www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs.html

This book blows wide open the scale of the operation to discredit natural health practitioners (as well as the paranormal) which is being orchestrated behind the scenes by the powerful corporate Science Lobby.

In particular it looks at the writings of Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science column in the Guardian newspaper but also covers the entire quackbusting operation in both the UK and the US.

Martin presents to us the Big Picture that ties together the reasons for the incessant attacks against alternative medicine and natural health practitioners. He tells the story of Britain’s most famous nutritionalist, Patrick Holford and the character assassination he has endured.

We learn that “Guidelines on Science and Health Communications” was created by the science lobby headed by Lords Taverne and Sainsbury which virtually forbids science writers from writing about alternative medicine.

What is abundantly clear from this book is that a host of organisations, such as Sense about Science, Science Media Centre, Health Watch, CSICOP, National Council Against Health Fraud (USA) are run by people with conflicts of interest who have been set up and funded by industry (pharmaceutical, chemical) as well as governmental, to at all costs protect the interests of big business. “What industry wants is not objective scientific research but a constant stream of disclaiming information that can be channelled out to science journalists and politicians”. These organisations are riddled with people who either work for or have worked for pharmaceutical , biotech and GM companies. They produce ‘denial information’ about the health damaging effects of industrial and high tech production and are centres to measure what industry can get away with.

Martin’s book also discusses the fate of Dr. Andrew Wakefield who questioned the safety of the MMR vaccine and who began an appearance before the GMC with two other doctors in July 2007. The sole complainant was Brian Deer who made a Channel 4 documentary against Wakefield.

There is also an appendix covering the work of leading psychiatrist Professor Simon Wesseley and his research at King’s College Hospital which seeks to label ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as being psychiatric illnesses.

This is a must read for the entire natural health community if they are to make any sense out of the media’s constant attacks on them. Martin Walker is the only writer who has really studied the history of these attacks in depth and who wrote about them in his first book ‘Dirty Medicine: Science, big business and the assault on natural healthcare’ published in 1993. With in excess of 150,000 natural health practitioners in the UK, isn’t it time we all got together and fought back?!

Louise Mclean is Editor of Zeus Information Service
www.zeusinfoservice.com