Experts with Feet of Clay

December 5, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

There are very few independent experts left in the world today. Most people who are described as experts (or who like to describe themselves as experts) are bought and paid for; their opinions controlled by the company, university broadcaster or NGO which pays their wages.

When fact checkers want a quote from a so-called expert they contact one or more of the well- known names in their book of contacts – and they invariably get the officially approved quote they hope for. Drug companies sometimes provide journalists with `tame’ spokes-doctors. The following essay is taken from my book `Medical Heretics’ which is subtitled `How the medical establishment crushes the truth and suppresses good ideas’.


Experts with Feet of Clay

Today, television and radio programmes always present experts as though their word is beyond discussion. Newspapers do the same, quoting experts as though they are bringing us solid evidence that the rest of us could never find without them.

It is frighteningly easy to become an ‘expert’. When I was in my 20s and newly qualified, I was regularly described as a ‘world famous expert’ or a ‘leading expert’ whenever I was quoted in the media. At least I was only ever giving my opinion based on the facts which were available – I have never been paid or otherwise bribed to offer an opinion or a particular point of view.

There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that now I am much older, and I hope wiser and better informed, I am never invited to give my opinion on TV or radio shows or for the press. The mainstream media prefers its experts to stick to the official and accepted line on whatever topic is under discussion. What viewers, listeners and readers don’t know is that many so-called experts have been bought and paid for, and when they open their mouths they are merely saying what they’ve been told to say by their employers. The drug industry has an army of doctors who will say whatever they are required to say – in return for a large cheque, a holiday abroad or a new television set. Special agencies offer these so-called experts to media groups who are looking for someone who can provide an apparently expert view. Television reporters, radio presenters and newspaper journalists like the fact that these experts work free of charge because they are paid by their sponsors. The ‘experts’ are known as ‘rent a quote experts’.

When I was young, and earning a living in the media, I always expected to be paid a fee but after a while I found that I couldn’t compete with the many doctors who were prepared to work without a fee or even expenses because they were paid by a drug company. When I wrote a syndicated newspaper column, the agency selling the column suddenly found that a few newspapers were cancelling the column. The editors of those papers explained that they’d been offered a free column as a replacement for mine. The writers of the free column were being paid, of course, but they were being paid by drug companies or government departments.

It should be clear by now that experts have screwed up in almost every area of life, and medical experts have been particularly adept at screwing up.

But that’s only part of the problem with so-called experts.

The other part of the problem (and the subject of this book) is the way that the experts within the medical establishment (often controlled by lobbyists working for a variety of industries – including most notably the pharmaceutical industry) frequently suppress and crush important and original work that could save lives and improve the health of patients around the world.

This isn’t a new phenomenon – it’s been happening for centuries.

The medical establishment will always take decisions on health matters which benefit industry, government and the medical profession, rather than patients. And the Government will always take decisions on health matters which benefit the State and the pharmaceutical industry rather than individual patients.

Responsibility has been separated from authority with disastrous consequences for patients.

There is something uncivilised and inhuman about a health system, designed by experts and reliant on experts, in which patients with suspected cancer must wait weeks, months or years to see a specialist, wait weeks or months to be diagnosed and then wait weeks or months or years to be treated – hoping that they won’t die on one of the waiting lists.

Finally, look at the way that experts have allowed our environment and our food to be poisoned by chemical companies, farmers and others involved in ‘serving’ our communities.

Poisons in our environment are now one of the most significant modern causes of illness in general and of cancer in particular. As a result of the contaminants in our food, drinking water and the air we breathe, human breast milk contains so many chemical contaminants that it couldn’t possibly be sold as safe for human consumption. And human bodies contain so many chemicals (some consumed in additive and pesticide contaminated food and some acquired accidentally from our polluted environment) that a human steak would never be passed fit for consumption by cannibals.

Children’s bodies are routinely contaminated with scores of potentially hazardous chemicals. The susceptibility of the young body, and the wide availability of toxic chemicals in the surroundings in which children live, mean that those as young as nine-years-old have far more toxic substances in their bodies than their grandparents ever had.

Television sets and plastic toys, deodorants and household cleansers are all sources of poisons as, of course, are the pesticides we use in our garden and the pesticides farmers use on our food.

Some carcinogenic industrial chemicals which have been banned can still be found in the environment. Back in 1930, just one million tons of man-made chemicals were produced globally each year. Today, the chemical companies produce hundreds of millions of tons of man-made chemicals a year.

When researchers tested ordinary citizens, they found that of 104 substances for which they had tested, 80 were present in human beings. These tests are often repeated – with much the same results.

Chemicals are in our air, our water and our food. The chemicals found in the average human body can cause liver cancer, damage to the developing brain, premature birth, genital abnormalities, bladder cancer, kidney damage, asthma, skin disorders, hormone disruption, and a higher risk of miscarriage.

There is not enough safety information available about nearly 90% of the 2,500 chemicals which manufacturers regularly use in large quantities, to enable scientists or doctors to do a basic safety assessment.

When chemicals are tested they are tested on animals. If the tests show that a chemical kills animals, the test will be ignored on the grounds that animals are so different to humans that the results are irrelevant, and manufacturers will be allowed to use the chemical as much as they like. Drug companies follow the same ‘we can’t lose’ trickery when testing drugs.

There is no doubt at all that many of the chemicals widely used in the preparation of food, the feeding of animals and the manufacture of a wide variety of goods are carcinogenic.

The experts know all this, of course, but they do nothing to prevent the pollution, or to deal with it because to do so would inconvenience their paymasters.

Then there is the scandal of our drinking water.

In towns and cities, drinking water is often taken from rivers. But sewage firms dump their untreated waste into the same rivers. The real problem is the fact that they can’t remove drug residues from the human waste which is discharged into the rivers. The result is that when you turn on your tap you get bits of old contraceptive pill, antibiotic and tranquilliser in your sparkling glass of apparently clean drinking water. You can’t see the drug residues, of course. And the water companies can’t get them out.

Governments have, of course, made things worse by adding fluoride to drinking water supplies. The theory is that if people drink water dosed with fluoride they will be less likely to suffer from dental decay. In practice, fluoride is a potentially hazardous substance and this practice is fraught with danger. Adding fluoride to the water is, however, encouraged by politicians because their ill-informed experts claim that although it probably damages the health of some citizens they claim it may help cut the nation’s dental bill.

As part of a school science project, a 12-year-old American girl collected ice samples from five restaurants. She also collected loo water samples from the same restaurants. She had all the samples tested for bacteria. In several cases, the ice from the restaurants contained e.coli bacteria and was dirtier than the water taken from the loo bowls. How did the bugs get into the ice?

Probably because the ice-making machines hadn’t been cleaned and because the restaurant staff had used hands which hadn’t been washed to scoop up the ice.

The moral is a simple one: you should avoid ice in bars and restaurants.

Doctors exist only for two reasons: to look after people who have acquired a disease, and to prevent healthy people from falling ill. That’s it. The rest is unimportant.

But today’s medical profession has been bribed by drug companies, bullied by, and overwhelmed by bureaucrats and social workers, and forced by politicians to abandon most of their ethical principles (including, for example, the traditional principle of confidentiality). Through the weakness of their leaders, doctors have been turned into ethically impoverished mercenaries.

Principles should be indigestible but the modern medical profession has swallowed its principles without hesitation or regret.

It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that many doctors now hate their jobs and regard them as little more than a way of making money. Many doctors would prefer to do something else for a living – if they could find something as lucrative. Thanks largely to the activities of dishonest ‘experts’, vocation has been abandoned and replaced by expediency.

Medicine used to be a proud and independent profession. Sadly, much of the modern medical profession is now little more than a marketing arm for the pharmaceutical industry and a snitch service for the Government. And things are likely to get worse rather than better unless and until we force governments and doctors to recognise that people must come first.

NOTE
The above essay is taken from `Medical Heretics’ by Vernon Coleman. The book is subtitled `How the medical establishment crushes the truth and suppresses good ideas.’ You can purchase a copy from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com or CLICK HERE

Copyright Vernon Coleman December 2024