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.

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Support is growing!

Four hypnotherapy associations have already confirmed that they are actively supporting the Truth Will Out Campaign – informing their members, linking to the site and promoting the Campaign through newsletters and similar publications.

N.B. The only support we have ever requested is for professional associations to inform their members about the campaign so that they are fully aware of the details. Any group or individual may participate more actively if they wish to, but our only request is that members are made aware of the campaign’s existence, so they can form their own opinion.

Individual messages of support continue to pour in, and more and more people are linking to the Truth Will Out site. Anyone involved in, or even interested in the field of complementary medicine may link to the Truth Will Out site, without making a formal request. We are grateful for their support. If you agree that nicotine is a poison posing as a medication, the best way to assist the case is to spread the word – to anyone and everyone, and in whatever way you can without contravening any laws.

Of all the organisations that we have approached within the professional field of hypnotherapy, none have yet refused support – most are still considering and consulting on how they prefer to respond to our request in due course. We can still confirm that since the site was launched on March 8th 2008, this Campaign has not generated one single hostile comment or criticism in respect of either its aims, or any of the evidence published on the site or in the book. Not one – despite 48,000 hits on the site (to date) from all over the world. No-one has stood up in defence of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning. Not one doctor, nurse, pharmacist or even the people who make the poison nicotine for sale to the general public. That’s a bit odd, don’t you think, for something that’s supposed to be an “evidence-based medicine”?

Three newspaper articles so far. Three television appearances with the book. Not one objection or disagreement received yet, and I first published the book in October 2007.

This is just the beginning.

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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?

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Channel M Television

If smokers’ cravings were really withdrawal symptoms, they would get them at their worst when the level of nicotine was lowest – which is first thing in the morning when they open their eyes. In truth, most smokers do not keep cigarettes in the bedroom and don’t smoke straight away: there is a gap between opening their eyes, and lighting the first cigarette. For some it might be five minutes, for others, over an hour – but the point is, during that time they feel perfectly normal. So why are they not climbing the walls, desperate for nicotine? They haven’t had any for hours! Where are the terrible ‘withdrawal symptoms’?

by Chris Holmes

After the article appeared in the Stockport Express about the publication of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was in early January 2008, I got an email from Vanessa Williams, Editor of the live Breakfast Show on Channel M (TV for Manchester!), asking if I would like to come on the show and talk about the book. I accepted, and the item was scheduled for Monday 14th January.

Items on breakfast telly are always short and sweet – the producers know you’re only watching this while you get ready for work, and they don’t want to hold you up with lengthy items that put the world to rights. So I knew I would probably only get the chance to get one good point across on this occasion, which was to point out that if smokers’ cravings were really withdrawal symptoms, they would get them at their worst when the level of nicotine was lowest – which is first thing in the morning when they open their eyes. In truth, most smokers do not keep cigarettes in the bedroom and don’t smoke straight away: there is a gap between opening their eyes, and lighting the first cigarette. For some it might be five minutes, for others, over an hour – but the point is, during that time they feel perfectly normal.

So why are they not climbing the walls, desperate for nicotine? They haven’t had any for hours! Where are the terrible ‘withdrawal symptoms’? I got that point across successfully within the four minutes we were allotted, and explained that we shut down the impulse to reach for tobacco in hypnotherapy, but that was about all we had time for really.

As that went well enough, later I was invited back onto the show and presented with a challenge in the form of the lovely Samantha, whom I had never met before, but who wanted to quit smoking. She worked for Channel M, but wasn’t present at my first visit. The idea was that we would do ‘before’ and ‘after’ appearances on the show, first with Sam talking about her current smoking habit, then (hopefully) about how she was a happy non-smoker after we had done the Stop Smoking session.

Now ask yourself this question: if hypnotherapy didn’t work, or only works if you are lucky – if it were no better than a placebo, or was pretty hit and miss – would I have accepted that challenge? I knew I was going back on that show a few weeks later to talk about the results – and even if I chose not to, they would be talking about the results anyway! Was I mad? What if it didn’t work?

So that second item was aired on the 29th of January, but it was 9th of February before we got around to doing the session at my offices here in Stockport. It all went fine, and we eventually scheduled the TV follow up for 12th March, which happened to be National No Smoking Day. Sam reported that the session had been immediately and totally successful, and just as I had said, there were no mood swings, no over-eating and no weight-gain. She had no desire to smoke under any circumstances and suffered no cravings.

Well, why not, Doc? What happened to the terrible ‘withdrawal symptoms’ listed in the medical textbooks? Why were Sam’s ‘nicotine receptors’ not “going crazy” like it says on the nicotine replacement poisoning ads these days? I’ll tell you: because suffering and struggle are only experienced if you don’t have hypnotherapy to shut down the craving signals. The impulse to reach for tobacco has nothing to do with nicotine. Whatever ‘nicotine receptors’ might actually be, they play no role in prompting smoking behaviour, and in hypnotherapy we routinely shut down smoking habits with no reference to nicotine receptors whatsoever.

The reason I was happy to accept that challenge – just one smoker, just one session – is because I knew from my personal experience of working with thousand of smokers that this is what usually happens when the job is done properly, so I was confident that I had a 70-30 chance in my favour of success, even with only one session. I reckoned it was worth the small risk to my personal credibility to demonstrate the truth to any smokers who might be watching.

It’s not a fluke. It’s not a miracle. It’s not some bizarre phenomenon. It is simply the easiest, quickest, safest and most intelligent way to eliminate nuisance habits – and it is high time that became common knowledge, and all this nonsense about nicotine was finally revealed for what it is: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century.

Special thanks to Sam, Vanessa and all at Channel M in Manchester!

Chris Holmes has been Director of Central Hypnotherapy, Stockport, England UK since August 2000
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The Truth About Smoking

I first became fully aware that smoking was not a drug addiction six or seven years ago. My smoking clients would walk in to my office ‘unable’ to stop smoking, and walk out free. How could that be, if they really were addicted to, or dependent on, a drug called nicotine?
The answer was simple: they were not. Nor is it a ‘psychological addiction’ – a nonsense term, since the ‘logical’ part of the mind (the conscious mind) is not really involved. No, it is entirely a compulsive habit, and it can be easily eliminated by effective hypnotherapy – just like any other compulsive habit.

by Chris Holmes

I first became fully aware that smoking was not a drug addiction six or seven years ago. My smoking clients would walk in to my office ‘unable’ to stop smoking, and walk out free. How could that be, if they really were addicted to, or dependent on, a drug called nicotine?

The answer was simple: they were not. Nor is it a ‘psychological addiction’ – a nonsense term, since the ‘logical’ part of the mind (the conscious mind) is not really involved. No, it is entirely a compulsive habit, and it can be easily eliminated by effective hypnotherapy – just like any other compulsive habit. The medical people who insist otherwise are either ignorant of the reality – which is bad, since they are handing out advice and products based on that ignorant notion – or they know that ‘nicotine addiction’ is bogus, but they don’t want the public to realise it, which is far worse.

I knew that before I could challenge the pharmaceutical giants, the medical authorities and the Department of Health here in the U.K., I would have to assemble some pretty damning evidence and get it out there where they cannot suppress it, so that is what I’ve done. The first stage was to write and publish the bookNicotine: The Drug That Never Was.

Then I went to the newspapers. Initially I just sent them information, assuming one of them would sense a story and get back to me for more details. I sent detailed information to news and media organisations, and kept a record of all those I have alerted so far. In truth I saw this as the first wave, I wasn’t expecting much from it, because everybody’s immediate knee-jerk reaction is “Huh? Nicotine isn’t a drug? Who’s this idiot?”

The local paper (Stockport Express) did do an article though, and my email address was published with it. I fully expected a backlash from medical people – GPs, pharmacists, people who work for the NHS Stop Smoking Services. It was inconceivable they didn’t hear about it, it was in papers that were delivered to thousands of homes in the Stockport area. Here I was, calling for NRT to be scrapped by the NHS, declaring that it doesn’t work for 94% of smokers. You would think that someone would be standing up for NRT, saying: “How dare you, who do you think you are?” etc, but no. Not a word, the silence was deafening.

Recently I mentioned this to one of my clients, who is a nurse. She shook her head, and said: “They won’t. They know.”

This rather telling comment implies that the only reason the medical profession has not abandoned Nicotine Replacement Poisoning is because to do so now – after recommending and endorsing it for so long, and wasting vast sums of public money on it (though, to be fair, that was a government decision) – would be an embarrassing U-turn they would rather avoid.  So to avoid admitting that they were wrong, they are quite prepared to let thousands of smokers die by sticking to a failed policy, and waste vast sums of cash, that could actually be saving lives elsewhere, on the pointless production of a poison which has no genuine therapeutic application whatsoever, and performs very poorly even within the normal placebo range.

Chris Holmes has been Director of Central Hypnotherapy, Stockport, England UK since August 2000
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