GcMaf developments were important but ignored

Quite a few of us have been running with the FDA's claim that pharmaceutical drugs are the number four killer of people and kill more people than motor cars, and this is the link in question:

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/DevelopmentResources/DrugInteractionsLabeling/ucm114848.htm.

Your correspondent refers to this as 'a link' or 'a website', neglecting to mention that it is the official website of the FDA – the food and drugs regulator of the USA.

Your correspondent cites the US National Library of Medicine to seemingly disprove this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22253191 claims that there are 292 deaths per annum from pharmaceutical drugs.

This is a bit of a difference from the FDA's, which states that there are 100,000 deaths per year.

Which begs the question, where is the US National Library of Medicine getting its information from?

And if the FDA is so incompetent as to have got it so hopelessly wrong, what else has it got wrong and with what consequences?

Your anonymous writer has no appetite for a thorough argument on this issue, quote: 'I have no intention of engaging in any protracted argument about these figures, I have other things that require my time'.

Also on 9 March, HSSD released some extraordinary claims of major new developments in the GcMaf saga. These were contained in a fact sheet which can be found online. HSSD's new claims included the MHRA having tested the samples, a border agency civil servant having made a policy decision to ban the product and that the MHRA has advised HSSD that the product poses a risk to the public.

These are all major and highly significant new developments.

So where were the media?

You'd think that not only should the public be informed of these game-changing events and the pro-GcMaf lobby be given the opportunity to rebuff the claims, but also HSSD would have been on at the media to publicise their fact sheet. Indeed HSSD took the opportunity to mention the link in a response to a letter in the Guernsey Press from correspondent Jo Spinks.

Extraordinarily, while unwilling to probe or at least report the content of the fact sheet, the Guernsey Press ran a column on 16 March reporting a bland holding comment from HSSD which was along the lines of 'we're still investigating with the MHRA and will get back to you'.

There was another small piece in on 17 March in which the chief pharmacist is quoted yet again.

Why such reliance on pharmacy?

Why are pharmacists the only people in the health industry who think they are the whole industry?

Pharmacy has nothing to do with GcMaf. The only reason there is confusion on this point is because the pharmacists have been left in charge of defining a medicine.

Why haven't we heard from the following people?

1. The other States pharmacists who Ed Freestone must be chief of in order to have the title 'chief pharmacist'?

2. The States' chief and other aromatherapists?

3. The States' chief and other biologists?

4. The States' chief and other dieticians?

5. The States' chief and other health officers?

6. The States' chief and other herbalists?

7. The States' chief and other homeopaths?

8. The States' chief and other hypnotists?

9. The States' chief and other spiritual healers?

10. The States' chief and other surgeons?

11. The States' chief and other therapists?

If these people do not exist, then why not?

The answer, I suggest, is that the States has given control of our health exclusively to pharmacists.

Even Mike Hadley gives credibility to the placebo effect.

If someone wants to try to cure themselves through non-scientifically based or proven means that is surely their prerogative.

I had a character on the phone recently saying 'we've got to make "freedom of health choice" an issue at the next election'. I said to him, 'some of us tried that last time and it fell on deaf ears'.

Even in spring 2011, ahead of the key debates on adopting EU directives for defining food supplements and alternative remedies, members of our lobby group were shaking their heads saying 'this really is the 11th hour'.

So the majority of the electorate is also missing – perhaps not surprising if the media's lack of coverage to the sort of major revelations and claims made by HSSD on 9 March is anything to go by.

MATT WATERMAN,

Flat 2,

3, Burnt Lane,

St Peter Port,

GY1 1HL.