Up Close and Personal
The monthly interview with CTM founder Phillip Day

ECLUB: Packed and ready for Australia?
PHILLIP DAY: Can't wait!
ECLUB: What gives this month?
PHILLIP DAY: Well, the Execrable Establishment's seizure of the alternative health industry proceeds apace. The reason? About 10 million people use some sort of complementary or alternative medicine every year in Britain and about half of them see therapists, and the loss of revenue for the drug industry is proving intolerable.
We have excellent articles this month, firstly by Dr Jonathan Wright, discussing the global vitamin round-up from America's point of view. Once again, folks, the legislation banning or severely restricting the public's access to a whole range of supplements and herbs is not just a European phenomenon. We're seeing similar moves in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada as the drug industry and its lap-dog, Big Medicine, move to regain market-share.
ECLUB: The pernicious Doctrine of Sanctuary.
PHILLIP DAY: …wherein no expense is spared to convince the public those wicked supplements will do them in, and so tacitly allows government to enter every nook and cranny of their lives to 'protect them'. Naturally all this socialist legislation does is make more criminals, removes rights and freedoms, and severely limits the public's right of choice. But it does put the drug industry back in control of what we take to help our bodies heal. Uh-oh.
ECLUB : Leading inevitably to….
PHILLIP DAY: The next article, dealing with the deregistration of doctors who commit the unpardonable sin of advising their patients to change their diet to more healthy options.
ECLUB: They're deregistering them?
PHILLIP DAY: Absolutely. Worse, the National Health Service is employing nurses paid for by drug companies to encourage patients to take medication under schemes that will inevitably result in people receiving inappropriate treatments. We've seen this go on for years with the baleful HRT patches and pills causing heart attacks, coronary spasms, estrogen-positive breast cancer, etc. There's an article this month also about the dangers of those contraceptive patches, Ladies.
ECLUB: Wear a crash helmet to bed then?
PHILLIP DAY: I don't care what you do to put your wife off, Brian. Just have her think before she medicates herself with that junk. The article entitled 'Blood Clot Warning for Women on HRT' reports women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) are at an increased risk of developing life-threatening blood clots. A study involving almost 17,000 women aged over 50, found that those taking HRT for five years were at double the risk of getting a venous thrombosis. Anyone unsure about the dangers of HRT after all the ballyhoo should search the CTM archives under 'Menopausal Problems' or, alternatively, go to Dr Joseph Mercola's excellent site. There are dietary and lifestyle changes that will safely move you out of the problem.
ECLUB: What else?
PHILLIP DAY: Another article reports that people vaccinated against hepatitis B are at an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study of UK patients. And then we have a round-up of facts from the Fluoridation Action Network showing that fluoride not only doesn't improve cavity statistics, it sometimes actually worsens them.
ECLUB: You're going quite hard on water at the moment, aren't you?
PHILLIP DAY: Yes. Aside from the fluoridation mission, Dr F Batmanghelidj's excellent new book, Water and Salt, Your Healers from Within, and also a little Credence primer by me (Water - The Stuff of Life), both deal with the tremendous health benefits of proper hydration with clean, unfluoridated water. It has been estimated 80% of the western populations are chronically dehydrated as a result of drinking 'fluids' instead of water. This has led to the formation of several disease-types, primarily because cell-cleaning, elimination and blood viscosity are all adversely affected by a paucity of water.
ECLUB: And lastly politicians?
PHILLIP DAY: …like babies nappies, should be changed often, and for the same reason. The EU continues to put its foot in its mouth. Most of the ten newcomers to the EU are having serious reservations about what they have let themselves in for.
ECLUB: Do you have an answer?
PHILLIP DAY: There is only one answer to all the public's woes with both Big Industry and Big Government, and that's for the public to stop being lame-brained and get involved. As Eve Hillary so astutely points out in a recent article, the new global activism is dictating where the bulk of the money gets spent. Simply put, the ultimate power in the marketplace and ballot box is you, the public. If we can all be educated into making good choices (and even not to choose at all), the market must inevitably follow us. Australians, for instance, spend $2.3 billion a year on some form of alternative remedy, FOUR TIMES the amount they spend over the counter on drugs. This has forced the drug industry to seek ways to recoup market share (hence the vitamin snatch). Ultimately, if no-one buys the majority of their products anymore, they have to stop making them.
ECLUB: Hence your Break Free tour.
PHILLIP DAY: Break Free, Brian. A squirrel is just a rat with good public relations.