Tag: Truth Will Out Campaign

NHS: Scrap NRT NOW!!

Since 2001 the UK government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds every year on the free or subsidised provision of NRT through the NHS. Many scientific studies have shown that willpower alone produces a long-term stop smoking success rate of anywhere between 2% and 8%. In 2005 the government learned from the Borland Report that NHS Smoking Cessation Services had a long-term success rate of just 6.5%. It doesn’t work at all.

by Chris Holmes

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) was originally passed as if it were an effective medication on the basis of its performance at just six weeks.

Since 2001 the UK government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds every year on the free or subsidised provision of NRT through the NHS.

Many scientific studies have shown that willpower alone produces a long-term stop smoking success rate of anywhere between 2% and 8%.

In 2005 the government learned from the Borland Report that NHS Smoking Cessation Services had a long-term success rate of just 6.5%. This is well within the normal placebo range, proving that those methods don’t work.

Promoters of NRT then adopted the fraudulent tactic of selecting only trial studies with a particularly low success rate for willpower – such as 2% – for comparison with NHS Services, to make it look as if the 6.5% figure boosts smokers’ chances of success.

The Borland Report did the same thing: slyly comparing the success rate of smokers trying to quit with their doctor’s help (2.6%) with those going to the hugely expensive NHS Smoking Cessation Services (6.5%) and concluding: “Where suitable services exist, we recommend that referral [to NHS S.C.S.] become the normal strategy for management of smoking cessation in general practice.”

The Royal College of Physicians have actually argued that 6.5% is “cost effective” if you treat million of smokers, because then, even that puny percentage would clock up a few hundred thousand successes! Barmy, eh? Never mind the fact that we needn’t spend a dime on NRT because willpower clocks up the same result anyway.

In 2007 I published Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was (Volume I) – a book that blew the whistle on the NRT scam.

In 2009 I published the second volume, and meanwhile the cost of NHS Smoking Cessation Services rose to £84,000,000. Just for that one year.

In 2010 my original claim that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine was confirmed by research at the University of Tel Aviv.

In January 2012 my original claim that NRT has NO benefit was confirmed by research at the University of Harvard.

The Truth Will Out Campaign has been calling for the NHS to drop NRT since March 2008 because it doesn’t work at all. The science backs this campaign but the BMA, the Department of Health, the MHRA, A.S.H. and N.I.C.E. all continue to recommend nicotine replacement products and public funding for them. They are wilfully ignoring the facts.

My books made three controversial claims. The first two claims have now been independently verified. The third – that nicotine is not a drug at all, and that smoking is not drug taking – will inevitably be verified as well because it is all true. But how many smokers have died since 2007? More than half a million in the UK alone. How many of them tried NRT on the advice of government and medical authorities, unknowingly wasting their precious time?

How much NHS cash has been wasted already on these bogus products since 2001? Anybody’s guess, but since the Borland Report first gave the Blair government the bad news in 2005, it will certainly have topped £500,000,000 just in the UK.

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THE CASH SHOULD BE DIVERTED NOW TO OPERATIONS AND EQUIPMENT THAT ACTUALLY WORK, PLEASE SHARE THIS PAGE ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, ANYWHERE… NRT is a massive global con and YOU are paying for it.

Champix Chantix 9: Varenicline, murders and suicide

I first heard of Champix (Chantix in the U.S.), otherwise known as varenicline, in May 2007. By July 2008 I had already learned enough about it to arrive at the conclusion that it should never have been passed as if it were safe for use in the UK, Canada or Australia because it was already clear it was causing serious harm in the United States. Before another year had gone by I had made it an express aim of the Truth Will Out Campaign to call for the withdrawal of this extremely unpredictable killer drug. (See Homepage for the original aims of The T.W.O. Campaign.)

*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.*

Why Champix Should Be Withdrawn Immediately by Chris Holmes

Finally – and this has taken far too long – the call has begun for Champix to be withdrawn from sale because of the dreadful damage it has done to so many smokers and their families. Dr Michael Siegel, a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health has explained why the Black Box Warning on the medication – the strongest type of safety warning there is – is still not sufficient to protect the public. His voice should not be ignored: Dr Siegel has 25 years experience in the field of tobacco control and has published nearly 70 papers on tobacco. This is what he says about Pfizer’s dangerous brain-boiling tablet:

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/04/rest-of-story-calls-for-removal-of.html

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/04/chantix-why-black-box-warning-is-not.html

I’ve Been Saying This For Years Now

That was two years ago. The foot-dragging of medical authorities all over the world with regard to this evil medication has become truly obscene. Most recently, New Zealand’s medicines approval body Pharmac – which had hesitated over Champix because of serious concerns regarding its safety – finally did a special ‘package deal’ with Pfizer involving the licensing of a number of drugs, including Champix, making it shockingly clear that their former concerns about the safety of New Zealand smokers could be negotiated away if the price was right. Never mind that the link with suicides was already well established. Never mind the fact that by this time, it was apparent that the true success rate of the drug (at the one-year follow-up stage) was only about 14%. The press in New Zealand churned out the familiar marketing hype about the 55% ‘success rate’ once achieved at the 12 week stage in clinical trials, and a Pfizer spokesperson added the platitude that the “benefits outweighed the risks”. What they really meant was, the benefits to THEM outweighed any risks to smokers lives, jobs, health, relationships, liberty etc. as far as THEY were concerned… risks which Pfizer continue to deny can be conclusively linked to the drug anyway.

*Would you like to reply to that denial? 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. If you live elsewhere, Google “How do I report a bad reaction to a medication in…” (wherever)*

Smokers’ Testimony Doesn’t Count

… as far as Pfizer are concerned, that is. This is why I encourage all those smokers who have suffered a bad reaction to report it, and make sure their doctor uses the official channels to make that report count. And although a recent report found that Champix/Chantix was 18 times more likely to be associated with violent behaviour than any of the other 484 drugs in the study – making it the worst offender of all in terms of aggressive reactions – that is STILL only using the data from the limited number of cases where an official complaint was made against the medication.

Smokers’ testimony counts here, though, on Truth Will Out. Already we know, from such testimony, that:

– many smokers are STILL not being warned about ANY risks associated with the medication

– many doctors and other medical personnel don’t know much about risks anyway, or dismiss it as ‘media hype’

– many smokers are okay on the drug at first. THEN it gets nasty

– early results seem much more promising than long-term outcomes actually are

– the last two points have generated massive amounts of PREMATURE praise for the drug

– many sufferers of bad reactions did not know that the drug was to blame

– very bad side effects continue in some people long after coming off the drug.

It seems inevitable that suicidal or violent behaviour in individual cases over the last four years may well have been blamed on the individual rather than the drug. In court cases or inquests all over the world it seems likely that the connection would probably have been missed, or perhaps dismissed as an attempted excuse. Certainly the actor Nicolas Williams was thought by some commentators at the time to be using that connection as a way of getting off an assault charge, when he was cleared by a court last June. But how many have been convicted?

In July last year, Andrew Case killed his two young daughters and his wife, then hanged himself. He had been taking Champix, but at the inquest it was stated that none of the drug was found in his blood. Did the people conducting that inquest fully understand that the horror continues for many Champix victims, sometimes long after the drug is discontinued? PRETTY IMPORTANT FACT TO BE AWARE OF, DON’T YOU THINK?

A Sure-Fire Way To Get At The Truth About Champix

When people die by their own hand – or as a result of violence, there is always a post-mortem examination. In this country, and I’m sure in many others, if that person is on any medication from their doctor, a note of this is made as part of the post-mortem and inquest proceedings. However, if they blew their brains out with a shotgun – or someone else’s brains – then the cause of death is recorded as Death By Shooting. If they were taking Champix at the time, the cause of death is listed as… Death By Shooting. This means if Champix really caused that death, Pfizer got away with it.

I suggest that the obvious thing to do is to look back over ALL the violent deaths and suicides which have happened over the last four years, and find out how many of those people were taking Chantix or Champix at the time. Then compare this information with the same types of cases in the previous four years before that, to see if the Great Global Champix Experiment threw up a spike in the incidence of violent assault, murder and suicide. Might also be a good idea for anyone accused or convicted of violent behaviour during that time to check for a Champix connection if that was not the way they usually behave. I’m sure this kind of information could be demanded by anyone under the Freedom of Information Act here in the UK, or obtained by lawyers involved in cases against Pfizer over Chantix/Champix. Even though this would still be missing the cases where the drug was bought, not prescribed, it would be a very good indicator of the drug’s actual role in all these horror stories and – even if not conclusive in any individual case – enough to get the monstrous concoction banned.

That inevitable event cannot come soon enough. How many more have to die, Doc?

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

safer, more effective alternative

How the NHS can save Lots Of Money!

Scrap the smoking cessation programme. As I demonstrated with all the evidence from the various government reports in “The NHS Lie Exposed” there is no significant difference between what smokers can achieve by themselves using willpower and the long term outcomes of NHS help, ie. when followed up at one year after “treatment”. Independent corroboration of those facts here.

Notice how Amanda Sandford from Cash In On Smoking And Health (A.S.H.) tries to suggest that there is convincing evidence to the contrary. This is because A.S.H. is operating entirely to support drug company products in the smoking cessation field, that is all they do. They hammer on and on about “nicotine addiction” and got into legal trouble when they tried to rubbish success claims for the Allen Carr (non-drug) method. None of the drug company products have ever achieved the success rate that Allen Carr’s Easyway International Group proved in court (53%), and A.S.H. were forced to apologise and pay Easyway’s costs, YET THEY DO NOT ENDORSE THE EASYWAY METHOD – which proves they are not really a “public health charity” but a shop window for the drug companies posing as a public health charity.

Sandford claims that:

“…studies into the benefits of nicotine patches and gums were ‘robust’ and that ‘all the evidence points to relying on willpower alone is not terribly successful.”

The unnamed Department of Health spokeman claimed that the Sydney University team’s anaylsis of 511 studies was:

“…inconsistent with a very well established evidence-base. Smokers that attempt to quit without assistance are significantly less likely to quit successfully than those who quit with support. The unsupported quit rate is around 4 per cent at one year. This is doubled when a smoker uses stop smoking medicines, and quadrupled when a smoker uses the NHS Stop Smoking Services – where smokers get both medicine and behavioural support.”

This is simply untrue. The claim of a 15% success rate which originates from the Fergusson report and is the supposed basis for the “four times more likely to succeed” slogan was only achieved by a process of cherry picking, weeding out all the participants that the report’s authors thought less likely to succeed because of socio-economic factors. That is bogus. The Borland report, on the other hand, found only a 6.5% success rate at one year follow up for NHS Smoking Cessation Services. Figures for willpower alone we have seen through several reports oscillate between 4% and 8%. In other words, the methods employed by the NHS Stop Smoking Services are an unjustifiable waste of precious public resources and must be scrapped. The Truth Will Out Campaign entirely agrees with this statement:

“Simon Chapman, a professor of public health, said that governments were also guilty of medicalising smoking cessation and of making giving up sound harder than it actually is.”

Yes, and so are A.S.H. The fact is, they don’t WANT you to quit. They want you to smoke, then try the gum, then smoke, then try the patches, then smoke, then try the lozenges, then smoke, then try the micro-tab, then smoke, then try the inhalator-thingy…

Quit Smoking In One Session With Hypnotherapy!

Of course I believe the money would be better spent on hypnotherapy based on my own experience as a hypnotherapist over the last decade, and also the evidence reproduced in the book and on this site. However I am no longer under any illusion that evidence will change these things. The opposition to change is ideological and has far more to do with money, power and influence than it has to do with evidence.

No, the thing which will really force a change is the fact that there isn’t any money – not for hypnotherapy, not for nicotine replacement poisoning, not for the Champix Suicide Pills, not for that freaky Zyban (it’s an anti-depressant! No it’s not, it’s an anti-smoking pill! No it’s not, it’s a cure for hiccups! No wait, it’s…)

There’s no money for any of it. All sorts of things are going to be cut, but the things that will be cut first are the ones that don’t work anyway, and EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT N.R.T. DOESN’T BLOODY WORK! And Champix is killing people, and damaging a lot more. Scrap the lot! Stop wasting prescious NHS resources on this bullshit!

Advertising Standards Slam Bogus NHS Claim

The Advertising Standards Agency block an attempt by the NHS to suggest in a promotional leaflet that smokers are “twice as likely” to stop smoking with NRT and “four times more likely” with NHS Stop Smoking Services because the claims are “misleading”.

by Chris Holmes

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) have blocked an NHS advertising leaflet which claimed that smokers were “twice as likely” to quit with Nicotine Replacement products and “four times as likely” to quit if they also used NHS Stop Smoking Services. For the very first time since the Truth Will Out Campaign was launched, the claims have been rejected because quitting success implies a permanent solution but the NHS were relying on the results at only four weeks, which the agency concluded was not the same thing at all, and was therefore likely to mislead the public.

I’ll say it is. And since we now know from the Borland report that the results dwindle to 6% success at the end of twelve months, which is the same result as a number of studies have found for willpower alone, we feel vindicated in claiming that NRT doesn’t work at all in the long run, and is therefore a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and the NHS should abandon it altogether. Instead they’re going to waste more valuable resources printing up leaflets that say something like: “Did you know that nicotine skin patches and chewing gum can be effective in aiding withdrawal from nicotine?” (The bit in bold type is a direct quote from the British Medical Association’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Dorling Kindersley 2002.) And now over to the March Hare, for the weather…

Here’s the link to the ASA story:

The Argus

**Update, January 2012: Harvard University publish a study that demonstrates NO USEFUL EFFECT from any form of NRT. Just as I said in the book in 2007, and on this site from March 2008.

Hypnotherapy is the easiest way of all to quit smoking, and despite the best efforts of Edzard Ernst to suggest otherwise, we will establish this as scientific fact and common knowledge in the end. The sooner the better. Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was fully explains the reasons for the complete failure of the medical approach and exactly how hypnotherapy wipes out compulsive habits like smoking, usually in a single session. As it says in the book, there is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”. Give it up, Doc.

more info about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Killer Chantix Champix Isn’t Magic

by Chris Holmes

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

Corruption at the Department of Health

“Evidence-based medicine” is shown to be a hollow phrase when the evidence from the Borland report shows that Nicotine Replacement products and willpower alone have exactly the same long term outcome. January 2012: Harvard University confirm Truth Will Out’s claim that NRT does not help smokers at all in any form.

by Chris Holmes

President Barack Obama said today: “Where there is inefficiency, where there is corruption, we expect those people to be held accountable.”

That is a fine democratic principle. Well said, Mr President. Of course he was talking about the government of Afghanistan, warning those people that they could not expect continued support from Western governments if they did not root out corruption wherever it is identified.

I take it, then, that President Obama would recommend the same remedial action to be taken within the U.S. administration and indeed their counterparts in the UK government, wherever it can be clearly shown that inefficiency and corruption are wasting valuable resources and attempts are made to conceal this, rather than rectify it.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy doesn’t work at all in the long term according to the government’s own research. Already, following the press release in July this year from the smokers’ rights group Freedom2Choose which cited my research demonstrating clearly that the NHS advertising claim that smokers are “four times more likely to succeed” by using those services was actually false, we note that in the latest TV campaign promoting those services, the bogus claim has been quietly dropped!

This is not enough. Let me just remind you what the Borland report found when that group investigated the long term results of the NHS approach to smoking cessation at the 12 month interval:

What they found, at 12 month follow up, was that the in-practice treatment scored only 2.6% success at one year, whereas the Stop Smoking Services delivered a staggering 6.5%. And then they actually had the temerity to officially conclude thus: “Where suitable services exist, we recommend that referral become the normal strategy for management of smoking cessation in general practice”.

Seriously folks, I ask you: is it possible to believe that anyone – any collective group of people – could be so unutterably stupid as to recommend the continuation of either of those approaches to smoking cessation, at the taxpayer’s expense, based on failure rates of 93.5% and 97.4% respectively? Also, what happened to the supposed 15% success rate claimed by the Ferguson report? Gone – reduced to 6.5% at best. This proves that the report was flawed and misleading and should never again be cited to market NRT products or NHS services. No wonder they buried it.

Finally, if the 1992 University of Iowa report found 6% for willpower over very large sample numbers, as did Cohen (4%), then how is 6.5% “up to four times more likely to succeed”?

The fact is that it is not.

At the start of the Truth Will Out Campaign, I reported that smokers were being lied to about the effectiveness of these services and drug company products, and reproduced in the Evidence section of this site published NHS and DoH documents that claimed up to 90% success rates for short-term results (4 weeks), but did not report at all on long-term outcomes. When they finally did, they claimed 15% success at one year, which I have now proved is also very misleading.

I said, right from the very beginning, that it was 94% failure. Thank you Borland et al, you just officially confirmed it. (Reproduced from the blogpost Dept of Stealth 6)

These results do not indicate that smokers should be directed to the Smoking Cessation Services. In fact they make it blindingly obvious that the whole sorry, stupid failure should be scrapped before any more valuable resources are wasted on it. Any fool can see that, so before we start lecturing the Afghan government about corruption, we should take that fine democratic sentiment and use it to investigate the corruption at the heart of the British government, and the role of the global drug companies that are bleeding the NHS to death.

If you agree, link up – spread the word. Let’s end it! Where are the bloody investigative journalists these days? Wake up, Health Editors! THIS IS A SCANDAL!

*Update 15.01.10
Apparently in some NRT promotions this New Year the ‘Four Times More Likely To Succeed’ claim is still being used. This is not “evidence-based medicine”, unless of course the DoH and the MHRA are going to cynically attach that label to any officially approved medicines REGARDLESS of what the evidence actually is.

Hear that trickling sound, Doc? That’s the sound of your credibility steadily draining away. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

**Update, January 2012: Harvard University report that NRT does not help smokers quit in any way. August 2011 Tel Aviv University study confirms that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine and that smoking is a habit, not a drug addiction – exactly what I said four years earlier when I first published:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Central Hypnotherapy

On a Lighter Note…

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

This development, I am certain, has nothing whatever to do with the Truth Will Out Campaign, but it is a bit ironic: I’ve just been invited to become an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine!

This is because I am involved – to quote the letter – “in one of the many medical and related professions”. There are several advantages to attaining this status, which the letter goes on to list, including: “The comfort and exclusivity of a ‘Members-only’ Society” – which sounds a bit snobbish to me – “Private fine dining” – which I’m not really into – and “access to one of the most modern medical libraries in Europe”.

Question: Has it got my book in it yet? it’s called:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Volume I: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century

No? Thought not. In that case I’ll say: Thanks, but no thanks. Ask me again when it does, because that will indicate that medical science is finally beginning to catch up with the world of Hypnotherapy.

My name’s Chris Holmes by the way. And if you’ve never heard of my book yet, Doc, don’t worry. You will. It is the first book ever to prove, by clear, logical argument alone – in other words, scientifically – that the nicotine tale is a lie, and that Nicotine Replacement products are entirely based upon a myth.

Cravings are behavioural impulses controlled by the Subconscious mind which we can easily shut down in hypnotherapy on request, usually in a single session. Tobacco smoking is entirely a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction and the whole ‘nicotine’ angle is bogus and incorrect, which is the main reason NRT has no long term success outside of the normal willpower range of about 6%.

So you can ignore it if you like, Doc, but smokers aren’t ignoring it! They are reading it in ever-increasing numbers and the reviews are terrific. In fact I challenge anyone – anyone at all, it doesn’t have to be a smoker because the book is about compulsive habits generally, not just smoking – to read that book cover to cover, and then tell me they still believe in a thing called nicotine addiction. And that’s why doctors are going to have to address this sooner or later whether they like it or not, because the plain fact is they are wrong. They are wasting smokers’ time with NRT, and vast sums of money that actually belongs to the taxpayer, and they have the temerity to blame the failure of all that on the smoker. But the Truth Will Out.

hypnotherapy info

Early Responses

Thousands of people read that report, and the one in the Stockport Times. Thousands of people will have heard me talk about this on Channel M. Thousands have visited the Truth Will Out Campaign website already, from all over the world. And yet no-one – no-one, that is, except Dr Watkins – has so far leapt to the defence of NRT. Not one nurse, not one pharmacist, not one GP… starting to feel a bit lonely, Dr Watkins?

by Chris Holmes

This campaign is only a month old, but the response is very encouraging already. Comments so far include:

“Well done on the site – it’s excellent!”

“I feel as strongly about anti-depressants… Someone has to take these people on – as my husband would say, if it wasn’t for the one individual who got the ball rolling, we’d still have slavery and women wouldn’t be voting! So ‘one little hypnotherapist’ can do something – you could be the next Emily Pankhurst!”

(To which I replied, “You never know, I may even have been the last Emily Pankhurst!” Entertaining the idea of reincarnation helps me to avoid taking this incarnation too seriously… I highly recommend this strategy.)

“If you are happy for me to do so, I will post this on my blog which is read by thousands daily… I like the message”

“With you all the way”

“I fully support your aims in publicising the failure rate of NRT, but know it will be an uphill battle as the ‘powers that be’ will not easily admit they got it wrong”

“We fully agree with your findings and campaign. Good luck!”

“I totally agree! Good on you”

“Well done Chris. Keep up the good work!”

“Nicely put together content on your site.”

That is just a small selection of the comments so far, and we have yet to see a negative comment come in. All who have voiced an opinion, ever since the article about the book appeared in the Stockport Express on the 9th of January, have been in wholehearted agreement, with the singular exception of Dr Stephen Watkins, Director of Public Health at Stockport Primary Care Trust. He was asked to comment upon the message of the book by Miles Skinner from the Stockport Express, which the good doctor felt free to do, despite the fact that he had never clapped eyes on the book, let alone read it.

Thousands of people read that report, and the one in the Stockport Times. Thousands of people will have heard me talk about this on Channel M. Thousands have been to this site already, from all over the world. And yet no-one – no-one, that is, except Dr Watkins – has so far leapt to the defence of NRT. Not one nurse, not one pharmacist, not one GP… starting to feel a bit lonely, Dr Watkins?

more about hypnotherapy

Site Launch!

This campaign is not attacking the medical profession. It is attacking the cosy collusion between medical authorities, the pharmaceutical industry and also the Department of Health, because they are all actively promoting methods that fail the vast majority of smokers, misrepresenting the facts and telling lies about alternative methods like hypnotherapy and acupuncture – all of which is costing lives and wasting resources.

by Chris Holmes

Well now, this should be interesting. It’s not every day a humble therapist takes on the pharmaceutical industry, the Department of Health, the B.M.A. and the Royal College of Physicians… but it has got to be done.

The book was the first step: that had to be written and published initially so that anyone in the world could get hold of a copy and assess the evidence for themselves. I couldn’t just come out and say: “Actually, the whole basis for Nicotine Replacement is false, which explains its abject failure!” …because nobody would have listened. Everyone would assume that it must have been properly tested, surely, in well-designed scientific trials?

Then again, you could just ask yourself: “Who has any faith in nicotine gum these days, really?” And of course, we now know that clinical trials ain’t what they used to be, and the whole process of getting products approved as medicines has been hijacked by the drug companies, who now run all the clinical trials themselves and tend to be very selective about the ‘evidence’ they present to approval bodies.

I challenge anyone – anyone with an open mind, that is – to read the evidence on this site and tell me they are quite happy to have their tax money squandered on the poison nicotine for a few more years. The Department of Health has got the NHS Stop Smoking Services proclaiming ‘success rates’ that bear no relation to the real, long term outcomes – and they know it! They just don’t want the public to know it.

I am quite sure there will be many people working in the healthcare system who will be in full agreement that precious NHS resources should not be wasted on a poison posing as a medication, just because the manufacturers managed to swing it in such a way that the very short-term results were passed off as the real results. That’s bogus, and if you turn a blind eye to things like that, you can hardly be surprised when you later see embarrassing headlines like the ones posted on this site (see Trust me, I’m a Doctor). And if you find yourself doubting that nicotine products could possibly have won approval in that way, you really should read the Daily Mail article there by leading psychiatrist Professor David Healy from February 2007, which is reproduced in that section of the site. In fact everyone should read that, before they allow their doctor to precribe them any new “wonder drug”.

This campaign is not attacking the medical profession. It is attacking the cosy collusion between medical authorities, the pharmaceutical industry and also the Department of Health, because they are all actively promoting methods that fail the vast majority of smokers, misrepresenting the facts and telling lies about alternative methods like hypnotherapy and acupuncture – all of which is costing lives and wasting resources. And all because they don’t want to admit they were wrong, which is a pretty pathetic reason to carry on like that. Or to maintain the status quo because it suits all three parties, which is worse, since it maintains at enormous human cost.

So if you find yourself in agreement with the Truth Will Out Campaign, please help by spreading the word in any way you can! This Campaign is opposed to any kind of violence, intimidation or criminal damage in pursuit of its aims – this is an information war, challenging misinformation and the covering-up of failure on a massive scale. On behalf of smokers everywhere, we welcome all genuine assistance in spreading the word! The Truth Will Out!

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

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