An ad on STV caught my eye the other day. It was a public service ad from NHS Scotland and was exhorting people to be prepared for the Christmas and New Year holidays as their GP surgeries would be closed Tuesday and Wednesday on each of the next two weeks. So, “don’t run out of your repeat prescriptions”!
And I thought, this is the big idea in health care? Make sure patients realise their doctors won’t be working for two days in a row so DON’T RUN OUT OF YOUR DRUGS.
I thought I’d pop across and see what NHS24 were saying. They have a whole section called “Be Ready for Winter”. It’s got three pieces of advice –
1. Restock your medicine cabinet
2. Order repeat prescriptions
3. Note when your GP’s surgery closes
Then, on Friday, I read an article in New Scientist, entitled “A humane solution” which was advocating more human drug trials instead of animal ones, as the animal ones don’t show the potential problems when drugs are taken by humans. But here’s the bit in the article that whacked me between the eyes….the first sentence….
Adverse drug reactions are a major cause of death, killing 197,000 people annually in the European Union and upwards of 100,000 in the US
Why do we tolerate this?
How did a “Health Service” become a “Drug Service”?
Heroes Not Zombies 
As sinister as this sounds? I think it was the plan of Big Pharma all along. It is particularly bad in the USA, where they paired up with the AMA, eradicated all herbal and homeopathic medical schools and actively changed the laws more than 100 years ago, and because of their power, continue to change those laws to exercise more power and remain there. I have to remind everyone that the same people were poisoning people with Mercury for a long time before what we know as modern pharmaceuticals were around.