UKCAF website

"Murky practices"
Leading medical specialists come out against over-medication

23rd February 2016

In an entirely unrelated public row today, leading medical specialists are demanding that the dispreputable practices of drugs companies be subjected to the glare of a full public investigation.

It comes as the media race wild with strangely unconvincing arguments that both over-prescription of largely ineffective drugs and virulent levels of air pollution are killing millions - including right here in our homes, hospitals, and even on our own streets.

Certainly the 'over-prescription' of fluoride here in the UK rests strangely uneasy against the very real and justifiable concern about getting the stuff OUT of water supplies in supposedly somewhat backward India.

On the drugs issue, the Queen's former doctor, Sir Richard Thompson, a past

president of the Royal College of Physicians is supported by consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra and Professor Sir Robert Lechler, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, in demanding an urgent public enquiry into drugs firms’ ‘murky’ practices.

"There is no doubt that a “more medicine is better” culture lies at the heart of healthcare, exacerbated by financial incentives within the system to prescribe more drugs and carry out more procedures."(Aseem Malhotra)

Will we see such an investigation? Probably not. While the dreadful threats to our health from diesel emissions occupy the centre ground of debate, there is little room for a more wide-ranging review of just how we treat people who are sick, or of the sordid business of the commercial fleecing of the National Ill-health Service on which so many of us are dependent.

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