This is certainly the conclusion that many of us have arrived at: Gregory Pawelski documents how his wife died from the side effects of her ovarian cancer treatments; Kit Anderson lists the toxic petrochemical pollutants present in the majority of beauty products; Dr Anthony Rees describes how his camera crew was barred from entering a CODEX meeting and told that the reason there were no press in attendance was that "the press hadn't been invited because there was really nothing of interest for them" (see Letters page 47). So much for health freedom!

However, the description by Thomas E Levy MD of the ignorance, obstinacy and mean-minded arrogance of the medical profession toward research and developments which in any way deviate from the drug-oriented books which they read in medical school, takes the biscuit.

Dr Levy, in his new book Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, & Toxins reviews the considerable clinical literature (>24,000 published studies) regarding treatment and cure of many incurable diseases, including polio, viral hepatitis, measles, viral encephalitis, rabies and AIDS using high-dose (optidose) vitamin C (See page 58). A doctor himself, the author has the uncanny knack of getting underneath the skin of the medical beast, and recounts the suspicion, derision and dismissive remarks which have consigned to oblivion, amongst many others, the cure for polio developed, presented to the American Medical Association and published in 1949 by the brilliant Frederick Klenner MD who cured 60 out of 60 of his polio patients. Klenner's work, along with most work outside the narrow medical box, has been consistently ignored over many decades.

I have convulsed myself in misunderstanding over much of this decade about the seeming ignorance of the medical profession regarding the thousands of research studies conducted in all fields of nutrition and complementary therapies. The mountains of literature are blindingly obvious to anyone who can read; yet it appears that if doctors haven't heard of a particular development because it wasn't in the medical textbook they studied, and it isn't in their current Physicians Desk Reference, it simply doesn't exist. The research must be of the vanishing variety; all the patients in the world getting better using nutrition, herbs, reflexology, aromatherapy are self-hypnotized by a placebo effect, or they were never ill in the first place!

It is amazing that cancer patients who improve using nutritional regimens such as Gerson or Macrobiotics or herbal medicine are derided as virtual crackpots and their treatments dismissed in a highly patronizing manner, whereas cancer patients who die, having undergone toxic treatments which sap their energy and harm their immune systems are heralded as brave souls.

Everyone endeavouring in their private life to improve the quality of the water they drink, the natural, organic food they eat and feed to their children, the non-toxic toiletries they use and natural remedies they choose, ought to be congratulated, encouraged and made shining examples to us all.

Instead, if the scientific committees of the EU and CODEX have their ways, the tens of millions of health-conscious, natural-loving citizens of the world will be criminalized and denied access to the vitamins, minerals, herbs and health-giving flower, aromatherapy and homeopathic remedies which have safely delivered health. We are certainly living in a backward-looking society when governments and the media push drugs that kill and punish us for using safe, natural medicines.

If you seek reliable, authoritative information to stay alive, you need to be ruthlessly sceptical about whom you believe, because there is an almost diabolical certainty that the information output will be dependent upon whom you ask.

To fix your car visit a car mechanic, to fix your central heating hire a plumber, for an operation, see a surgeon, for chemotherapy or radiotherapy ask the oncologists. However, if you wish non-conventional treatments, don't ask most doctors, because they won't have even heard about them.

In order for sanity to be restored to this upside-down state of affairs, it will take an earthquake of a revolution to replace the pharmaceutical kingdoms with a new natural medicine world organization. My application is ready; missing is merely the detail of where to send it.