Editing lost main point of letter

On 16 May I wrote an article entitled 'Carol Tozer: Glimmer of Hope or Change Agent?' and posted it online. It generated quite a lively reaction so I wrote a short letter to your Open Lines pages, referring your readers to it (for reasons given in the short letter). You published this letter (together with a response from Dr Tozer) but omitted all mention of the article, thus defeating the primary objective of the letter.

While the local media is not as bad as the national media in terms of suppressing information, it does have an increasing habit of watering down arguments so that everything has a 50-50 look about it. (A local deputy who seems to have recently acquired the name 'Rockmount Balboa' for some reason, carries more punch than our media).

You are of course not the only media outlet to show bias towards the establishment's approach to health and medicine. From 30 May to 1 June the public has been absolutely bombarded with lead headlines in the tabloids and main news about mainstream medicine having made a major cancer breakthrough and having 'discovered' immunotherapy, which involves stimulating the immune system to get rid of the cancer. Much of this reporting has been vague bluster, lacking in detail. The GcMaf brigade have been talking about kick-starting the immune system for a decade. Homeopaths and acupuncturists have been working this way for hundreds of years and spiritual healers for thousands of years. Even Big Pharma itself has been going down this route for the last couple of years, so it's hard to see what this stratospheric fuss is all about this time. Except of course by continually frightening us with the spectre of cancer and persuading us that progress is being made and bombarding us with probably very expensive adverts on TV and around football grounds, they are almost bullying us into contributing to their considerable coffers. Racketeering tactics. By being persuaded to listen to experts all the time (in whose opinion are experts experts?) we are conditioned into accepting the concept that more power should be condensed into fewer hands. Many issues these days are much too important for the electorate to be able to decide upon, it seems.

Perhaps the small guys like Immuno Biotech are being sidelined to enable Big Pharma to catch up and claim all the glory? Deliberate or not, that's how it seems to be panning out. Not that I expect Big Pharma's GcMaf-style solutions to be free of what most people call 'side effects'.

Which brings me to Mike Hadley who, if we make the perhaps reckless assumption that you represented him correctly on 30 May said: 'if action is not taken against people like David Noakes then the people of Guernsey will have no protection against anyone in the future who markets dubious or dangerous products for profit.'

You said it Mike. Dangerous and dubious in whose opinion? The Big Pharma funded MHRAs? 'Dubious' is the kindest thing which can be said about most of Big Pharma's products –take a look at the potential effects they themselves admit to having other than addressing the symptom they treat.

MATT WATERMAN,

Flat 2, 3, Burnt Lane,

St Peter Port, GY1 1HL.