I will consider some of the Disbenefits of seeking Consensus

I came across this very interesting article by John Kay, about Consensus and the undesirable outcomes that, in practice, tend to result from seeking Consensus. I do urge you to read it.

He summarises his thesis in these words:
“Just as universities need to tell people to stop quibbling and work towards a common objective, companies need to realise that clustering around a corporate conventional wisdom that has not been subject to analysis and debate is also not a recipe for success.”

Earlier today, on Radio 4, I heard someone (sorry, I didn’t catch who he was) speaking critically about Wikipedia, and, if I remember correctly, criticising it essentially for tending to move towards Consensus, rather than towards Truth. Like him, I favour Truth, backed up by Evidence, rather than Consensus, backed up by Assertion.

The Climate Change Science Scandal that has featured prominently in the news recently, rested in essence on one set of scientists, led by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, seeking to manipulate access to data, and the interpretation of data, in order to bring more scientists to a consensus favouring his views, in the hope/expectation that consensus would be accepted as truth, even though the data had been doctored.

When I use the word ‘doctored’ in this context, I do so advisedly. – For many years, law courts and judgments were over-influenced by so-called ‘expert’ opinions expressed by ‘expert’ witnesses, in particular ‘expert’ medical opinions. Such was the deference the justice system accorded to these expert medics, that in practice the opinions they expressed were mostly accepted as factual evidence, rather than opinion. This institutional prejudice was compounded by what was called ‘The Bolam Test’, which was adopted by some other countries – former British colonies, I believe – as well as Britain.

A doctor, dentist, nurse, etc is deemed to owe “a duty of care” to the patients they treat. But when a doctor, say, was negligent in the way he treated his patient, according to the Bolam Test, it did not necessarily amount to negligence if support could be found for it among other members of his profession – even if there was not a lot of support. This ruling meant in practice that a doctor accused of medical negligence needed only to find another ‘expert’ who would testify to having done the same thing, or would testify that he would have made the same diagnosis, as the accused doctor.

Obviously this practice was widely abused as there was no shortage of venal health professionals willing to testify in such a way as to favour a fellow member of their profession. – I remember when I was on the Steering Committee of the RSI Campaign, that we had a young lawyer come to speak to us one evening, and he told us that lawyers could always find an expert medical witness to give any opinion their doctor client wanted to be given, provided they paid him enough.

This, of course, is disgraceful and unjust enough, but the Bolam Test spread its baleful tentacles into clinical practice, and has had the effect of increasing the incidence of medical negligence. Medical and dental practitioners regarded themselves as pretty safe from being found guilty of negligence, because all they had to do when a patient made any charge or complaint of negligence against them, was to ensure that colleagues of similar standing in the profession would back them up about the course of action/inaction they had taken. This was easily achieved because there tends to be a feeling within the ‘caring’ professions that “there but for the grace of God, go I”, and a tendency to support erring professional colleagues, in the expectation that if they got into the same situation, their colleagues would similarly support them.

Thus it was that when I suffered sustained negligent and appallingly cruel treatment at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital years ago, it proved almost impossible for me to get the treatment I desperately needed, despite seeing several dentists well able to have provided it. See Fighting the System.

One of the negligent dentists, Stephen Hatt, Head of Restorative Dentistry, sneeringly invited me to write a letter of complaint about him. – “Much good it’ll do you!” he jeered, in complete confidence that nothing whatever would be done about his cruel treatment, which had caused me such long, agonising pain and the later loss of a tooth. And he was right. Nothing at all was done about the letter I arduously compiled and sent.

Long after this, I was talking socially about the matter to a young dentist who worked in a different town, and I asked him why it was that whenever I had tried to get help from another dentist at that dreadful hospital, they had scrupulously examined the notes about my treatment, instead of examining the teeth themselves! He explained that the system was that they had to be sure that they would all say they would have made the same diagnosis as the negligent senior dental staff who had harmed me, and so that treatment would have been considered correct and they would not have been deemed to be at fault. – This is an example of the law of unintended consequences, and leads to the extraordinary probability that if ALL would have treated the patient badly, then NONE is considered negligent!

Officially the Bolam Test is no longer part of the legal process, but in practice its spirit lives on, and most health professionals do not worry much about getting into trouble about their poor treatment of a patient, because there remains the implicit assumption that doctors and dentists are altruistic, omniscient beings who do not make errors, or if they do, it is not their fault. You have only to remember the terrible harm done by the arrogant, ill-informed Professor Sir Roy Meadow in the case of Sally Clark, and to realise that even now, despite all the tragic consequences of his flawed testimony, colleagues in his profession continue to defend him!

I remember reading years ago – I think it was in The Politics of Schizophrenia by David Hill – that the only time doctors/psychiatrists all agree on a psychiatric diagnosis is when they are all wrong…(o:

You will have gathered that I do not favour consensus as being a reliable guide to the truth of any belief. I look back on those two very famous errors of hundreds of years ago that held sway because of being the consensus view, namely that
1) the Earth is flat, and that
2) the Sun goes round the Earth.

I rest my case.

I like the Sunday Times’ article about the Climate Change Science Scandal

Jonathan Leake in this Sunday Times article leads me to conclude that whichever view of of the Climate Change debate turns out in the end to be accepted as correct, Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, has sullied his own reputation and sullied the reputation of science. The winning of an argument by manipulation of the data is so discreditable that in my opinion he no longer can be thought of as a scientist. I believe that scientists should be seekers of the truth. (Whatever the truth of this matter, however, I have a webpage which, among other issues, does have original, easy and cost-free advice that, if taken, would result in a reduction of energy consumption by people taking the advice. See social and economic considerations involved in acknowledging and telling the truth about obesity and the salt connection.)

The Climate Change Science scandal is just one of the most recent of scandals of ’scientists’ who dishonour their calling, for example the American psychiatrists who have so gravely harmed children with psychoactive drugs. Read about one of them in the Boston Globe’s article about Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa’s investigation into whether Harvard child psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman’s association with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson influenced his research findings about their psychotropic drugs, and therefore harmed children.

The most catastrophically harmful ’scientific’ scandal and con-trick in the history of the world has yet to be universally recognised and acknowledged, however. – I allude to the big dieting/calorie con, the insistence that eating less and exercising more will reduce obesity. – IT WON’T.

That damaging advice will not work because obesity is caused not by ingesting too many calories, but by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt, and it is easily, SAFELY and swiftly reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. Read more about this on my website.

Medical staff using contaminated needles are infecting millions of Africans with HIV

The Telegraph reports that “One in five HIV sufferers in Africa was infected by medical staff using dirty needles and clinical equipment.” That is nearly five million new cases annually because of bad, crucially unhygienic practice. The research appears in a publication backed by the Royal Society of Medicine.

“Africans are subject to a much higher proportion of injections and blood tests than patients in the West, according to a 1999 study for the World Health Organisation.

That research found that a wide range of common symptoms such as colds, ear infections, fatigue and tonsillitis were treated with injections rather than oral medication.

The study concluded that at least 50 per cent of these were unsafe, with needles being used repeatedly on one patient after another, without sterilisation.“

I hope you are as horrified as I am. – It seems clear to me that Western medicine needs to get the Hell out of Africa, where it is directly responsible for appalling suffering, disease and death on an unimaginable scale.

In my opinion, philanthropy as it is too often practised by Big Business – i.e. unloading a load of pharmaceutical drugs, sometimes drugs that contain live microbes – to be injected into Africa’s adults and children in less than hygienic circumstances, seems like the work of the devil incarnate!

The Constant Gardener, a book by John le Carré, has the harm done by Big Pharma to African citizens as its fictional theme, but although the detail in the book is fictional, the reality of the harm done by pharmaceutical junk in Africa is actually worse. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film/DVD, I recommend you do so and have your eyes opened.

Scotland’s ‘obesity epidemic’ and how to reduce it by eating less salt

BBC News reports that two-thirds of men and more than half of women in Scotland are now overweight. Well that’s a great shame and much of that increase could have been avoided. It is about eight years since I contacted Bill Gray, who was at the time National Project Officer of the Scottish Community Diet Project, Scottish Consumer Council, and also others working in the same field. We wrote and we spoke on the phone. I sent him lots of material and evidence making clear that to reduce obesity/overweight it is necessary to reduce salt intake and that it is not necessary to diet or to try to lose weight by exercising.

This is an extract from what I wrote to him almost exactly 8 years ago:

“As I explained to your female colleague, I am not asking you to endorse my advice.

I am asking you to tell people that it could be salt and water retention that has caused their weight gain and that if they reduce their salt intake they could lose weight. They have only to try it. They will then find for themselves that they lose weight. Without the information that salt can be the cause of weight gain they are highly unlikely to discover it for themselves.

I have quoted to you EXACTLY what Sir Richard Doll wrote to me, but you seem to have discounted what HE says, as well as what I say.

Why I say you have treated me shabbily is mainly because you are not a man of your word. You promised, TWICE, to reply to my letters. You did not reply. Your colleague, stammering and almost incoherent when I spoke to her, also promised me a response. Again nothing. Good God! You would think I was asking you to tell people something that might endanger their health rather that enhance it! Cutting down on salt is entirely safe and completely free. Just give the additional information that it could also cause weight loss in the obese.

Why don’t you have the courage to believe Sir Richard?

My MP has sent me a photocopy of a letter he has received from Pauline Jackson, a friend of mine and another of his constituents. In a separate email, I shall send you a copy of it.

THEN PLEASE COME BACK TO ME ON THIS.

Copying my stuff and passing it on to others in the hope that they will have the courage to do what you yourself lack the courage for, is just a waste of time and paper. They will be as cowardly as you have shown them that you are. They too will be unwilling to put their heads above the parapet and you will all continue to leave many THOUSANDS of people needlessly suffering all sorts of health problems and all sorts of emotional and social and psychological distress. Do you really want that on your conscience?“

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, boost your lung function and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! – Try it!

See my website.
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts – just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in Foods

AstraZeneca Judge to Urge Return of Seroquel (Antipsychotic Drug) Cases to Courts

AstraZeneca Plc may face as many 6,000 trials of lawsuits claiming its antipsychotic drug Seroquel causes diabetes after a judge said she will recommend sending the cases back to their home courts. U.S. District Judge Anne Conway in Orlando, Florida, who is overseeing pre-trial proceedings in federal Seroquel litigation, said yesterday she’ll urge a panel of judges to return all of the cases to courts across the U.S. for possible trials.

See article at bloomberg.com.

Fighting the System: the uselessness, cruelty and bias of the NHS Complaints Procedures

The first feature article I wrote for Mensa’s monthly glossy magazine was about medical and dental negligence and the uselessness, cruelty and bias of the NHS Complaints Procedures, and was entitled ‘Fighting the System’. In the years since then there will have been changes to the Complaints Procedure, but I am confident that it still harms complainants rather than helping them or reforming the system.

This is a slightly shortened version of the article:

Fighting the System

An abscess flared up on one of my front teeth. Talking was difficult and sleep impossible. My dentist said there was nothing wrong. So I went to the Dental Hospital. The pain – sudden, acute, accompanied by swelling, most severe when biting – was exactly characteristic of an acute abscess. But the pain was discounted and the abscess not treated.

When you have toothache you chew in strange ways to avoid exacerbating it. This puts unnatural pressures on teeth and it is easy to crack them. This happened to me. A cracked cusp, a separate agony, went untreated. Tooth-brushing was an ordeal and could not be as thorough as before the pain. Decay started, causing further severe toothache. This also went untreated. It was almost a year before the abscess was treated. It was over two years before I obtained treatment for all the dental disorders causing the toothache!

If consulted by a man with an abscess and weeping in agony, surely the most negligent dentist would take note of the signs and symptoms and would treat the abscess in its acute phase, ending the pain. In a full year of many attendances at the Sheffield Dental Hospital I was constantly insulted and left in agony. One consultant called me ‘You Fat Depressives’, plural, instead of using my name. It was clear that he habitually addressed suffering women in this way.

I eventually found a dentist brave enough to try to put things right. He dealt with the gross infections, etc but tragically much of the pain had by this time become chronic, which often happens when the cause is not dealt with promptly.

I heard from other women who had had their pain derided or been told that it was ‘nerves’ or ‘all in the mind’. One Rotherham woman had endured agony from trigeminal neuralgia for 13 years before someone (a neurosurgeon in private practice) took her pain seriously and operated. The pain then stopped. Trigeminal neuralgia mainly attacks women and its only symptom is pain. It is not uncommon for people to kill themselves because of severe toothache or because of trigeminal neuralgia, so intense is the pain.

Thirteen years of needless agony. Why does such cruelty flourish? The answer is many-faceted, of course. It includes ignorance and arrogance. Pre-eminent, however, is the health professional’s demeaning attitude towards women, coupled with the scandalous fact that in this country doctors and dentists are accountable to no-one, not to the patient, not to the hospital, not to the NHS.

Women are sub-human, second-class citizens whose voice need not be heeded. Everyone knows, don’t they, that whatever a woman complains of, the ‘real’ cause is usually psychological, and instead of investigation and treatment all she needs is a brusque injunction to pull herself together and a prescription for tranquillisers and anti-depressants. That’ll settle her!

In my desperate efforts to obtain the treatment I needed I turned to every health agency. All pretended that negligence does no occur. No-one insisted that my teeth be examined and my agonising toothache dealt with. The health agencies and the people to whom complainants must address complaints are financed by the DHSS or the NHS and by definition not impartial. The Complaints Procedure routinely adds to the difficulties of complainants rather than dealing with their complaints of negligence.

Why are the legislators not moved to effective remedial legislation? There are many reasons, I suppose; laziness, fear, the myth of medical infallibility, the desire to keep in with medics and their retinues, the fact that most MPs use private medicine rather than the NHS and that when they do use the NHS they get preferential treatment. Surely, also, a lack of imagination – failure to comprehend the scale of the suffering, the profound and terrible difficulties of damaged victims – trapped in pain and distress and worry, trapped in misunderstanding, trapped in bewilderment that those to whom they turn for help and from whom they have been led to believe they will receive it, adopt a confrontational stance. There is no-one in the entire edifice of the Health Service from whom victims of medical negligence can be assured of receiving help. They do not know where to turn.

In the Sheffield Star of August 20th 1986, the Administrator of the Sheffield Family Practitioner Committee is quoted as saying of complaints that most of them ‘were dealt with amicably, although in some cases the patient was struck off’. Dealing with complaints is clearly thought of as a matter of smoothing ruffled feathers or of placating/punishing the complainant, rather than of examining faults that need to be put right. If you made a complaint about trains, you would not consider it resolved by being forbidden to travel by train any more, would you? Why should a complaint about a doctor be considered resolved by crossing the complainant off his list?

When in the press someone criticises the medical profession, another person is certain to write in to protest that they themselves received wonderful treatment. e.g. the dreadful way that Sue Arnold was treated at the Moorfields Eye Clinic in London, reported a few months ago in her column in the Observer magazine. The following week someone wrote about their wonderful treatment there. If you publicised finding a dead mouse in a loaf, no-one would dream of writing to say that they had had a loaf from the same shop and it hadn’t had a dead mouse in it! Officials aver that the public makes few complaints about the Health Service. Like saying that most of our loaves don’t contain dead mice.

The official claim disregards the justifiable fears many people have about making a complaint. You risk being struck of a doctor’s list (and often the family of the complainant is also struck off) and may find it difficult to get a doctor at all.

The main reason for outraged complaint is being treated as sub-human. As I was. Callously left in agony which could easily have been treated and which I clearly could not treat myself. Agony for which it was impossible to get relief without the treatment that was being denied me. Abscesses and caries cannot ‘get better’. There has to be professional intervention.

By allowing medics to insult people under the guise of diagnosing them, by allowing honourable people to be treated in this appalling way, humanity is defiled. By categorising the person who then complains as a nuisance who must be pacified if possible and quelled if not, no-one is safe from such defilement.

There are moves to tinker with the Complaints Procedure. The Primary Health Care leaflet, with the Government’s proposals for discussion on health services outside hospital, suggests that there should be informal conciliation procedures to settle less serious complaints quickly and effectively. Again the ruffled feathers syndrome. Complainants do not want conciliation, they want remedial action taken about the complaint. Officially, negligence does not occur. So nothing is done about it.

It would be salutary to cause to be published a sample of the complaints of the last year and what the Complaints Procedure did about them. This would show it up for the charade it is. One only hears of anything being done if the matter is given publicity, which seldom helps.

That suffering, ill, exhausted people damaged by the medical profession have the right to redress in the civil courts is no right at all. Only 3% or 4% of cases get to court and they take a minimum of 4 years to get there. Everything is weighted against the victim, especially the hostile attitude of the Health Authorities. In any case, action in the civil courts has only individual relevance. General reform cannot result.

What victims most need is remedial treatment. There is no provision for this. What can be more important than the right to urgent remedial treatment when you have been harmed by hospital personnel? Gross medical negligence is compounded by the implacable unhelpfulness of the Health Authorities.

The NHS should be accountable to the consumer – i.e. the patient. Medical and dental staff have absolute power to give or to withhold necessary investigation and treatment to patients, to treat them with insolence, to defame their characters in privileged communications, etc. provided only that they call this the exercise of ‘clinical judgment’. (Compare this with, in recent times in Parliament, the ritual incantation that a matter is one of ‘national security’ and as such no-one has the right to question it.) Such power is clearly dangerous, is open to abuse and is clearly being abused. Terrible suffering like mine would be totally prevented if medical and dental staff were accountable.

Negligence

There can be nothing in this country more heinously unjust than the lack of help for the suffering victims of medical negligence. Patients have no protection whatsoever from the ignorance, incompetence, negligence and sometimes sheer malice of doctors and dentists. People who are not victims of the system are unaware of the situation. That negligent doctors and dentists incur neither censure not sanction from the system ensures that negligence flourishes.

It is a moral imperative for caring people to do what they can to bring a speedy end to this cruelty.

The Complaints Procedure needs to be scrapped and replaced by a system providing immediate help for the victim of negligence (I don’t mean money; I mean remedial treatment and support) and an independent inquiry into the negligence with the purpose of apportioning responsibility and instituting reform to protect potential future victims. I stress that I am not interested in legal redress. I am asking for legislative action to remedy a national scandal.

The Health Ombudsman defines instances of medical negligence as matters of clinical judgment, and matters of clinical judgment, conveniently for negligent doctors and dentists, are outside his terms of reference. So he does not help. His reply to my letter made clear that he had given scant attention to my arduously compiled material. My evidence was ignored.

This state of affairs is independent of who the individuals are who become victims, being only dependent on the deficiencies of a system which allows the magic phrase ‘clinical judgment’ to override reason, humanity and justice. Clinical judgment cannot, by definition, obtain, where clinical diagnostic procedures have been waived. To pretend otherwise is an abuse of language, an abuse of trust, effectively an abuse of power and in practice a physical and psychological abuse of individual victims.

These abuses are systemic and must be rooted out. The powerless and suffering need protection from such cruelty.

There was a public inquiry about Wendy Savage, a doctor neither negligent nor incompetent, and about whom no patients had lodged complaints. There are no inquiries into real cases of negligence, initiated by the victims. Health professionals would be much more careful if their actions were to be subjected to public scrutiny.

In an article in the Telegraph, Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association asks, “Will those responsible for UK Hospital Trust failures be held to account?”

The Telegraph carries further articles about UK hospital trust failures today, one of which is this heartfelt indictment of the system, written by Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association. I urge you to read it.

She writes that “we need to start holding NHS managers to account so that the army of bureaucrats that run the NHS will know that recklessly endangering patients” will lead to the end of their careers and the loss of their generous pensions. Personally I would like it to lead to an appearance in the criminal court as well. People whose negligence results in the untimely deaths of innocent people and the unnecessary suffering of many others should in my view go to prison for what I believe should be classed as crimes.

She writes also that “the NHS complaints process is a bureaucratic nightmare completely lacking the necessary powers and independence to ensure patients are protected and changes are made.” – I can vouch for that, having attempted to make a complaint about gross, sustained, cruel negligence by a number of senior staff at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital years ago. – Nothing whatsoever was done to help me or to prevent others from suffering the same cruel negligence I had suffered. I was insulted and subjected to further negligence and the official who was supposed to be ‘dealing with my complaint’ sought to intimidate me by threatening me with a libel action if I persisted in complaining about the atrocious treatment I had endured.

There is nothing people who suffer harm from hospital treatment or filthy wards or poor nursing care or negligent, ignorant, arrogant health professionals can do about it, because making a complaint is an exercise in futility.

If you would like to read my Mensa article about my own experience of the NHS Complaints Procedures, you can read it in my next post!

Hundreds of patients died because of appalling NHS hospital care.

The Telegraph reports that appalling care, filthy wards and complacent management at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals FoundationTrust have led to the deaths of up to 400 patients a year. The Care Quality Commission discovered a litany of negligence issues.

Extract from the Telegraph article:

“Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association said: “Yet again patients are being neglected. Lack of monitoring, lack of help with feeding, lack of dignity, avoidable pressure sores. How many times do the public need to keep hearing about this before the Government is embarrassed enough to do something about it?

“We’re sick and tired of NHS managers and senior staff walking away unscathed when families are left with a life sentence of grief.” “

It is routine for complaints about hospital care to be treated dismissively, denied and not acted upon. Until negligent personnel incur sanctions appropriate to the seriousness of the negligence and its outcomes, negligence will continue to flourish and increase. Healthcare staff are allowed to get away with appalling treatment of patients; they believe themselves to be safe from both censure and sanction. Over the years I have had two erring health professionals say to me that there was no point in my making a complaint about them because it would not do any good at all. – And therein lies the reason there is so much negligence by healthcare workers and so much needless suffering by NHS patients.

If negligent, uncaring, complacent staff were to be tried in a criminal court and found guilty of grievous bodily harm or whatever appropriate charge were to be laid, and received an appropriate sentence, these awful cases would become rare indeed.

Instead we have the useless inhouse system in which the usual complaints procedure is to ignore the complaints except perhaps to victimise the complainants.

Experts say that the present maximum daily salt intake recommendation of 6g is too high and should be lowered.

BBC News reports that experts now say the recommended daily maximum salt intake of 6g is too high and should be lowered.

Professor Graham MacGregor, said: “All the evidence now points that the target should be set lower. Getting it below 6g would give more benefit.”

He said the 6g figure, set by the government’s expert advisers back in 1994, had been “plucked out of the air” because the evidence at the time was not that good.

“We knew it was important to cut salt intake and we wanted a target that the food industry would accept.”

Well not to put too fine a point on it, Professor MacGregor is being somewhat misleading in what he says! – Although the 6g figure was advised in 1994, for many years from 1994 on, the food industry continued to ladle more and more and more and more salt into their highly salted convenience foods and ready meals and salty snacks without let or hindrance, and the government didn’t start advising people to cut down on salt till round about 2003/4. (And if memory serves me correctly, the first advice given was max 7g a day for men and 5g a day for women. Years later it was changed to 6g a day.)

Recommendations made about salt

COMA

1 Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease 1994 This COMA report considered the evidence for a causal relationship between the consumption of sodium and both the level of blood pressure and the rise in blood pressure with age. A statement in the report said it recommended: “A reduction in the average intake of common salt (sodium chloride) by the adult population from the current level of about 9g/day to about 6g/day. There needs to be a gradual reduction in the amount of sodium from salt added to processed food and food manufacturers, caterers, and individuals should explore and grasp the opportunity for reducing the sodium content of foods and meals.” The Chief Medical Officer at that time, accepted all the recommendations in this COMA report except for the recommendation to reduce salt. The reason for this is not clear but is believed to be pressure from industry. Department of Health (1994), “Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease”, HMSO, London.

2 Dietary Reference Values 1991 This COMA report considered that: “Current sodium intakes are needlessly high and we caution against any trend towards increased intakes”. It set its recommended intake for salt, as with all the other recommended intakes for nutrients, on the basis of the balance of risks and benefits, which might practically be expected to occur. The RNI for a particular population group is defined as the amount of the nutrient that is enough or more than enough for about 97% of the people in this group. The Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for sodium for adults was set at 1600 mg/day. This is equivalent to approximately 4g of salt, if all the sodium was present in the diet as sodium chloride. This is considerably less than the present intake of 9-12g. Department of Health (1991), “Dietary Reference values for food, energy and nutrients for the United Kingdom”, HMSO, London

I wonder why The Chief Medical Officer (Kenneth Calman, I believe) in the early ’90s apparently did nothing to implement the recommendation of a maximum of 4g of salt a day, and apparently gave greater consideration to the desires of the food industry than to the health of the nation, and I wonder how many deaths and how much terrible suffering he was, therefore, personally responsible for? And I wonder why his successors in the post were so tardy in taking effective steps to give warnings about salt consumption? – Political considerations? – What though, could be more important in this matter than the health of the members of public – the electorate – the tax-payers, in fact?

I consider the failure until recent times to put pressure on food manufacturers and caterers to reduce the sodium content of foods and meals to be a dereliction of duty of successive political administrations and health departments. – I remember buying McCance and Widdowson’s ‘Composition of Foods’ in the late ’90s, at considerable cost, in order to discover how much sodium there was in food. There was no way consumers could get this information from the pack. - The people of this country have been very ill-served in this matter.

See my webpage about the politics of salt for fuller coverage of the issue.

And it is more than time for Professor MacGregor to tell the truth about salt sensitivity, especially that caused by the reckless over-prescribing of pharmaceutical drugs that cause weakened blood vessels, massive fluid retention and consequent morbid obesity. – I wrote to him about this OVER TEN YEARS AGO and yet he is still not telling the truth about obesity and the salt connection.

Transplanted organs are less safe now because more donors are ‘risky’

BBC News reports that the organs used in transplants are now, because of the shortage of donors, more likely to come from patients with a history of cancer or drug abuse, drinkers and heavy smokers, elderly donors and those with serious illnesses.

Extract from the article: “One patient who was given a kidney, which turned out to be cancerous and had to be removed, told File on 4 she had been so traumatised by the experience she had refused to put her name back on the transplant waiting list.

The woman said: “I felt as though my life had been ruined. I felt destroyed, my family was destroyed… my husband has to care for me now. When I was on dialysis before I was coping, now dialysis is worse.” “

My personal opinion is that transplanting organs that have a high likelihood of transmitting serious disease to the recipient is irresponsible in the extreme and should not be contemplated.

The way to deal with the problem of insufficient organs available for donations is to prevent so much illness occurring in the first place. – This would be very easily and rapidly achieved by telling the truth about prescription drugs, obesity and the salt connection.

Obesity is the main underlying cause of most chronic illness and a lot of frailty. It is therefore increasingly desirable to reduce the incidence and severity of obesity because this would reduce chronic illness, frailty and human suffering to a small fraction of what it is now. But this CANNOT be achieved by continuing to give the wrong information about the causes of obesity and about how best to reduce obesity.

Obesity is NOT caused by eating too many calories/too much fat and/or taking too little exercise. – No matter how many doctors and other ‘experts’ claim that it is, and that it can be reduced by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise, they are wrong and it is still NOT true. – The hypothesis has never been put to the test scientifically and there is certainly not a shred of valid evidence to back it up.

There is, however, a wealth of evidence to show that it is NOT true. – Millions upon millions of innocent overweight people have tried over decades to reduce their excess weight by eating fewer calories and taking more exercise. – Overwhelmingly they fail to lose weight this way. – They get tired; they feel cold and ill and hungry. – But they do not lose weight (or if they do it is only temporary). – The ‘experts’ then tell them that they have done it wrong; they haven’t tried hard enough or long enough; they are lying; they are mistaken, etc. – The ‘experts’ cannot get their heads around the fact that it is THEY who are wrong; THEY who are lying; THEY who are mistaken…

Obesity is caused by fluid retention in people who are sensitive to salt. – It is as simple, and as profoundly complex, as that.

Now – what really causes the fluid retention/salt sensitivity/obesity? – Here are the main causes:

1. Prescription drugs such as tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline.

Amitriptyline is also known as Elavil, Tryptanol, Endep, Elatrol, Tryptizol, Trepiline, Laroxyl, and is present in some combination drugs, e.g. Limbitrol is a drug which combines amitriptyline and chlordiazepoxide.

Weight gain is also widely reported by people taking Lexapro, Prozac, Fontex, Celexa and Paxil. These are not tricyclic antidepressants; they are SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors). As with the tricyclic antidepressants, the weight gain is because of sodium retention and fluid/water retention, and can be avoided/reduced by avoiding eating salt and salty food.

2. Other prescription drugs such as steroids including prednisolone (also sold as Pediapred®), prednisone (also sold as Deltasone®, Meticorten, Orasone and SK-Prednisone), cortisone, hydrocortisone, dexamethasone, betamethasone, beclomethasone, fludrocortisone, triamsinolone, desonide, fluprednidene, clobetasone, alclomethasone, momethasone, desoxymethasone, fluosinonide, budesonide, fluosinolone, triamcinolone (trade names Kenalog, Aristocort, Nasacort, Tri-Nasal, Triderm, Azmacort, Trilone, Volon A, Tristoject, Fougera, Tricortone, Triesence) and other corticosteroids, Advair – a combination drug that contains Fluticasone, a corticosteroid, HRT and other medications containing oestrogen – like some birth control medication (contraceptives) – amitriptyline and some other anti-depressants, some anti-psychotic drugs, including Zyprexa (aka olanzapine) and other psychotropic drugs, and some anti-epileptic/anticonvulsant drugs, notably valproate (trade name Epilim).

If you have been inappropriately prescribed or over-dosed with corticosteroids or HRT or the many other drugs that cause weight gain, then you may well have developed drug-induced Cushing’s Syndrome, a very serious illness, frequently far more serious than the health problem for which the drugs were prescribed. It is, to the best of my knowledge, an entirely preventable illness if doctors conform to the protocols for prescribing these drugs and if they monitor patients’ progress on the drugs, and if they warn patients about salt. It is VITALLY important that it be realised that weight gain resulting from these drugs is from sodium and water retention, so patients taking these drugs should be warned not to eat salt, or foods containing salt, while taking the medication. They should also be informed that any weight gained in this way can easily and swiftly be reduced by eating less salt/sodium, and they should be warned not to try to lose weight by eating less food or restricting calories because this will not help them to lose weight and is harmful.

If you gain weight suddenly and unexpectedly when you start to take prescribed medication that I have not mentioned on this page, it is highly likely that the weight gain is caused by the drug. You may like to consider whether you really need to take that drug, or whether the dose could be lowered. At any rate if you continue with the drug, try to reduce your salt intake in order to reduce the weight gain. Doctors seldom, if ever, warn about the drugs that cause salt sensitivity and the need very strictly to avoid salt and salty food while on the drugs, and many do not observe the drug protocols and very few properly monitor the patient’s progress on the drugs. Obviously if doctors did do all these things, there would be no steroid victims, no patients with drug-induced obesity, etc. whereas there are many millions of them worldwide, victims of medical negligence and ignorance.

3. If, as a baby or small child, you ate salt and salty food, you were highly likely to have developed sensitivity to salt and you therefore became fat or overweight.

4. Pregnancy can cause fluid retention/salt sensitivity because of hormonal changes during pregnancy. It is important to avoid salt and salty food during pregnancy.

These are the main causes of obesity. Dieting/calorie counting makes obesity worse and should be avoided.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, stroke, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver damage and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! – Try it! – You will feel so much better! See my website.

The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts – just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection.

I can be contacted from my website if you need my further help. My help is free.