Why is Britain’s “Public Health” such a joke?

We said good riddance to Public Health England, the body that deliberately blocked any serious research into nutrition. But now we’re lumbered with its replacements: the UK Health Security Agency AND the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities. These titles are all beginning to sound a bit 1984-ish. 

October 1 announcements declared, “UK Health Security Agency (HSA) launches with a relentless focus on keeping the nation safe”. And “The Office for Health Improvement (OHI) and Disparities launches today putting prevention at the heart to help people live longer, healthier and happier lives”, declaring a “New era of public health to tackle inequalities and level up the UK”.

The HSA “will take on a critical role in protecting the public and ensuring we are prepared for health threats and future pandemics”, said health minister Sajid Javid. That’ll be “relentlessly focusing” on trying to deliver “health” via needles, then.

Meanwhile, the first move in the OHI’s bid to put “prevention at the heart” was announced by England’s inept chief medical officer Chris Whitty: adding fluoride to the UK’s drinking water to “prevent” tooth decay.

The dead hand of Public Health England was still at work here, as this move was based on its estimates that stepping up fluoridation would reduce cavities by 17% among the richest children and 28% among the poorest. Tooth decay is the biggest cause of hospitalisation for children aged from five to nine. The emotional appeal here is, “Don’t you care about the children?”

Apparently not. Because if it did, our new Office for Health Improvement would take action to discourage parents feeding their kids sugary drinks and sticky buns, and encourage them to make sure kids brush their teeth – after all, most toothpaste is FLUORIDATED – and drink more tea (more fluoride).

“Public Health” in Britain is a joke. We’re the fattest of all Western European nations, with a third of our population obese; diabetes here has DOUBLED in the last 15 years; our cancer survival rates are the worst in Europe; around 450 people a DAY die from heart disease or circulatory disorders; and 15 million Brits are living with at least one “untreatable” chronic disease – that’ll soon be 25% of the entire population. HALF of UK adults have cholesterol levels above national guidelines, and almost eight million people are taking lipid-lowering drugs – and the response to THAT is for the NHS to approve £2,000, twice-yearly injections of a pharmaceutical. 

When the best the combined might of OHI and HAS and all the nation’s chief medical officers can come up with are more jabs and medicating the water supply…have to say: not impressed.

Diet and lifestyle beat resistant hypertension – the first acknowledgement

People in the US with high blood pressure are given a succession of drugs. When these fail, the patient is told they have “resistant hypertension”. Quite why the first line approach to hypertension should be drugs, when diet and lifestyle can easily bring it under control, exposes yet again orthodox medicine’s preference to boost drug company profits rather than do anything useful. Anyway…it turns out that resistant hypertension can also easily be treated with diet and lifestyle. But apparently no one wanted to risk profits by formally testing that idea before now. The FIRST clinical trial has only just been done – published September 27 in the American Heart Association’s journal! (See page 7.) Researchers at Duke University found that behavioural changes, adoption of the DASH diet, regular aerobic exercise and losing weight, can lower blood pressure significantly and improve cardiovascular health in people with resistant hypertension. Who could POSSIBLY have guessed it!?

By coincidence, in our research pages this month (page 46 onwards), you’ll see news of supplements that boost nitric oxide levels – critical in heart disease. In one month, supplementation produced a12mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure and 6mmHg reduction in diastolic pressure. (That supplement has 11 clinical trials behind it, and counting, so there is no reason for it not to be noticed or for these supplements to be dismissed as quackery.)

Another scandalous episode. 

When is orthodox medicine going to admit that its total reliance on the pharmaceutical industry, coupled with its ignorance of basic facts about nutrition, supplements and lifestyle modification is killing thousands of people every year?

As an aside, in the UK a patient isn’t hypertensive until they hit 140/90mmHg or higher. The US sets the bar at 130/80mm Hg. Dropping it that low in 2017 added 30 million more customers to Pharma’s customer base and resulted in 50% of Americans being diagnosed with the condition. (Yes, the basic “science” behind pharmaceutical medicine changes according to the country you live in.)

Once more for the lowest-cost drug you can find

Aspirin use reduces risk of death in hospitalised COVID-19 patients – again (see page 47). “This is a critical finding that needs to be confirmed through a randomised clinical trial”, said study leader Jonathan Chow, MD. “If our finding is confirmed, it would make aspirin the first widely available, over-the-counter medication to reduce mortality in COVID-19 patients”. So wrong. Not only have Israeli researchers already published data from 10,000 patients (rather than the mere 412 in the US study), but this lot don’t seem to have heard of vitamin C, vitamin D or zinc. 

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Simon Martin
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