How To Stop Your Doctor from Killing You
The statistics relating to medical treatment are pretty well known by now. Back in the 1970s it was known that around half of all patients given drugs suffer serious or potentially serious side effects.
It was known that one in six patients in hospital were there because they’d been made ill by a doctor. (When I first revealed this alarming statistic in 1975, while on a promotional tour for my book `The Medicine Men’, a representative of the British Medical Association pointed out, with surprising pride, that this figure meant that five out of six patients in hospital were NOT there because their doctor had made them ill. He seemed pleased by this.)
And today, of course, not even the staunchest supporters of the drug industry and the medical establishment (excuse the tautology, please, for these are interchangeable in their purposes and their greed) would dispute the fact that doctors are now the greatest and most significant cause of death – killing more people than cancer, heart disease and strokes. (I first explored this startling truth in my book `Why and how doctors kill more people than cancer’ but revealed the evidence back in the 1990s.)
Medical history is now awash with examples of professional perfidy.
In the 1980s, serious suggestions were made that the drinking water should be laced with contraceptive hormones (to reduce the population) and benzodiazepine tranquillisers (to numb people and stop them thinking for themselves).
In the 1990s a ludicrous attempt was made (which I am proud to say I prevented single-handedly) to prescribe regular doses of tamoxifen for all women. (Tamoxifen is a drug which is immensely useful in the treatment of breast cancer but which should never have been considered appropriate for mass medication of the female population.)
Today, women are encouraged to take deadly HRT for menopausal problems (ignoring the various health risks).
Weight loss jabs are promoted with wild enthusiasm – though I suspect that anyone who’d studied the side effects would rather diet by going on a bread and water diet.
(Read my book The End of Medicine’ for evidence doctors and the main stream media are only just beginning to notice. Here is what I wrote in that book in 2025:The drug decreases the amount of dopamine your brain releases after you do something enjoyable – drinking, smoking, eating food you particularly like or having sex – and therefore eliminates the motivation to do those things.
The drug will remove the sense of pleasure that is experienced when you do something you enjoy. The drug may therefore change the personality of the person taking it and it may reduce the individual’s libido. This effect will ensure that the drug fits nicely into the depopulation programme which is so loved by the conspirators.’)
I first exposed the dangers of the benzodiazepines in the early 1970s but millions still take addictive and largely inappropriate benzodiazepines for anxiety and depression. Anti-depressants are prescribed by the ton but it is not difficult to argue that they do more harm than good.
And then there are the statins.
In Britain it is recommended that statins be given to just about everyone in the country – even healthy 20-year-olds. These drugs would, it was promised, cut heart disease. (The quickest, most effective and cheapest way to cut heart disease would, of course, be to encourage a healthier lifestyle and to stop vaccinating everyone – particularly with the toxic covid-19 vaccine. But no one is allowed to suggest such a thing.)
I first wrote about statins in the first edition of my book How to stop your doctor killing youwhich was published in 1996. Statins were then being heavily pushed as a way of controlling cholesterol levels. I was not impressed. This is what I wrote then:
`It isn’t difficult to find many examples of the way that drug companies (and doctors) do their best to turn every illness into a profit making opportunity – while endangering the health of individual patients.
The treatment of raised blood cholesterol is one example.
For many years doctors and patients have believed that a patient who had a high blood cholesterol level may be more likely to suffer from heart trouble, high blood pressure or a stroke.
Vast amounts of money have been spent on screening patients for blood cholesterol levels. And many patients have been frightened half to death by finding out that their blood cholesterol levels are too high.
As a result, some years ago, the drugs industry became excited by the prospect of introducing cholesterol lowering drugs on a large scale. Soon after they had first been introduced, drugs being prescribed to lower blood cholesterol were described as so safe and so effective that they would soon be prescribed for all individuals over the age of around 30 – whether or not they had a raised blood cholesterol level.
Drugs designed to lower blood fat and cholesterol levels – and therefore reduce the risk of heart disease – have been on the market for some years now. Back in October 1992, I announced that in my view the latest drugs which looked like making a fortune for the drug industry were the products which were designed to lower blood cholesterol levels. At the same time, I expressed scepticism about the value of these drugs – and concern about the possible hazards associated with their use.
When they were first launched, the cholesterol lowering drugs were everybody’s dream. The drug companies loved them because they knew that there was a massive, long-term international market. And many patients loved the idea of taking a pill to lower blood cholesterol because even though they believed that a high cholesterol level meant a high heart attack risk, many didn’t want to stop eating the fatty foods that may cause a high blood cholesterol.
(Our ‘pill for every ill’ society sometimes still amazes me, and I am constantly horrified at the number of people who know that their lifestyle is likely to result in a slow but early death but would still rather put all their trust into the greedy hands of the drug companies rather than doing something relatively simple and entirely risk free to help themselves.)
But there are several important questions to be answered here. (Questions which are, of course, never asked, let alone answered by the professional bozos who prescribe this junk.)
First, is a high blood cholesterol level really a danger sign?
The controversy over whether or not there is a direct link between a high blood cholesterol and the development of heart disease just won’t go away. Most patients with heart disease have normal cholesterol levels, and the alleged link between cholesterol levels and heart disease could, it seems, be a result of prejudices and assumptions being accepted as fact.
A Californian study couldn’t find any link between high and low cholesterol levels and heart disease – but concluded that early deaths from heart disease are caused by other risk factors. A study of patients over the age of 70 failed to show any link between a high blood cholesterol level and any heart disease.
Second, is it wise to try to reduce a high blood cholesterol level?
Some trials have seemed to suggest that some of the patients who take cholesterol lowering drugs may be more rather than less likely to die.
Years ago, a report in the British Medical Journal concluded that ‘various studies have shown excess mortality from injuries and ‘causes not related to illness’ in those who have participated in trials in which their serum cholesterol concentration is lowered by either diet or drugs’.
A Swedish report looked into the possibility that a low cholesterol level may be linked to death from injury or suicide.
They found that deaths from injuries, particularly suicide, were commoner in some men with a low blood cholesterol level.
An expert from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA wrote an article in The Lancet which began: ‘…trials which have shown that the lowering of serum cholesterol concentrations in middle aged subjects by diet, drugs or both leads to a decrease in coronary heart disease have also reported an increase in deaths due to suicide or violence. There has been no adequate explanation for this association.’
This expert suggested that a lowered serum cholesterol concentration may contribute to a: ‘poorer suppression of aggressive behaviour’.
Californian researchers found that depression was much commoner among individuals who had a low blood cholesterol. They also found that the lower the cholesterol the more depressed the patient was likely to be.
A World Health Organisation trial of a drug designed to lower blood cholesterol levels reduced expectations that cholesterol lowering drugs might lower mortality from heart disease, and raised new questions about the role of these drugs.
Does anyone really know for sure whether it is wise to reduce a high blood cholesterol level – or whether such action may create new and as yet poorly understood problems?
For women the truth seems even better hidden than it is for men. Research involving 15,000 women in Scotland showed that women who have high levels of cholesterol are less likely to die of heart disease than men who have high levels of cholesterol (even though the women had higher levels of cholesterol than the men). It seems that lowering a woman’s cholesterol levels may even expose her to a greater risk of heart disease.
The big (largely unasked) question is, of course: Can individuals reduce their chances of developing heart disease simply by eating more sensibly?
This question is clearly of vital importance because if the answer is ‘yes’ then blood cholesterol levels (and cholesterol lowering drugs) become of academic, rather than practical, importance.
The curious and sad thing is that most doctors will, despite the ‘first do no harm’ philosophy which I have always regarded as a fundamental tenet of medical practice, be happy to reach for their pens and prescription pads and dish out the pills rather than bothering to ask themselves what is (or is not) a suitable diet for preventing heart disease. There is a constant stream of new information and advice about these pills. But are they perfectly safe? I still don’t think so.
On the other hand, it is possible to cure heart disease without pills.
One of the basic cornerstones of this treatment programme is to follow a diet which cuts fat consumption down to somewhere between 10% and 20% – much lower in fat content than the usually recommended cholesterol lowering diet which is likely to contain 30% fat.
Most doctors still prefer to stick with the advice handed out by slick suited drug company representatives. And prescribe pills rather than diet.
Sadly, all this provides yet more evidence that most doctors are little more than marketing assistants for the pharmaceutical industry.
This is sad because depression and death aren’t the only inconvenient side effects which may be associated with the use of cholesterol lowering drugs.
Possible side effects known to be associated with some of the many drugs commonly prescribed for the lowering of raised cholesterol levels may include: nausea, looseness of the bowels, impotence, headache, fatigue, drowsiness, skin rashes, pruritus, hair loss, weight gain, dizziness, cardiac arrhythmia and myositis like syndrome (comprising myalgia, myopathy, muscle cramps and sometimes rhabdomyolysis), rash, myalgia, headache, non-cardiac chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and fatigue, abdominal pain, constipation, flatulence, asthenia, myopathy, rash, dyspepsia, pruritus, pancreatitis, paraesthesia, peripheral neuropathy, anaemia, rhabdomyolysis, hepatitis and hypersensitivity.
Remember, these are drugs which are prescribed to apparently healthy people – to keep them healthy without their having to give up burgers and cream doughnuts.
Are cholesterol lowering drugs effective? Will you live a longer, healthier, happier life if you take them?
Dunno.
Will you live a longer, healthier, happier life if you eat less junk?
I firmly believe so.
But where’s the profit to be made out of advising patients to eat fewer burgers?’
That was what I wrote in the first edition of `How to stop your doctor killing you.’
But the medical establishment and the drug industry (tautology again) don’t like to abandon a good seam of potential profit.
By the 2020s, doctors were again pushing for everyone to take statins. And in 2026, the media promoted statins heavily with the news that new research published in The Lancet (a magazine coincidentally packed with expensive drug company advertisements for immensely profitable drug company products) had shown that statins are safe. (The publishers, editors and their various lawyers will doubtless claim that advertising does not influence editorial in any way but I in turn will argue that if medical magazines want to be taken seriously they should avoid all links, especially financial ones, with drug companies. Medical magazines should rely upon income from subscribers and libraries. If they cannot survive without drug company advertising then they do not deserve to live.)
As a result, I have no doubt that millions more patients will be put on these drugs. To say that I’m not convinced they’re useful, necessary or safe is another of my growing collection of laughable understatements. Indeed, I fear they’re just another weapon being used by the killing machine which medicine has become.
Doctors don’t want to prescribe life-saving antibiotics (and so in the UK deaths from sepsis have gone up from around 2,000 a year to over 40,000 a year in no time at all) or asthma drugs (the incidence of deaths from asthma will rise) but they will inject their patients with useless and dangerous vaccines (such as the toxic covid-19 vaccine) and prescribe statins by the bucket-load. It’s no exaggeration to say that half of the prescriptions which are written probably do more harm than good. (That’s almost certainly another underestimate.)
I’m not keen because the known side effects include liver damage, muscle damage and a rise in blood sugar (possibly leading to diabetes mellitus). Oh, and possibly dementia. Just about every drug recommended for long term use seems capable of causing or exacerbating dementia.
I have long believed that drugs should only be prescribed when the upside outweighs the downside. If you have severe asthma a steroid may save your life. If you have an anaphylactic shock then an injection of adrenalin will keep you alive. If you have heart failure then digoxin (first discovered in the 18th century) is still one of the most powerful medicines. If you have a blood clot then an anticoagulant may save your life. If you have a serious infection then an antibiotic will keep you away from the boatman on the river Styx.
And I’m afraid that statins don’t satisfy my simple rule.
Sadly, most of the prescriptions doctors write are for drugs, such as statins, which will, in my view (as someone who has studied drug side effects and iatrogenic illness for over half a century and who used to be widely quoted in the medical literature but who is now, without a shred of evidence dismissed as `discredited’) probably do you more harm than good. Most doctors don’t know a damned thing about the drugs they prescribe.That’s probably why doctors now kill more people than cancer, heart disease or strokes. And it may be why the death rate goes down every time doctors go on strike.
NOTE
This essay is adapted from How and Why Your Life is Being Deliberately Destroyed’ by Vernon Coleman.How and Why Your Life is Being Deliberately Destroyed’ is, like all Vernon Coleman’s books available via the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
source drvernoncoleman.substack.com