This is another important book by Dr Coleman about the dangers of doctors, prescription drugs and so on. Many more people die each year as a result of medical "accidents” than die as a result of road accidents.

Vernon gives us twelve laws of medicine that can help to protect us from these “accidents”.

Coleman’s 1st Law

If you are receiving treatment for a disease and get new symptoms, you should assume that these are caused by the treatment.

Doctors are now officially one of the top four causes of death and serious injury in the world along with cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Doctors don’t know how dangerous drugs can be.

Four out of every ten patients who take a prescription drug will develop side effects, some mild, some unpleasant but many dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

Reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medications kill far more people than all illegal drug use combined.

The drug industry does not exist to find more cures or treatments for people, but only to make money.

Most doctors know little about the drugs they prescribe, and the little they know they learn from the companies that make the drug.

The same medicines, often in the same doses, are prescribed for young and old, male and female, fat and thin.

Statins can cause transient global amnesia (TGA) which can wipe out every memory since early childhood. Other side effects include cancer, most often of the breast and of the gastrointestinal tract, congestive heart failure, neurological damage, extreme fatigue, nausea, muscle weakness, gastrointestinal problems and pain.

Dr Coleman gives us several horrific stories about drug side effects. (I’m so glad I never take medicine.)

Many drugs do not interact well. If you take two drugs you have a far greater risk of developing unpleasant or lethal side effects than with the two individual drugs.

Experiments are performed on animals. If they do not die or fall ill when given a drug then the company making it will announce that it has been proved to be safe. If they do die or fall ill, the company will state that it is ignoring the results because animals are different to people.

Coleman’s 2nd Law

There is no point in having tests done unless the results will affect your treatment.

Coleman’s 3rd Law

If the treatment doesn’t work then you should consider the possibility that the diagnosis might be wrong, particularly when several treatments have been tried.

Doctors are frighteningly bad at making diagnoses. A study from 2004 showed that major disorders are not picked up in around four out of ten patients, When doctors compared post-mortem results with the patients’ medical records they discovered that out of 87 patients only 17 were diagnosed completely correctly. Ten of the patients might have survived if the diagnosis had been more accurate, In 15 cases major problems such as heart attacks were not detected.

Learn as much as you can about any disorder from which you suffer. “Patients who know more than their doctors invariably do better than patients who put all their faith in their medical advisers.” (So true; my doctor is irritated by my knowledge and tells me I read too much.)

Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion. Dr Coleman himself was told he had renal cancer and had to get a kidney removed. But he got a second opinion and the next doctor assured him there was nothing wrong with it, and it turned out he didn’t have cancer but irritable bowel syndrome.

Coleman’s 4th Law

Screening examinations and checkups are more profitable for doctors than for patients.

Mammograms, for instance, are far too dangerous and should be avoided.

They may help to prevent breast cancer but can also cause breast cancer.

The incidence of false positives among women who have mammograms is phenomenally high. In one investigation of 26,000 women who had mammograph screening, only 1 in every 10 women who tested positive was subsequently found to have breast cancer.

The false negative rate for mammography is between 5% and 20%, with the higher figure relating to younger women.

Coleman’s 5th Law

It is doctors, not patients, who need annual checkups.

Ha, ha, ha!

“Incompetent or careless doctors cause a horrifying amount of death or injury.”

When more than 30,000 patients admitted to acute care hospitals in New York were studied it was found that nearly 4% of them suffered unintended injuries in the course of their treatment and that 14% of the patients died from their injuries.

It is clear, therefore, that doctors kill vastly more innocent people than do terrorists.

It was found that 64% of carotid endarterectomies were either unjustifiable or of debatable value. The equivalent figure for pacemaker implants is 56%.

Coronary bypass operations are immensely popular among heart surgeons but a major study showed that many patients who don’t have surgery live longer than those who do.

In the USA the death toll from unnecessary surgery has been estimated to be as high as 80,000 patients a year.

20% of British patients with slightly raised blood pressure are treated unnecessarily with drugs.

In Britain the Institute of Economic Affairs claimed that inexperienced doctors in casualty wards kill at least one thousand patients a year.

Vernon has a zany sense of humour; he states: “A big chunk of doctors are crooks who would prescribe arsenic if they got a free pen from a drug company making arsenic tablets. Many more don’t know (and wouldn’t dare guess) what day of the week it is unless a drug company representative told them.”

470,000 Australian men, women and children are admitted to hospital every year because they have been made ill by doctors. 18,000 Australians die annually as a result of medical errors, drug toxicity, surgical errors and “general medical mismanagement”.

Figures in Europe are no better, in fact the story is the same the whole world over.

Drugs – benzodiazepines, antibiotics, painkillers and antidepressants - are wildly overprescribed. Vaccines are also a major cause of illness and death,

When doctors in Israel went on strike for a month, the death rate dropped by 50% to the lowest ever recorded level. In Bogota, Columbia, doctors went on strike for 52 days and there was a 35% fall in the mortality rate. In Los Angeles a doctor’s strike resulted in an 18% reduction in the death rate. After the strike was over the death rate went back to normal.

The author states that we need to humanize doctors by stripping away some of their power and authority. Patients must start treating doctors more critically; they must be more demanding, more questioning and more assertive.

And, most importantly, we need to make a genuine effort to separate the medical profession from the drugs industry.

The author discusses the power of love and states “Love is a better cure than drugs or surgery. But where’s the profit?”

I’ll leave you to discover the remaining seven of Coleman’s Laws yourself by reading the book

I found it to be an extremely valuable book and it will be even more valuable for all those that follow their doctors’ instructions to the letter (though I very much doubt that any such person would find his or her way to any of Vernon Coleman’s books!)

It was a disadvantage for me that the pages weren’t numbered, and that there was no index.

I highly recommend that you read the book. ( )