It is probably inexcusable that it has been almost 3 months since I wrote my last entry. And it probably sounds pathetic that publishing Positive Health PH Online has wiped out virtually all my time. Is this the prelude to burnout, or have I been in that state where work overwhelms my life?
Don't know the answer, but undoubtedly will discover in due course. I have listened to interviews of several high profile editors and spoken with very well known publishers who have remarked that publishing has taken over their life or virtually bankrupted them, so I am familiar with that sentiment. Quite a number of individuals and organizations presently are teeter tottering along the plank to insolvency in various degrees. In fact just about the whole of the UK, Europe and perhaps the USA are in similar dire straits. Except of course for those rich with cash.
I have received copies of Martin Walker's latest epic Dirty Medicine The Handbook, which is the latest strand in a long line of titles dealing with the nefarious side of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry and its political connections and cliques. I was fairly centrally involved and featured in Martin Walker's first book in this area Dirty Medicine and in fact proof read the book at a time after the organic germanium tabloid debacle when it was banned on spurious grounds to prevent it being trialled for potential efficacy for HIV / AIDs. However now in the midst of reading this latest sequel of titles about medicine and its dark connections to politics, my jaw is continuously dropping and I feel sometimes a total ingenue in discovering exactly which powerful scientists, politicians and media celebrities have been involved with the financial support of organizations deliberately tasked with the suppression, defamation and indeed obliteration of complementary and alternative medicine.
Having been the Editor of Positive Health PH Online I have been observing and dealing with many of the central characters mentioned in Martin Walker's new book. And I have been reviewing numerous books detailing the dirty tricks and deliberate obfuscations of research funded and published by the pharmaceutical companies. Indeed I know first hand many of the individuals featured in the book and deal with many of the organizations cited.
One would have had to be blind and deaf not to have been aware of the huge scandals which form major threads in Martin Walker's book, including the trial of Dr Andrew Wakefield before the General Medical Council, the legal challenges by Dr Simon Singh against the British Chiropractic Association, nor the venomous campaigns against homeopathic medicines by all the Great and the Good.
Martin Walker terms the Alice through the Looking Glass phenomenon whereby everything you thought went one way was reported to be the opposite way as Truth Reversal - an excellent alternative term to the plain old lie.
I am only about halfway through this highly researched and technically very detailed book which gives the cvs of some of the most august members of the scientific, medical and political establishment, viewed through the prism of Martin Walker's highly politicized lens. As a PhD myself, I must say that I have spend much of my career striving to join and be accepted by these very people. Now I quite understand why rather than being embraced and acknowledged by them for the considerable achievements of Positive Health PH Online I, along with numerous other well-intentioned but perhaps politically naive individuals have been at best sidelined or ignored, at worst destroyed.
I will report back with further progress. Watch this space.
