Current Posts – 03 Nov 2015

Calls to reform medical research can often seem like pie-in-the-sky. The campaign to get pharmaceutical companies to be more truthful about the results of their trials limps along because what company is going to be keen on reforms that may interfere with a billion dollar profit? Bottom line is that companies exist to make profits and if that conflicts with patients’ interests, patients lose out. The solution could lie with an unusual Italian research institute.

A diagnosis of cancer drops you into a war zone. We talk of beating it and putting up a good fight; the treatments involve cutting, burning and poisoning. There is no sense that dialogue with your cancer is part of a route back to health, This week we publish an extract from “The Cancer Whisperer“, a beautifully written book that tells how listening to cancer can be more beneficial than demonising it.

One of the reasons people go to psychotherapy is get help to change a pattern of behavior that keep getting bad results. There now seems a very strong case for sending all senior managers of the charity Diabetes UK for intensive group psychotherapy. They need professional help to stop them compulsively advising diabetics to follow the low fat diet. It has become embarrassingly obvious that it doesn’t work.