A guest post by Ernest Gibbs
Gary: Ernest worked for me in sales many years ago, and our friendship has continued ever since. I liked so much what Ernest presented to the Select Committee considering the Therapeutic Products Bill that I asked for his permission to reproduce it on my blog. He agreed, so here it is!
Bio:
Entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for health & fitness. In the construction industry, specialising in roof coatings and working on Mach 2 of a prefabricated loadbearing self-supporting building panel to form the floor, walls and roof to challenge the concept of SIPs - Structural Insulated Panels - and provide a solution to the housing problem. Networker on the cutting edge of the nutritional supplement business.
My Objection to the Therapeutic Products Bill
Therapeutic Products are medicines, medical devices, natural health products, and pharmaceutical ingredients. The bill seeks to provide for the regulation of therapeutic products in a way that is comprehensive and balances the risks and benefits of the products.
So goes the preamble to the reasoning behind this Bill. But secretly, everyone knows its intent is to obstruct, impede, restrict and even destroy the ability for the average New Zealander to have free access and choice to Natural Health Products and the trained practitioners associated with them, like naturopaths, herbalists and homeopaths, including the ancient healing traditions of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is said, at least 50% of the population avail themselves to this wide range of alternative choices to the Allopathic Medicine of Big Medicine and Big Pharma, rolling along and picking up the casualties after the detritus of Big Food. Let’s call it what it is: a power play of global proportions by Big Corp in partnership with Globalist Government, signed up to the playbook of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, with its World Health Organisation and Agenda 2030 to infiltrate, surveille and control every part of our lives, right down to our choices of maintaining health & wellness. This is all in plain sight if we do the research and understand the globalist overreach these unelected officials wield to influence the New Zealand Government that ultimately overregulate, sabotage and destroy the way of life socially, culturally and economically of huge numbers of Kiwi’s in Aotearoa New Zealand, from the home, to school, to industry, towns and cities, and down to the farm, parks and reserves.
We need a level playing field between the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Natural Health Industry, primarily for consumer choice. Power to the People, not to the biases of a global pharmaceutical behemoth and its players for profit.
Personally, I object to the Therapeutics Goods Bill for the following reasons. I believe it is my inalienable God-given right to have sovereignty over my own body and personal choices to maintain my health and wellness, by doing my own research that is widely available in books and on the www of the internet, using my common sense and gaining mastery over myself, my habits and appetites to live an intentional healthy way of life.
I’ve been joking for more than thirty years, “….By the time I see the doctor it’ll be too late.” Back those more than thirty years ago, I decided to take back my personal power and my own responsibility for my health and wellness. I’m sixty-eight in May this year and have been assessed to be in the top one percent of men in my age bracket – 60 to 70 – for health and fitness. I’m not on any medication, preferring to eat all organic foods, exercise regularly and take nutritional supplements, guided and advised by my functional medicine practitioner, who starts with assessing one’s level of cellular health with a Hair Tissue Mineral analysis.
It is my understanding, having studied these alternative modalities and pathways to good health and wellness that the root cause of virtually all disorder, dysfunction and disease is a deficiency, excess or imbalance of minerals and/or toxins such as heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, food additives and a raft of many other chemicals and poisons from environmental, household and occupational exposure. This is the starting point of a Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis – HTMA – to show up any deficiency, excess or imbalance of minerals and/or toxins, and when analysed and interpreted by a skilled practitioner: be given a regime of mineral and nutritional therapies, diet recommendations of foods to eat or avoid, along with any lifestyle interventions or advice.
This approach to health fly’s in the face of Allopathic Medicine, which fundamental tenet is ‘pathology is its own cause,’ and so after diagnosis, medical intervention fails to determine as a priority the root cause of the disease or disorder, so the patient can be advised of certain lifestyle interventions as part of treatment, such as being more circumspect with what one puts in one’s mouth to eat, which for example, lack of education or attention to, is the root cause of type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome. The focus becomes more on the masking and alleviating the symptoms rather than drilling down on the root cause. This is lead with the treatment of drugs, if not removing or repairing the diseased organ or body part by surgery for acute cases, in either case usually setting up a course of lifelong dependence on drugs and a social culture of never ending pharmaceutical prescriptions. Please note: I’m in the Pasifika/Kiwi European demographic, who along with those of Māori, Asian and African descent, have a predisposition to developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, which is the number one risk factor of heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The Government should be investing more of its health budget into education and a handful of nutritional supplements, and wean off the support of the reflex action of lifelong diabetes medication. My younger brother, who has been taking medication for type 2 diabetes for over 30 years, half of that time being insulin injections, has come off all medication through the lifestyle interventions of losing weight, exercise and diet. There are more and more like him, who have taken responsibility for their health rather than be part of a System that maintains their sickness with drugs and give little hope of wellness, which never even enters the conversation.
I call it a Medical System rather than a Health System, because how can one say with all good conscience that we have a Health System. The culture and practises of Big Medicine and Big Pharma have created a Sickness System where there is no real drive or intention to cure disease much less educate; but sign up those unlucky enough to befall the System to a lifetime of medication, without getting fully well and healthy again. We need a Health System that invests in the education of the prevention of disease and or how to reverse its root causes, and not just be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
The enactment of this Bill will severely impede my health practitioner’s ability to administer such alternative therapies, along with my own democratic right and choice to be the master of my own destiny, with the considered choices I make to manage my health and wellness. Make no mistake, for thirty years I have invested in myself and health with education, deliberate intention, discipline and paying out my own hard earned cash to eat clean, supported with dietary and nutritional supplements. I’m a zero burden on the Government’s Medical System compared to many of my peers, contemporaries and even younger people, some who have cost the System tens of thousands of dollars over years with triple bypass operations (a very common one), cancer treatments, hip and knee surgeries, just to name a few common ‘medical’ conditions. There are a growing number like myself, and many others who through education or the experience and circumstances of iatrogenesis are disillusioned and weary of the Medical System and its failures if iatrogenesis.
I have a friend in my generation, who was up for a triple bypass heart operation three years ago and decided against it when he was presented with an alternative route to wellness. That route was chiefly lifestyle modifications of diet and particularly nutritional supplements, and he is in increasingly better health and on the way to recovery with significant reversals of calcification in his arteries. This was an investment in himself, with his time and money to research and purchase dietary supplements. All this continues to amaze his cardiologist. I wonder how many patients of this cardiologist are advised of this alternative route to triple bypass surgery? Of course that’s outside his training and expertise, but it has very real successful results.
Iatrogenesis – literally ‘death by healer’ has a wide range of definitions, but it includes from serious harm to the death by misdiagnosis, mis-prescription and erroneous course of treatments. I read an article 30 years ago that claimed 500,000 people die every year from iatrogenesis in the US, so I’ve been aware of this phenomenon for decades. A quick Google today tells me, quote: ‘According to a recent study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.’ Unquote.
It’s hard to get any definitive New Zealand data for iatrogenic deaths, but I came across a NZ Herald article in 2017 reporting a study by the Health Quality and Safety Commission with the headline: 30 in 100 Patients harmed by medication.
There was also an interesting paper titled: The Opioid Epidemic – Iatrogenesis on a
Global Scale. It was delivered by four doctors in May 2019 at the Aotea Centre in Auckland.
This was for a New Zealand audience with an Australian and New Zealand perspective and
at least one of the doctors was a ‘pain specialist in New Zealand.’ We have all heard that there is an opioid epidemic that has been going on in the US for years and there’s been scathing books written about it because of the undue influence of Big Pharma peddling with financial incentives. The paper states: opioid overdoses accounted for 64,078 deaths in the USA in 2016. Under the heading of The Size and Seriousness of the Problem, there were some key bullet points:
Of all the commonly used drugs, opioids have by far the highest mortality risk –Darke (2014) estimated that by the age of 50 years, about half of any cohort of illicit opioid users will have died, with overdose being the most common cause.
The size & seriousness of this clinical & public health problem is highly visible in northern America as it is now in Australia & is quite understandably forcing a serious rethink within the medical profession.
While Australia is already treading in the footsteps of Northern America, NZ is not yet experiencing these problems to the same extent.
The pharmaceutical industry is now targeting many other countries of the world in its opioid marketing activity (‘colonisation’), further fuelling the global opioid epidemic.
New Zealand has the opportunity to avoid an opioid epidemic of similar proportions while at the same time, ensuring better quality pain management.
It’s at least good news according to this paper that ‘NZ is not yet experiencing these problems to the same extent.’ But it’s not without its problems. Where do we stand on a Global Scale for consumption? the paper asks.
On the basis of data provided by member states (daily divided doses or DDD), a UN report (2016) suggests that Australia is 8th on a league table of opioid consumption per million persons while New Zealand is 15th. Doing the maths of on their chart ‘Standard daily dose of prescription opioids per million inhabitants’ came out at 52,565 doses daily here in NZ – that’s still a lot of people – which compounded to 20 million doses in a year: that’s a lot of drugs. The highlighted above is an indictment against the Pharmaceutical Industry which is like rust: it never sleeps with its burgeoning power and size spoken of in the trillions of dollars. It reports 1,100 opioid deaths in Australia in 2016, but is a bit sketchy about deaths in NZ and could only come up with the figures 35 to 47 deaths a year between 2009 and 2013, with a total of 200. Is that because NZ doesn’t have such a robust system as Australia as to keeping the count? The true damning report on the opioid market and Big Pharma’s drive for profits is it ‘is unable to demonstrate its effectiveness’ as the paper reports:
The US CDC & the Faculty of Pain Medicine (ANZCA) are among leading health bodies concluding on the basis of large systematic reviews & meta-analyses that there is ‘insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of long-term opioid therapy for improving chronic pain & function’ –This is an astonishing finding given the colossal number of prescriptions written for these medicines globally, over the past several decades!
At the same time, those reviews have revealed worrisomely high rates of wide ranging & serious adverse events & unwanted side effects: If that doesn’t drive home the psychopathic behaviour of Big Medicine and Big Pharma as an Industry, perhaps the end of the paper will, with the heading of Other Pharmaceutical Iatrogenesis: We are also witnessing rising problems associated with other classes of medicines & there are common themes – Benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, anti-depressants, Gabapentinoids, psychostimulants.
These medicines have psychotropic properties, may trigger reinforcing ‘brain reward’ pathways & alter the way people perceive, think (cognition), feel (affect) & behave
Their prescribing is too often in irrational & unsafe combinations, doses & clinical contexts, signalling an apparent expectation or hope that a medicine will solve or enduringly relieve often complex health & human problems.
While many medicines do save lives, extend lives & improve QOL, the pharmaceutical industry has been only too pleased to promote ‘the magic of pharma’ in ways that are often unjustified by the evidence.
These are enlightened doctors reporting on their own ‘industry.’ Yes, not all MD doctors are entrenched in the System, as witnessed by the MD’s in NZDSOS – New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science - who were delicensed by an all-powerful Medical System, and lost their ability to practice during the Covid plandemic, rather than compromise their values.
Overall, with iatrogenesis we must sit up and take notice of all the cost and misery to human life that Allopathic Medicine can bring in the name of healthcare, even with their admittance ‘many medicines do save lives.’ At all costs, we need the ability to do our own research and make choices from the options presented to us.
I’ve laboured on iatrogenesis in Allopathic Medicine to juxtapose it to Natural Health Alternatives that begs the question:
How many cases of iatrogenesis – death by healer – or fatalities are there on record in New Zealand attributed to NHP’s – Natural Health Products? Using the same method to research iatrogenesis in Allopathic Medicine, I couldn’t come up with one case. In contrast, at the top of the page of my search, I found a Press Release from the Coroners Council dated October 2006, with the heading:
Natural medicines – the safest way to avoid death
A report just released by the Acting Chair of the Coroner’s Council has shown natural medicines have the lowest fatality rate of all medical treatments in this country.
Despite extensive research, coroner Dr Wallace Bain found no deaths have occurred in this country due to natural medicines such as vitamins, minerals and herbal products.
Dr Bain, who is also a trained pharmacist and lawyer, undertook the study in light of growing opposition to new legislation that will see New Zealand’s natural health industry come under Australian laws. The safety of natural products is often cited as a reason for the need for such a move.
At the bottom of the page of my search was an article dated August 2022 by the New Zealand Medical Journal: Just because you can…does not mean you should: an examination of efficacy and potential harms from non-prescribed supplements taken by members of the Christchurch Health and Development Study at age 40.
It started with the legend: ‘The development and sale of non-prescribed dietary supplements is a growing industry.’ Follow the money. The undergirding leading edge of the article, reading between the lines, is the millions it’s not getting from competition that just might have finer better quality products that are more natural than their synthetic bent, which they can patent and make huge profits on lower costs. After citing the figures of the growing market it continued, ‘Global demand for supplements such as vitamins C and D, minerals and herbal supplements increased as the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened despite, in most cases, no scientific evidence that their consumption can directly combat SARS CoV-2.’ Quite an ironic blanket statement when they can’t actually offer scientific evidence themselves that the mRNA gene therapy with the misnomer of it being a vaccine, was indeed ‘safe and effective.’ Continuing it said: ‘While multivitamin supplementation is useful for pregnant people, vegans, older people, post-bariatric surgery or during extremely stressful circumstances, meeting nutrient intakes through diet rather than supplementation is preferable. Non-clinical populations derive little benefit from using supplements and in extreme cases there is potential for interactions between products, toxicity due to chronic high dosages or financial hardship due cost. Further, there is no specific legislation governing natural health products in New Zealand.’ In conclusion it said, ‘Clinicians should encourage patients to use diet to attain nutrition. Clinicians should also encourage information sharing of supplement consumption by their patients. A large proportion of patients used supplements and there is potential for interactions with prescription medication or for symptoms of excess consumption. Often, non-prescribed products are a waste of money offering no health benefit.’
With a concession that multivitamin supplementation can be useful to certain parts of the population, it concludes that we can get all our nutritional needs through diet. However, that is a specious argument. It might have been possible 70 to 100 years ago, when soils were rich in nutrients, but now the average person gets their fruits and vegetables from the local supermarket, not being organic, and think they’re ‘getting their five,’ with all its health implications of good health. But sadly, the food chain is deficient in minerals, especially micro and ultra-trace minerals, due to decades of industrial farming with hybrid seedless fruits and vegetables, grown with chemical fertilisers and dusted with herbicides and insecticides, which is a recipe for toxicity and disease. There’s become a growing awareness amongst researchers that glysophate (with descriptive brand names like Round Up and Knockdown), which is an ubiquitous and insidious chemical weedkiller, is the root cause of many tumours, cancers and disease.
The claim: ‘Non-clinical populations derive little benefit from using supplements’ is straight out of the Big Medicine and Big Pharma playbook to discredit NHP’s, but there are mountains of studies to disprove that both clinically and empirically. Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis in hand with mineral and nutritional therapies have proven very effective where Allopathic Medicine has failed to be efficacious, and elite athletes wouldn’t achieve peak performance without dietary supplementation. Do you think the average All Black or Olympian isn’t seeking an edge in performance by not experimenting with nutritional supplements? A high octane motor needs high octane fuel. The truth is, in the modern world we need to supplement an organic diet if we desire optimum health and fitness, especially as we age; acknowledged in the NZ Medical Journal article as ‘older people.’
To push back even further on this Bill and the double standards of Big Pharma vs Natural Health Products: it's a mockery of the tenets of good health and wellness for the Government to allow the use of at least 3,000 synthetic substances approved for use by Big Food and Big Pharma that are components and additives to countless processed food products, synthetic dietary supplements, fragrances and cosmetics. Regardless, many of these chemical substances are known to be hazardous or carcinogenic. These products are readily purchased off supermarket and pharmacy shelves, while more pure and natural foods herbs and their tinctures, elixirs and extracts will be controlled at the best or made illegal at the worst.
This Bill will impede restrict or destroy the many cottage industries and small to medium sized businesses producing these salubrious and often cutting edge NHP’s. This is a slap in the face by Government and Big Corp to the entrepreneurial spirit of the founders, owners and employees of these companies. The net result will be loss of local GNP, higher unemployment and the destruction of a thriving industry. The only winner will be Big Food, Big Medicine and Big Pharma who will be taking their profits off shore, much like the global masters of our four Big Banks. As the commentator of the America’s Cup was fond of saying at the end of each race back in 2013, as Larry Ellison’s Team Oracle USA pulled off the impossible and came back from an 8-1 deficit to win, ‘The rich keep getting richer!’ Too bad about our SME’s – small to medium sized enterprises - that have always been the backbone of the New Zealand economy, but since the Lockdowns have increasingly been threatened by Big Corp taking over all business on a global scale.
I would remind the Committee of the words of Hippocrates the so-called father of medicine: ‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.’ The practitioners of Allopathic Medicine take the Hippocratic Oath, which distilled to its essence is: do no harm. They are far from such lofty ideals as an industry and as a culture.
The enactment of the Therapeutic Goods Bill will perpetuate the continued move to centralisation for all Government services, with a one-size-fits-all approach when every functional medicine practitioner will tell you we are all different, even in families, with unique individual needs for healthcare, administered by a discerning health practitioner, and not just a cursory flick through a drug handbook or file, as to what drug is recommended for a particular range of symptoms.
The enactment of the Therapeutic Goods Bill will set up even more conflicts of interest with legislation that purports the Government or its agency be the Regulator, while at the same time promoting and sponsoring pharmaceuticals and even their manufacturers, as was witnessed with the roll out and enforcement of the mRNA gene therapy called a vaccine mandate, which was subservient to Pfizer in a deal that lacked transparency with the NZ public.
Pfizer is the largest pharmaceutical corporation on the planet with an atrocious record of convictions for criminal lawsuits. They were fined $US2.3 billion for ‘mispromoting medicines and paying kickbacks to compliant doctors.’ In this case, the summary comments of the presiding judge said, the actions of the Pfizer executives were psychopathic with no regard for life or safety, only profit. No one was jailed or personally fined.
What an indictment, and we, the New Zealand public are expected to fall in line with such shady and questionable tactics, which are nothing less than medical tyranny in partnership with a Government that is leaning towards totalitarianism, with all the vaccine mandates that came into effect under duress, and the resulting loss of livelihood and destruction of lives through hardship.
This partnership between Regulator, being the government, and Big Pharma, being the manufacturer, with incredible flimsy proofs of efficacy sanctioned by the FDA, WHO, CDC, NHI and our own Medsafe must stop for any credibility to Government integrity going forward. The nature of this partnership between Governments and Big Corp is shot through with misinformation, disinformation, collusion and corruption. The actors of this heist need to be brought to justice, especially with all the adverse reactions and harm from the mRNA gene therapy that now can’t be denied. The Government website on Covid response now lists myocarditis and pericarditis as possible side effects, but plays it all down while still sanctioning the Jab.
Who can fathom what the problem is that this Bill proposes to fix, other than a power grab to enforce even more laws, rules and regulations on our already overregulated lives. It bamboozles, but with pernicious overreach and will need an army of bureaucrats to administer and enforce, never mind the one Regulator. It's dangerous to our freedom and liberty and choice to self-determine our individual and personal healthcare. The government needs to desist with their risible but strongarm attempt to more totalitarian legislation.