‘The over-60s are not worth treating’

A version of this post was first published in 2007. It has been republished in the light of the Gosport hospital case.

---

The Daily Mail has reported that half of all GPs say that patients (victims) over the age of sixty are not worth diagnosing or treating. Of course, what GPs say has no necessary relationship to what they actually do. Telling the truth is not, even nominally, part of their remit. But it is likely that what goes on, and has been going on for a long time, is worse than they admit openly.

* * * * *

Some years ago there was a similar article revealing that, in the case of women, fifty-five was the age at which doctors thought them past bothering with.

Taking a short break at Boscombe in a seaside hotel, I was discussing this with a lady in her fifties, sitting opposite me at the breakfast table. She protested at so painful a topic being discussed, so I stopped talking about it. But this may illustrate both how demoralising the immoral power of the medical Mafia is, and why there is no sympathy with those who complain of it.

When this lady went to her doctor she liked, no doubt, to maintain an uneasy fiction that she could trust him, rely on him to exercise his powers in her best interests (as understood by herself), and believe what he said.

She would wish to do this in order to relieve her anxieties about any symptoms she might have. However, doing this in the face of evidence to the contrary is likely to take quite a lot of emotional energy. Taking up emotional energy in this way is essentially decentralising.* Recognising that one is alone in a hostile world is, or may be, eventually liberating (although, no doubt, there are plenty of ways of doing it wrong).

The psychological social contract is what happens when the individual gives up his own drives to self-fulfilment and becomes the willing slave of social oppression, in return for the possibility of oppressing others, or enjoying the spectacle of their being oppressed by the social forces with which he has thrown in his lot.

Once a society has instigated an oppressive regime, such as the modern Welfare (Oppressive) State, there is no real possibility of reversing it, as an increasing number of people wish to believe in the ‘benefits’ they are deriving from it — including in many cases the opportunity to oppress other people — rather than face up to the terrifying nature of the threats to which they are exposed.

* For an explanation of the concept of centralisation, see here.

Patients starved to death

A version of this post was first published in 2007. It has been republished in the light of the Gosport hospital case.

In 1989, there was another life crisis when Marjorie’s mother, then in her 70s, had a series of increasingly severe strokes.
‘The hospital withdrew food and water and I watched her starve to death. My sister felt it was the kindest thing to do but my mother spent a week in agony. I felt utter grief and still haven’t dealt with it.’
(Daily Mail, 17 April 2007)

It is legal for an incapacitated patient to be denied artificial hydration and nutrition ... if doctors consider death to be in their best interest.
(Daily Mail, 19 April 2007)

It is legal, but it is still immoral (it is a strong violation of the basic moral principle*), for members of the medical Mafia to kill people by starving them to death. The assertion that it is legal is only making explicit the immorality which is already inherent in the medical profession, operating on the terms it does.

If an individual, or a relative or other person appointed by him, loses the right to decide for himself what is in his interests as he perceives them, the harm that may be inflicted upon him by the decisions made by the doctor to whom he has lost his autonomy, whether by accident or design, may clearly extend to extreme suffering or death.

* * * * *

Mr Cameron highlighted figures showing assaults on NHS staff running at 60,000 a year [...]
(from ‘Rudeness is just as bad as racism, says Cameron’, Daily Mail, 24 April 2007)

We are unfortunate enough to live in an age of legalised crime. State education and state medicine should be regarded as criminal.

Agents of the collective, such as teachers and doctors, are at risk from the resentment of their victims, who do not realise how thoroughly justified their resentment is.

In fact the victims should be opposing the principles of social oppression, not indulging in violence, which is seen as an excuse for even more oppressive incursions on individual liberty.

But the victims have been trained to believe that they would be losing free goodies described as ‘education’ and ‘health care’ (which have been paid for with money taken away from other people), so that they are ‘better off’ hanging on to these ostensible handouts, even with the great penalties which are attached to them.

* Basic moral principle: It is immoral to impose your interpretations and evaluations on anyone else.

Sir Michael Marmot, genetics and health

Were we to find a chemical in the water, or in food, that was damaging children’s growth and their brains worldwide, and thus their intellectual development and control of emotions, we would clamour for immediate action. […] Yet, unwittingly perhaps, we do tolerate such an unjust state of affairs with seemingly little clamour for change. The pollutant is called social disadvantage and it has profound effects on developing brains and limits children’s intellectual and social development. […]

I have spent my research life showing that the key determinants of health lie outside the health care system in the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age; and inequities in power, money and resources that give rise to these inequities in conditions of daily life. […]

As doctors we cannot stand idly by while our patients suffer from the way our societies are organised. Inequality of social and economic conditions is at the heart of it. […] I invite you to: [quoting Pablo Neruda] Rise up with me … Against the organisation of misery.

(Professor Sir Michael Marmot, inaugural Presidential speech to the World Medical Association)

In the speech by Michael Marmot from which the above extracts are taken, there is no reference to statistical differences in IQ or to other possible genetic influences. This is almost universally the case in modern analyses of any situation. Differences between various sections of the population are taken to be caused by the different circumstances of their members, and not by genetic differences between individuals.

Olive leaves and the British Heart Foundation

A pill made from the leaves of the olive tree could be a powerful weapon in the fight against heart disease, scientists say. According to research, the olive pill is as effective as some prescription medicines at reducing high blood pressure...

The British Heart Foundation urged those on blood pressure medication not to stop taking their drugs without first consulting their GP. (Daily Mail, 15 April 2011)

Now, why ever should the British Heart Foundation think that advice from a doctor is likely to help a person come to the best decision about what will be good for him? At least, that is the implication of the urging uttered by the British Heart Foundation. What is their motivation for wishing you to think that a doctor is likely to know what is good for you, or likely not to advise you to do the opposite, if he does know? Presumably a lot of the people in the BHF are themselves socially authorised sadists (medical doctors).

The question of motivation and incentive in relation to medicine and medical charities is one of the issues on which critical analyses could be being published by Oxford Forum if it were provided with adequate funding to do so. Meanwhile, spurious papers on medicine and medical ethics, containing numerous unanalysed and tendentious assumptions and making policy suggestions which are likely to be damaging to the real interests of patients, will continue to flood out from socially recognised sources.

Russian roulette and the impending ban on herbal products

In a recent newspaper there was a piece asserting, ‘you are playing Russian roulette if you take such and such drugs without having them prescribed’.

I thought of adding, ‘and of course you are playing Russian roulette with your life, health and liberty every time you have any contact with a doctor, whether or not this is in order to obtain a prescription’. There is no reason to suppose he is trustworthy – in fact in view of human psychology in general, it is most unlikely that he is well intentioned towards you – and he has the power to deprive you of your liberty and have you subjected to compulsory medication.

* * *

Every time it is made more difficult to obtain medication under your own auspices it is actually making it more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for those who will have nothing to do with the medical ‘profession’ to obtain treatment for themselves. The argument justifying this is that they will be placed under greater pressure to expose themselves to (abuse by) the medical ‘profession’, as that ‘profession’ likes to believe that individuals acting on their own behalf are running greater risks. As usual this is a statistical belief not allowing for individual differences, notably differences in IQ. And it may well be the case that, even on average, the riskiness for anyone of any contact with a socially authorised sadist exceeds that of doing the best he can for himself.

We note, and deplore, that various herbal products will no longer be available from the end of April, as a result of the hostility of the medical ‘profession’ to remedies which can be obtained independently of them. This is absolutely appalling. Apparently it will be necessary to go to a herbalist in person, where the person running the shop may count as an expert, who may prohibit you from having what he does not approve of your having. But no more mail order. So you must either make an arduous journey to subject yourself to a psychologically damaging interview – in principle, as decentralising as an interview with a doctor – or else make an even more arduous journey overseas to a more liberal country where you may be able to make your purchase.

What about elderly people in outlying districts, such as Scotland, dependent on some herbal tincture, now unavailable to purchase by mail order, having to travel down by train from Edinburgh to London to obtain supplies from their usual herbalist?

But the most serious thing, to my mind, is the violation of the principle that a person should not be forced to submit to having decisions about his territory of control made by someone else, doctor or otherwise.

Another principle is also involved, namely that the territory of control within which an individual is free to act legally should be clearly defined. This might be taken as the defining feature of a civilised society. It is nowadays the case (a development that has come in over the course of the last twenty years) that you cannot buy medicines at a chemist’s shop without having your order scrutinised by a ‘pharmacist’, who will assess your order in relation to ‘guidelines’ produced by the manufacturers and which you are not allowed to know. You will not be allowed to have what you want if it seems as if you might be violating some ‘guideline’. E.g. an adult might prefer a strength of preparation made for juveniles, so (it is assumed, by some bizarre logic) he might be about to abuse a child.

This is a terrible development, and means that many forms of medication are now in practice unavailable to those who are strongly opposed to abusive (decentralising) psychological experiences. The situation is about to become even worse, as a result of the impending ban on herbal products.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply, for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Medical authoritarianism: opposition starved of funding

copy of a letter to a philosopher

It is really terrible that with the appalling legislation that is constantly being made, which in many cases directly affects one’s own liberty, one can squeeze out so little in the way of criticism, and publish it only on the blog.

Surely some university (yours?) could provide enough to make possible a much greater output of analysis of the principles involved, which one would, if not prevented by lack of support, have been publishing continuously for decades before the whole thing reached so advanced a point.

They are gradually making it impossible for medicines of any kind (including herbal) to be obtained without subjecting oneself to scrutiny by an agent of the collective, even if not a supposedly qualified doctor. So in effect they are making medicines inaccessible to those who will not subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny, whether or not this is because they recognise it as psychologically damaging.

I would suggest that it is the desire to interfere with other people’s autonomy, as well as the more recognised power and profit motives on the part of medical and pharmaceutical professionals, which motivate the development of such restrictions. No one actually cares about the possible harm people may be doing themselves with echinacea, kava kava etc, any more than anyone cares about the much greater harm which may be done to people by heavy-duty chemical or mechanical intervention that is not under the victims’ control. What interventionists do care about is the possibility that the pressure people are under to expose themselves to the latter might be reduced by having access to the former. This kind of infringement of liberty should be regarded as unacceptable, but as usual the academic establishment is on the side of the interventionists.

Alternative views, not currently represented in academia, should be given publicity, but this is unlikely to happen unless we are supported. £500K per annum is a small part of the running costs of most academic institutions, but if we had even that much, it would enable us to be more productive than is possible at present, and with less pressure on our health and well-being.

We could use any funding not only to support ourselves but to employ domestic, bookkeeping, caretaking and secretarial staff, all of which we badly need.

Genes: another excuse for interference

The Daily Mail (and no doubt others as well) has got the idea that some health and behavioural problems, such as drug-taking, may be genetic. This could be taken as a counter-argument against intervening because there are ‘unfair’ differences in health between different sections of the population. However, it appears it is just as likely to be taken as a reason for more intervention. Thus the abusive medical ‘profession’ can indulge in further interference; perhaps sterilisation will be proposed, especially of high-IQ people whose drug-taking is the result of living in so hostile a society.

Suppose it is only health, and not behavioural, problems? ‘How can a clean-living 33-year-old have a heart attack?’ asks the Daily Mail. Oh, it’s in his genes. Therefore (the argument goes) the iniquitous medical ‘profession’ has an excuse for more ‘tests’, and a lot more of taxpayers’ money can be spent on ‘testing’, and possibly keeping alive for longer (at taxpayers’ expense), people who might otherwise not live so long.

So first you increase the percentage of genetic deficiencies in the population (as previously discussed), and then you can justify even more taxation to pay for widespread ‘testing’ and ‘treatment’, which of course involves abusive interaction with doctors, and so the development of an even larger population of medical abusers being paid out of taxpayers’ money.

Heart UK advises that children of people with [familial hypercholesterolaemia] should be tested by the time they are ten. ... but it can be difficult to distinguish ... experts are calling for genetic testing to be more widely available ... it was for FH patients that statins were developed in the 1970s.

‘Developed’ by biochemists salaried by taxpayers’ money, probably with university appointments, working in laboratories funded by taxpayers’ money.

Analysing the distortions involved in this is complicated (distortions of this kind could and should be the subject of at least one book), but the point is that the research done is affected by being filtered through a socialist system. The research is not paid for directly by individuals, or carried out by those with independent means, but financed by charities (which are only to a limited extent supported by individuals contributing their own money) and by ‘universities’.

Even if the institutions carrying out research in those areas receive some of their support from corporations rather than the state, those corporations are operating under significant social pressure to give support to the ideology which exists to take money (freedom) away from above-average individuals, and to bestow it, in the form of oppressive ‘benefits’, on those who are below the average on some measure or other. Pharmaceutical companies are, in any case, deriving their profits from an artificial market, since most drugs are not purchased directly by individuals, but prescribed by doctors.

There is no solution but the abolition of the NHS, the abolition of the medical ‘profession’, and the abolition of state-financed research.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply, for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Local oppressors: so much better

The Mail led the way in highlighting how NICE, the Government’s drugs rationing body, was denying life-prolonging treatments to cancer patients purely on the grounds of cost. ... Of course, the NHS does not have unlimited funds, and on occasion patients must be told No – however heartbreaking this may be. But these decisions must be taken by doctors who know the person best. Not by bureaucrats sat in regional offices. (‘One more injustice’, editorial page, Daily Mail, 21 November 2010. )

And how is that supposed to help? Instead of an explicit universal prohibition, a subjective decision will be made by ‘your’ doctor who has his own reasons for knowing how much he will enjoy depriving you of something you will really suffer from not having. He may know that you are middle-class, send your children to non-state schools, have a high IQ, and so on. Just how much each individual doctor hates a particular characteristic is variable, but I do not see any advantage in that.

Better to have a blanket prohibition based on some objective criterion, however arbitrary, and to have to pay to get the refused treatment if you do not qualify. You are over the age of 57, or you are over 6 foot tall? Then you do not qualify for the free medication, and can only get it by paying for it. Actually it is quite likely that many of those refused the treatment would be willing and able to do so, as they would be more likely to fall into the category of bourgeois over-achievers or intellectuals, who are more likely to be refused things than those who are regarded as acceptably down and out.

There is certainly no advantage to the individual in having decisions about himself made by members of the local community who think they know him well, compared to having them made at a distance by bureaucrats. It is not that the latter are likely to be well-intentioned towards him, but that the damage which is intended can be more accurately directed by members of the local community, including one’s ‘own’ doctor.

In my own case, I was prevented from taking advantage of the legal possibility of taking exams (including degrees) before the ‘normal’ age, by the hostility of the local community, including some relatives, who knew too much about my father and myself.

The most I ask of society is that it should express the will of the majority in a blind and imperfect way. That would at least give one a sporting chance of survival. (Celia Green, The Decline and Fall of Science, 1976, p. 173)

The risks of consulting a doctor

In Tuesday’s Daily Mail there is an article headed:

Pharmacists are selling more and more drugs over the counter to patients who haven’t consulted their doctor, posing the question ... Is your chemist putting your life at risk?

But no one ever makes the point that any contact with a “doctor", or “socially authorised sadist” as we call them here, is putting more than your life at risk and should be avoided at any cost. The medical “profession” in the oppressive society is totally immoral.

“Medical ethics” is an impossible association of terms, but socially accredited “philosophy” departments of “universities” continue to pour out books and papers on this topic, of which the philosophy department of my suppressed and unrecognised university is being prevented from publishing criticisms, which would analyse the unquestioned assumptions implicitly being made.

Meanwhile intrusions on individual liberty continue to be made at a rate of knots. I remember a time when pharmacists did not consider it their business to interrogate a customer before allowing him to make a purchase. Now they are evidently legally required to do so.

Further comment

The Mail article about “medical ethics” is ostensibly triggered by the deregulation of a medication which is used by middle-aged men, described in the article as “a segment of the population which is notoriously slow in asking for medical help” (or “exposing themselves to medical abuse”, as I would put it).

The current system is clearly discriminating against those who, for whatever reason, avoid exposing themselves to the dangerous and abusive situation of “asking for medical help”. Statistically, men are more disinclined than women to do this (being less tolerant of decentralising situations – i.e. more realistic) so, if the obvious and ascertainable benefits of seeking “help” from a doctor are statistically greater than the harm that results from the lack of those benefits, men are being placed at a disadvantage to women in the oppressive society, because the detrimental psychological aspects of what is on offer are evidently more damaging to men than to women. It is very similar to the way they are discriminated against in the “educational” system, in which girls have become not only as “successful” as boys, but more so.

Comments on modern psychology – comparison of Princess Diana with the Queen Mother (continued)

To make the obvious explicit in the case of Princess Diana contrasted with the Queen Mother, the reason I say I find modern psychology incomprehensible is that I can quite easily imagine myself behaving as the Queen Mother did, and never giving away anything that the royal family would not consider it to be in their interests to have given away. But I cannot imagine at all the psychological events that went into Diana's very damaging public discussion of Prince Charles, to whom she was married. And yet I suppose a lot of people can imagine this, since such betrayals of confidence appear to go on all the time in modern society, at all social levels, so I suppose that there is no longer any such thing as a concept of something being in confidence between individuals.

From the television dramas one gathers that it is considered interesting and attractive to promise not to give something away, and then to do so, which shows there is an awareness that you do not have to keep your word, although you may have led someone to believe (more fools they) that they can rely on you to do so.

When people do insist on not giving away information about someone, this is virtually always portrayed as misguided. They are covering up for a criminal or pervert in withholding information from police or doctors, setting other people at risk and preventing the criminal or pervert from getting the punishment he deserves or the "help" which he needs.

Cases almost never occur in the television dramas in which an individual is protected by discretion from wrongful persecution by agents of the collective.

I say "almost" never because there was a case recently in which a policeman threw away a cassette which might have incriminated someone. But the "someone" was a doctor, hence "good". The crime of which the doctor might have been convicted was (so far as I could gather from a very inattentive observation of the unattractive episode) that of assisting a suicide in framing someone on whom he wished to take revenge, so that they would be supposed to have murdered him when he was found dead.

The right not to be killed

Debbie Purdy is a woman suffering from multiple sclerosis who thinks she may, in the future, wish to commit suicide with the assistance of the Swiss euthanasia group Dignitas, and who says she would want her husband to accompany her on her trip.

The Director of Public Prosecutions has been ordered to clarify the factors which would be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute someone for the crime of ‘assisting suicide’. The Daily Mail claims this has taken Debbie Purdy ‘a step closer to dying on her own terms’.

Critics of the latest development seem to fall into two camps. They may deplore suicide on moral grounds. For example, Ruth Dudley Edwards writes about a friend, a successful lawyer, who ‘decided when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer that he would try to make his dying life-enhancing for others’. Her comments seem to imply that other should follow his example, whether they want to or not.

Curiously, one does not hear the same people condemning the common practice by doctors of hastening the death of terminally ill persons by administering excessive doses of painkillers, or suggesting those people could have been induced to make their dying ‘life-enhancing’ for others. Perhaps it is presumed that a doctor’s judgement on this issue can never be wrong.

The other type of critic regards the latest development as a move down the slippery slope towards legalising murder. Part of the problem here lies in the definition of ‘assistance’. Accompanying someone to the place where they plan to commit suicide seems innocuous. Giving an elderly person a lethal injection and claiming afterwards that they asked you to do it may seem less so.

As is usual in such discussions, however, the context – that medical goods and services are immorally controlled by a monopolised profession which transfers the right of decision from the patient to the doctor – is ignored. If the law on medicine reflected the basic moral principle (respect for individual volition, unless others are harmed) a number of consequences would follow.

First, medicine delivered by doctors would become more accessible to many people who currently find it obnoxious to submit to arrogant authority figures who can choose to refuse them what they urgently need. Second, the goods and services necessary for treatment would also become available without the involvement of doctors. For both these reasons there are likely to be people currently contemplating suicide who would be able to recover their health sufficiently to want to go on living.

Third, the issue of ‘assistance’ would become far less relevant. In a free market for all medicines, including those which can be used to produce a painless death, ways would be found for individuals to administer the means of suicide themselves, even if they were incapacitated, without an active role being played by outsiders. Family members could be present at the suicide without having to become involved. People would not have to travel to far-off locations to achieve their objective.

Fourth, and most importantly, the issue of assistance by medical professionals would also cease to have the same level of relevance. This – not assistance by laymen, and certainly not ‘assistance’ in the sense of accompanying on a journey – is the most worrying possibility among those being contemplated. In the institutional setting of a hospital, where respect for autonomy is absent, and where ‘best interests’ arguments have been used to perform euthanasia without consent*, legalising suicide-with-assistance in general seems certain to lead to even more surreptitious medical-killing-with-presumed-consent than is already going on.

* as for example in the case of Hillsborough victim Tony Bland

Vulnerable to doctors

Another terrible development which has not yet come about, but soon will, and which as usual we are prevented from speaking out against by lack of social status and financial support. Discussing different plans to computerise medical records in a recent Daily Mail:

Patients’ medical records could be transferred to Google under plans being considered by the Tories ... But campaigners and doctors claim patient information could be vulnerable to hackers.

And there are also concerns it could put lives in danger because it would be harder for doctors to access vital medical information in an emergency than under Labour’s rival NHS computer scheme. *

Campaigners claim that the medical records of victims might be ‘vulnerable to hackers’. But it seems no one is complaining that they would be vulnerable to doctors which is – or ought to be – the most serious concern. ‘Patient confidentiality’ now means that not only the socially authorised sadist you have consulted will be free to record his opinions about your problems, but that these opinions are accessible to all members of the medical Mafia. Which makes a mockery of the idea of seeking a second (or third) opinion and starting from scratch with another doctor, difficult though that is anyway already, and almost impossible without the ‘permission’ of the doctor first consulted, and without the second doctor knowing that he had a predecessor.

* 7 July 2009

William Sargant and the idea of brainwashing

At my last seminar an Iraqi lady commented that the way we had been treated sounded like what happened in an authoritarian regime, only where she came from they would shoot you for expressing any criticism of the system, not merely suppress you.

Later she asked, ‘What were they threatened by?’ I think the answer is that any respect for individuality per se is a threat to the total power that socialists seek over all minds as well as all physical bodies.

When I first met Mary Adams[1] after being thrown out by Somerville, she was carried away with enthusiasm for a wonderful book by William Sargant entitled Battle for the Mind[2],on the strength of which he was becoming a celebrity and a Great Name.

At the time I did not see the point. The book contained some examples of tribal initiation rituals in which people were made to lose consciousness, and of the techniques of brainwashing and Chinese thought reform. I could make parallels between the brainwashing techniques and the ways I had been treated at school and at Somerville, but this did not seem to me very interesting.

When I started publishing my own books and they did nothing at all for my status or reputation, I thought that I did not see what William Sargant’s book had had that mine had lacked: its content of ideas seemed very small. But there seemed to be an idea that by knocking out people’s minds you could create a tabula rasa which could be programmed like the mind of a newborn baby.

I gradually came to realise that it supported the very important piece of modern ideology that there is nothing in the individual that society cannot wipe out, whereas my books always suggested the possibility of ways in which the individual might become less dependent on the physical and less vulnerable to social influences.

Only recently I came to realise that William Sargant was (from my point of view) a horrifying monster of iniquity. He was a psychiatrist(!) which implies that he was immoral enough to have become a medical doctor first, and he used atrocious ‘therapeutic’ techniques on his victims, drugging them to sleep for weeks and subjecting them to ECT at the same time. This killed some and left others permanently lacking memories for parts of their past lives.

Sargant’s fame was relatively short-lived and other psychiatrists did not espouse his overtly physicalist methods en masse; I think that he was a bit too crudely obvious in applying his methods; but he was expressing a universal underlying motivation to subject individuality to the power of the socially authorised by means of the physical.

One of Sargant’s ideas was that if brainwashing had been around at the time of Christ, it would have been possible to cure Christ of his beliefs, whatever they were, and make him go back to being a carpenter.

[1] A former Head of Television Talks at the BBC.

[2] Battle for the Mind: The Mechanics of Indoctrination, Brainwashing & Thought Control by William Sargant, Pan Books, 1957

Iatrogenic drug addiction

A form of torture practised by the medical 'profession', and in many ways the most horrifying, is the infliction of suffering, in the form of 'treatment', against the will of the 'patient' (victim). This includes the compulsory 'medication' of those 'diagnosed' as 'mentally ill', who can in some cases be re-incarcerated for forcible 'treatment' if they fail to present themselves for regular torture when they are 'released into the community'.

Even when 'treatment' is not compulsory, doctors have no scruples about getting 'patients' (victims) hooked without warning on mind-altering drugs which will have severe side-effects if the 'patient' attempts to regain his independence of them. At least, their scruples only appear when it is a question of refusing to let the 'patient' have a form of medication which he wants to have. Doctors then become very sensitive indeed to every possibility, however remote, of any side-effect, and most unwilling to let the 'patient' decide for himself whether the risk of this possibility is one which, in view of his own motivation and knowledge of his own constitution, he wants to take.

Curiously and informatively enough, people appear blind to the horror of people being hooked for life by doctors on drugs which effectively deprive them of the use of their own minds — actually a more horrific deprivation of liberty than the infliction of physical pain against the will of a conscious 'patient' (victim), which would be regarded as torture if the doctor who inflicted it was not a properly trained and qualified person.

The hatred and persecutory fervour of modern society is reserved for those who wish to alter their mental outlook by the use of chemicals of their own choosing, and for those who sell them the chemicals they want to have. Self-inflicted drug dependence is regarded as an 'evil' from which victims (who are not 'patients') should be rescued against their will by the expenditure of massive amounts of taxpayers' money, while the drug dependence so freely created by doctors arouses no such opprobrium, although in many cases its continuity is enforced by compulsory medication. The voluntarily drug-dependent person is still free to decide to break away from the addiction, whereas the involuntary victim of compulsory medication is not. Nevertheless it is the former that is described as 'abuse' of drugs, whereas those who are compulsorily and permanently under prescribed influence, are described as 'users'.

(from the forthcoming book The Corpse and the Kingdom)

Medicine and 'fairness'

Now that it is considered acceptable for the state to transfer power from individual citizens to agents of the collective so that 'services' (for which a better term might be 'oppressions') may be provided, it comes to pass that persons in socially authorised academic establishments (i.e. universities) make studies of how the systems of oppression 'ought' to work.

A friend of mine once found himself at a college dinner sitting next to an economics student whose subject was the different ways in which 'health care' (physiological oppression) was being or should be provided by various governments. "Well, at least," he (my friend) said, "I hope you won't recommend that anyone should give any further power to doctors to make subjective decisions about how medical resources should be allocated. They have far too much power already."

"But it's not acceptable to have decisions made about who gets the resources on the basis of ability to pay for them," she (the other person) said.

"Countries that didn't find that acceptable, and I don't see why they shouldn't, could at least have the resources allocated among the individuals who apply for them on a random basis. Nothing could be so unacceptable as arbitrary power in the hands of doctors or any other agents of the collective" my friend replied.

"But that wouldn't necessarily produce the fairest outcome either," she demurred.

This brings us to the extraordinary notion of 'fairness'. We see that the transfer of power to agents of the collective makes it far more dangerous that people should indulge in such ideas. So long as they were notions that were entertained by individuals, and which individuals could, if they wished, use any resources at their own disposal to bring about, they were relatively harmless. Nowadays, however, academics can write papers on what 'ought' to be the case and advise governments accordingly, the governments then feeling free to instruct agents of the collective to implement the ideas in practice.

The idea of 'fairness' and 'rights' arise from a modern set of ideas, which has practically the status of a religion, and for which as little justification in reality can be found. It is not so long ago that governments considered that women should not be able to obtain anaesthetics for childbirth, because God clearly preferred them to suffer. Even at that date, before its powers were so monstrously increased, we see the medical 'profession' in the role of social oppressor.

Nowadays it can withhold diagnosis and treatment from anyone whose life, in its opinion, is not worth prolonging. But having decided, in effect, to kill them, it is under no obligation to provide them with a reasonably easy death, which would require the admission of the objective and the overt administration of pharmaceuticals.

Organs and 'social justice'

In theory, removing organs on this basis [presumed consent] can be made to sound humane, but remember the law of unintended consequences. Anything promoted by government as life-enhancing can be turned into the opposite by greedy and/or unscrupulous individuals (Peter McKay, Daily Mail, 14 January 2008.)

As usual, reference is made to the risks of ‘greedy and/or unscrupulous individuals’, but not to risks which arise from agents of the socially oppressive system.

‘We must never be denied the right to choose’, says Melanie Phillips weakly, but we already are, if we allow ourselves to be forced into contact with the medical Mafia. Whether or not consent to remove organs after death is presumed unless refused, what is to prevent disapproval of those who refuse being covertly expressed in bad treatment by doctors and nurses? I have seen it suggested that those who refuse to donate their organs should themselves be refused treatment.

If doctors are able to presume consent for organ removal, they will be given even more power to do things against the will of their patients. It is clear that a considerable percentage of the population would not consent to removal, and not all of them will be efficient and initiativeful enough to register their lack of consent in the required way. Even those who do will be at the mercy of the system, and will have to be confident that there will never be any failure to communicate their refusal at the right time to the right doctor. Given what we know of the fallibility of computer systems and of the medical profession in modern society, there is a very obvious and serious uncertainty here.

To be sure that they are not violating the will of their patient, doctors should wish to have an explicit expression of consent.

But, of course, a modern person may say, even if an individual does not consent, they ought to. A person who says this is welcome, so far as I am concerned, to set up a charity financed by like-minded individuals, but not by the state, to convince people that they ought to want to donate their organs.

The issue of the motives, including unconscious ones, of the people implementing the proposed scheme is, as usual, entirely left out of account. This includes those operating the computer systems as well as the doctors. In borderline cases, it may be difficult to determine whether a person is dead or not, or whether it would have been their wish to be resuscitated. In such cases, the motives and preferences of the doctors will inevitably exert some influence. It is assumed that their motives can be only virtuous and disinterested, and that the only risk of abuse could come from outside the system. But in a borderline case, the characteristics of the organ-possessor may be relevant. If they are aged and infirm, there may well be a stronger tendency to give up on them than if they are young and have what the doctors consider to be an adequate quality of life.

Nor, given the way that considerations of ‘social justice’ are entering into medical ‘ethics’ (as well as everything else) these days, is it inconceivable that ideas about ‘fairness’ might influence their decisions at the margin. Might not a ‘privileged’ middle-class individual be more likely to be treated as ‘dead’ than a more ‘deserving’ working-class patient? Might not ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions be affected by whether somebody has a harvestable organ?

In considering the dangers of databases, reference is only made to the risk of abuse by criminal individuals who are not agents of the collective or otherwise authorised users of the data base. An upper-class banker (John Monckton) was murdered in his entrance hall two years ago by someone who used published information to target wealthy people. There was some suggestion that the murderer’s motives may have included resentment of the rich, as well as the usual pecuniary one. What is to prevent a person with similar motives from being among those who have official access to a data-base and using it to seek out people whom he or she regard as too well-off? Or perhaps just using the access to delete their refusal to have their organs harvested after death, as a way of expressing his aggression?

Agents of the collective such as doctors, teachers and social workers are just ordinary people. They are no more immune from the risk of behaving irresponsibly or abusively than anyone else.

Patients starved to death

In 1989, there was another life crisis when Marjorie’s mother, then in her 70s, had a series of increasingly severe strokes. ‘The hospital withdrew food and water and I watched her starve to death. My sister felt it was the kindest thing to do but my mother spent a week in agony. I felt utter grief and still haven’t dealt with it.’ (From ‘A troubled mind’ by Moira Petty, Daily Mail, 17 April 2007.)

It is legal for an incapacitated patient to be denied artificial hydration and nutrition — now considered to be medical treatment in law — if doctors consider death to be in their best interest.(From ‘I’ve changed my mind, says woman in right-to-die case’ by Steve Doughty, Daily Mail, 19 April 2007.)

It is legal, but it is still immoral (it is a strong violation of the basic moral principle), for members of the medical Mafia to kill people by starving them to death. This is only making explicit the immorality which was already inherent in the medical profession, operating on the terms it does.

If an individual, or a relative or other person appointed by him, loses the right to decide for himself what is in his interests as he perceives them, the harm that may be inflicted upon him by the decisions made by the criminal doctor to whom he has lost his autonomy, whether by accident or design, may clearly extend to extreme suffering or death.

Mr Cameron highlighted figures showing assaults on NHS staff running at 60,000 a year... (From ‘Rudeness is just as bad as racism, says Cameron’, Daily Mail, 24 April 2007.)

We are unfortunate enough to live in an age of legalised crime. Agents of the collective, such as teachers and doctors, are at risk from the resentment of their victims, who do not realise how thoroughly justified their resentment is. In fact the victims should be opposing the principles of social oppression, not indulging in ‘anti-social’ violence, which is seen as an excuse for ever more oppressive incursions on individual liberty. But the victims have been trained to believe that they would be losing free goodies described as ‘education’ and ‘health care’ which have been paid for with money taken away from other people, so that they are ‘better off’ hanging on to these ostensible handouts, even with the great penalties which are attached to them.

"The over-60s are not worth treating"

Recently the Daily Mail reported that 1 in every 2 GPs said that patients (victims) over the age of 60 were not worth diagnosing or treating. Well, of course, what they say has no necessary relationship to what they actually do. Telling the truth is not, even nominally, part of their remit. But in fact we can be pretty sure that what goes on, and has been going on for a long time, is worse than they admit openly.

Some years ago there was a similar article revealing that, in the case of women, 55 was the age at which doctors thought them past bothering with. Taking a short break at Boscombe in a seaside hotel, I was discussing this with someone at the breakfast table, sitting opposite a lady in her fifties. She twice protested at so painful a topic being discussed, so I stopped talking about it. But that clearly illustrates, both how demoralising the immoral power of the medical Mafia is, and why there is no sympathy with those who complain of it.

When this lady went to her doctor she liked, no doubt, to maintain an uneasy fiction that she could trust him, rely on him to exercise his powers in her best interests (as understood by herself) , and believe what he said. She would wish to do this in order to relieve her anxieties about any symptoms she might have, but it would take quite a lot of emotional energy to do so, in view of the available evidence. Taking up emotional energy in this way is essentially decentralising. Recognising that one is alone in a hostile world is, or may be, eventually liberating (although, no doubt, there are plenty of ways of doing it wrong).

This lady, like everyone else, believed in society. On higher level terms, and in view of the basic moral principle, one considers it highly immoral to force people into decentralised positions, and tries to avoid offering people the usual provocations to reactiveness. The psychological social contract is what happens when the individual gives up his own drives to self-fulfilment and becomes the willing slave of social oppression, in return for the possibility of oppressing others, or enjoying the spectacle of their being oppressed by the social forces with which he has thrown in his lot.

Once a society has instigated an oppressive regime, such as the modern Welfare (Oppressive) State, there is no real possibility of reversing it, as an increasing number of people wish to believe in the ‘benefits’ they are deriving from it, including in many cases the opportunity to oppress other people, rather than face up to the terrifying nature of the threats to which they are exposed.

It may also be pointed out that discrimination against persons over a certain age is discrimination against aristocratic genes and high IQs (as certainly as is a chronological-age related exam system) since high IQ is positively correlated with longevity. My parents, with aristocratic genes and high IQs, remained functional with little recourse to medication or hospital treatment until they had reached an age at which they were, in the eyes of the medical Mafia, past their sell-by date. People with worse genes and lower IQs cost the taxpayers (via the NHS) much more over their lifetime than my parents did, even if in a shorter lifetime.

Compulsory screening

Terrifying legislation is constantly proposed and my philosophy department remains unfinanced and hamstrung. Appallingly, it is proposed that, since a high proportion of the population is assured (whether they work or not) of an income at other people’s expense sufficient to enable them to eat and drink themselves into a state of ill-health, which prevents them from making any contribution by way of taxation towards the upkeep of themselves or towards interference with the lives of others, there should therefore be compulsory screening of all for high cholesterol at 5-year intervals and, presumably, enforced ‘treatment’ (torture) by the iniquitous socially appointed ‘medical’ sadists.

Now it is bad enough that access to pharmaceuticals and information is blocked to the extent it is by the totally immoral terms on which the medical Mafia operates, in complete violation of the basic moral principle, but at least a conscientious objector such as myself is able to avoid being forced into an abusive relationship with any doctor by forgoing whatever could only be obtained with its permission. This is bad enough, and one regrets also that one continues to be taxed (have one’s freedom confiscated) so that others who are too unintelligent to object can be subjected to torture and abuse.

But to be forced into an abusive contact with the medical Mafia against one’s will is horrific beyond measure. I have already said that this is no longer a country where it is possible to live except under protest. The protests which should be being expressed by the philosophy department of my crushed and downtrodden independent university are ignored and suppressed, and that should not be so.

Esther Rantzen and the medical profession

Extracts from an article by Esther Rantzen
about her daughter suffering from ME

When I saw my once active, energetic daughter walking heavily upstairs, and struggling to get off a sofa, at first I put it down to teenage lethargy. Now I know better, I can date the onset of the fatigue. It was triggered by a bout of glandular fever in 1992 when Emily was 14 — a common enough illness in young people, but she never fully recovered. She went back to school after a week or two, but from then on she was overcome with a tiredness that sent her back to sleep in the library or at the back of the class. She went to the school nurse, who ‘counselled’ her, mainly about the depressing effect of my career on her emotional health. Emily argued with the nurse, and never told me. I would have left my job in television instantly if Emily or I had thought the school nurse was right, but this didn’t look like emotional depression to us.

During the next two years she had longer and longer periods off school and in bed, missing out on two thirds of her education, but she still managed to catch up on her own so that her grades at GCSE were a perfect clutch of A-stars. Once again, looking back, I realise that effort was the last straw. The next term she collapsed, and left school permanently. At this point our GP referred her to a neurologist, thank heavens. Had we been referred to a psychiatrist, as many ME patients are, I might have come under suspicion of abusing her, been diagnosed with Munchausen by Proxy, and told that I was deliberately causing my daughter’s illness myself.

It may sound far-fetched, but I have met families to whom that had happened, and mothers who not only had the anxiety and distress of a child’s illness to deal with but the hideous experience of having to defend themselves against accusations of abuse. When a child’s illness baffles the medical profession they sometimes look around for someone to blame, and mum is often the nearest and easiest target. I have campaigned on behalf of parents and children who suddenly find a care order slapped on their sick child. I’ve heard of terrible scenes when screaming children were torn from their parents’ arms and locked in closed psychiatric wards. I know of one father who went to prison rather than allow that to happen to his son.

Luckily our consultant neurologist was one of the few at that time — this was 12 years ago — who recognised ME as a genuine illness, and told us that Emily was a classic case. There wasn’t much he could do, and he was quite honest about that. He told us that nobody knows what causes ME or how to cure it. (Daily Mail, 6 February 2007)

My comments

This article provides a vivid picture of the parlous position of those who are in any way above average in modern egalitarian Britain. Esther Rantzen is not overtly critical of this state of affairs; she had obtained a way of using her ability to gain reward and attention from the society around her precisely by identifying with socialist ideology and becoming a prominent promoter of interventionist ideas.

And yet she describes a state of affairs in which it is dangerous for a middle-class parent to consult a doctor about their child. They are liable to be blamed and have a psychiatric interpretation placed upon them by doctors who are working-class by upbringing and have lower IQs than their own. Their children can be taken away from them at the drop of a hat and they or their children may be incarcerated in prisons or mental institutions. This is the modern form of class warfare.

And consider the ‘counselling’ given by the school nurse, quite likely also a person of working class background and low IQ. The blame for the illness of Esther Rantzen’s daughter is placed upon her and her above-average career, thus trying to turn daughter against mother and (if possible) destroy Esther Rantzen’s career.

Before the inception of the Welfare State, such presumptuous willingness to tear down the respectable middle class was unheard of. If there was a school nurse at all, she was certainly not handing out incitements to persecute parents. People with above average IQs are, at times, surprisingly willing to consult people with lower IQs than their own, who are jealous and resentful of their actual and potential success in life.

And, although of course Esther Rantzen does not mention the possibility, it is perfectly possible that her daughter was just another victim of the ‘feminisation’ of education, which discriminates against people with ability and drive, and which has resulted in more girls than boys going to university.

It is more than likely that a daughter of Esther Rantzen would have an above average IQ and a strong drive to achievement; this could easily lead to depression in modern society. What opportunities is it prepared to offer to such people? Although, of course, only physiological causes are considered as initiating the daughter’s depressed state.

Esther Rantzen follows convention in describing her daughter’s absence from school as ‘missing out on two thirds of her education’, but in fact her daughter’s GCSE successes and the fact that she has been offered a place in Oxford illustrate how little attendance at school has to do with examination success, at least in a positive sense, although there may well be many cases in which it is a massively negative factor.