study of such items of data from physicians notes, accompanied by verification of test results and verbal confirmation from patients involved, could provide a similar standard of evidence as that obtained through the retrospective studies of WM (eg. vaccination outcomes. RCT, systematic review and meta-analysis would be unsuitable yet there is no reason why, as a selection for certain types of TCM intervention, this trial type should not be a first choice scientific approach perhaps preferable to systematic reviews of trials.
Suggested Research Study Types
I would suggest as most reasonable for TCM practices the following types of research trial: -
- Cohort studies; which have been recorded in China for many years.
- Retrospective studies based on collection, collation and analysis of case histories, anecdotes and testimonials whose data has been verified at source by patient, relatives if patient no longer able, and all professionals involved.
- RCT, Controlled and similar studies have been carried out in centers of academic excellence in China and other countries for years for which papers are already published. Randomisation can be a very simple process to initiate, ranging from first come first served to computer-generated selection following a random pattern superimposed on a patient list. The control used would depend on type of disorder studied and treatment modality used. For a common disorder, with a treatment already widely prescribed (eg WM drug or TCM herb) and of known outcome, the control could be that treatment. Due to the special nature of TCM, its long tried and tested modalities, in certain cases it may be ethical that NO control be used. The design must suit the specific circumstances and aims of any research project.
- Systematic reviews and meta-analyses can only be performed on these studies when sufficient are available, of like framework and content, to justify at least 5 years labor producing meaningful product. Intermediate versions could be produced as a measure of efficiency and effectiveness of this type of study method for the very individualised and unique types of intervention TCM provides. They will always be difficult to apply to a system of medicine like TCM that is patient-centered responding to the uniqueness of every patient in diagnosis, application of treatment type, and pathogen exposed. The locations of different studies would preclude them appearing in the same review. eg Patients diagnosed with wind heat syndrome where the research takes place in a hot windy climate, or windy season of a temperate climate, would react differently to treatment than those suffering a similar syndrome when treated in a cold stable climate. WM has no such philosophy therefore researchers unfamiliar with these considerations cannot understand their relevance.
- Various placebo and sham control interventions have been suggested for modalities such as acupuncture & moxibustion; at the moment there is no commonly accepted placebo or sham method defined to represent A&M treatment. One can devise placebo for herbal interventions but not for Tui Na or A&M. Placebo and sham interventions should be excluded, they are a waste of time and confuse the true picture.
Peer review and repeatability are obvious ingredients with which one is able to confirm results from research trials. If one cannot analyse the claimed effectiveness and safety of a form of intervention by conventional trial design routes one must look for alternative ways to achieve a realistic assessment; that is the essence of good science, designing ways to understand physical reality.
TCM includes dimensions of thought and the physical application of interventions that are currently out of reach of WM scientific analysis that has neither the tools nor philosophical maturity to assess these aspects of the TCM reality. The �spiritual� dimension is a major part of TCM philosophy, aspects of which are often described in WM through the application of psychological theories that provide little real scientific understanding. Intervening on any level through TCM practices one necessarily considers the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual essence of each patient and situation. The pathogens of TCM cannot easily be described in modern scientific terms; modern medical science knows little about complex human nature, how the environment impacts on this, and the cosmological effects that maintain flux in our lives, we are microcosms within the macrocosm. It is the millennia old knowledge, experience and teachings born of observation and empirical evaluation that has given TCM a unique understanding of these effects on human physiology and psyche which should not be ignored by research method.
According to William Rosenberg and Anna Donald, EBM is rooted in five linked ideas (7): -
- Clinical decisions should be based on best available scientific evidence
- The Clinical problem, rather than habits or protocols, should determine the type of evidence to be sought
- Identifying the best evidence means using epidemiological and biostatistical ways of thinking
- Conclusions derived from identifying and critically appraising evidence are useful only if put into action in managing patients or making health care decisions
- Performance should be constantly evaluated.
TCM is not a new form of medicine; it is one that had to develop its own scientific format to identify with providing an evidence-based product. It already has a wealth of data derived from generations of activities healing the sick and measuring its methodology, philosophy and modalities against disease such that collection, collation and dissemination of this information can identify very valuable forms of EBM
One must ensure that relevant scientific method is used to develop reasonable conclusions about effectiveness, efficacy and safety. Biochemical markers and measures are inappropriate for some interventions or disorder types where there is, as yet, no known biochemical understanding of why a particular outcome is effected by a particular modality and patients got better. WM usually retreats to the placebo concept to explain things it does not scientifically understand due to the inability of biochemistry to explain and define so many disorders. eg MS, CFS, addiction, psychosis. WM claims to treat most disorders despite not really understanding the mechanisms of most of these; TCM also treats all disorders it recognises, however it does so through the use of a medical model that is different but equally and, in many cases, more effective than the WM model. It is imperative that the science used to investigate is capable of understanding and expressing the essentials of TCM.
Other factors influencing EBM
Like WM there are numerous factors that would be likely to alter the EB value of a TCM modality when faced with national and global political and financial constraints.
There is also, inherent in the unique TCM system of medicine, the acceptance that practitioners can have a very great degree of autonomy when using TCM methods and applying TCM philosophy. This allows for the interaction of emotional, mental, spiritual and physical dimensions inherent recognised through the TCM approach. Different practitioners bring with them similar, yet also unique, qualities that enter the patient-practitioner equation (some of these may contribute to the placebo concept of WM). A system of physician autonomy is generally anathema to WM as drugs are involved and the average physician is not qualified to understand the biochemistry of his medicaments so it is better that a strict protocols are followed to safeguard the patient. This situation conflicts with TCM where all medicaments used by a practitioner are both well understood and well described over millennia such that patient safety is rarely an issue. TCM rarely changes its medicaments, it uses the same needles, moxa, massage, Qi Gong, Tai Qi it has used for generations.
One cannot state with any degree of scientific certainty that any practitioner who treats a particular patient with the same intervention will achieve exactly the same effects for that person. TCM also knows that at different hours of the day and night, in different seasons, under different climatic and environmental situations, our reactions to treatment can vary enormously. WM does not yet understand or value such complexities; hence it often recommends the same prescription for the same patient ad infinitum. The TCM practitioner is like an electronics expert manipulating complex circuitry (human body). As the circuit evolves it is affected by different external and internal factors so he adjusts the system using the same tools as always. He must adjust the approach to the evolution of the machine, whilst keeping up to date on potentially new external and internal noxious effects. The WM practitioner sees the same human body and must also adjust to the evolution of the system as it is affected by similar external and internal noxious factors, but his tools change constantly.
One must also consider the political and financial factors that can affect availability of best EBM treatment.
1. Public requirement: If a TCM intervention trialled was found to be the best option as compared with all previously published trial results, then according to Sackett (1) all other interventions have been superseded and only the new method is an EBM.
2. Practitioners expectation: If a practitioner is not prepared to use the EBM suggested by research, he does not necessarily provide an EBM. Eg Western medical acupuncturist who fails to adopt safe TCM practices for patients.
3. Industry expectation: If the industry producing the modality equipment (eg particular herb or needle type) fails to supply that type for financial reasons it may negate some or all the EBM.
4. Government expectation: If for any reason a government restricts a modality or type of intervention from public use despite it being deemed the EBM through trials, due to cost the public may not then receive an EBM.
5. World Health Organisation: If for any reason the WHO interferes in the availability or provision of a TCM EBM it prevent a population receiving EBM, as it would have to use other methods already superseded.
Clearly if it is accepted as Sackett et al (8) suggests, that a superseded intervention loses its EBV, then only the best will do as only that can be considered the EBM. This may not seem too extreme when considering old superseded and new drugs of WM but for TCM it is unacceptable perhaps even unworkable. With an individualised patient centered intervention everyone necessarily receives treatment that is appropriate for themselves, their specific characteristics and circumstances. This situation may exist in WM if, for example, a patient has responded badly to a new drug yet an older version works well. That patient may not, according to Sackett et al, receive an EBM yet the patient clearly receives an already proven treatment that, for that person, must have some EBV.
Conclusion
Ideally, the information provided should go far beyond efficacy to include measures of harm as well as benefit, to integrate patients views on their quality of life with and without treatment, and to include the economic consequences of the treatment alternatives Sackett and Cook 1994 (9)
Traditional Chinese Medicine already has great EBV, the global public are aware of this, as are Chinese research scientists and practitioners of TCM modalities. WM has major problems with its ability to devise and implement EBM procedures for its practices that will ensure safety and efficacy, whilst reducing the enormous carnage it is currently responsible for worldwide. Both medical systems must utilise science and scientific methodology that apply directly to the kind of intervention researched. Trial design must be completely attuned to declared aim.
Important influential bodies like the House of Lords should be properly informed such that they are able to make sensible valued judgments after having received best advice from scientists and professionals who both recognise and can provide adequate evidence from all available data. China has a wealth of research data in many formats, much of which originated from trials designed to answer the questions posed, not from some strictly theoretical yet restrictive framework feted as a kind of gold standard which fails to assess correctly the modality and is unable to answer specific scientific questions asked about interventions already proven over the ages which are eminently suitable for the treatment of many diseases.
References
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Biochemical Medicine (BM)
When a significant number of people (billions) believe in, and partake of, a medical paradigm one strongly suspects it to have substance. When the paradigm has existed for millennia, with little change to its central tenet (Meridian Theory) yet having evolved through experiential, philosophical and religious machinations to reach the 21st century fundamentally intact, one concludes that it is worth more than a second glance! That medical paradigm is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and it has bequeathed us its multifarious modalities such as Herbalism, Tui Na, Qi Gong, Acupuncture & Moxibustion and Tai Qi. All are efficacious methods whereby TCM-based manipulation of the human animal to preserve and restore health is safely effected.
One cannot discuss the merits of one medical paradigm without a suitable comparison, in this case the dominant Western Medical (WM) paradigm Biochemical Medicine (BM). The backdrop of war, plague, trade and rapid technological advances of the last two centuries, that historians find difficulty comparing favourably with any other period in known history, saw the rapid conception and ascent of BM. Without the simultaneous development of chemistry BM may never have developed and WM may have continued to evolve from the traditional practices of ancient healers such as Culpeper. In China, TCM managed to evolve without a monopolistic science dominating its universal theme. Culpeper would be proud of TCM.
I doubt Culpeper would have expected that his scientific art would be deconstructed and reformed as BM, and suspect that he regularly turns in his grave at the mass destruction that is an undeniable part of BM. When chemists began to dismantle nature and reform or separate for medical use naturally occurring compounds they unlocked the vast potential of BM - a potential for tremendous advances in acute medical care yet equally devastating damage to the environment and public health.
TCM by comparison, through the late 20th Century, was required by Chinese Parliamentary edict to avoid deconstructing nature as licenses for medicinal products were only granted if the producer could guarantee that all the original natural substance was included in the remedy believing that removal of any part destroys the synergy of healing elements and reduces the efficacy of the medicament. BM bases its scientific validity on an opposite view - that extracts of plants and synthetically produced alternatives to nature provide efficacious and safe medications. BMs philosophy conveniently isolates the production of medicaments to chemical industries capable of separating or synthesising nature thus creating a very powerful industrial drug base that excludes nature per se.
Known to treat almost all yet cure almost no disease, BM blankets whole populations now suffering extremely high levels of ill health, perhaps than ever before. In the UK about one in three expect to develop cancer, one in five asthma, millions develop heart disease or stroke, epilepsy, diabetes, MS, ME, arthritis and other chronic intractable diseases; BM has recently been shown to be a major cause of death and serious illness in Australian, American and British research studies around the third biggest killer after heart disease and cancer. Every year BM probably kills and seriously afflicts more people worldwide than died in the Great War of 1914-18. (Lazarou, Pomeranz, Corey; JAMA Apr 15, 1998;Vol 279 No 15 Incidence of ADRs in Hospitalised patients; a meta-analysis of Prospective Studies; 1200-05 and Sunday Times 19 Dec. 1999 Blunders by doctors kill 40,000 per year in UK)
TCM has several millennia of use amongst billions of people and has never been shown to devastate its public, indeed recent statistics conclude that it appears to be extremely safe in the hands of its practitioners. Of the comparatively few ADRs to acupuncture located in a trawl of the literature of 1994/5 by Dr. Kim Jobst, Honorary Research Fellow at Glasgow Western Infirmary, most of these were associated with doctors practicing acupuncture (Heres Health; Therapy Update; July 1998 Page 28) as opposed to TCM-based Practitioners of acupuncture. First do no harm is an enduring philosophy amongst TCM practitioners that does not mesh well with BM. Should BM be allowed to run amok as some headless apocalyptic beast devouring huge public resources, at times the saviour but often the sinner, or is it time to shackle the monster, tame and re-educate it such that its undoubted merits are realised while its unquestionable hazards are curtailed? Funds released from curtailment of the unsubstantiated and therefore potentially dangerous BM practices can be used to fuel the spread of TCM-based modalities as practised by its practitioners. This would acknowledge and redress the double standards that exist in judging traditional & alternative medicine� (BMJ 6 Jun 1998; 316:1694)
The Case for TCM
The 21st Century model of TCM is without the vast financial and political resources of WM. Its practitioners generally recognise the same anatomy, physiology and pathogenesis as WM and TCM also has it�s own well defined models for these aspects. What is unique about TCM is its central tenet - the Theory of Ching Luo (Channels and Collaterals). It is a description of the Body Electromagnetic often referred to by biophysicists. It details the anatomical matrix of energy channels and collaterals that is the Meridian System as described in TCM. Modern critics of TCM, particularly those involved in protectionism for BM) say that the existence of the Meridian System and its Acupoint phenomenon has not been proven; they are wrong. They say the philosophy and practices, which accompany the healing modalities of TCM have no scientific base, again they are wrong.
Evidence for the existence of the Meridian System and Acupoints is overwhelming; it is the fine print that is now under scrutiny. Yet where is the revised anatomical literature of WM? Why are surgeons still cutting meridian lines of energy flow with impunity? Why are the effects of drugs on this system of human equilibrium not evaluated before prescription? The dominance of BM thought in WM continues to blind everyone to the truth by insisting that the adjective scientific can only be applied to a theory that fits into the limited biochemical paradigm. People allow this arrogant stance to proliferate despite the extraordinarily high percentages of the public choosing a Complementary or Alternative (CAM) therapy to improve their health. In Europe the uptake of CAMs ranges from 49% in France to 24% in Denmark (Edzard Ernst �The ethics of complementary medicine; Journal of Medical Ethics, 1996; 22:197-198).
Understanding and acceptance of the existence of the Meridian System of TCM and the related phenomenon of bioelectromagnetic energies the Chinese named Qi, the vital energy of life, will help to extract 20th Century BM from its arrogant, insular dialogue with itself to allow for the rapid development of an objective, multidisciplinary scientific future for world medicine.
Meridians Exist and so do Acupoints
Overwhelming evidence for the existence of Meridians and related Acupoint phenomena has been recorded throughout history in various forms and, in recent decades, in modern scientific fashion. The Energy Channels follow well-defined pathways around the surface, and interior, of the body. They support aspects of Qi flow and other substances described by the TCM medical model. The Meridian System appears to be a phenomenon of intercellular communication, the transfer of energy signals between cells that form part of the anatomical structure of the skin especially the stratum corneum, analogous to the microwave-linked communication systems that serve mobile phone networks. Qi energy, which courses through this system of channels, is the manifestation of electromagnetic energy signals that communicate with, and activate, all body functions. Until electromagnetic energy was measurable one could only obtain electrical measurements. Data collected has long confirmed the presence of electrical phenomena associated with all living things. In recent decades biophysicists have extracted electromagnetic information from our tissues thereby contradicting claims that only biochemistry could provide scientific medical intervention.
1. Dr. Robert Becker (an American orthopaedic surgeon twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, Professor of the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Centre and Louisiana State University in Shreveport, a leading expert in the field of biological electricity and regeneration), whilst researching the mechanisms involved in body self-repair and the restoration of growth at amputation sites on amphibian limbs, found what appears to be a universal vertebrate primitive DC current system which probably preceded the evolved AC system recognised by modern WM. During a study for the National Institutes of Health Becker, together with biophysicist Dr. Maria Reichmanis, found that about 25% of the acupuncture points on the human forearm did exist in that they had reproducible and significant electrical parameters and could be found in all subjects tested we found also that the meridians had the electrical characteristics of transmission lines, while non-meridian skin did not. We concluded that the acupuncture system was really there, and that it most likely operates electrically.(1)
2. Chinese researchers have measured the unique meridian and acupoint phenomenon of low impedance (LIP low impedance points) compared to surrounding tissues.(2)
3. Studies in animals showed that the introduction of carboxyfluorecin into cells in the epidermal layer realised increased transfer between cells along meridian line pathways.(3)
4. The histophysiology of the Meridians was investigated at Xian Medical University in China and led to the discovery of the �neuromastocytic junction on the meridian line of human skin. In tissue areas said to hold meridian lines, special expanded axon terminals that contained various synaptic vesicles, mitochondria or neurofilaments were identified; the team also established that close contact existed with the surface of a mast cell. They named this connection between axon terminal and mast cell a neuromastocytic junction. Further electron microscopic studies concluded that the axons approaching the junctions run in the same directions as the meridians tested and that both axon and mast cell, at such a junction, were Substance P reactive a characteristic of the Meridian-acupoint phenomenon.(4),(5)
5. Zon and Tien, biophysicists, have investigated the electronic properties of cell and organelle membranes and feel that there is evidence to show that bilayer lipid membranes have n-type and p-type semi-conductor properties (Zon and Ti Tien 1988) (6). If so this would indicate the possibility of transmembraneous current rectification. The implication here is that alternating fields may result in more charge movement in one direction across the membrane rather than the other. Frohlich (7) has proposed that the growth and stability of organs and tissue systems may be controlled by intercellular mutually coherent frequency signals. In other words, cell systems may recognise each other and socially communicate through an interlocking range of specific coherent information and instruction carrying frequencies. Degenerative disease processes and cancer have been modelled as breakdowns of this mutually coherent frequency control by abnormal destructive agencies such as trauma, infection and auto-immune processes. Cancer cells, for example, become increasingly alienated and unresponsive to coherent signaling and at each generation regress (Hameroff et al 1984) (8).
6. Scientists from the Institute of Biophysics, Beijing Hospital of TCM, Beijing Union Medical College, Hospital of Qinyang, Beijing Medical University, and Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics studied the phenomenon of Latent Propagated Sensation along the Meridian (LPSM) using chemical, electrical and electron microscopic means. They confirmed the low impedance nature of the Meridians on the epidermis and stratum corneum, commenting that the low impedance nature of the stratum corneum reflected only one of the biophysical characteristics of meridians and that other substantial structures related to meridians exist in various layers (dermis, connective tissue and muscle) of meridian lines.(9)
7. Infra-Red Radiant Tracer
HU Xianglong. WU Bao-hua and WANG Pei-qing of the Fujian Institute of TCM, Fuzhou 350003, China carried out research using infra-red radiant tracer, connected to accurate infra-red photographic equipment and a computerised graphics process to obtain images like the one above. Those with a working knowledge of the Meridian System will immediately recognise aspects of the Stomach, Triple Energiser and Small Intestine Meridians. (10)
Other scientific methods adopted to demonstrate hard evidence that the Meridians and Acupoints exist are: -
Analyses of afferent pulses from nerve branches using (Propagated Sensation along the Meridian) PSM. (11)
Mechanical blocking of PSM (12)
Resistance patterns of segments of meridians and collaterals (13)
Body luminescence lines coincident with meridian lines (14)
Rheogram, Electromyogram and Thermograph studies (15), (16), (17)
MRI Imaging (18)
Experimental observations such as the relationship between a meridian and organ
Eg. Pericardium Meridian and Cardiac Function (19)
The Power to Heal
The existence of Meridians and Acupoints has been demonstrated very effectively by science. The complex TCM doctrine, that has long explained this anatomical and physiological system, has generated an enormous amount of valuable scientific research helping to explain how and why TCM modalities successfully manipulate this system to promote health. The TCM model, which is used in many guises by modern-day Acupuncture & Moxibustion Practitioners, remains in a form very much as it was 2,000 years ago. Skeptics say this is ancient therefore outdated and irrelevant. Not only is it as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago, but it is also ultra-modern. Many concepts of TCM are still ahead of current BM knowledge thus BM devotees cannot hope to understand and use the system safely or effectively. It should be used in accordance with the principles of TCM.
Often fundamental concepts of TCM are criticised by BM scientists and professional skeptics. Their ignorance of the meanings of what are essentially limited translations of Chinese concepts they read before criticising is revealed by their outbursts. For example: -
Yin and Yang
This concept has been said by skeptics to have no foundation in science. If I were a primary school student I may accept that statement, but by the time I'd studied electricity, magnetism, atomic structure, let alone Einstein, quantum mechanics and the molecular nature of life I would begin to wonder what science the critics were quoting.
Yin and Yang is a fundamental characteristic of nature. Simply put, it means that everything tends to a state of oscillating balance of opposites. Yin can be -ve, then Yang is +ve, Yin can be action, then Yang is reaction, Yin can be alkali then Yang is acid, Yin can be night then Yang is day. is that so controversial? Chemistry tells us that the atoms and molecules of nature tend to ionic balance. For every electron we like to see a proton, compounds form with strong attraction, just like magnets, with +ve and -ve equality where possible. An ionic bond requires the sharing of spare electrons to from a more stable structure its the basic stuff of life.
TCM gives us much information about nature and ourselves from the simple statement that everything should have a Yin/Yang balance. In medical terms we must look for both sides of the coin in our attempt to balance Yin and Yang physiological aspects to achieve health. Kidney Yin and Kidney Yang must be balanced for health. This is similar to saying that cortisol and adrenaline aspects of the HPA system should be balanced, and that Yin (night Parasympathetic NS) should balance Yang (day Sympathetic NS) activities for health. These concepts have yet to find their way into WM thinking. The very essence of anatomical and physiological balance seems pretty remote from general BM theory.
Yin & Yang is here to stay, it is the fundamental concept of the Duality of Nature.
The Five Elements
This simple-looking formula of TCM below is often called the five transformations as this fits more closely the Chinese explanations of the system described. TCM focuses on physiological change with time whereas BM tends to prefer the snapshot view (X-rays, EEG etc.). BM medics may prescribe a drug for life, anathema to TCM that says that your health picture may change with time and intervenes with that in mind. One cannot assess functions with time in a 4-minute consultation, nor by X-ray or CT scan. These modern methods, though valuable snapshots, do not play a major part in the progress of disease until it is already quite serious.
The Five Elements formula shows how nature maintains harmonious balance. The Chinese have attributed to it certain aspects of the human body to show how we must strive to achieve a healthy balance. Liver and Gall Bladder functions are represented by the element WOOD, Heart and Small Intestine functions by FIRE, Spleen and Stomach functions by EARTH, Lung and Large Intestine by METAL whilst Kidney and Urinary Bladder functions are found under the element WATER. The clockwise cycle, element to element, of (water>wood>fire>earth> metal>water>etc.) is called the creative cycle, each preceding element is the mother of the following son element
(Mother-Son Law). Positive alterations to a mother organ function may affect her son similarly whilst alterations to son will probably have the opposite effect on his mother. Destructive cycles are those where opposing elements can have adverse effects on each other eg. Alterations to Kidney function may adversely affect Heart function, i.e. strengthening Kidney weakens Heart.
Although a rather archaic or alchemical-looking form of symbolism, its looks belie its profound value in medical treatment. Adherence to its basic reasoning could save thousands of lives each year that are written off to BM intervention. The formula tells us that whatever we do to one aspect of the body will automatically affect the whole body balance in the way described. One must ensure that any potential adverse imbalance a prescription may induce is simultaneously corrected by additional ingredients to a prescription formula. For example, if one were to prescribe a Heart medication, a TCM doctor would be aware of the potential for knock-on effects to the Liver, Spleen, Lung and Kidney systems. If one does not adhere to this rule of Five Element balancing one is likely to cause unnecessary ADRs to a treatment. I find that much BM treatment ADRs are predictable through Five Element reasoning.
For example BM may diagnose excess stomach acidity (gastritis) and prescribes say Omeprazole for months (even years). TCM would first ask, if Stomach (Earth) has a problem, what about the rest of the �5 element system? Could the cause lie elsewhere, could another element be at fault and its malfunction be affecting the balance of the system? One may find that Liver function (Wood) is hyperfunctioning and releasing excess bile thus inflaming the stomach or intestines; or a Lung (metal) excess such as an infection or Heart (fire) is hypofunction, or Kidney (water) hyperfunction - perhaps a hyperadrenaline state such as anxiety - may be responsible. TCM would consider all these, thanks to the Five Element concept, before achieving a differential diagnosis and completing a prescription. TCM treatment of gastritis may involve regulation of Heart function, or Liver function or Lung function or Kidney function, or it may result in only Stomach function regulation!
Whilst working at the Leeds General Infirmary Pain Clinic in the late 80s I saw an elderly patient whose plight epitomised the BM TCM conflict. She had intractable right upper quadrant abdominal pain for over 30 years. Her gall bladder, and part of her stomach had been surgically removed years before in attempts to stop the pain, to no avail, she had seen numerous specialists and taken multifarious drugs over the years culminating in the chronic intractable state that I saw. I immediately recognised a hyper-Liver state (in TCM terms her stomach and gall bladder had been the unfortunate victims of the Liver function excess and BM unnecessary intervention); my acupuncture treatment was immediately effective along with suitable dietary advice. If used 30 years earlier, TCM acupuncture may have prevented her years of pain, ineffective drug and surgical treatments.
The Five Element formula is a profound tool used in understanding the complex balance of the human body. It is an essential part of TCM diagnosis and intervention.
Scientific Experimental Evaluation of TCM-based Medical Intervention
Chinese research scientists constantly evaluate TCM interventions, often proving old knowledge for the benefit of sceptical westerners, and those who want to know the truth.
For example: -
1. Chinese scientists believe they have found a means to show that Yin /Yang is an accessible tool for measuring progress of disease and medication. They realised, from their understanding of the concept of physical duality for all things, that this duality may reflect in the central cyclic nucleotide variation c-AMP and c-GMP. If this were so, medical scientists would have a valuable insight into body harmony� via this model in addition to other such as pH balance. Using acupoint GV20 stimulation in 39 rabbits, and radioimmuneassay to determine the presence and values of c-AMP and c-GMP, the results led them to believe that they may have discovered the key materials that embody cellular Yin and Yang harmony. (20)
2. Whilst researching the effects of electroacupuncture on experimental myocardial ischaemia in rabbits the changes of ECG S-T segment and Glycogen researchers WEN Shen et al of The Institute of Acupuncture, Academy of TCM, Beijing found that Glycogen is a sensitive index in early ischaemic myocardium. (Liver Wood function - glycogen affects Heart Fire function eg ischaemia). (21)
3. A preliminary study of the correlation between acupuncture points for the treatment of eye disorders suggested by ancient oriental literature and the corresponding brain location for vision described by Western Medicine was performed using functional MRI. The results obtained demonstrate the correlation between activation of specific areas of the brain cortices and corresponding acupoint stimulation predicted by ancient acupuncture literature. (18)
Multifarious experimental studies are constantly being completed in Chinese and worldwide research centers to illustrate their effects of acupoints on physiological processes. See a few typical examples below.
Examples of Point Specific Studies: -
1. Acupuncture at S36 and GB30 increases Acetylcholine activity in brain significantly (cortex, caudate nucleus, hypothalamus and brain stem)-rat. Also increases 5HT and 5-H1AA in brain. NE content is significantly reduced-rabbit. S36 increases blood platelets, granulocytes, and degranulation of peroneal mast cells in connective tissue and regulates intestinal peristalsis-rabbit. There is also significant increase in activation of T-lymphocytes with insignificant alteration of Es-RFC (stable E-rosettes) sub-population after acupuncture-human. S36 had marked effect on Small Intestinal mobility; heavy twisting of needle reduced mobility while gentle twisting increased mobility-rabbit. Moxibustion at S36 on hypertensives with cerebral thrombosis (in convalescence) showed remarkable reduced FDP (fibrin degradation products) that was maintained over 6 months illustrating the power of acupuncture at S36 to reduce blood coagulation-human. Acupuncture at S36 increases 5-HT and 5-H1AA of brain and excites sympatho-adrenal system and the adrenals to release cate-cholamines, also plasma ACTH increases-rat. (22), (23), (24), (25), (26), (27), (28), (29), (30)
2. Acupuncture at LI4, P6 and SI18 increase Tryptophane, 5-HT and 5-H1AA significantly and decrease NE-human. (31)
3. The essential afferent neurons of P6 exist at C6-8 and T1 spinal ganglia which is at variance with median nerve (C5-T1). -rabbit. But segmental innervation of P3 was found to be C6-T1. -rat. Afferent neurons in spinal ganglia of H7 were at C6-T1; the segment of Heart is C8-T10. -cat. (32), (33), (34)
4. S36 was tracked mainly to ganglia of lumbar and sacrum (L4-S2) and a few other segments (some T10-12, some L1-7, some S1-3) whereas for the Stomach organ the locations were C4-8, T1-12, L1-7 with most occurring in T5-12. This shows that sensory neurons of S36 and Stomach overlap in the lower Thoracic and Lumbar regions which may be an explanation for why S36 treats pain, visceral and pathogenic effects of the Stomach.-rabbit (35)
5. UB17 and P3 treat acute myocardial ischaemia but LIV7 could not. -rabbit (36)
6. P4 and UB21 could promote recovery from acute myocardial ischaemia but LIV6 could not. -rabbit (37)
7. S36 and LI11 created a marked reduction in arterial pressure and accompanying decrease of plasma AT-11 (Angiotensin II) level to protect hypertensives. -dog (38)
8. S36 acupuncture made significant alteration to EGG on Stomach/Spleen illness whilst GB34 made none. -human (39)
9. Acupuncture at UB28 caused strong bladder contraction; at UB23 caused bladder relaxation. - rabbit (40)
10. S36, UB20 and P6 produced significant increases in gastric secretion of bicarbonate and sodium with marked decrease in gastric secretion of acid. - dog (41)
11. GV26 produced significant inhibition of gastric motor activity. - dog (42)
12. S36, Sp6 and P6 caused increased leukocyte phagocytosis.- human (43)
13. Moxibustion on GV14 in mice produced certain inhibitory effect on Sarcoma 180.D-PA plus moxibustion on GV14 produced an even stronger anti-tumour effect. - mice/rat (44), (45).
A Small Study
I recently conducted a small study using the Pubmed database searching on acupuncture and recording chronologically each original and linked abstract until I had 105 with which to illustrate a quantum of the kind of research documentation available. Using Pubmeds categorisation of RCT, Meta-analysis etc. my simple study found that: -
39 (37.143%) abstracts were of RCT based studies
11 (10.476%) were of CT based studies
13 (12.381%) were of review based studies
7 (6.667%) were meta-analysis studies
10 (9.524%) were experimental or chemistry based studies
25 (23.810%) of the 105 were other types of studies. (Including cohort studies or pilots).
Those showing acupuncture to be clinically effective were 61.905%
Those showing acupuncture as without significant effect were 13.333%
Those with no relationship to acupuncture effects were 27.619%
A few Examples of RCT-based studies, Reviews and Meta-analyses drawn from the
Pubmed database and supporting Acupuncture: -
1. Meta-analysis of acupuncture for back pain, 12 studies included, acupuncture was shown to be superior to various control interventions (46)
2. RCT of the treatment of migraine by acupuncture showed - acupuncture was significantly more effective than the control procedure in reducing pain of migraine headache (47)
3. RCT of acupuncture for the management of primary dysmenorrhea. In real acupuncture group 90.9% of women showed improvement compared to placebo group (36.4%), standard control group (18.2%) and visitation control group (10%). After treatment series acupuncture group reduced analgesic medication by 41% compared to other three groups 0% or increased analgesic use! (48)
4. RCT of acupuncture treatment of stroke patients in subacute stage showed significantly greater improvement than in control group both during the 6 week treatment period, and even more so during the following year. (49)
5. RCT of treatment of primary Reynauds Syndrome with Traditional Chinese Acupuncture showed that it is a reasonable alternative in treating patients with this syndrome. (50)
6. RCT of acupuncture treatment confirmed that the cognitive function of cerebral traumatic dementia patients was increased effectively with the acupuncture. (51)
7. Systematic Review of 22 RCTs (including 1042 patients) showed that the existing evidence suggests that acupuncture has a role in the treatment of recurrent headaches.(52)
Critics who say there is insufficient evidence for acupuncture as clinically effective (eg Prof Edzard Ernst no such technique has so far shown any scientific validity) (53) appear misguided.
News:- The US Agency for Healthcare Policy & Research and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine have awarded a $1 million grant to study acupuncture as a treatment for chronic lower back pain. (Journal of CM News 26.12.1999 www.jcm.uk/News)
The Electromagnetic Spectrum and TCM
Modern TCM is the result of an evolutionary process over millennia which describes the fundamental mechanics of nature as viewed through biophysics. BM has evolved through biochemical eyes. The two can be complementary but their nuts and bolts paradigms are alternative to the core, yet at that core the two basic sciences, or views of nature, intertwine. In the macro-world of human medical intervention they seem like chalk and cheese, analogous to gas and electricity, but with respect for the fundamentals of each one is able to devise an integrated, healthy version of medical intervention based on input, as prescribed, from TCM doctor and BM physician.
It is unwise to allow a TCM doctor to adopt BM modalities unless having had adequate training to so do. The very minimum appears to be somewhere near that of the Nursing Practitioner. It is similarly unwise for a BM physician to use a TCM modality unless having also completed the current minimum training in TCM which, say for the British Acupuncture Council, is 1,500 hours. Any deviation from this may put the public at risk. Dr. Kim Jobst, Honorary Research Fellow at Glasgow Western Infirmary, commenting on his trawl of the literature of 1994/5 to find data on ADRs associated with acupuncture said that "ost were associated with medical doctors practicing acupuncture (Heres Health; Therapy Update; July 1998 Page 28). There are at present several thousand BM physicians and physiotherapists using TCM modalities in the UK with virtually no TCM training or experience. Based on the TCM view, this is not a safe option for any patient.
In order to manipulate meridian energy flow through acupoints using needles or herbs one must understand the characteristics of that flow and how it affects the organ/visceral system. BM does not recognise the existence of the meridian system, let alone understand its complexities. Allowing a BM physician with the equivalent of only a few days training (a medical acupuncturist) to manipulate bioelectromagnetic equilibrium is likely to put patients at risk. It is analogous to allowing a gas engineer to manipulate an electronic circuit with scanty understanding, or even acceptance of, electrical theory and the complexities of such circuitry. The danger is obvious. One would employ an electronics engineer to ensure safety and effectiveness.
Living cells are weak emitters of selective frequency radiation across much of the EM spectrum up to long ultraviolet frequencies. All cells generate a surrounding dielectric field which will organise particles in patterns similar to iron filings around a magnet. This field is at its maximum during mitosis (Pollock and Pohl 1988) (54). Cells also emit photons, known as biophotons, at spectral frequencies ranging from near infrared to ultraviolet A (Kart and Rose 1989) (55). Emission intensity usually seems proportional to cellular activity, inflamed and healing tissues, therefore may be strong sources for such emissions which could be received through the frequency windows of neighbouring cells to initiate their response.
TCM is at present the only well-established means of understanding the body electromagnetic. Its modalities such as acupuncture & moxibustion are believed to be very effective tools for the manipulation of the electrical, electromagnetic and biochemical systems of the human animal. BM recognises and is adept only at the latter and carries a serious penalty for an unfortunate proportion of those its power touches.
Electromagnetic manipulation of the biophysical body, refined over the millennia, is here to stay, as is biochemical intervention. The former is safely attainable through the TCM model. We may say that TCM constitutes medical alignment with the WAVE perspective of nature (and the quantum world), then BM constitutes medical alignment with the PARTICLE perspective. This essential duality of nature, the Yin and Yang of our reality provides great potential medical benefit as East meets West in medicine. Let us give the public the best of both worlds from those well trained and experienced in each paradigm.
The Patients' Dilemma
It is incumbent on any government tasked with selection of safe and efficacious methods of healing to provide the best available for public (who funds it) consumption. It is no longer good enough to say the doctor knows best when doctor is a term monopolised by gas engineers yet electronics and well-trained electronics engineers have become widely available. This paradigm now deserves a place in their lives. The Patients� Charter gives them a choice, in order to make that choice they require access, through State Registration and adequate funding to both paradigms.
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34. TAO Zhili et al, Inst., of Acupuncture & Moxibustion, China Academy of TCM, SAA-CAAM-1987 p479-480
35. TAO Zhili et al, Inst. of Acupuncture, Academy of TCM, Beijing SNSAM 1984 p491-2
36. CAO Qingshu et al, Inst. of Acupuncture, Academy of TCM, Beijing; SNSAM 1984 p504-5
37. ZHANG Honglin et al, Inst. of Acupuncture, Acad. of TCM, Beijing; SNSAM 1984 p505-6
38. WANG Tong et al, Wannan Medical College, Anhui; SNSAM 1984 p527-8
39. HE Zhimin et al, Research Group of Meridian and Collateral, Guanzhou College of TCM, Guangzhou; SNSAM 1984 p529
40. WU Dingzong, YANG Liping, DENG Chunlei, SHI Peifeng, Shanghai College of TCM, Shanghai; SNSAM 1984 p537-8
41. LU et al, Dept. of Physiology, Inst. of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of TCM, Beijing; SAA-CAAM-1987 p593-4
42. LU et al, Dept. of Physiology, Inst. of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of TCM, Beijing; SAA-CAAM-1987 p593-4
43. ZHOU Youngxing et al, West China University of Medical Sciences; SAA-CAAM-1987 p608-9
44. YANG Youm, LUO Mingfu, WANG Pingping, Inst. of Acupuncture & Moxibustion, China Academy of TCM, Beijing; SAA-CAAM-1987 p610
45. NI Jinfang, HU Zhongzhen, DING Guangxia, Dept. of TCM, Changhai hospital, Second Military Medical College, Shanghai; SAA-CAAM-1987 p611
46. Ernst & White, Arch Int. Med 1998 Nov 9; 158(20): 2235-41
47. Vincent CA, Clin J Pain 1989 Dec; 5(4): 305-12.
48. Helms JM Obstet Gynecol 1987 Jan; 69(1): 51-6
49. Kjendahl A et al Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen 1998 Mar 30; 118(9): 1362-6
50. Appiah R et al, J Intern Med 1997 Feb; 24(2): 119-24
51. Zhang A et al, Chen Tzu Yen Chiu 1996; 21(1): 12-4
52. Melchart D et al, Cephalalgia 1999 Nov; 19(9): 779-86; discussion 765
53. Prof. Edzard Ernst MD, PhD, Centre for Complementary Health Studies and Postgraduate Medical School, University of Exeter, Orchestrating a roomful of cats: Scrutinising Complementary Medicine extract from talk given to The Acupuncture Association of Chartered Physiotherapists March 1995 about Complementary Medicine.
54. Pollock JK and Pohl DG 1988 Emission of radiation by active cells in Frohlich H (1988 above at 68).
55. Kart J & Rose L (1989) Clinical laser therapy: low-level laser therapy, Scandinavian Medical Laser Technology, Copenhagen.
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Traditional Chinese Medicine requires its practitioners to keep abreast of all aspects of living and environment that may affect human
health. Epidemiology is therefore a very important aspect of TCM. Can one really overcome disease if one has no interest or
understanding of the causes, and therefore the effects, of potential pathogens? To Western medicine a pathogen tends to be an organism
eg parasite, bacteria or something which has been designated an organism, eg. virus, mycoplasma etc. To TCM a pathogen is
anything which causes dis-ease, from climatic conditions, to bacteria and viruses, to lifestyle and diet, to emotions, to man-made
pollutants be they chemical or electromagnetic in nature - not forgetting that all reality, including our environment and the human body, is
electromagnetic in nature and nothing can be separated from anything else, including the probability that each affects the other in a way
that we might refer to as disease....
3. Contrails or Chemtrails, That is the Question.
Over the past few years a phenomenon has emerged which is widely reported, largely over the Internet but it has been covered in several daily newspapers, in the USA and UK. What appears to be a massive increase, some say way beyond the increase in commercial overflights, of condensation trails (contrails) from aircraft that some ground observers say correspond to and perhaps have resulted in corresponding increases in health deterioration amongst communities affected by these overflights; and the coincidental appearance of clouds that form within minutes as these contrails descend earthwards expanding into cirrus-like formations blocking out our life and health giving sun.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has produced a fact sheet (1) and details at www.epa.gov (2) attempting to dispel increasing public concern over these rather unusual contrail formations. Together with the US FAA, NASA, and NOAA the EPA asserts that all contrails are formed from known aircraft emissions, the science of which is understood, and allegations that secret operations by Government outside public knowledge are responsible for some of these persisting contrails are a mistaken. The EPA fact sheet contains scientific examination and explanations for the contrails and concludes that persistent contrails pose no direct threat to public health?
Then why is there public concern over contrails, why do people believe that contrails made them ill, why has there been outbreaks of respiratory illness amongst communities, experiencing higher than normal contrail activity, within days of that increased activity, why are contrail-inducing overflights experienced which allegedly do not appear on commercial logs, and why have laboratory tests of contrail fallout substances allegedly recorded banned jet fuel chemicals, human blood cell material, identifiable pathogens and bear some relationship to allegations made by people described as whistleblowers that governments are carrying out secret biological, chemical and sun-exclusion experiments?
Are all contrails merely commercial or military flight-induced phenomena, or are some produced by military or non-commercial flights authorised by government which have a more secret and perhaps sinister purpose (3)?
Should some of these condensation or vapour trails be more accurately referred to as government-sponsored chemtrails and biotrails (4) (5)?
The EPA Case
The EPA evidence apparently designed to reduce public suspicion that the US Government may be acting against public interest does not appear to answer quite obvious questions: -
- Many reports of contrails describe incidences that cannot readily be explained by normal commercial overflights.
- The EPA gives no examples to the questionable incidents that show how those particular incidents can be easily explained through the EPA rationale.
- The EPA has no response on the alleged chemical or biological findings associated with some contrail formations.
- The EPA has no response for allegations that illegal components of jet fuels have been identified in some contrail fallout.
- The EPA, by referring to specific cases, has not refuted the fact that contrails are forming and persisting behind aircraft despite atmospheric conditions that ought to preclude, scientifically, their formation and persistence.
- The EPA has provided no explanation for why whole communities have apparently suffered an increase in sickness shortly after dramatic increases of contrail formations in their skies.
- The EPA has not explained why whistleblowers would allege that the US Government is carrying out top secret experiments on, and over, its peoples such as the spraying of Aluminium Hydroxide from unmarked aircraft in an attempt to create an artificial sunscreen to reflect solar radiation to alleviate global warming and the spraying of Barium Stearate from unmarked aircraft to enhance the precision of military 3D imaging of the Earths surface and the spraying of anthrax simulating substances over communities to assess the effects of aerosol application of such pathogens and the manipulation of climate through the application of chemicals into the atmosphere, the effects of which may be modulated with technology as yet unknown to the public.
The EPA and its allies NASA and NOAA, having produced a Fact Sheet, appear to be ignoring specific cases that have caused concern to observers who have taken a dedicated, scientific and rational approach to investigating this new phenomenon. Unless the EPA and partners can scientifically, or in other rational ways, refute the allegations being made about the unusual formations said to have been analysed and investigated by dedicated researchers, they could be failing in their Duty of Care owed to every American Citizen.
Ken Caldeira, a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories USA and a US expert on weather modification, is said to have conducted original computer modelling for the use of Aluminium Hydroxide to fight global warming and concluded that it should not be done due to the adverse health effects on the population subjected to the fallout. The science is known, the application is patented, observations suggest it is in use, and scientific expert opinion advised against use. Has Government ignored his warnings and authorised its use despite public dangers and in secret could government be acting against the best interests of the US public and to the detriment of public health? Is the UK Government duplicating those practices against its own citizens?
The Public Case
he 1977 UN Treaty The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Technique prohibited the use of technologies that would have widespread, lasting or severe effects through deliberate manipulation of natural processes such as earthquakes, tidal waves, change in climate and weather patterns.
If a country creates domestic laws that support anti-social and anti-international convention activities, can Government and employees found co-conspiring be found in contravention of the UN Treaty and be brought before the International Court of Law? Citizens have a right to protection against abuses of public trust, carried out in secret by governments without the acceptance of their public.
If our politicians authorise covert and health damaging chemical and/or biological applications in our skies they are probably acting in defiance of the United Nations International Conventions, the European Law on Human Rights for Europeans including UK citizens, and probably Rights conferred on American citizens through their Constitution and Bill of Rights that were drawn up to prevent intentional abuse of the public whether or no scientific support exists for the technologies involved by governments. If so are they indulging in crimes against humanity if chemical aerosol operations are taking place?
Evidence Suggesting that Governments May be Abusing Public Trust, Health and Safety.
- The USA EPA, NASA and NOAA deny that secret chemtrail activities against the public are underway through their position that all contrails are naturally formed and none are chemtrails - yet do not appear to have investigated one evidenced case. That is an abuse of public trust and safety. It is not sufficient to deny facts without investigating those facts. Until each case has been investigated, and all allegations have been disproved through proper scientific investigation, those public bodies have not satisfied their responsibilities to the US Public and their Fact Sheet cannot make claims that suggest they have. (1) (6)
- Numerous photographs taken by interested observers around the world illustrate the type and concentrations of contrail/chemtrail activities, and suggest other than the official EPA view that commercial airliners plus suitable atmospheric conditions are responsible. (7)
- Numerous videos taken by interested and concerned observers have recorded similar contrail/chemtrail displays that suggest the same aircraft are laying patterns in the sky above communities not typical of commercial aircraft flight patterns some observers believe the same aircraft return time and again to lay these patterns.
- Observers with experience in aircraft recognition state that a number of military aircraft are responsible for the untypical contrails namely the refueling tanker aircraft KC-135 and KC-10. It is known that these aircraft have been modified to spray, as opposed to performing only refueling operations, the modifications are said to be used to spray ahead of military attack aircraft to create variable visibility to test pilots in low visibility during exercises. If only such sprays were in use why would military aircraft be performing hazardous exercises over large urban populations? (8) (11)
- It is alleged that a scientist out of Wright Patterson AFB anonymously said that two different projects are being conducted in secret: Cloud Creation experiments to lessen the effect of global warming, and Radiation Reflection off clouds in conjunction with HAARP operations in Alaska. The scientist alleges that Aluminium Oxide (12) is used to create an artificial sunscreen to reflect solar radiation back into space to alleviate global warming, and Barium Stearate (13) is sprayed to create radioactive skies for high tech 3D imaging as it creates a wire through which an electromagnetic beam can be transmitted to take 3D images of the ground far over the horizon. These chemical sprays that enable detailed high-resolution images of targets over the horizon have definite military use. When you see planes flying back and forth making parallel lines, X-patterns and grids in a clear sky, that's aluminium oxide he is alleged to have said.
- Contrail/Chemtrail reports have been made in all 48 continental United States over the past 3 to 4 years, and that clouds formed from spraying at 20,000 feet cause wheeziness and shortness of breath at ground level.
- KC-135 and KC-10 military aircraft have allegedly been identified criss-crossing the sky over areas where people later became ill and local hospitals were said to be overflowing with patients suffering flu-like illness, and that a high death rate through respiratory illness in mainly elderly persons have been alleged at certain locations affected by spraying, one commentator observed.
- Washington reporter Mike Blair wrote anti-bacteriological warfare chemicals are being tested by Federal Government by DARPA covert immunization by Government is being carried out as governments are worried by the Gulf War Syndrome reactions. and the legality is being drawn by government from US Code Title 50, Section 1520, which gives the Secretary of Defense the authority to order testing involving the use of chemical or biological agents on a civilian population for research purposes. (14)
- Revelations that the sprays may contain JP-8 jet fuel ethylene dibromide and others banned as pesticide due to severe respiratory reactions at low levels, plus numerous pathogens including Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Serratia Marcescens, Streptomyces and certain Molds capable of inducing heart disease, upper respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments and suggests that US Code Title 50 cannot protect the persons responsible for the spraying of populations from criminal proceedings. (14)
- In the US House of Representatives, October 2nd 2001 A Bill was proposed by Mr. Kucinich which was referred to the Committee on Science, Committee on Armed Services, and International Relations for consideration which included the following detail: Sec. 6 Non Space-Based Weapons Activities Nothing in this act may be construed as prohibiting the use of funds for 4 civil, commercial or defense activities that are not related to space-based weapons or systems. Sec. 7 Definitions includes (IV) (ii) Inflicting death or injury on, or damaging or destroying, a person (or the biological life, bodily health, mental health, or physical and economic well-being of a person) (I) through the use of any means described(II). directed at an individual person or targeted populations for the purpose of information war, mood management or mind control of such persons or populations or (III) by expelling chemical or biological agents in the vicinity of a person (B) such terms include exotic weapons systems such as (ii) chemtrails (air pollution) (vii) chemical, biological environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons (nuke bomb tidal waves). This Bill clearly appears to incite the flouting of International law, UN Convention, and allows for targeting ANY population - it does not appear to exclude ones own Nationals and may be a form of treason. Chemtrails are reported over the UK and one wonders what UK legislation could make this acceptable despite the European Convention on Human Rights and UN Convention designed to protect all citizens? (14)
- The Canadian Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported a fervour over chemtrails on May 16th and said ground fallout analyzed in the US contained carcinogens and bacteria. also found were toxic micro-fibers, much finer than asbestos. (14)
Thoughts on the Contrail/Chemtrail Phenomenon
Clearly a phenomenon exists, it can be seen by the naked eye, and has been extensively photographed and videoed. The trails affect atmospheric conditions and are affected by prevailing conditions. I have heard people state that on a day of clear blue skies and not one cloud, as they sat relaxing in the garden, aircraft appeared that created persisting contrails that resulted in the sky soon clouding over.
Whether this phenomenon is the effect of standard commercial aircraft going about their business or has more sinister connotations chemtrails for instance it is unreasonable that public access to sunshine is being limited by the phenomenon especially in the UK that sees precious little sunshine each year. Our Sun provides life-enhancing and protective radiation that, contrary to unscientific propaganda, is less likely to cause ill-effects such as skin cancers unless so-called protective sunscreens are used at the same time in other words, statistically if you wish to reduce the probability you will develop skin cancer do not use sun screen. The Sun provides us with life-enhancing and essential Vitamin D that protects us against cancers and heart disease.
Anything that diminishes our sunshine is diminishing our protection against some of the most common in cold climates - widespread diseases.
The whistleblower alleged that the US Government seeks to block sunshine to reduce global warming if so, why is the public not told or consulted? There is a theoretical possibility that global warming has a negative impact on society through the burning of fuels such as coal, petrol/diesel and gas plus and that other man-made phenomena such as the HAARP applications of the USA may also destroy our atmosphere and therefore environmental spacesuit (15) (16). It would appear that the former theoretical risk allows governments to consider reduction of global warming yet the latter theoretical risk is considered by the same governments to be worth the risk as it increases its use of HAARP technology to control climate and attack the atmosphere for military purposes surely these assumptions and this conduct cannot be used by governments to usurp the rights of their citizens to enjoy as natural and safe environment as possible, and does not authorise governments to take steps to chemically, electromagnetically, or in any other way interfere with those human rights without first asking, in a democratic manner, their peoples first to see if they wish to have those rights restricted in the name of theoretical science.
I believe that a government which fails to seek authority of its citizens, asking if they wish to give up access to sunshine or chemical free atmospheres, and activates systems secretly which deny its citizens access to those healthy options, does not deserve to govern, is not acting democratically, and is possibly defying its own and International Law.
If the phenomenon is of standard commercial flights only
This is the explanation the relevant government departments project when asked by concerned observers whether of environment or airspace. It is certainly a compelling explanation and, for a large proportion of contrails many of which disperse within minutes, it is probably true. However, those contrails formed when atmospheric conditions do not scientifically support natural water vapour trails remain a question that to date government bodies seem ill disposed to explain. For example, how can so many contrails appear as numerous straight lines side by side across the sky, or criss-cross each other like band-aids, in areas where flight paths do not seem to support such formations?
It would be good to know that it is the natural effect of commercial airliners carrying fee-paying citizens; even so it is unacceptable that serious health concerns of the output of said commercial flights are not addressed such that allegations of respiratory and other serious population effects can be minimized.
Entry dated 20th February 2008 - There have been further developments in identifying this phenomenon from Germany; it appears that the phenomenon has at last been acknowledged as genuine; I wonder if or when the British Government will acknowledge what part it has been playing in similarly authorising public skies to be contaminated with substances, the effects of which on individuals cannot be known, by whom and from which monies?
See
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sneezypb/3346798344/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okB-48916MI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3VLNNwiKv1E&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-uSqZbEiJk&feature=watch_response_rev
for a variety of comments and videos ........
If the phenomenon is not of standard commercial flights only
Then what is it?
If we take as examples some of the most unnatural looking contrails which, if merely water vapour, or even water vapour with small quantities of chemicals expected from aircraft combustion processes, appear to defy scientific explanations; see photographs for details: -
These two shots depict a typical after trail sky, no aircraft were seen only the visible trails which developed into a wider and wider cloud like phenomenon as the sky hazed over. The flight paths to the local airport do not support these trails; hence they were formed at high altitude before descending. The paths are South-North over West Yorkshire.
and on 10th February 2003 the following criss-crossed trails were seen over South Leeds, W. Yorks, not local traffic and very unusual; the lower more dispersed contrails are clearly visible and the higher ones will gradually descend and disperse into cloud-like formations:-
4. Vaccination – is compulsion an option in a civilised democratic society?
British Government Health Minister Edwina Hart had to announce recently there would be no compulsory MMR for Wales; this must mean that for the rest of the UK compulsion is out of the window for the moment. Her decision was based on the fact that compulsion may cause the public to mistrust local medical professionals. She makes no mention of the fact that MMR has insufficient scientific evidence, let alone proof, of effectiveness or safety according to the most comprehensive Cochrane Collaboration systematic review ever undertaken. In addition mumps and rubella vaccinations are probably unnecessary for children based on good evidence (http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/#Meas_Mort_USA)
The issue of compulsion strikes at the very heart of social democracy; those who claim necessity must be carefully scrutinised as they are rarely without ulterior motivation. Let us look at the facts.
In May 2008 Labour MP for Wakefield Mary Creagh, head of Labours Manifesto Group on Public Health, and Sir Sandy Macara, ex-Chairman of the British Medical Association, the physicians’ union, wrote in the magazine of the Fabian Society, the Fabian Review, that the United Kingdom should use the same sanctions as the United States to make vaccines compulsory, that schools should be required to verify that all children enrolled have been vaccinated, and that children should not be allowed to receive health benefits unless they are vaccinated.
Public health MP Creagh and public health professional Macara cannot be other than fully aware of dangers posed to a population such as Britains’ young children from compulsory vaccination, as before embarking on their simplistic arguments for compulsion they should have done essential research into published, and other widely available, sources of information on vaccinations. Creagh and Macara are promoting compulsion of an “NHS programme which immunises toddlers against MMR, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, meningitis and pneumonia” to include “expanding that scheme by adding chicken pox, flu and winter vomiting virus to the list of jabs for under twos” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/1944753/No-MMR-jab-no-school-under-Labour-plans.html) despite the probable addition in the British public domain of three untested new vaccines.
The Chair of the BMA, the Government, and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics line were clearly ignored by health minister for Wales Edwina Hart who announced that “she had been considering MMR as an entry requirement for school” since Wales was experiencing 302 cases of measles; “the rising number of measles cases necessitated a fresh look at compulsory MMR vaccination and this has been undertaken” she said, then concluded that “compulsion would adversely affect the trust that most parents have in local health professionals”….and she would “concentrate on providing reassurance based on sound advice to parents”. Not to be outdone, “after a debate in Cardiff Bay, Sir Sandy Macara a former Chairman of the BMA, backed a compulsory MMR vaccine saying he believed children should not be able to go to school unless they have first been vaccinated”; and not to be outdone by Macaca, the Strategic Health Authority for London, NHS London, “has asked the Department of Health if it could introduce compulsory vaccinations and the right to insist on an immunisation certificate”. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8103969.stm ).
A combined assault for compulsion by two prominent political personalities, and a Strategic Health Authority, suggests either coincidental or complicit proposals. Although I have no problem with coincidence, I recognise that where vast markets exist in public health one often finds complicit strategies. In this case, where at least two of the three sources (Macara and the SHA for London, NHS London) might be expected, through their relationships with the enomous pharmaceutical giants, not least the UK’s GlaxoSmithKline, that manufacture and market the very products suggested for compulsion it is necessary to investigate whether compulsion might be a marketting strategy as opposed to a sensible health strategy. One also bears in mind that civilised democratic societies do not practice compulsory medication, a concept more associated with NAZI-ism. Furthermore, any well educated medical or non medical person might well ask why compulsion, for MMR as an example, would be sought when the most comprehensive systematic review by Demecelli et al illustrates just how potentially hazardous childhood vaccines like MMR may be – in the face of that data, clearly, no one really knows and is that a satsifactory basis for vaccinating children?
The very comprehensive Demecell, Jefferson et al 2005 Systematic Review (Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2005 Oct 19;(4): CD004407. “Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children”) after analysing more than 5000 published studies stated “..We could not identify studies assessing the effectiveness of MMR that fulfilled our inclusion criteria.... The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate…”. When the science does not support MMR one must ask, is compulsion anything other than a cynical marketing strategy promoted solely in the interests of profit-making corporations? Why would any responsible person wish to force children to accept medications that had no proof of and very little scientific evidence for effectiveness and safety?
The main British corporation standing to make substantial gains from compulsion of MMR vaccine sales is GlaxoSmithKline (GSK); perhaps the most widely known figure associated with GSK is Richard Sykes, Fellow of Imperial College Oxford and of King’s College London, Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College Oxford and Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Cardiff and the University of Central Lancashire. He was employed by GSK for 30 years and became Chairman and Chief Executive before in 2002 taking over as Rector of Imperial College Oxford until June 2008. He became Chair of NHS London on 1st December 2008. “NHS London is the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) for the whole of the Greater London area. That means we are responsible for making sure that all the NHS healthcare services provided in London are world-class.” (http://www.london.nhs.uk/who-we-are). The significance of GSK, vaccine manufacturer and MMR distributer, having the potential to influence for compulsion is not lost when one considers that ex GSK CEO Richard Sykes is Chair of NHS London since 1st December 2008 and NHS London is now requesting compulsion of MMR vaccination; he is a Fellow of the University of Wales, Cardiff where Sandy Macara recently argued for compulsion, as well as in the Fabian Review in May 2008 with Wakefield Labour child health MP Mary Creagh, coincident with Richard Syke’s brother Hugh Sykes coming to the end of a 3 year term as Chair of Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust encompassing Creagh’s constituency. Are these merely coincidences?
GSK faced one of its most powerful challenges to dominance of the UK MMR market when Dr Wakefield’s research was published in 1998; such important information becoming available to the public at a time GSK and other vaccine manufacturers were becoming embroiled in serious vaccine litigation would inevitably mean that Wakefield and his excellent team might suffer vigorous, perhaps even unlawful given the reputation GSK has gained in recent years (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/nov/22/pharmaceuticals.glaxosmithklinebusiness) and (http://www.ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1279), attacks on the validity of their professional findings and their personal and professional competence – which is exactly what has been seen to evolve. If GSK-driven, such perverse action would be to effect damage limitation for MMR confidence and sales. No doubt GSK was already aware that, as the Cochrane Collaboration systematic review by Demicelli, Jefferson et al concluded a few years later showed, there is little evidence - despite thousands of scientific papers said to support such products - of effectiveness or safety of MMR. GSK was certainly by then aware that parents and clinicians had alleged serious damage from MMR for 10 years, including that MMR is causing autistic spectrum disorders, the frequency and rate of which had skyrocketed since MMR was introduced in 1988, and it appears Parliament was given false assurance by the JCVI and Professor David Salisbury (http://www.foiacentre/news-MMR-070523.html).
Wakefield found the vaccine virus in the gut of some autistic children coincident with a newly defined type of gut disorder and suggested that measles vaccination should be investigated as potential for causation; his was virtually the first clinical scientific evidence of a possible association between a new gut disease and MMR vaccine virus, a disease that in the small sample was associated with regression into autism soon after vaccination according to parental reports. Such information was bound to reinforce the strongly held views of parents and professionals that MMR vaccines were unsafe; information that might impact negatively on sales of a very lucrative product and possibly other products.
The MMR vaccine, one of GSKs most lucrative but problematic products, is now very close to being accepted as major cause of ASD; US Courts have begun associating, for vaccine damage payment purposes, ASD conditions with MMR vaccination although the mainstream media seems extremely reluctant to publish this vital information. When the public becomes so informed, the enormous financial prospects for GSK and other vaccine manufacturers and distributors may be destroyed therefore, if such a strategy achieves only temporary success, compulsion might coerce at risk of imprisonment sufficient numbers of people to accept these intrinsically dangerous products for their children until such times as sufficient stocks are cleared and revenue realised before the inevitable call for removal of such products from global sales.
The UK’s MR campaign in 1994/5 demonstrated how gullible the British public could be when confronted by suspicious DoH stories of impending epidemic and death by measles coincident with the desirable clearance of end of shelf-life stocks, before supplying the impending MMR2 vaccine. In the 1999-2000 period some children tell of being coerced into ingesting live oral polio virus vaccines they had neither expected nor had parental consent for, along with BCG jabs they had consented to, at school further demonstrating a kind of indifference towards rights and welfare of British children by professional vaccinators who were in effect helping industry to clear “to be withdrawn” stocks of OPV which, according to faxes advising all UK GPs of that time, were already suspected of contamination with NvCJD. As people become more aware of apparent acts of exceptional indifference to public rights to informed consent by health professionals, compulsion may be the only tactic left for pharmaceutical vaccinators to override reasonable public concerns; history tells that any compulsion in our so-called democratic free societies could result in mass public outcry, perhaps rebellion, thence retribution against those who conspire to defy public decency. So compulsion may be pressed, like privatization through NHS PFI processes, by the back door as politicians and academics test the water along with the media, sponsored by the drugs giants whose 5th columnists secure essential positions in political, academic, and scientific circles, at the heart of the British establishment..is that happening now?
Once pharmaceutical supreme GSKs Richard Sykes is now Chair of NHS London, having moved from Imperial College where he was Rector; fellow NHS London Board members include Tanner and Spyer who also have GSK and other connections. GSK director Roy Anderson, who previously left Oxford University after a unanimous vote of no confidence in him by the Department of Zoology, has since taken over Sykes’s position at Imperial College as Rector last year; he was recently cited in the media as having an unreasonable advisory advantage in UK strategy on swine flu whilst receiving a £116,000 salary from GSK, the company marketing the antiviral Relenza and is manufacturing a swine flu vaccine. Another GSK director, Sir Crispin Davis, was CEO of the Lancet owner Reed Elsevier which, having been the journal that published Wakefield’s paper questioning measles vaccination suddenly proceeded, through Editor Richard Horton, to now attack Wakefield’s paper. Crispin Davis’s brother Justice Nigel Davis later presided over the turning down of the appeal for legal aid for many vaccine-injured children who had cited GSK as defendant – a coincidence not lost on the victims of alleged vaccine damage. Another Davis brother, Ian, managed McKinsey – a company advising New Labour on matters NHS. Many McKinsey senior personnel were afforded numerous advisory appointments by Prime Minister Blair whilst effectively subordinating elected officials (“The Might of the McKinsey Mob” by Clayton Hirst Sunday January 2002 The Independent ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-might-of-the-mckinsey-mob-664081.html ). Blair and Health Secretary Reed made press statements supporting MMR despite the scientific and widespread public protestations against the vaccine. GSK has friends in valuable places, a practice common throughout drug-based industries (“Pharma support of medical societies raises conflict of interest concerns” by Kevin B. O’ Reilly AMNews 13th April 2009 (http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/04/pr120413.htm).
Compulsion for vaccinations, particularly MMR, with little if any scientific evidence for efficacy or safety must fail. The significance of recent developments in MMR litigation and research must be understood, as must the reason why those involved with pharmaceutical interests wish to force a debate as quickly as possible - they know that laws are quick to be passed but slow to revoke with our governments. Reputations could be enveloped by very damaging, but well-earned, litigation driven by what appears to be a now global attrition rate of neurological damage, death and debility that will eventually be attributed to the vaccines they wish to mandate. Perhaps then the world, especially “third world”, can begin to benefit from enormous sums of monies that must be wasted on ineffective, unsafe vaccine programs (http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1556886020080215) and apparently depraved practices by pharmaceutical players (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/04/usa.highereducation “UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans”), ( http://liamscheff.com/daily/2007/04/28/inside-incarnation/ ) and ( http://www.nypress.com/article-11844-inside-incarnation.html ) Those taxpayers’ monies should be spent of tried and tested effective and safe alternatives like clean fresh water and hygiene (The Lancet Infectious Diseases Vol 2 February 2002, by Allison E. Aiello and Elaine L. Larson, “What is the evidence for a causal link between hygiene and infections?”). The concurrent effect of reductions in allergies in the “first world” promise dramatic improvements in mortality and morbidity, allergies are a hidden cost of many vaccine programs and are presently suffered by millions of vaccinated persons (Pediatrics Vol 123 No 3 March 2009, pp 771-778 “Allergic Disease and Atopic Sensitization in Children in Relation to Measles vaccination and Measles Infection” by Helen Rosenlund et al. )
In the USA, Hannah Poling demonstrated in Court the link between mitochondrial dysfunction, autism and vaccination including MMR vaccine. Bailey Banks (Banks v. HHS Case 02-0738V, 2007 US Claims LEXIS 254 July 20 2007) was found to have developed an autistic spectrum disorder caused by MMR. Britain’s Health Primo, Minister Dawn Primarolo, appears to have misled Parliament in her Ministerial answer to a Parliamentary question by Mark Pritchard MP about vaccines causing autism (Hansard 18 March 2009: Column 1229W) by claiming that Bailey Banks was not diagnosed with autism, yet his diagnosis of “Pervasive Developmental Order” is, under DSM IV, an “Autistic Spectrum Disorder” or ASD. If our primo responsible for vaccine policy fails in that regard, what hope does the public have for reasoned policy? Under Primarolo’s watch that the UK JCVI has recently been given authority to decide on vaccine selection, despite the JCVI’s known usually heavy vested pharmaceutical interests, and knowing it holds no direct accountability for the safety of the nations children with respect to vaccines and vaccination.
A US Court ruled in favour of Benjamin Zeller, deciding that as a result of MMR vaccination received on 17th November 2004, he suffered persistent intractable seizures, encephalopathy and developmental delay. Three-year-old child Julie has an ASD-like disorder for which she has recently been awarded a lump sum of more than $810,000 (plus an estimated $30-40,000 pa for autism services and care) in compensation; the court ruling that MMR vaccine caused her acute brain damage. In the US vaccination damage cases involving children with ASDs are being represented in the courts without mention of autism, because the perception amongst lawyers is that success seems to depend on not mentioning autism; CBS News found that since 1988 the vaccine court has awarded money judgments, often in the millions of dollars, to 1322 families whose children suffered brain damage from vaccines and in many of these cases the government paid out awards following a judicial finding that vaccines caused what was in effect an autism spectrum disorder. Ignorance, denial or conspiracy to deny?
Vaccines can never be declared free from the threat of disaster therefore compulsion should never be considered. Questions over vaccine safety By Steve Connor, Science Editor Thursday, 26 February 2009 illustrates this perfectly.
“Health officials have been forced to withdraw 21,000 doses of the meningitis C vaccine from GP clinics around the UK after it emerged that some doses may have been contaminated with a blood-poisoning bacterium. More than 60,000 doses of the vaccine, which is offered to all four-month-old babies, could be contaminated with the hospital-acquired infection – the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium – and a third of these had already been sent to vaccination clinics before officials became aware of the problem. Officials within the Department of Health and the vaccine's manufacturers are believed to have known of the problem since Tuesday but only issued an emergency recall last night after being contacted about the potential contamination by The Independent”. (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/questions-over-vaccine-safety-1632069.html)
The Fabian Society, Creagh and Macara reported to, has an interesting history. “Leon Trotsky, an influential 20th century revolutionary socialist, wrote that Fabianism was an attempt to save capitalism from the working class. He wrote that "throughout the whole history of the British Labour movement there has been pressure by the bourgeoisie upon the proletariat through the agency of radicals, intellectuals, drawing-room and church socialists and Owenites who reject the class struggle and advocate the principle of social solidarity, preach collaboration with the bourgeoisie, bridle, enfeeble and politically debase the proletariat.”..”In an article published in The Guardian on 14 February 2008, following the apology offered by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd to the "stolen generations", Geoffrey Robertson criticises Fabian socialists for providing the intellectual justification for the eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society ).
Compulsion of vaccination, indeed of any medical product, contravenes human rights; it fails to acknowledge humanities right to the lawful consent; it fails to acknowledge humanities right to decide for oneself one’s own fate in the face of potential death or debility. It resides within the spirit of the abuse of an individual and is more fittingly prescribed by a fascist regime; it has no place in a civilised democracy. After all, vaccination is but one aspect of Medicine and medicine in its present form remains the most dangerous practice known to man - “Death by Medicine” Gary Null et al ( http://www.encognitive.com/files/part%20-Death%20by%20Medicine.pdf , http://www.encognitive.com/node/10274 and http://www.healthe-livingnews.com/articles/death_by_medicine_references.html )
5. Swine Flu
Government Health Authorities and the World Health Organisation tell us the world is in the grip of a pandemic of swine flu. According to expert Tom Jefferson, who’s Cochrane Collaboration team produced the most comprehensive systematic review of all known research papers on influenza vaccines that concluded flu vaccines provide very little benefit; the WHO changed its definition of pandemic. The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn’t have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-637119,00.html). He suggests the industry thrives on pandemic business – “..The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They’ve built this machine around the impending pandemic; and there’s a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions; and all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding”.
We are told that viruses mutate all the time, yet mutants are created in modern laboratories all the time which provides adequate opportunities for companies to unleash, by accident or design, rogue viruses they analyse or create - witness the recent Baxter International event; in December 2008 a Baxter facility in Austria sent a human flu vaccine contaminated with deadly H5N1 live avian flu virus to 18 countries, including the Czech Republic, where testing showed it killed ferrets inoculated, Czech newspapers questioned whether Baxter was involved in a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic. So far Baxter continues to rake in multimillion profits despite the most potentially deadly virulent virus being released into the public domain by that US company; Novartis was in the news in 2008 for a clinical trial of H5N1 in Poland; the trial was administered by local nurses and doctors who gave the vaccine to 350 homeless people leaving 21 dead. The Police prosecuted them and Novartis claimed the deaths were unrelated to the H5N1 vaccine that had “been tested on 3500 other people without any deaths”. When a renowned journalist believes she has uncovered such evidence of impropriety within the vaccine industry and related circles that she lays information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for possible prosecution, she is thrown out of her job (http://www.infowars.com/journalist-fired-over-flu-pandemic-lawsuit/).
Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister filed criminal charges against the WHO, the UN, and several high-ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism. She stated “There is proof many organisations – World Health Organisation, UN as well as vaccine companies such as Baxter and Novartis – are part of a single system under the control of a core criminal group, who give strategic leadership, and who have funded the development, manufacturing and release of artificial viruses in order to justify mass vaccinations with a bioweapon substance in order to eliminate the people of the USA, and so gain control of assets, resources etc. of North America”.
Although such allegations appear astonishing, she is entitled to have her evidence investigated, especially when a respected journalist who must realise the penalties for false accusations and libel. If must be easy to speculate on companies such as those she cites; Baxter already guilty of unleashing a most deadly pathogen into Europe just weeks ago, and Novartis, reflecting Chiron vaccine company which Tony Blair favoured and employed director Drayson who had sold Powederject to Chiron just after he was cited in the media as a crony of Blair to whom Blair gave smallpox and anthrax vaccine contracts when tens of thousands of pounds had been paid to New Labour by Drayson after breakfast with Blair. Drayson has sold dud smallpox vaccines to Britain at an inflated price yet he was “rewarded” by becoming Blair’s Lord Drayson and put in charge of UK Defence procurements; he then presided over the scandalous sell out of Qinetic, amongst other sales of portions of UK Defence establishment to private corporations, to the Carlyle Group which owned Chiron. Selling off public defence assets cheaply, then allowing corporations to make massive gains on them, is one thing but posturing on deadly viruses and vaccines is clearly another. Foot and Mouth still haunts UK farmers yet the reason for the outbreak never became clear although a military link with the suspect Northern farm, plus rumours of missing vials from Porton Down, have never been fully explained; all during Blair’s watch, demonstrating Government investigators might take their eyes off the ball after massive culling and enormous financial gains have been completed.
We saw the mysterious SARS epidemic fizzle out, followed by bird flu events with a physician said to have worked in a research complex in China was portrayed as first fatality during a visit to Hong Kong. Events typically of little consequence to the UK and many other parts of the world provided the generation of enormous sums to be paid to the companies indulging in medical and military-industrial processing, supported by effective speculation, rumour and scare mongering, of potential global weapons of mass destruction.
In February 2006 the British Government said it was ordering 3.5 million doses of H5N1 “bird flu” vaccine from manufacturers Baxter International Inc. and Chiron Corporation. Then Health Minister Rosie Winterton said the contracts were worth £33 millions; the British Department of Health said the vaccine was scheduled for delivery in May 2006. Noel Barrett Vice President of vaccines at Baxter International told reporters the vaccine was based on a strain of H5N1 found in Vietnam…. it was not clear whether this vaccine would offer any protection should a mutated pandemic strain emerge. Government said the order was an addition to plans for so-called sleeping contracts for 120 million doses of a pandemic vaccine – such contracts are a way of reserving future access to vaccine supplies. Novartis AG of Switzerland was buying out California-based Chiron.
The current swine flu outbreak is believed to be using up enormous stocks of Tamiflu Blair paid for several years ago, a 2004 dated batch of Tamiflu was handed out to one of my patients last week by a “specified pharmacy”, so one can see how easy it is for speculation to take place. People are aware that even when it is the wellbeing of whole populations at stake, foul play is guaranteed at some level, witness the UK MP expenses scandal. Do these people care less about their fellow citizens when extra finances are there for the taking?
A Real Pandemic?
Government tells us that medical interventions are available should a “deadly swine flu pandemic” afflict the United Kingdom this coming winter (fortunately Australia is suffering the same current “pandemic” of swine flu, despite it being winter down there, and the flu has remained mild) but real experience proves these measures are extremely costly in public health and wealth. Although wealth defers to health in a sensible society, it is essential that public monies are not wasted on potential and proven ineffective, potential and proven dangerous, potential and proven deadly medical interventions. Is the Government providing adequate proven medical interventions for a serious pandemic, has an adequate risk/benefit analysis of all options been carried out, and could it do more?
Potential and proven ineffective
Flu jabs have been shown to be ineffective, through extensive systematic review, in the general population. They showed a very modest effect in a narrow age range and no effect in the elderly. Numerous studies have documented that flu jabs give little or no protection against infection and illness, and there is no reason to believe that swine flu vaccines will be any different. A review of 51 separate studies in 2006 concluded that flu vaccines worked no better that a placebo in 260,000 children ranging from 6 to 23 months of age (Smith S et al http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/pubmed/16437500). Jefferson et al demonstrated the inadequacy of flu jab vaccines, the kind of information one would expect Government to convry to the public but does not; Jefferson discusses the problems inherent in vaccine flu studies therefore data used to form national strategy and spend enormous sums of public monies, and responds to eletters on the British Medical Journal ( http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/333/7574/912#149153 )
Michael Elsahoff and other FDA reviewers showed Relenza, the antiviral drug from GlaxoSmithKline, no more effective than placebo in American patients in 1999. Just before a controversial licensing of Relenza by the FDA in 1999 Jolson of the FDA said that Relenza had not been shown effective for patients over 65 or those “with a variety of respiratory, cardiovascular and other medical conditions” and “special precautions are warranted”. She said “the totality of the data” suggested some Relenza patients could expect modest benefit and that their influenza A or B symptoms might improve“ on average of one day sooner by taking the drug”. Is “one day sooner” worth the risks of side effects?
Potential and proven dangerous
Flu jabs have proven dangerous in children with asthma. A study of 800 children with asthma found those receiving a flu jab had a significantly increased risk of asthma-related doctor and A&E visits (Christy C et al http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1720017&blobtype=pdf and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez "Effectiveness of influenza vaccine for the prevention of asthma exacerbations" Christ C et al, Strong Children's Research Center, Rochester General hospital, Rochester, NY, USA Arch Dis Child 2004 Aug; 89(8):734-5). The “experimental” swine flu jabs given to Americans in 1976, for a pandemic that never emerged, caused 532 known cases of the severe neurological disorder Guillain Barré syndrome, over 30 died, amongst many other side effects. The US VAERS vaccine reporting system databank holds thousands of reports of deaths suspected as caused by flu jabs; underreporting of more than 1000% is believed common, therefore deaths from flu jabs could number in the tens of thousands in the US alone over the period of VAERS reporting.
Relenza has been shown to be dangerous. A report published in 2009 showed children with asthma who received Relenza had a 3-fold increased risk of hospitalisation visits (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/703235 “Flu vaccine may triple risk for flu-related hospitalisation in children with asthma” 25th May 2009). Following the voluntary reported deaths of 7 Relenza patients the FDA announced an unusual “public health advisory” to doctors on 12th January 2000 warning of the limited role of Relenza; 2 of the dead had bacterial infections that could have been treated with antibiotics. Reports filed through to June 2000 showed that Relenza was cited suspect in 22 deaths; there have been well over 100 reports of psychiatric events, of which over 70 were children.
Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche, has been shown to be dangerous. The recent mild flu outbreak around the UK saw over 50% of recipients of the drug develop side effects. The experience echoes Japan a few years ago where Tamiflu had widest exposure. In 2005 Dr Rokuro Hama, head of the Japan Institute of Pharmacovigilence said he had investigated 8 suspicious deaths of children aged from 2 to 17 years of age over the previous 3 years that he thought were linked to Tamiflu. In 2004 a 17-year-old boy, after taking Tamiflu, left his home in a snowstorm then jumped in front of a truck and died. In 2005 a 14-year-old boy, after taking one Tamiflu capsule, jumped or fell from the 9th floor of an apartment building. Neither boy had exhibited any abnormal behaviour before taking Tamiflu. In 2005 the FDA investigated the deaths of 12 children who took Tamiflu in Japan and 32 psychiatric events.
The Japanese Ministry of Health warned against Tamiflu for patients aged 10-19 in March 2007. The Japanese looked at Relenza and new warnings came into place citing neurological and psychiatric problems that could lead to self-injury and, in some cases, death; in March 2008 Tamiflu warnings were intensified citing rare reports of delirium and abnormal behaviour leading to self-injury and, in some cases, death.
Potential side effects cited on the Tamiflu datasheet include:
Nausea, diarrhoea, bronchitis, abdominal pain, dizziness, headache, insomnia, cough, vertigo, fatigue, vomiting, otitis media, asthma, epistaxis, pneumonia, ear disorder, conjunctivitis, dermatitis, lymphadenopathy, tympanic membrane disorder, rash, eczema, urticaria, erythema multiforme, Stevens Johnson Syndrome, toxic epidermal necrolysis, allergy, anaphylactic shock, face oedema, convulsions, delirium, altered levels of consciousness, confusion, abnormal behaviour, delusions, hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, nightmares, haemorrhagic colitis..
Lactating rats excreted Tamiflu in their milk.
Potential side effects on the Relenza datasheet include:
Bronchospasm serious and sometimes fatal and/or decline in respiratory function (some of whom had no history of respiratory disease), seizures, confusion, delirium, hallucination, abnormal behaviour, placental transfer shown in rats (no studies done in humans), allergic reaction including facial and oropharyngeal oedema, dyspnoea, rash, urticaria, sinusitis, fever and or chills, arthralgia and articular rheumatism, headaches, digestive problems, diarrhoea, nausea, vomiting, nasal problems, bronchitis, cough, sinusitis, ear nose and throat infections, nervous system disorders, malaise, fatigue, abdominal pain, myalgia, elevations of liver enzymes and CPK, lymphopenia, and neutropenia, ear nose and throat haemorrhage, asthma, anorexia, feeding problems, endocrine and metabolic disorders, viral respiratory infections, allergic or allergic-like reaction, including oropharyngeal edema, altered level of consciousness, delusions, agitation, anxiety, nightmares, syncope, serious cutaneous reactions. Not to be used in persons with previous allergic reaction to lactose and milk proteins. Serious bacterial infections may begin with influenza-like symptoms or may coexist with or occur as complications during the course of influenza. Relenza has not been shown to prevent such complications
Safety and efficacy have not been demonstrated in patients with high-risk underlying medical conditions. No information is available regarding treatment of influenza in patients with any medical condition sufficiently severe or unstable to be considered at imminent risk of requiring inpatient management. Safety and effectiveness of Relenza for treatment of influenza have not been assessed in pediatric patients less than 7 years of age. Lactating rats excreted Relenza in their milk. Should not be used in pregnancy, especially 1st trimester unless possible benefit to patient outweighs risk to foetus.
Potential and proven deadly
Tamiflu and Relenza have been associated with deaths. The swine flu vaccine of 1976 was associated with numerous deaths. It is inevitable that a swine flu vaccine 2009 will be associated with deaths.
If you are more likely to die of the pathogen than the medicine, there is justification for the medication to be offered the public. For any medication that can kill and injure there can be no justification, in Common Law, to mandate the medications, one cannot be forced to offer themselves for possible death or debility therefore vaccine uptake must be based on fully informed consent. Clearly there are nations that shamefully and unlawfully fail to uphold this basic law and human right.
When death and debility are caused by medicines prescribed during illness, medicines that can have side effects similar to symptoms brought by the illness, it is easy for the professional to misdiagnose death or debility by medication as death or debility by illness. Using prophylaxis, as a vaccine, death and debility by vaccine ought to be more readily identified, as usually there is no predisposing or underlying pathology in the vaccine recipient. That is the theory, but in practice children die or are debilitated, according to diagnoses, “by unknown cause” or sometimes “by natural causes” despite there being no other probable cause than vaccine. If not incompetence or ignorance, these diagnoses must flag protection of the profession and industry. In science as in law, when the only plausible cause is vaccination as it is the only scientifically arguable new factor, vaccine must be the strongly suspected cause.
The US VAERS database is dependent on scientific reasoning and the integrity of those making the reports; medical professionals are not supposed to administer vaccines to persons known to be suffering symptoms of illness at the time, unless specifically prediagnosed “safe” to vaccinate being in a sufficiently stable state to warrant safe administration of a potentially harmful procedure. There are reports by recipients, and relatives of recipients, of vaccination without fully informed consent having been sought or gained – the vaccinator acting unlawfully – and if complicated by the death or debility of the vaccine recipient, this warrants arrest and prosecution for murder and serious criminal assault respectively.
VAERS Database Examination
A few examples of VAERS records follow:
1. Records with “Vaccine Contains FLU and Hospitalised” search criteria
a. Vaccinated on 1st December 1989, on 3rd 66 years old F of NY State developed myalgias, eye/temporal pain was admitted with GB syndrome on 15th February 1990.
b. 43 year old F from New Jersey on 7th November 1989 vaccinated, same day developed arthralgia, arthritis, hypokinesia, lymphadenopathy, pain, back pain, parasthesia; hospitalised and two operations.
c. 31 years old F vaccinated 26th January 1990 on 20th February developed asthenia, bradycardia, dizziness, flu syndrome, neuropathy, GBS.
d. 62 year old M, vaccinated on 12th October 1989, awoke next day in semiconscious state, grossly confused, weak, unable to recognise wife and doctor.
e. 62 year old F vaccinated 21st August 1990, onset of GBS 1st September 1990.
f. 53-year-old F vaccinated 24th October 1990 on 5th November 1990 asthenia, dysphagia, neck paralysis, and parasthesia, GBS.
2. Records with “Vaccine Contains FLU and symptoms contain GBS” search criteria
a. 31 years old M army inductee vaccinated 1st February 1973 onset GBS 1st March 1973, 180 days hospitalised
b. 60 years old M vaccinated 20th November 1990, on 27th November 1990 onset GBS, 35 days hospitalised
c. 72 year old F, vaccinated 16th October 1990, on 31st October onset GBS.
d. 58 years old M vaccinated on 30th October 1990 and on 1st November 1990 developed weakness and difficulty swallowing and talking, hospitalised 8 days, developed quadriplegia and respiratory difficulties, 15th November respiratory arrest, GBS.
e. 72 years old F vaccinated 24th October 1990 and on 2nd November 1990 funny feelings in both legs, clumsy, numb, tingly, not work well; GBS.
3. Records with “Vaccine Contains FLU and Patient Died” search criteria
a. Bronchial asthmatic 52 years old F vaccinated on 20th September 1990, same day died of respiratory arrest.
b. 92 year old F vaccinated 9th October 1990; 11th October 1990 developed fever, died at 02.30 hrs 12th October 1990.
c. 62 years old F terminally ill cancer patient vaccinated on 1st October 1990, same day developed apnoea, fever, flu syndrome, pneumonia, and rhinitis and died.
d. 65 year old F vaccinated 18th October 1990, around 23rd October complained of fatigue, low back pain and upper shoulder pain, on 25th October 1990 sudden death.
e. 77 year old M vaccinated on 2nd October 1990, same day onset of nausea and pain apnoea, pneumonia, shock, heart arrest; died on 9th October 1990 respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.
f. 69-year-old F vaccinated on 26th November 1990, developed a cold next day, upper respiratory infection and cough, treated for bacterial bronchitis, found dead 2 days later.
g. 82 year old M vaccinated 26th November 1990, same day immediate cardiac arrest, CPR initiated, taken to hospital where died.
h. 72-year-old M vaccinated 24th October 1990, on 2nd November started funny feelings on legs, clumsy, numb, tingly, BP 180/100, died.
4. Record using search criteria “age from 0 to 1 and Sex is Female and Vaccine is Flu and Patient Died”
a. 10 months F vaccinated 27th October 1998, on10th November 1998 severe vomiting, cranky, glucose 92, viral, continued till on 12th December 1998 died.
b. 9 months old F vaccinated 7th October 2003, no illness or fever reported, put to bed, last checked 0300hrs on 8th October 2003, at 0900 hrs found dead in crib.
c. 6 months old F vaccinated 18th October 2004 with flu, DTaP, IPV and PNC on 19th October 2004 found dead in crib with lung congestion, liver and brain damage.
d. 8 months old F vaccinated 24th January 2007, 26th January 2007 found dead at home, called SIDS.
e. Newborn vaccinated on 5th November 2007, developed cyanosis, low blood pressure, bradycardia, dehydration and died on 10th October 2007.
f. 6 months old vaccinated 20th December 2007 with DTaPHE, Flu, PNC and ROTHB5; on 22nd December 2007 anoxic encephalopathy, apnoea, and cardiac arrest; died 24th December 2007.
VAERS data is rarely used to full extent, the mantra heard from vaccine interest professionals is that the data cannot be used to prove cause and effect which is of course true in terms of single events but, as in any court of law or science arena, the analysis of accumulated repetitive events can provide accumulating evidence to develop a hypothesis on which further record analysis can be based. Sometimes the records will yield sufficient evidence to stand alone, supported by individual witness testimony, at other times it can provide sufficient circumstantial evidence in support of testimony that can be measured against medical or other scientific rebuttal; what is not true is that VAERS is of not value evidentially.
When a number of children die minutes or hours, or even days, after vaccination and there is no other explanation for the deaths, there must be strong suspicion of the vaccination. When law courts begin to reflect this basic scientific and logical position, judges will arrive at long overdue conclusions about vaccine safety and damage.
Jon Rappoport in his article “Vaccine Dangers and Vested Interests” argues that the typical CDC media speak of 36,000 deaths from flu in the US every year is propaganda to promote flu jabs; he states that government data shows that actually the figures biannually between 1979 and 1995, then annually to 2001, for total influenza deaths in the US are:
1979 604, 1981 3006, 1983 1431, 1985 2054, 1987 632, 1989 1593, 1991 1137, 1993 1044, 1995 606, 1996 745, 1997 720, 1998 1724, 1999 1665, 2000 1765, 2001 257.
The members of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) in the USA, as the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), make recommendations each year on vaccinations. Most ACIP and JCVI members have financial or other ties to the vaccine industry and they obviously recommend flu jabs DESPITE evidence of ineffectiveness, danger and lack of sufficient safety studies as they ignore the Cochrane Collaboration systematic review. Furthermore, research has shown that for every 100 people who get the flu jab only 1 will benefit. It is not clear just how many die or are disabled by jab they did not need; many flu jabs contain mercury at 250 times the EPA recommended daily intake level for some infants and there is evidence that flu jabs cause Alzheimers disease. Research showed that people who receive a flu jab each year for 3 to 5 years have a 10-fold greater risk of developing Alzheimers disease that those who did not.
Is propaganda used to artificially exaggerate flu deaths to market vaccines?
An “over the counter” Proven Safe Remedy for flu
Perhaps the most crucial remedy required to protect us from influenza, that I have yet to hear any Government spokesperson on health advise the public about, is Vitamin D. Vitamin D is possibly the most important protective remedy for flu. (http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html)
Vitamin D levels fall to their lowest ebb during flu seasons due to lack of sunshine that promotes Vitamin D expression in the skin. This probably causes a fall in the body’s own antibiotics (antimicrobials peptides) that Vitamin D engineers; it switches on genes in macrophages that make antimicrobials peptides that attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. Vitamin D can also express genes that stop macrophages from overreacting to an infection and releasing too many inflammatory agents – cytokines – that can damage infected tissue; for example it down regulates genes that produce interleukin-2 and interferon gamma, two cytokines that prime macrophages and cytotoxic T cells to attack body tissues. Studies showed that children with rickets, a Vitamin D deficiency disorder, suffer from frequent respiratory infections, and children exposed to sunlight are less likely to get a cold. TB and various autoimmune diseases such as MS, Lupus and Type 1 diabetes have a causal association with low Vitamin D blood levels. Vitamin D deficiency also plays a causal role in hypertension, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, peripheral vascular disease and stroke. ( http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51913.php )
The increased deaths that occur in winter, mainly pneumonia and cardiovascular diseases, are therefore much more likely linked to Vitamin D deficiency than to increased prevalence of serologically positive flu virus (which also relates to Vitamin D deficiency). A double blind RCT trial showed Vitamin D prevents colds and flu significantly better than placebo (Epidemiol Infection 2007; 135:1095-6)
Vitamin A and Vitamin C should be a further consideration for storage in the flu protection cupboard; one easy way to obtain adequate vitamin D and Vitamin A is to use cod liver oil daily, especially throughout the winter and low sunshine periods; eating butter, cheese, full cream milk and other good sources of Vitamin A and D will add benefit. Vitamin C occurs in good amounts naturally in fruits and vegetables but the levels said to protect and treat viral illness like flu are much higher than naturally available; gram of Vitamin C is stored in about 30 to 40 oranges so it is probably best to use supplements during flu season, synthetic Vitamin C or ascorbic Acid. These are available over the counter or from specialist suppliers where one can vary the added ingredients, such as valuable bioflavinoids, and obtain buffered tablets to reduce impact of acid on stomach. Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner and Vitamin C expert, said the average primate requires about 2.5 gms of Vitamin C per day and humans cannot synthesis their own as do certain animals like rats. 2.5 grams in terms of the RDA is an enormous amount but very many of my patients over many years state their health is supported, especially during epidemics, with 2 to 3 gms of Vitamin C per day and during epidemics they may increase to 5 or 10 gms per day depending on symptoms, or until stools become loose. Their regular daily dose is around 1gm – and I heard it said that Maggie Thatcher used to take 1gm per day to remain fit and healthy during her arduous years as PM.
There are other tried and tested natural remedies available to counter and protect against flu disorders; ask of your local health and alternative health professionals, and check products at local health food stores. Remember “one man’s meat is another man’s poison” so what does for one may not do for another, and what works for one may not work for another as we are all individuals, also that numerous survivors of the 1918 pandemic swore their survival was based on taking natural remedies, such as Gelsemium and Bryonia from the homeopathic doctor, and avoiding medications like aspirin and vaccines. (http://www.naturalnews.com/026148.html)
John August 2009
Location