At the end of most articles in the Guardian newspaper you find this:
This is what we’re up against.
Teams of lawyers from the rich and powerful trying to stop us publishing stories they don’t want you to see. Lobby groups with opaque funding who are determined to undermine facts about the climate emergency and established science. Authoritarian states with no regard for the freedom of the press. Bad actors spreading disinformation online to undermine democracy.
But we have something powerful on our side. We’ve got you.
The Guardian is funded by readers like you and the only person who decides what we publish is Katherine Viner. If you want to join us in our mission to share independent, global journalism to the world, we’d love to have you on side.
################################################
This post is twinned with Challenging My Doctor to Disclose and Breaking the Word of Promise to our Hope on RxISK.
The word My in the title refers to the fact I, and others in health I know, were once Guardian readers but have stopped because of its health coverage in the last decade.
Informed Consent
As Truth, Trust and Health outlines, through to 1800 we were subjects of monarchs and sinners. With the French Revolution we became citizens and patients. Patients were citizens of a new Domain of the Sick in buildings converted from palliative care hostels into hospitals. We had formerly been preparing for Heaven in the Hotel de Dieu (House of God), looked after by religious folk, but now got doctors.
The new Acute Medicine, child of the Revolution, initially dealt with desperate situations, where there was little time for informed consent. By the 1950s as medicine, armed with new treatments, extended its reach beyond life and death situations, while the primary source of information on our treatments was the clinical experience of the doctor treating us, informed consent was born.
There was a sense that, as is appropriate with citizenship, we, as patients, should be treated decently. Surgery for breast cancer and ECT led the way. Is this how you would treat your own wife doctor? Is this a treatment you would wish for yourself in my circumstances? (See Shock Therapy and Shipwreck of the Singular for more on this).
Around 1990 we transitioned into Consumers. Healthcare was changing into health services. Rather than treating the emergencies we brought to it (acute medicine), services began calling us in for screening and giving us problems we didn’t know we had. Briefly these were called risk factors but are now called chronic medical conditions.
Increasingly, ‘our’ services rather than us decided we needed treatment for these. You might imagine, when the treatments proposed were being offered to us when we were perfectly well, and increasingly were based on supposedly public evidence rather than the experience of the doctor, that the premium on informed consent would grow.
Just the opposite happened. In 1990, proceeding as had been normal medical practice, Martin Teicher and colleagues wrote an article proving a new antidepressant, Prozac, could trigger suicide. It had been normal in the 1960s for doctors to write reports stating that, of course wonderful though antidepressants were, they could cause suicide, homicide, sexual dysfunction and physical dependence without accusations of misinformation.
Lilly’s pushback to Teicher’s article, facilitated by the BMJ, created Evidence Based Medicine. Gordon Guyatt and Iain Chalmers have been convenient figleafs covering these origins. Companies began to lay Cuckoos – Randomized Controlled Assays (RCAs) – in the medical nest, claiming this ‘evidence’ was worth more than the anecdotes that constituted clinical experience – See Health’s Illusions.
These ghostwritten RCAs hype benefits on surrogate outcomes and hide the harms often to a fraudulent extent – claiming a study shows a treatment to be effective and safe when the company knows it wasn’t. These frauds get published in the very best ‘medical’ journals – they are no use to companies otherwise. Contrary to the norms of science, no one has access to the data from these studies. But journals make money from them – especially the New England J of Misinformation.
This has been happening for 30 years and medical journals are past repair. See The Lights all went out in Massachusetts.
Noble Lies
This post is not about the cesspit of hype and fraud that parts of the medical literature have become. It is about a loss of decency, and an astonishing nastiness toward the people we are supposedly helping, who have been harmed by what we do.
When managing the Prozac and suicide crisis, FDA, who had access to behind the scenes evidence that SSRIs caused more suicidal events than they prevented, introduced a notion never before used by a regulator. They claimed reluctance to warn in case it might deter people from getting the benefit of treatment. Warnings might kill people.
We could perhaps invoke a Platonic Lie as a precedent for this inside out version of a dilemma the Pope then had – should condoms the Church banned be permitted for AIDS prevention?
It overlapped with the public execution of Andrew Wakefield. The idea vaccines could cause significant harms would deter too many people from getting the benefits. Sticking Wakefield’s head on a Spike in the Central Square chilled conversations beyond the MMR vaccine. Many parents whose perfectly normal children reacted catastrophically to the DTP vaccine faced complete denial that any vaccine could cause any harm at all.
The Mouths of Others
Even though harms were disappearing from the ‘adverts’ (the medical literature), with BMJ leading the way, it was still possible for clinicians to recognize the harms happening in front of them – people becoming suicidal or getting PSSD on treatment.
For a decade or more, the media continued to mention the drugs people were on in the event of a mass murder or colorful crime like female teachers seducing their teenage male pupils – Notes on a Scandal.
From 2000 to 2004 the Guardian carried great articles on SSRI harms, ghostwriting, and lack of access to company study data.
Between 2002 and 2004, BBC’s Panorama ran a compelling series on Paroxetine dependence and suicide, featuring internal company documents that led to a Fraud Charge and ultimately a $3 Billion resolution – Children of the Cure.
A relatively senior person in Lilly could even tell me my lectures on SSRI harms were doing more for the sales of Prozac than anything else.
Things, however, were changing. Clinicians were becoming less likely to accept a treatment had harmed the person presenting to them. People began to experience what they now call gaslighting.
While the Guardian and BBC were initially apparently successful, it also became clear the standard media approaches – find an insider to lead you to a rotten apple and make a big deal of throwing it out of the barrel – no longer worked. We now had a rotten barrel problem – something the media have still not found a way to handle.
And as of 2003 the Guardian found itself on a GSK jet to Malawi to report on GSK’s Saving Grace initiative aimed at getting their HIV drugs to people like Grace in Africa.
Perhaps it was because patients were now being openly called consumers. You might think consumers should be privy to more information, but these ex-patients had been set off on a road to polypharmacy prevention and of course we don’t want to deter people from the benefit of not having to take something to actually get a benefit.
Calling patients consumers was not welcomed by everyone. Squeamishness about changing linguistic styles aside, the consumer narrative in health is deeply misleading. The consumers of prescription-only medicines are doctors who consume side effect free by putting pills in the Mouths of Others.
Mouths of Others deliberately echoes The Lives of Others – a movie about the moral dilemmas of life in East Germany in Stasi times.
Doctors by this point were increasingly incentivized to ensure a certain proportion of their patients with hints of a risk factor chronic medical disorder ended up on treatments for multiple conditions. These doctors can remain adverse event free provided they don’t agree with a patient that the product they ordered the patient to take has caused the damage.
Doctors paid by pharma? Nope. Doctors paid by health service companies who were getting more and more business from the increased number of hospital visits triggered by osteoporosis drugs, antidiabetics, antihypertensives and antidepressants.
Since then apparently independent social media like NHS Digital list SSRI side effects as nausea, headache and other relatively minor issues – omitting suicidality, sexual dysfunction, dependence or any other significant effects because, they say in email responses if asked, they wish to avoid deterring people from seeking the benefit of treatment.
Ditto the New York Times, the BBC and what is often called the liberal media.
Doctors have been cancelled. In a reversal of free-market expectations consumers (neither patients not doctors) have any say in this market. Both have become vassals if not serfs. Printed warnings are now viewed as May Contain Nuts labels – put in place by companies and regulators to cover their backs.
If doctors try to report adverse events to NPR, BBC, NYT, Guardian, BMJ, NEJM – In France of anywhere – completely contrary to the Viner Guardian claim above the lawyers for these outlets advise against publication. Far from standing up to this menace the liberal media succumb in a way Right Wing media like the Telegraph, Fox News or the Mail don’t.
Policy
Some years ago I approached the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) laying out the case that some people are unjustly imprisoned for crimes they haven’t committed in the sense the behavior has been triggered by medicines they were on. For many Republicans, ACLU sympathy for criminals is a totemic symbol of liberalism gone mad.
Would ACLU be interested to engage with me on this? Nope.
Why not? It’s a policy matter. ACLU do not want to deter people in prison from getting the benefits of being able to access treatments.
Covid vaccine policies mandated a vigorous censoring of any mention of linked harms. Huge chunks of common sense were branded as misinformation. Posts or lectures showing nothing but company documents indicating more deaths and injuries in the vaccine arms of company trials than on placebo were blocked.
There were forced retractions of now validated data. See Rebekah Barnett on Forced Retraction of Cancer Study. A Mostert et al article on excess deaths in the years pre and post vaccines has been subject to Calls for Retraction. The push to retract is not linked to scientific flaws. It appears driven by certain people thinking there are things the rest of us should not know about.
In clinical practice, I met people with events like clotting or auto-immune reactions happening hours after and clearly caused by the vaccine – See Cause and Effect.
Astonishingly, however, doctors rather than agreeing with a person evidently badly harmed by the vaccine, with clear blood test proof, who work in clinics and were friends with the doctors, faced denial the vaccine could have caused the harm or any harm. They were forced to take follow up jabs on pain of losing their job, and then further jabs after repeated bad reactions. This was brutal beyond belief.
Pregnant women were fired for refusing the vaccine with bioethicists behind the charge for force these vaccinations – see Women, Pregnancy and Trials.
Pap Smears to screen for cervical cancer add to the policy element. No one is told before Pap Smears that Cone Biopsies can cause cervical incompetence, which can lead to premature birth with any baby then having a reduced life expectancy.
So a vaccine for the HPV virus that can cause cervical cancer might allow us to reduce cervical cancer screening. HPV vaccines are not mandatory but heavy pressure was brought to bear on teenagers, side-stepping parental consent in many cases (It Couldn’t Happen Here).
No-one, however, is told about the harms that HPV vaccines can cause. Just the opposite. Anyone claiming they have been harmed runs into a barrage of vilification – what do you expect from teenage girls (and a lot worse).
The data on cervical cancer rates after HPV vaccination is mixed. Cancers other than cervical appear to be increasing – is there a link? It is almost impossible to ask the question.
Policies introduce a lack of flexibility. HPV vaccines and Pap Smears could be targeted at high incidence areas but another policy blocks this. For DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – reasons targeting is not tolerated. Something that might be particularly helpful in one setting must be mandated for everyone, even in low incidence areas. With the HPV vaccines, the Net now sweeps up Teenage and pre-Teen boys.
Gender transitions add to this scenario. Getting everyone to transition is not a matter of policy, but DEI sensitivity is. Potential accusations of DEI infringements make it difficult to mention the inevitable harms linked to medical and surgical transit events.
This gives youngsters the impression they can magically transit from being a perfectly functioning XX to a perfectly functioning Xy without any glitches. This should defy common sense. But raising the possibility of harms runs into a barrage of hostility.
The effects of Industrial practices – ghostwriting and lack of access to trial data – differ from the effects of policy. Making harms disappear is a creative act. Ghostwriters put their hands up and can be amused you have spotted the cup the nut or whatever is under – perhaps because they are removed from the harms that result.
Policy leads to outright psychotic denial of harms in a person right in front of you. Faced with harms you have been party to creating by being a prescribing doctor or trans or vaccine advocate creates a more visceral hostility perhaps because escaping responsibility is more difficult.
No less than mothers, apple pie and religion, DEI is good in principle. But our efforts to be equitable and inclusive are creating a new excluded class. In many settings it is still unfortunate to be a woman, an older person, a person of color or a prisoner, but it is now more unfortunate to be harmed by one of our sacraments (medical treatments) – sacraments are interventions that can only benefit and cannot harm. Pandora: Dos Centavos, DoS Centavos Veinte Euros, Rock, Stone Crack Disappear.
Deep State and Populists
DEI policy-makers may not realize their role in creating this situation. Seeking Equity and Universality is a good thing and is to some extent inherent in Bureaucracy. These instances seem to offer examples of an entrapment in the Iron Cage of bureaucracy run riot, that Max Weber warned about a century ago.
The role of Policy here seems linked to Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil phrase coined when observing the post-War trials of senior Nazi’s involved in the concentration camp program. See Peter Gordon’s encounters with this banality in Breaking the Promise.
For Weber, bureaucracy evidently needed to be tempered by leadership and sophistication. Leaders are the people entrusted to step in and say on this point we have lost the plot. They take responsibility for their actions rather than point to a policy.
Weber analogized the role of political leadership to that of a doctor (in his day). Taking responsibility is something medical professionals once did – they now take orders from the policy apparatus.
Sophistication, as F Scott Fitzgerald said means being able to hold two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time and still function. Generalist doctors used to do this remarkable well, specialists less well. Now the idea a drug that can benefit might also harm has become blasphemous.
There is a Left Right split on these issues, both of which link to military needs – Truth, Trust Health.
Health has traditionally been a socialist/liberal trump card with concerns about ill-health linked to work and living conditions used to temper markets and technologies. But this has been changing greatly in recent decades.
Pharmaceutical companies have found it ridiculously easy to ‘play’ the Left. Hearing a word of promise to their ears of Free Lunches and Medicines for Everyone, politicians and media seem incapable of seeing how this word of promise will be broken – Breaking the Word of Promise to Our Hope.
When it comes to weapons, politicians and media on the Right champion our sacred right (almost a duty) to bear arms. When it comes to Drugs, politicians and media on the Left, like the Guardian and New York Times, champion our sacred right to access them and push for lower prices so people can have more and more.
Right wing media can see the problems in the Left wing takes on health and their inability to report on drug harms. In Britain the Telegraph and Mail do a much better job than the Guardian not just on the matter of harms but on the policy factors behind the denial of the obvious.
This split links to the deep divides we now face between what gets branded Populism by one side and Deep State by the other.
An unsophisticated policy response is no longer enough. The statement at the bottom of Guardian about lobbyists undermine the climate emergency and established science brings out the need for sophistication. The G and NYT left hands campaign to avoid the environment being pumped full of chemicals, while their right hands create conditions like ADHD where people increasingly pump themselves full of chemicals.
Guardian Disclosure
Meanwhile, an autism made in the media and smartphones rather than by vaccines now haunts us. A polypharmacy pandemic made in company laboratories has swept in.
We have a public health crisis with between 10 and 20 % of Western populations hooked to psychotropic drugs, primarily antidepressants, which will necessarily inhibit our ability to reverse plummeting reproductive replacement rates.
This set of crises began as a policy initiative in the US, UK and Europe called variously names like Defeat Depression – as Peter Gordon, a young psychiatrist then, tells you – see Breaking the Promise. There was no intention of Defeating Depression. This cash cow is now 1000 times more common than it was – which is not what happens when we set about defeating illnesses like tuberculosis.
This set of crises have evolved in the absence of any national discussion about the wisdom of what we are letting be done to ourselves.
There are other problems we need to look at but when it comes to Health it is the Media I once read – not just the lay media but also the BMJ and NEJM – who need to disclose the basis for taking the positions they do.
Katherine Viner (above) and Eric Rubin (NEJM) need to publish honest disclaimers.
They might say we will never publish anything about the adverse effects of drugs but will take Pariante style garbage every day of the week.
Or perhaps we are inhibited by our lawyers from publishing anything on the adverse effects of drugs.
Or perhaps we believe in Numbers Based Medicine – anything else is misinformation – which we feel duty bound not to report
That way Peter Gordon and colleagues – see Breaking the Word of Promise to our Hope – would realize the futility of crafting letters born from significant personal losses aimed at getting a co-operative conversation going that might keep more of us safe.
The only co-operation on these matters the Guardian seem to want is for folk to hand over their money.
Political actors on both the left and right once played a part in the Co-operative Movement. Something we need to reinvent?
Postscript
Thanks to Patrick Hahn for the comment below which gives an image that perfectly encapsulates why I cannot now take seriously anything the G say. Trust is the issue.
Noble Lies
‘This post is not about the cesspit of hype and fraud that parts of the medical literature have become. It is about a loss of decency, and an astonishing nastiness toward the people we are supposedly helping, who have been harmed by what we do.’
This is a complaint mostly realised, by those who were trustingly prescribed medications on blind faith, then rued the day, as cack-handed doctors, added to, doubled, took off and changed, doses and drugs.
Platonic Lies –
April 5, 2012
7 Comments
‘It’s difficult to see how Dr Appleby or others expect to get many more people on antidepressants than we now have. We have had 20 years of perhaps the most successful marketing campaign in history, a campaign that has even managed to persuade parents and doctors that pre-school children are depressed and in need of antidepressants. The vast majority of these and of anyone else who might be likely to end up on antidepressants are at a vanishingly small or no risk of suicide.’
louis appleby@ProfLApplebyJun 20
It’s that time in the election cycle – post-manifesto, pre-vote – when civil servants prepare briefing for day 1 of an incoming Govt.
My hope – obviously – is whoever wins will give #suicideprevention priority. Over 6000 deaths/yr in UK.
Leading cause of death in under 35s.
Does he ever go to work. All birds and travelogues, books and films.
Dee Doherty has already got him to admit, he recognises Akathisia, in her correspondence.
Newspapers are not specialists in mental health. They want scoops, exclusives and big stories to sell newspapers. If a Pariante comes along, with his status, they will, idiotically, think – wow – big story – not having the wherewithal to do any elementary research which might lay bare the extent to which he is making highly misleading claims. This is not journalism. But where is journalism, today?
The medical journals make the same mistakes with quite often misleading ‘studies’.
It is not my intention to draw attention to Wessely, again. It is the proposition that counts.
Peter Scott-Gordon, got it in one
In that correspondence Simon Wessely had ALL the power. He understood this. It was implicit in all his communications with me.
ALL the power has become heady and untruthful; truth in the media is a rare commodity, you only have to listen to the BBC flagship news to realise that their drift is probably not our drift.
We are becoming a dumb-down nation, the Covid debacle exposed so many lies, from the dumb.
But, of course, all the accolades kept coming.
Our backs are up against a wall – (journals and the media mostly now have paywalls,; the Guardian is still free)
How can we blend it all together – just keep on keepin’ on …
Right now I’m in the middle of reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Eichmann said at his trial he had nothing against the Jewish people, and there is no reason not to believe him. He was just following the guidelines.
Fabulous Patrick – thanks for this.
I routinely tell medical students and doctors when they are the audience that they have become bureaucrats – maybe I should make it more pointed – they have become Eichman’s
Another way to illustrate it is asking what use is Salt if it has lost its savor.
D
Speaking of the Guardian, they just ran an article advising readers that thinking for yourself is just too exhausting. I’m not making this up, but I wish I were:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/11/trust-us-institutions?CMP=share_btn_url&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1FrY7US0rmyDenNiB36mT2xfh-ul3EZ50VfytBBeB7oo5nH4_BAjerUTA_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
Patrick
Again thanks. The image and article are great. I have added the image as a postscript the main post.
David
Trouble is unfortunately we need to read garbage to keep up with what they are putting out as your post shows in a way. Am speaking as a non g reader though I still get sent requests for subscriptions which is all they and others really want . Or to use us add ridiculous immature ticks and comments which are of no use whatsover ,just to look as though they are ‘engaging’ with readers. in most forums they get edited anyway.) I went to one of the last lectures Hannah A E gave at a church in Cardiff. She was tired and shockingly stated that she has stopped even using the ‘banality of evil’ phrase she coined Her thinking had moved on but the phrase actually stopped thought progressing further. Her message was quite jumbled as she was pretty exhausted by then but still thinking on her feet Which was the most impressive way I have ever heard a lecture given. She didn’t claim to have the answers.
No-one is going to be able to improve on a comment that mentions the last time I was at a lecture by Hannah Arendt..
D
I should clarify. In terms of events in Cardiff, having Hannah Arendt lecture there, half a century ago, was one of the biggest things to happen there before Taylor Swift gave a concert in Cardiff a few days ago
D
Was more important that that! T S will come and go Hannah’s lecture and writings will have a much bigger influence for a lot longer…..but good luch to the amazing T S
‘My Media’ …
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
BREAKING NEWS NETHERLANDS:
‘It’s an absolute disgrace that the Princess Maxima Center is trying to distance itself from one of its most distinguished academics regarding a very thorough and meticulously peer reviewed paper. For all those critical thinkers with high ethical principles a substantial link with the covid vaccines and excess deaths is clearly based on irrefutable evidence. All those trying to undermine what is likely to turn out to be the greatest medical mistake and corporate crime in history are either incompetent, immoral or both’
https://x.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1804383511136067907
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
Well said Mark
https://x.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1804067184865357836
‘whatever’s next down the pike’ …
Patient safety
From: Peter Scott-Gordon
3:30 PM (21 June 2024)
To: guardian.letters, RCPsych feedback, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Dr Ellie Cannon [c/o Daily Mail]
I write to express concern in relation to the following perspective as published in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/08/antidepressants-addictive-has-been-debunked-psychiatry-depression-withhdrawal-symptoms
This published opinion has the potential to cause considerable avoidable harm.
This published opinion spins what the Lancet meta-analysis carefully says.
Why the Guardian should publish this opinion piece, without fact-checking, should be a matter of concern.
This opinion piece is by a career-long paid opinion leader whose vested interests [paid and otherwise] are multiple.
As a retired NHS psychiatrist I was dismayed to learn that the President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists recommended this Guardian perspective with these words “This is a MUST read” [sic]
Yours sincerely
Dr Peter Scott-Gordon
Dr Ellie Cannon [c/o Daily Mail]
Last week, Dr Ellie Cannon, The Mail on Sunday’s resident GP columnist, wrote that, having read the new study, she was pleased to hear that the pills were much less addictive than feared.
Dr Cannon, who has publicly spoken of her own antidepressant use and the fact that she has suffered from withdrawal symptoms when stopping, added that she would be glad to reassure patients. However, scores of readers responded saying they had been hit by withdrawal.
Previously posted –
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13533737/patients-antidepressants-suffer-severe-withdrawal-symptoms-hooked-life.html
Dr Ellie Cannon, who joins us to unpack the myths surrounding antidepressants, and reveal how they work.
https://www.itv.com/thismorning/articles/the-truth-about-antidepressants-what-you-need-to-know
Reply to Wendy Burn
Joshua Ireland@JoshuaMIrelandJun 9
Pariente kens the different meanings of addiction & dependence, & he knows the general public does not. His canard that anyone says ADs cause addiction is a myth he’s debuting, not debunking. His defence against straw-men deflects attention from dependence & withdrawal. Helpful?
https://x.com/wendyburn/status/1799437144374776295
From Company Woman or Mother Ellie’s rationale at the time was that she takes AD’s herself and on that basis advises those who consult her. Ellie herself was not willing to ‘engage’ with the complaint raised on behalf initially for MadinWales
.susanne says
November 10, 2021 at 4:42 pm
Re . Dr Ellie Cannon
29 August 2019
‘In an era of fake news, TV doctor Dr Ellie Cannon is the much-needed antidote to health myths.
She is also a blogger for Pulse and has tackled issues including the anti-vax movement and fighting cervical cancer.’
Decided to go ahead with complaint to the GMC re misinformation propagated by Ellie Cannon GP re ADs
plus lack of response from the surgery manager – there is an obligation to respond CCG is trying again
Hello All (to madintheuk)
just a bit of an update – Ellie and the surgery manager have an obligation to reply.
Complaint has been forwarded to GMC – will take ages but will keep you informed
All the best – take care
susanne
———- Forwarded message ———
From: COMPLAINTS (NHS NORTH CENTRAL LONDON CCG)
Date: Wed, Nov 10, 2021 at 5:08 PM
Complaint regarding the seriously misleading information broadcast by Ellie Cannon
Cc: COMPLAINTS (NHS NORTH CENTRAL LONDON CCG)
Dear (susanne)
Thank you for your response.
GPs are not employed by Clinical Commissioning Groups for their general practice work, and we are also not directly responsible for the performance management of GPs. We are co-commissioners with NHS England. We will forward on your complaint to ITV and make sure you are copied in. ITV is responsible for the information that they broadcast on their programmes, and for ensuring that a balanced perspective is presented, so we feel that they would be best placed to respond.
In regards to the complaint you have made about the practice’s contact information, our primary care team will follow this up with the practice to ensure it is addressed.
Best wishes
Brett
Brett Vallance
PALS, Complaints & FOI Manager
North Central London CCG
More on Ellie who seems to to have fingers in several pies
susanne says
October 12, 2021 at 3:26 pm
Ellie says she takes ADs – wonder which one ?. Snippetts From 2012 to 2021
Unsure whether Ellie still works as an expert for Pampers but guess there was no conflict of interest? hubby is a lawer .GP Dr Ellie Cannon, from the Pampers’ expert panel, says: https://www.magicmum.com/I’m proud to be working with Pampers as they really care about what’s best for babies, constantly innovating to create great products. The new Pampers Premium Protection™ range protects and cares for your baby’s skin every step of the way, from newborn through to potty training, meaning that every new product helps to support your baby’s wellbeing.”
Re Baby Milk Action press release 7 March 2016
Issuing the results of a survey is an old trick for companies to try to gain free publicity in the media. Nestlé is today trying to bypass restrictions on advertising its SMA brand of infant formula with a press release campaign on mothers’ knowledge about breastfeeding and protein. It has recruited “media doctor” Dr Ellie Cannon who, according to her website, is “best known for her weekly health column in the Mail on Sunday and her regular appearance on Sky News Sunrise”. Nestlé’s marketing company is attempting to set up interviews with Dr Cannon to speak on the “changing protein composition of breast milk” as part of Nestlé’s new SMA PRO infant formula rollout.
…..The press release does not mention the fact that Nestlé is relaunching its SMA formula as babies fed on the current product have “protein intake in excess of requirements”, according to information sent to health workers.
The company, which is the target of a boycott for unethical baby milk marketing practices around the world, is trying to divert attention from this, while presenting itself as an expert on protein. In the meantime, supermarkets, such as Tesco, are desperately trying to clear their shelves of the current formula, which has led to a campaign in Parliament for formula marketing regulations to be enforced.
CLICK HERE to watch Dispatches: Breastfeeding uncovered.
Broadcast on UK Channel 4 on Monday 30th July, 2018 and includes Baby Milk Action’s Policy Director, Patti Rundall being interviewed by Kate Quilton.
There has been a great response to this program, especially on social media. But also some vitriolic attacks – one from Dr Ellie Cannon in the Mail on Sunday. Worth remembering our Press Release from 2016 – showing her links with Nestle and the SMA brand. Funny she didn’t mention that in the article. Here are some excerpts:
“Just because formula is manufactured – yes, processed – it doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy. Processed merely means ingredients have undergone a process (chopping a tomato is a process, as is heating soup).”… In fact, formula milk is more than a healthy choice, and recent additions to ingredients means it now contains more essential fatty acids and pre and probiotics –…
Complaint to the GMC about Dr Ellie
5th June 2012
Dear Sirs, We write as a group of mothers who breastfeed or have breastfed our children beyond their first year. We would like to make a formal complaint about an article written by Dr Elise (Ellie) Rebecca Cannon (GMC number 6030416), published in the Daily Mail on the 20th May 2012. You can access a copy of the article here and we have enclosed a copy with this correspondence: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2146870/Breastfeed-year-old-Thats-just-selfish-wrong.html We would like to draw your attention to serious inaccuracies in her article and various assertions which we consider to be unprofessional for a registered GP to make and, in our view, breach GMC guidelines. We outline these in detail below. The article deals with ‘attachment parenting’ and, in particular, sustained (or natural-term) breastfeeding…….
Re antidepressants
Joanna Moncrieff
@joannamoncrieff
·
So many things wrong with this – but mainly that it encourages even more people to start and stay on antidepressants, and promotes the mythical idea that they ‘only stop the bad feelings’ https://itv.com/thismorning/articles/the-truth-about-antidepressants-what-you-need-to-know they should return to their moral roots as family doctors – and simply ignore the BMA”
And one from Fiona :
https://nevertrustadoctor.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/my-despair-when-i-listened-to-dr-ellie-cannon-on-itv-this-morning/
susanne says
October 15, 2021 at 2:10 pm
Re: Half of people who stopped long term antidepressants relapsed within a year, study finds Elisabeth Mahase. 374:doi 10.1136/bmj.n2403 E M Works on Thebmj
Dear Editor
This study will reassure those who wish to continue on their antidepressants and to the pharmaceutical companies that produce these drugs. However, as a jobbing GP actually treating these patients I am less reassured. For many patients who have been on anti-depressants for more than a few years a 2 month tapering period is insufficient. We have become increasingly aware that many of the symptoms these patient experience on stopping their anti-depressants are due to the drug withdrawal itself rather a return of the “illness”. It also important to reflect on the study’s finding that 39% of those who continued on their anti-depressants suffered relapses.
It is my experience that with a significantly longer taper (the sort of tapers we use for benzodiazepine users) together with active support many can stop the medication. I also worry that there is not enough of a concern with regard to possible permanent changes in brain chemistry, down -regulation of 5HT and beta-1 receptors as well as changes in serotonin receptor sensitivity with long-term use of these drugs. This might not be a problem over decades but we just do not know.
Depression and anxiety is a biopsychosocial illness and for many of our patients addressing the non-biological aspects although much more difficult is infinitely more rewarding. We must beware the easy option of just writing a prescription and moving on to the next patient.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Last year BBC reporter did a story on how he obtained a diagnosis of “ADHD” from three private clinics, after being assured by an NHS doc that he did not, in fact, have this disorder. The Guardian leapt to the defense of the ADHD industry, with a piece by BBC television presenter Adrian Chiles about his own struggles with this supposed disorder.
A few years ago, Chiles presented the BBC documentary “Drinkers Like Me” in which he revealed he drinks 100 units of alcohol — the equivalent of two and a half cases of beer — a week. If I drank two and a half cases of beer a week, I’d have problems with attention, too.
My take on the controversy:
https://patrickdhahn.substack.com/p/controversy-over-adhd-documentary
Very interesting. I didn’t realise until this recent Guardian-Pariante debacle blew up that Chiles is married to Katherine Viner the G editor.
One of the other ways the G intersects with the points made here – especially the nasty elements – is that previous G columnists like Suzanne Moore were forced out because of a censoring of Free Speech. See https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/the-guardian-freedom-of-speech-suzanne-moore-b1099386.html
She was not saying anything unreasonable or provocative but views that almost certainly are the majority view were categorized as transphobic generating an atmosphere of hostility and unreasonableness she was not prepared to put up with.
See the Silent Health post for more on this G controversy
David
As I write these words, children are being gaslighted, poisoned by hormone blockers and unnatural concentrations of hormones, and being groomed for the pleasure and profit of surgeons and associated professionals whose income stream depends of convincing children they were “born in the wrong body.” All of this is justified by an ideology which not only lacks a credible evidence base, it lacks any semblance of internal coherency, substituting instead a fog of semantic obfuscation.
We are our bodies. How can the body you are born in be the wrong body?
That’s why censorship is the linchpin this enterprise. The entire ideology breaks down under the application of a modicum of facts and logic.
Patrick
There is lots in what you say I agree with but let me distinguish between the trans phenomenon as it applies to older men which dates back 75 years or so. I’ve seen a lot of these people as none of my colleagues would and liked most of them a lot. There is real distress or yearning of some sort – as there is in some people who feel they would be better off without a leg – and have it removed. Surgeons facilitate this but its not driven by surgeons. In these cases while there are some exploitative men, a lot of the social opprobrium is directed at these mostly older men.
The trans phenomenon today though really applies mostly to teenage girls with rapid onset gender dysphoria. Let’s leave the why of why girls should want to transition and not have children to one side – a case could be made for smartphone input etc.
My interest here is more in the as I put it DEI driven nastiness, a vicious brandishing of transphobia slurs, at the mention of harms from the meds used to transit – the denial that they could happen and psychosis about them happening when they do happen. This is not driven by surgeons or the medics who hand out the drugs – although I agree there are shocking clinics doing this – its driven by DEI believers including ‘leaders’ on the Left and directed not just at those who want to transit but in particular at those who face into a detransiting having the accept living with unavoidably permanent scars. There is no sympathy there, little support just opprobrium.
A previous boss of MHRA – Britain’s FDA – June Raine refused to believe that harms like persistent sexual dysfunction after isotretinoin, finasteride or SSRIs could be persistent – because doctors can fix anything these days they can even turn women into men. To call this magical thinking is kind. It breeds hatred toward those who don’t fall into line.
D
That piece by Suzanne Moore reminds me of Naomi Wolf’s discussion of men who would message her in private, thanking her for her work regarding the covid madness, while afraid to say anything in public.
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
https://x.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1805118201505714522
I lost my job in 2019 and was unable to get back into the NHS because of a smear campaign initially by Sarah Boseley in the Guardian & then Barney Calman in the Mail on Sunday saying a ‘place belonged in hell for Drs that say statins don’t work’ – I never said that – their attack was rooted in support from financially conflicted university of Oxford Professor ‘Sir’ Rory Collins but in my relentless pursuit of dissemination of the whole truth we were able to expose a crucial twitter DM message exchange between myself and the then Secretary of State Matt Hancock who had been quoted in the article saying there was no place in the NHS for people like me. In addition the brave and fearless editor of the @bmj_latest
Dr Fiona Godlee also supported me unafraid to call out the Guardian & the Mail on Sunday for their misinformation. These greater truths were highlighted by one of the most thorough & honest health journalists in the U.K. ( who also exposed the ambulance delay cover up that contributed to my father’s death)
@PMGallagher1 in the @theipaper
. THIS story is NOT over
https://inews.co.uk/news/health/statins-war-debate-matt-hancock-aseem-malhotra-rory-collins-271835
The SB and G element of this last comment is interesting
D
Sarah Boseley’s writings on GlaxoSmithKline were second to none – it was a case of ‘whatever next’ …
This is interesting…..
‘What Boseley omitted to do as a decent journalist and a competent reporter was to tell her readership what the medical establishment was worried about.’
The Walker-Smith Appeal, the British Media and the Boseley Problem
https://www.ageofautism.com/2012/02/the-walker-smith-appeal-the-british-media-and-the-boseley-problem.html
The almost unavoidable conclusion is that large sections of the British media have always known that the “Wakefield” prosecution was based on an imposture, and have been holding their silence in contempt of fair reporting and of the public at large, and that these people are much more concerned about their own backs than they are about our children.
John Stone is UK Editor for Age of Autism.
From: Peter Gordon
Sent: 20 May 2014 18:12
To: ‘secretary@ctsu.ox.ac.uk’
Subject: FAO Prof Rory Collins
20 May 2014.
Dear Professor Collins,
I am writing to ask where the public can access any declarations of interest that you may have both individually and for any collaborative research you undertake?
I assume that you may register this with your employer? Can you confirm if this register is open to the public? Perhaps you can send me the link?
Meantime, with a few others, I have helped establish a voluntary register where all doctors can openly declare any conflicts of interest: http://www.whopaysthisdoctor.org/
My declarations are on this site and also here: http://holeousia.wordpress.com/declarationof-interests/
yours sincerely,
Dr Peter J Gordon
NHS Consultant Psychiatrist for Older Adults
NHS Forth Valley
(this e-mail is written in my own time)
From: Rory Collins
Sent: 21 May 2014 17:47
To: Peter Gordon
Subject: RE: FAO Prof Rory Collins
Dear Dr Gordon
The link to the CTSU’s policy on honoraria etc is https://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/news/press-releases-archive/honoraria. With respect to research grants to Oxford University for independent research that we conduct, I am attaching a list.
Best wishes,
Rory Collins
From: Peter Gordon
Sent: 21 May 2014 19:05
To: ‘Rory Collins’
Subject: RE: FAO Prof Rory Collins
Dear Professor Collins,
Many thanks for this which is most helpful. I should say the reason I ask is that I am interested in the area of transparency generally and have petitioned the Scottish Government for A Sunshine Act: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/GettingInvolved/Petitions/sunshineact
I noted today that today in a BMJ Rapid Response Peter C Gøtzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, Copenhagen concluded “I believe science ceases to exist when no one else than those who have conflicts of interest are allowed to see the data.”
http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g3306/rr/698864
It is helpful to get both the CTSU’s Policy on honoraria and also the attachment for research grants to Oxford University. However my question was where can the public view any declarations of interest you might have? I find that I cannot determine this from what you have most kindly supplied.
The GMC advice is that …. “If you are in doubt about whether there is a conflict of interest, act as though there is.”
I do hope you might be able to help further on this even if it is simply to confirm in the public domain that you have no declarations to make.
Kind wishes,
Peter Gordon
From: Rory Collins
Sent: 23 May 2014 12:51
To: Peter Gordon
Subject: RE: FAO Prof Rory Collins
Dear Peter
Thank you for your comments. I do agree that it is important for potential conflicts of interest to be made explicit and we are looking at the best way to do this for all of our grants on an ongoing basis.
However, I have made it clear publicly that the unit has significant research grants from the pharmaceutical industry and, indeed, have also sent these to the BMJ.
Again, thanks for your advice.
Best wishes,
Rory
From: Peter Gordon
Sent: 23 May 2014 16:45
To: ‘Rory Collins’
Subject: RE: FAO Prof Rory Collins
You are welcome.
If you wanted to, by declaring on the voluntary register http://www.whopaysthisdoctor.org/ you would at least save yourself from further enquiries (not from me I should add; this will be my last e-mail to you on this subject).
Given the topicality of this issue I would urge all directly or indirectly involved to consider how important full transparency is in this area … even if this is to declare no conflicts of interest. I am sure as a scientist you would agree.
I wish you well and thank you kindly for your prompt replies.
Aye Peter
The ‘Pariante’ bug…
Medicine and the Media
Statins for all?
BMJ 2012; 345 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e6044 (Published 12 September 2012)Cite this as: BMJ 2012;345:e6044
Margaret McCartney, general practitioner, Glasgow
An epidemiologist’s call for all healthy adults over 50 to take statins was uncritically reinforced by the media without proper discussion of risks and side effects, writes Margaret McCartney
“Give statins to all over-50s. Even the healthy should take heart drug, says British expert.” This headline heralded a few days of intense media publicity, focusing on a talk given by the UK epidemiologist Rory Collins at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Munich. The Daily Mail continued in the same vein: “Currently statins only given to around eight million high-risk patients; But Professor Sir Rory Collins says healthy people can also benefit; He said evidence from 130 000 patients shows they’re safe.”1
The Geoffrey Rose lecture on population science, which Collins had delivered, is an annual event at the congress. It was publicised by means of a press notice that said that “Collins’s lecture this morning will hold out the promise of even more rapid demonstration of the benefits of adding newer cholesterol-lowering agents to the statins.”2 The Mail continued: “Prof Collins, 57, went to his GP a fortnight ago to ask about taking statins despite a relatively low cholesterol level, and was dismayed to learn …
‘
Professor Sir Rory Collins, Head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, and Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank, has been awarded the Medical Research Council (MCR) Millennium Medal 2020, the MRC’s most prestigious personal award.
https://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/news/professor-sir-rory-collins-awarded-medical-research-council-millennium-medal-2020/
2020 is the year when the importance of medical research – from basic science at the level of the molecule to epidemiology on a global scale – for everyone in every country has become clear. The ability of the world’s scientists to find ways to help control the COVID-19 pandemic so rapidly is a consequence of the type of long-term investment that the Medical Research Council makes in all types of medical research. As someone supported by the MRC throughout their research career, it is an extraordinary honour to be awarded its Millennium Medal at such a time.’
Uh-huh…
WILD – on so many levels…
Britain snubs GSK as Pfizer wins jab rollout contract: U.S. group delivers big RSV setback to Walmsley
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/britain-snubs-gsk-as-pfizer-wins-jab-rollout-contract-u-s-group-delivers-big-rsv-setback-to-walmsley/ar-BB1oOvZl
The Pfizer drug is also approved for both the elderly and pregnant women. GSK’s only has approval for the elderly.