Champix: The Terror Continues

“I think the drug [Champix Chantix] should be banned because it is crazy. Does anyone know how long this will go on because living alone I don’t know if this will stop before it takes control of me. it has to stop soon I pray”

*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

After four years of collecting smokers’ feedback about Chantix/Champix/varenicline on this site, it is now obvious that no-one is safe from this drug, not even people who have taken it before with hardly any side effects.  This is typical of some of the feedback we are getting from people who have tried a second or third course of the drug because of its high relapse rate:

“I first went on Champix 3 years ago, did the full course and gave up smoking for 2 years.  only side effect was a few weird dreams.  Unfortuneatly I started smoking again so went to get a new course from the doctor.  5 weeks in and I am now close to finishing it all.  I can’t sleep, keep shaking, crying uncontrollably and look at knifes in the draw, pass the bath and see myself lying there with no more problems and it won’t stop.
Doctor stopped me taking them 5 days ago, 2 days later he put me on valium and I’m still not able to control myself without taking valium to put me to sleep.  Currently I’m looking at the valium and thinking if I take the lot then it will stop all this crazy feeling.
worst thing is I know what is causing it but can’t stop.  I think the drug should be banned because it is crazy.  Does anyone know how long this will go on because living alone I don’t know if this will stop before it takes control of me.  it has to stop soon I pray”

No Isolated Case

If you’re reading this and trying to reassure yourself that this is some kind of freak case – it isn’t.  These individual nightmares are going on all over the world, and are seriously under-reported which is why I am screaming about it from the TruthWill Out site and will continue to do so until this evil drug is withdrawn from sale.  Imagine going through this yourself, or someone you love going through that just because they wanted to improve their health and they innocently assumed that the drug had proved safe in clinical trials.

It didn’t: the manufacturer Pfizer hid some of the evidence from a crucial safety review by submitting the reports of hundreds of bad reactions “through the wrong channels” at the Food and Drug administration.  When this fact came to light, the French government withdrew public funding of the drug, citing “safety concerns”.  All the other Health Departments in governments all over the world who have done lucrative deals with Pfizer decided to pretend it didn’t happen, and that is the only reason this terror is continuing.  If you think it’s all about depression and suicide, think again: the list of serious ailments caused by this drug is a long one and many lives have been ruined already.

Champix has aleady caused suicides, murders, violent attacks, horrendous depression, crippling pain, major life-threatening seizures and epilepsy in people who have never had epilepsy before, life-threatening skin conditions where skin blisters up and falls off, damage to optic nerves, increased risk of heart attacks… and as this message proves, it usually doesn’t work in the long run anyway.

If you have taken Champix yourself, and like David the first time round, had hardly any side effects and stopped smoking for a while, you might feel inclined to send me a message saying: “I think Champix is brilliant!”  …not realising you were just lucky the first time round.  David’s advice now would probably be: “Don’t risk it again.”

more smokers’ feedback

 

Champix Chantix Success Report No.1

so I had to wonder why – four years after Champix was made available in the UK – a “wonder drug with a 50% success rate”, we were told – this was the first smoker I had ever met, professionally or socially, that reckoned they had quit successfully with Champix and without side effects.

I’ve met loads that haven’t succeeded with Champix, and about half of them said they had to stop taking it because it made them ill.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

Today I met someone who was successful with Champix.  This person had come to me for weight loss, and some of that weight gain had been as a result of stopping smoking.  The young woman – let’s call her Lucy – reported that although she had taken a course of Champix in 2010, and it “did nothing at all”, this year she was really determined and had told herself that: “This time the tablets WILL work… this time I’m definitely going to stop smoking!”  And indeed she did.

So – presumably – the first time around she did NOT tell herself that.  Maybe that’s why the tablets “did nothing at all”.  And – presumably – the tablets were made to the exact same specifications as the 2010 batch… dosage was the same, length of course the same… indeed the only factor that was different was her mental attitude and the positive suggestions she was giving herself.

Positive suggestions and mental attitude are what hypnotherapy are all about.  Essentially we do the same sort of thing but without the tablets, AND we include therapy to prevent the weight gain, which is easily avoided if your hypnotherapist knows what they’re doing.  I’ll soon reverse Lucy’s weight gain anyway, but we could have done the lot in one go if she’d come here in the first place.

But that’s not what prompted me to write this post.  What prompted me to write it was the realisation that Lucy was the first of my clients ever to report lasting success with Champix.  True, it had only been four months so far, but she was pretty confident she had it licked and I had no reason to doubt this.  Now, I meet a lot of smokers and ex-smokers in the course of my work, and of course we talk about these things all the time, regardless of what the session today is actually about, so I had to wonder why – four years after Champix was made available in the UK – a “wonder drug with a 50% success rate”, we were told – this was the first smoker I had ever met, professionally or socially, that reckoned they had quit successfully with Champix and without side effects.

I’ve met loads that haven’t succeeded with Champix, and about half of them said they had to stop taking it because it made them ill.

So when people contact the Truth Will Out site (occasionally) to report that they and their partner and their neighbour and all their 27 friends have successfully quit with Chantix or Champix… (and that all of them had previously tried hypnotherapy and failed! despite the fact that less than 1% of the population have ever consulted a hypnotherapist about ANYTHING)… I might be forgiven for doubting this tale, and wondering if this message really comes from some liar who sells Champix over the internet and is a bit worried about sales being not what they were now that smokers are beginning to twig that this “wonder drug” isn’t any better than the last one (Zyban), but it does seem to be WAY more harmful and unpredictable.

safer alternative

Tobacco’s healing properties

“…it certainly isn’t healthy to smoke tobacco, and the vast majority of the tobacco smoked in the world is certainly not part of any ritual, indian or otherwise. It’s just a dirty and rather pointless habit, but if anyone wants to smoke it that’s fine by me. The whole point of this site is to denounce Nicotine Replacement Therapy as a scam which the Department of Health already know from their own research doesn’t work any better than willpower in the long run. I’m also calling for Champix to be banned, because anyone with half a brain can easily see that it should be.”

by Chris Holmes

This message came in by email the other day:

Austrian Smokers rights wrote:
Tobaco is a wonderful indian ritual and healing plant: would you please take this skul and bones of “nicotine”; and replace it by Chmapix or NicVax the killing vaccines.

thanks
chritsine

Now, Austrian Smokers’ Rights have had a little pop at me before, for the same reason that the Ashtray Blog bloke did, who is a devotee of the electronic cigarette… because I had the temerity to suggest that nicotine is just a useless poison.  Poisons are usually denoted by the symbol of the skull and crossbones, so it seems appropriate.  True, the same symbol should be on the Champix packaging in my view – I’ll suggest it to Pfizer’s Head of Marketing next time we meet up for a beer.  NicVax I know nothing about – yet.  But the idea that a vaccine will fix a compulsive habit like smoking seems very dubious to me.

As for tobacco being “a wonderful indian ritual and healing plant”, that is an unusually positive view of it nowadays, to say the least!  But if Christine is assuming that I am anti-tobacco or anti-smoking, she hasn’t read much of this site and has missed the point of it.  I’m not pro-tobacco, but I am very liberal about what people do to themselves, even if it kills them.  Mountaineering kills people, but I wouldn’t sign a petition to get it banned, would you?

Just because something is used in a ritual doesn’t mean it has any useful aspect to it.  Humans and animals have both been sacrificed in rituals in the past, but that doesn’t make human or animal sacrifice a worthy thing.  Rituals are not necessarily a good thing anyway, because they are simply repetiton of an act without questioning it, which can lead to all kinds of mad mucking about: look at that daft nonsense with Black Rod and the opening of the English Parliament – how silly is that?

Tobacco might possibly inhibit the development of Alzheimers, and prevent endometrial cancer.  But the list of diseases it causes is far longer than that, so it certainly isn’t healthy to smoke tobacco, and the vast majority of the tobacco smoked in the world is certainly not part of any ritual, indian or otherwise.  It’s just a dirty and rather pointless habit, but if anyone wants to smoke it that’s fine by me.

The whole point of this site is to denounce Nicotine Replacement Therapy as a scam which the Department of Health already know from their own research doesn’t work any better than willpower in the long run.  I’m also calling for Champix to be banned, because anyone with half a brain can easily see that it should be.

My book is the first to explain what cravings really are, and why they have no connection to nicotine whatsoever.  It also explains how we hypnotherapists routinely shut down all kinds of cravings without any difficulty just about every working day of our lives, including smokers’ cravings.

I didn’t write the book for the Austrian Smokers’ Rights group, though.  I wrote it for any ordinary smoker who would like to quit but hasn’t found that easy, and anyone who is interested in hypnotherapy and the Subconscious mind.  So the skull and crossbones stay, no apologies.

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

 

 

Edzard Ernst, the Quack Professor, retires defeated!

“Has Ernst been beating around the bush in his previous assessments of alternative therapies then? Outspoken, eh? Yeah, you do that, Ernst. You become “really outspoken”. I’ve been saying you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing for years. Here’s the rope: you hang yourself, pal. The fact is you were never bright enough to quit while you were ahead, and now the only people who have any time for you at all are the other mindless zealots who don’t know anything about CAM therapies anyway, and that’s why you really lost your job – it has nothing to do with Prince Charles…”

by Chris Holmes

In a fawning interview extract from Zeno’s blog, the Professor Against Complementary Medicine announces his academic demise and threatens to become “really outspoken” against CAM therapies! HA HA HA HA HA!

What really makes me laugh about this latest evidence of his total loss of credibility – as well as his job, which he should never have had in the first place – is this astounding statement:

“The trouble is that it is relatively easy to get research funds if you have the reputation of being “sympathetic” to CM. If you are critical, it is much harder.”

Hmm! Is it really “relatively easy” to get research funds if you are going to be ‘soft’ on Complementary Medicine? Who FROM? Who are all these kind donors who are lining up to give universities funding for research into CM, but unfortunately for Ernst stipulate that he mustn’t be too critical? Can you NAME ANY, Prof.?

Or perhaps he was unconsciously referring to the £2 million he secured from Maurice Laing by pretending he was going to be fair and even-handed about CM? He claimed he wasn’t going to be “critical” or pro-CAM when he started out, but open-minded. After a while it became apparent that he was actually an anti-CAM zealot, and now nobody really wants to fund that project because anti-CAM zealots are really in quite a small minority. Nobody, that is, except perhaps drug companies but of course if they’ve ever provided any funding to Ernst’s project in the past they would have taken careful steps to make sure no-one noticed, and they wouldn’t want to fund it now because Ernst got a bit carried away and no longer has the sort of credibility he enjoyed for a while.

Has Ernst been beating around the bush in his previous assessments of alternative therapies then? Outspoken, eh? Yeah, you do that, Ernst. You become “really outspoken”. I’ve been saying you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing for years. Here’s the rope: you hang yourself, pal. The fact is you were never bright enough to quit while you were ahead, and now the only people who have any time for you at all are the other mindless zealots who don’t know anything about CAM therapies anyway, and that’s why you really lost your job – it has nothing to do with Prince Charles. Academics in the U.K. are not there by Royal Appointment, are they? And the Royal Family don’t have the power or influence to remove any of them either – what planet are you on? Nobody wanted to fund your little misinformation game any longer, and your University got sick of your unacademic, self-publicising media antics, as they were bound to in the end.

Go to America, where I’m sure there’ll be a cushy job for you. Take the PharmaDollar, and stop posing as an objective scientist!  You’re a joke.

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

related article 1

related article 2

Central Hypnotherapy

*Update, 4/8/11:  I couldn’t help laughing when I noticed that one of my centhyp tweets had been re-tweeted on 18th April by… none other than Edzard Ernst!  Since I have been very critical of him, he threatened to sue me and he was rather rude to me on skepticat’s blog, I was surprised he had done this… until I realised that he had not even bothered to check the link he re-tweeted.  If he had, he would have realised that it just led to a publishing website that sells my book!  So why did he re-tweet it?  Because before the link, I had written: “Why doctors don’t provide hypnotherapy”, which happens to be the title of one of the chapters.  Ernst must have glanced at that, assumed it was some anti-CAM argument and re-tweeted it as a knee-jerk decision based on his own over-zealous anti-CAM agenda… but without even bothering to check what it actually was!  VERY scientific, Eddie-boy!  Perhaps that says a lot about the way you’ve been conducting your “research” all along, eh?

By the way, if anyone doubts that anti-CAM zealots are in a pretty small minority, I think it’s very telling that one of their most celebrated and widely-published champions, Edzard Ernst, still only has 3166 followers on Twitter after 17 years of constant CAM-bashing!

Killer Chantix Champix Isn’t Magic

by Chris Holmes

*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

The weird and wonderful internet just threw up another amusing splinter of craziness in the form of an email message, sent through the Truth Will Out Contact Form facility, from a website called ChampixMagic.  It purported to be from a person called Jay, and it said:

Jay wrote:
Dear sir/webmaster,
I am the responsible person for link exchange at chantixmagic.com  I visited your site and feel, it’s a quality one and relevant to my site theme. So I hope that you would consider link exchange with us. If you determine that a link to our site is appropriate, Please let me know whether you are interested or not. If yes please provide your site info.

I find it very hard to believe that Jay has ever visited the Truth Will Out site.  I think it is much more probable that this message is sent out automatically to any site that mentions Champix a lot.  There follows here an excerpt from one of my earlier posts that mentioned it under the heading CHANTIX CHAMPIX KILLS, BUT A.S.H. WON’T TELL THE SMOKERS, and it also mentions the ChampixMagic site:

Now look at this, which purports to be a “Trusted Information Bank” about Champix (Chantix).  At the base of the page, a disclaimer states “We don’t encourage the buying and selling of Chantix without prescription”, which is a weird thing to claim when you can buy it right there, via the site!  It mentions nothing about any dangers, but says:

“Chantix is the latest blockbuster drug approved by the FDA on May 11, 2006 that is indicated as an aid to quit smoking. Manufactured by Pfizer Inc., Chantix offers a new approach, different from the existing smoking cessation therapies to quit smoking.”

It does not mention that the drug is now under investigation by the FDA for serious side effects.   Instead it uses crude scare-tactics in the first two, very badly written paragraphs about the dangers of smoking to suggest that Chantix is your ‘only hope’, if you are a smoker, to escape ‘certain death’. The site is called ChantixMagic and it is dangerously devoid of any serious warnings about how this medication could wreck your life or even end it.

In reality, Champix is a pretty faint hope because it doesn’t work for at least 80% of smokers even with all that hype.  In contrast, expert hypnotherapy has a 60% success rate in first sessions alone.  If you include the successes that took more than one session (some do, it’s inevitable, people are not all the same) then the overall success rate is well over 80% PROVIDED the therapist is a smoking cessation specialist with plenty of experience.

I should also qualify the above statement by saying that I’m talking about success rates in countries in which tobacco use is in general decline.  I work in the U.K. where only about 26% of adults still smoke, so smoking is not the norm.  In countries like Greece and China where there is a much greater proportion of smokers, the long-term success-rate of hypnotherapy would not be as high because the influence of other people smoking has a bearing on relapse rates for all quitting methods, including hypnotherapy – as does the general social perception of what is “the norm”.

So you see, ChampixMagic, I already have a link to your site but I don’t think it was quite what you had in mind.  Since all you want to do is sell more prescription medications without prescriptions or proper warnings regardless of whether it harms or kills people, I suggest you go throw yourself off a cliff.

safer alternative

 

Are Medical Authorities Secretly Reading This?

by Chris Holmes

Since the launch of this site in March 2008 I have been urging medical authorities to press governments to do something about the madness of ‘internet pharmacies’ from which people can buy prescription medications without any doctors or prescriptions being involved.  Occasionally I had heard people like Dr Chris Steele ( a TV Doctor here in the U.K.) gently warning the public that some of the medicines might be fake, and that is why it’s not a good idea.

That is just one of the reasons it is not a good idea. Someone just deciding that they could do with some Valium, some hydrocodone and maybe some anti-depressants but they can’t be bothered to consult a medical professional about whether or not that’s safe or appropriate… but they have a credit card, and the people who push drugs on the internet have certainly got the greed if not the scruples to be concerned that their customer might be about to end up like Heath Ledger… these are some of the other reasons that internet drug shops are not a good idea.

Anyway I have suggested a number of times that the medical profession should be very seriously concerned about this and move to oppose it, mainly because it is dangerous and unethical but also because if people don’t need a prescription they might soon conclude that they don’t need doctors either, or that they can be their own doctor now by reading up about their condition on the internet and simply buying a treatment – without any objective, experienced, wise or properly-qualified opinion being involved.

I know a lot of people read this website, in fact it is increasing all the time.  Some of those people are smokers.  Some are therapists.  I know this because they send me comments and messages, some for publication on the site.  As yet, no doctor has ever sent me a message of any description via the Truth Will Out site, although I do have some contact with doctors and other medical people through my hypnotherapy practice.  (I even did some work for the NHS last year – unheard of!)  But that doesn’t mean medical folk never read this stuff.

So I was interested to see a new billboard, whilst travelling in to the office this morning, featuring a corpse on a gurney in what I suppose was an autopsy room, covered over with a sheet.   It said “You might pay with more than a credit card, if you buy medications on the internet.”  Then the slogan: Get Real – Get a Prescription.

Elsewhere on this site I have mentioned alarming figures about the harm done by medications that have been prescribed by doctors anyway, but I think it is important to get these things in perspective. I don’t expect everyone to turn away from drug therapies and embrace alternative therapies en masse – nor should they.  It would be a much better idea to establish which methods are genuinely most useful and safest for the wide variety of symptoms requiring treatment, so people can benefit from all forms of therapy, not just drug treatments.

But I certainly don’t want to see doctors being edged out of the picture by the drug industry via internet drug shops, so it is nice to see somebody is finally doing something about it.  It’s not enough, but it’s a start and I really welcome that.  Well done, whoever is behind that one.  Good on you.  Doctors are not expendable, and when I got that email last year from an internet pharmacy that was titled: “Prescriptions are a thing of the past!” I just had to write about that (See Posting Comments 2 if you want to read it).

It may be, of course, that the people behind this new billboard campaign just came to the same conclusions as I did, without reading any of my ranting about it here on the Truth Will Out site.  But if so, they took a hell of a long time to come to that conclusion considering that these drug shops have been flogging dangerous drugs for years now, and although none of that affects me directly it certainly affects them.  And also, although I wrote the original rant about that back in June 2008, according to my stats package it remains, surprisingly, the most frequently read page on the site after the homepage.

Now, that’s not because of any links that I’m aware of, so it does suggest that people are sending that link quietly to each other.  And people do have to have a shared interest in that subject to do that, don’t they?  So that rules out smokers and hypnotherapists for a start.

So – hope you’re keeping well, Doc.  All the best.

Parexel amendment

Today I have removed an earlier post about the drug testing group Parexel because it was based on a news story in the Sunday Express which was later withdrawn by the newspaper. (Thanks to Dave for the link to the published retraction.)

Since this story was pretty much an aside as far as the Truth Will Out Campaign is concerned, it doesn’t affect the campaign but we still want the site to be accurate in every respect.

Attempts to Censor Truth Will Out

There is a myth in the U.K. that we have a thing called “free speech”. We really love to believe it, too. But in practice, there are some things you are not supposed to tell people about, apparently – and if you try, certain people will try to stop you.

The E-Zine

Here is a typical recent example. A certain hypnotherapy ‘e-zine’ (internet magazine) which has links with the medical profession recently offered to publish a piece on the Truth Will Out Campaign, subject to approval. Then, after a bit of discussion, agreed to review my book – you know, the one that destroys the nicotine myth. The book that totally discredits the whole basis of Nicotine Replacement Therapy. This e-zine purports to concern itself primarily with new developments in hypnotherapy. Clearly, a book by a hypnotherapist that destroys the nicotine myth would be news in that context, wouldn’t it?

Now the interesting thing about this was, these people were initially very cordial and open, saying that they were aware of the message of Truth Will Out and generally favourable towards the aims of the campaign. So I sent them a copy of the book. There was a pause, then I got a brief message which apologised for raising my hopes, but there had been a “change of plan”, and that they would not be reviewing my book, “or any other”. Which seems a bit odd for a research publication. They did not say why.

So I asked them. I asked them nicely, but the reply wasn’t very friendly, and it wasn’t very convincing either. I was told that there had been a meeting, at which it was decided that the e-zine “was not a marketing organ and had never carried a book review before”. So I suggested that they could just report on the Truth Will Out Campaign then, which is, after all, aiming to prove to the world that hypnotherapy is the best method for smoking cessation. That should be acceptable enough, since that was what we were talking about originally anyway.

Now, though, they weren’t interested in doing that either – despite the fact that the Truth Will Out Campaign itself is not about marketing, it is about the grim reality that around 5 million people in the world are killed by tobacco every year, an annual mega-disaster that is partly perpetuated by the nicotine myth.

In fact they didn’t even reply. However, in an earlier issue of the E-zine, they did decide, presumably at a different sort of meeting altogether, to report on the crucial issue of the recent antics of a stage hypnotist in the Australian Big Brother House. So for a hypnotherapy research “organ”, they are certainly getting their priorities right there, aren’t they?

Incidentally – in case you were wondering – anyone who finds the Truth Will Out Campaign website acceptable enough would not find anything in the book that should cause them to think again. If anything, the site is more politically forthright – being a campaign – and the book is more entertaining. Being a book. That is not to say that all books are sufficiently entertaining, but they would certainly benefit from having that quality.

So it wasn’t what I’d written about hypnotherapy or compulsive habits that was causing the problem at that meeting in London. No, it was the connections they have with the medical profession, and the fact that important people in that profession wouldn’t take kindly to anyone drawing attention to a book which proves they’ve got it wrong. Especially since it is written by… a hypnotist, of all people!

To quote Harold Shipman: “Doctor Knows Best”

In case you didn’t know, the intellect of doctors is deemed to be of a Higher Order. They cannot be seen to be proven wrong by someone assumed to be of a Lower Order, or the world would come to an end. This fact in itself proves that true, objective Science is not always their top priority, is it? Not if it might cast doubt on the prevailing Order of things. So they find that they cannot engage with the case I’m making on its merits, because they cannot acknowledge my right to speak to them at all. I’m Untouchable, I’m from a Lower Caste knowledge-wise, especially from the point of view of Medical Authority. They cannot possibly countenance learning something from me – that’s unthinkable! So it’s business as usual: “Screw the smokers, we’re sticking with the nicotine myth!”

That’s the truth, and the real problem that those E-zine people in London had with the book is that it proves the case, and publicising that would have real consequences. So instead of reporting on it, they made a cowardly, considered decision to censor the whole thing by omission, thereby playing a part in helping the government to cover up the truth. At your expense, taxpayer. And the cost of… how many more lives?

What if they had another reason?

Some people reading this might think: “What if you’re just missing the obvious? Maybe they didn’t like your book and didn’t want to review it!”

Well firstly, they claimed that they had decided not to review my book simply because they had suddenly ‘realised’ that they don’t do book reviews at all, as an editorial policy. But then they also refused to mention the Truth Will Out Campaign either, which is just censorship. And anyway, they were always free to pan the book if they wanted to, I couldn’t stop them! So to back off in that way clearly indicates a fear of being associated with a direct refutation of the nicotine myth, which would only anger the drug companies, the Department of Health liars and the medical authorities. How cowardly is that, really? These editorial decisions genuinely cost lives – and all to protect the interests of rich and powerful people. It disgusts me. Your “E-zine” is a truly worthless organ. Who cares about stage hypnotists and the Big Brother house? People are suffering and dying in vast numbers, you fools.

Newspapers(.co.uk)

Censorship comes in many forms, and for journalists and newspaper editors, the most straightforward mode of censorship is to ignore something totally. All the national newspapers in the UK have been made aware of the Truth Will Out Campaign in one way or another since January 2008. Some of these newspapers have been quoted directly on this site, and stories run by them – often front page stories – are referred to as evidence of what is wrong with the current approvals system for medicines. So they can hardly be uninterested, they are making the same criticisms themselves! They cannot reject the evidence either, as quite a bit of the supporting evidence comes from them. They can’t possibly take up the position that no-one will be interested if NRT is proven to be a bogus medication, when millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is at stake. So why the silence?

In fact, the silence from all these people is deafening: The British Medical Association, The Royal College of Physicians, the drug companies involved, all the doctors, nurses and pharmacists involved in the supply chain, all the people who work for the NHS Smoking Cessation Services. Why is no-one leaping to the defence of NRT, saying “How dare you? This is a fine medication, with a proven track record!”

The answer is simply because they can’t: it isn’t. So their collective silence is both an embarrassed silence and a guilty silence – the only strategy they have left is to pretend the Truth Will Out Campaign does not exist. Or perhaps there might turn out to be some honest and decent souls among them who just can’t bear helping the poison factories exploit smokers to the point of death any longer, who break ranks by admitting openly that they’ve known all this for a while actually, they just didn’t know what to do about it. Comments please!

But what about the “free press” we are supposed to have? Why the silence there?

Sarah Boseley

Sarah Boseley is the Health Editor at The Guardian newspaper, and I wrote to her directly on the 25th July 2008, explaining what the issue was briefly, and asking if she would be interested in looking at the evidence. That’s all. I mean, we’re talking fraud, here, on a massive scale: a government department publishing success rates it knows are utterly misleading, thousands of people dying needlessly, hundreds of millions wasted. I’m telling this journalist I can prove all this, and she doesn’t even want to look at the evidence. No reason given – I mean, can you even imagine any sound reason for that? Censorship in action, folks.

Not long after that, Sarah Boseley co-wrote a front page article in the Guardian exposing the way drug companies spend millions of pounds every year on all-expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and other hospital staff, “in what critics say is a massive marketing exercise dressed up as medical education”. To read that, you’d think we were singing from the same hymn-sheet really, wouldn’t you? But no, Sarah didn’t want to know about the nicotine scandal.

I have learned since that Sarah Boseley has sympathy with the journalism of Dr. Ben Goldacre, who is an outspoken rubbisher of alternative medicine generally and very much in the same camp as Edzard Ernst, the Professor Against Complementary Medicine (see below). Ah, I get it. No wonder she didn’t want to talk to me! So the scandal of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning will be very much one of those matters she would be inclined to edit out, rather than edit in, when she is compiling ‘news’. Yeah, o.k. Sarah – long as we understand each other. Of course if I’d known that before I wouldn’t have bothered writing to you in the first place. You probably have hypnotherapists in the same mental bracket as witchdoctors, in your narrow little journalistic mind. Goldacre certainly does, the fool. Fortunately most medical people are not that narrow-minded these days – although they certainly have a very limited idea of what hypnotherapy is capable of achieving, mainly thanks to the publications of men like Ernst and Goldacre. Publication of any kind for such men is effortless, as they are singing the approved tune. They get the opposite of censorship. They are pharmaceutical whores in reality, disguised as Professor and Doctor to create a gloss of ‘credibility’ which fools no-one in the field of alternative medicine, of course.  Enjoy your officially-approved, self-important status while you can, boys.  You are the ones who are going to look stupid in the long run.

‘News’ Online

Newspapers have their web-versions too now, and I noticed this story about Edzard Ernst, Exeter University’s Professor Against Complementary Medicine, in the online Times Higher Education (link). He is quoted in this story as saying: “I am not disappointed when a healing study shows no specific healing effect…”

No, Edzard. I bet you’re not. And it’s so easy to arrange them that way, isn’t it, when that’s exactly what you are aiming to ‘prove’.

“…but a strong placebo effect. What would disturb me is if someone said it was rotten science.”

The ‘placebo effect’ also goes by another name: suggestion. It plays a role in all healing procedures, but the real experts with it are the hypnotherapists of course. What Ernst is unwittingly demonstrating in using the term “strong placebo effect” is that suggestion alone can produce an effect that qualifies as “strong” – in other words, hypnotherapy works. Yet elsewhere he claims that his research indicates that for certain key things, including smoking, it doesn’t work. He is completely wrong about that, so I posted a comment to the T.H.E. story to that effect, and also threw in a reference to an article by Robert Verkerk which does accuse Ernst of “rotten science”.

Not long after that, I noticed that my post had been answered by a certain ‘Andy Lewis’, who rips into the Verkerk article, denouncing it scornfully and pointing out that Verkerk is the Director of the Alliance for Natural Health, suggesting a profit motive lies behind his criticism of Ernst’s methods. But who is ‘Andy Lewis’? Follow this link to a very interesting homoeopathy blog, and scroll down to the eighth article, entitled: “Andy Lewis does not want you to read this”

Censorship “in moderation”

So I answered Lewis with another post – but it didn’t appear! Of course, all comments have to be ‘moderated’ (passed) by an editor, you cannot just have people adding stuff to your site without having editorial control, obviously. But that should not be stifling free debate, it should only be to eliminate spam, or offensive material. So I wrote another answer to Lewis’ comment, this time explaining what I think Verkerk meant by the bit Lewis quoted and labelled “incomprehensible”. They did not pass that comment in moderation either, so I wrote a third, quite different answer, and requested that if the editors had a problem with me answering this point, could they please email me and explain?

All three attempts to continue the debate were refused, no reason given. No email. ‘Andy Lewis’ given the last word, no right of reply. That’s not a free press, that’s not free speech. It’s censorship.

**Update, 30.10.08

Recently another post was blocked in moderation, for no apparent reason. The context was the Champix debate, and all I did was try to provide a link to similar reports of problems, but somebody at the Australian Daily Telegraph didn’t like that apparently. Here’s the page:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23741431-5001021,00.html

Homoeopathy

I have said elsewhere that I have no professional connection with homoeopathy whatsoever, and know virtually nothing about it. So you may be wondering why the links with homoeopathy sites are cropping up here. It’s simple. There’s a war going on. It is an ideological war, a war of ideas, and it has been going on for almost two centuries but it is really hotting up now. Alternative or complementary medicine is gaining popularity, potentially at the expense of the pharmaceutical giants. So they are doing something about it, and people like Ernst and ‘Andy Lewis’ are playing an active part in that, whether that is actually orchestrated by the drug companies or not. Their attempts to influence public thinking range from mild-mannered to vitriolic, and they seem to have targeted homoeopathy particularly, as if it were representative of ‘alternative’ thinking generally. Which it isn’t, actually – but it is probably regarded by the more aggressive skeptics as the ‘easiest target’.

After all, the skeptics cannot deny the fact that hypnotherapy received official approval from the B.M.A. and their American counterparts half a century ago. They did not do that on a whim, so when the pseudo-scientific scoffers suggest these days that hypnotherapy is “not proven” they are in fact damning their own institutions! And when they denounce herbal remedies and acupuncture, they run the risk of seriously offending the next global superpower. So, like all bullies, they pick on the little guy, which in this case is homoeopathy.

Does homoeopathy work? I haven’t a clue, I’m a hypnotherapist. But I know for sure hypnotherapy is brilliant for smoking cessation, and Ernst says his methods suggest it isn’t at all, so forgive me if I have more time for Robert Verkerk than Edzard Ernst, and naturally wonder what Ernst, the likes of ‘Andy Lewis’ and the editors of the Times Higher Education – who apparently won’t let me answer Lewis in free debate – are really about. I mean these are the guys that are always bleating on about “evidence”, but they’re censoring the evidence, aren’t they? Just like the drug company that deliberately held back information about Prozac, to make it seem effective when it wasn’t really. Seriously, do you trust their “evidence”? They are not credible, are they?

When moderating comments for the Truth Will Out site, I pass all genuine comments whether they agree with my view or not. I have only stopped one supposedly real comment, from ‘mark’, because it seemed pretty fake, but even then I wrote about it and explained why, then directly quoted the main point anyway, word for mis-spelt word. I want genuine debate. They don’t, because they can’t afford it: the evidence of deceit, manipulation, corruption, lies and corpses are piling up in their corner but not in ours. It’s only a matter of time, because the Truth Will Out.

Wherever this campaign encounters censorship or indeed any attempts to protect the drug companies’ interests at the expense of the truth – and thousands of innocent lives – we’ll let you know, of course.

free info about hypnotherapy

Links

There are many individuals and organisations who have put a link to the Truth Will Out site on their own websites. We are now going through all of these and we have created a Links page (See right column, under Navigation) where we will link back to all sites that have helped to publicise the Truth Will Out Campaign in this way, as well as a few other sites we like anyway.

If your site has a supporting link to this one, but has not yet been added to our links page, please let us know and we will be glad to include it. Thank you for helping to spread the word!

practice website

Truth Will Out – A Worldwide Campaign

Smokers’ cravings are not withdrawal symptoms, but brain signals that can be shut down immediately with hypnotherapy. New Studies back hypnotherapist Chris Holmes on nicotine, the nature of withdrawal symptoms, and the uselessness of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

In every country, there are millions of tobacco smokers. The majority probably still believe that the reason they feel compelled to smoke is because they are addicted to a drug called nicotine. Yet if they had never been told this, they would have no concept of nicotine at all. Not one of them could tell you what nicotine does, and that is because they are not smoking for the effects of nicotine, and never were.  They are prompted to smoke by the compulsive urge to pick up a cigarette, which is ‘compulsive’ because it feels like a need or a desire, when in truth it is neither. In hypnotherapy, we shut it down. (For a full explanation of this, read from the book here on the site, or download the entire book – It’s much cheaper than the paperback version!)

The essential message of this campaign is to tell the world that the impulse to light a cigarette has nothing to do with nicotine, and the book proves that for the first time, simply by logical explanation. All this suggestion about the role of “nicotine receptors” in the brain is bogus science. How do I know? Because in one hypnotherapy session, the impulse to light a cigarette can be shut down for good, without any reference to nicotine receptors whatsoever. This is the usual outcome of my Stop Smoking sessions, and many of my previous clients have been sending new people along to me for years, so it is obviously not temporary. If the brain truly “needed nicotine”, otherwise the nicotine receptors would “go crazy”, as the TV advert for nicotine products suggests, then such an outcome would be literally impossible. Yet that is the outcome of the majority of my Stop Smoking sessions, much to the amazement of the clients! But the only reason they are amazed is because they had been led to believe they were addicts, which none of them are.

This proves that medical authorities all around the world have got this horribly wrong, and all treatment options that are in any way related to the nicotine theory are also wrong, which explains their dire performance detailed elsewhere on this site.

Read it For Yourself

This site is all about evidence, so look at the evidence! The truth is that all nicotine replacement products – and Champix – are based on a myth, and the millions of people all over the world who are struggling to give up smoking are only struggling because they are being encouraged to use methods that don’t work, precisely because they are based on a myth!

This creates the understandable impression that it is really difficult to stop smoking. The truth is that it is really difficult to stop with conscious efforts alone (willpower), or methods that do not involve talking to the Subconscious mind about it, because all habitual behaviour is directed by the Subconscious. I’m afraid your Doctor probably knows nothing about this, because it is not part of their training. They were told it is a nicotine addiction, so that’s what they are telling you – although to be fair to doctors, most of them don’t actually believe that any more.

Ask anyone who quit with hypnotherapy and they will tell you, it is really easy to quit that way, because the cravings are shut down completely and no willpower is required.

The Message is Spreading!

Oh, Nicotine Replacement Poisoning, your days are numbered! I denounce you and all your apologists, for spreading disinformation and despair. That is not medicine, it is poison-peddling. I call upon the British Department of Health to stop wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on this useless poison, you know damn well it doesn’t work! Doctors, rebel! Refuse to prescribe the poison products, or you are going to end up looking very stupid by the time it eventually becomes common knowledge that this is only a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction.

Still, to date, not one visitor to this site has challenged my statements about nicotine replacement therapy. Why not, Doc? Not a word from any of the Poison Factories, either. If I made a product I was proud of, and really believed in, and someone denounced it as a fraud, as a bogus product that was dangerous and didn’t work anyway because it was based on a myth, and should never have been licensed in the first place because they only looked at very short-term results… I think I’d have something to say about that, wouldn’t you? If it wasn’t true I mean. But no – absolute silence!

Maybe they haven’t heard about Truth Will Out yet. They will.  I am going to prove to the world that there is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”, and that smokers are not drug addicts, and that the real solution is hypnotherapy… if it takes me the rest of my life.  **Update, Jan. 2012:  The way it’s looking so far though, it probably won’t take that long.  Check this for progress! **

*If you would like to know more about hypnotherapy to stop smoking the really easy way, without being poisoned, visit the Central Hypnotherapy website. Please comment if you have a view, or if you support the aims of Truth Will Out, spread the word! And on behalf of smokers everywhere in the world who have been lied to incessantly, thank you.