Thoughts of a carer

  It has been recorded that Prof. Neil Furguson thought, in March 2020, that lockdowns could not be imposed on the British people. Yet they were. Our leaders, and their advisers, were surprisingly quickly convinced of the need for this, and then thought there would be significant pushback, justifying a policy of behavioural management, nudge and coercion that, prior to 2020, would have been considered very un-British (Laura Dodsworh’s excellent book, ‘ A State of Fear ’ is worth reading, if you haven’t already.) . How might this have arisen? Were all government ministers fully aware of what was going on, had they thought everything through and considered the risks, I wonder, or were their faculties somehow impaired? *** I’ve written before on the topic of the side effects of prescription medication ( ref 1 , ref 2 ).  It's not unknown for people to mess things up, we all do something less well than we might wish sometimes. There will often be a reason for what happens; in some...

In my previous blog entry , I described my experiences of the effect that certain medication - in that case, antidepressants - can have on someone’s judgement and character, and the effect on their relationships and even those around them. I also referred to an NHS report from 2016 that contained some startling facts, including: ‘ 48%, of adults had taken at least one prescribed medicine in the last week, and almost a quarter, 24%, had taken three or more’   ‘...commonly  used  prescribed  medicines were antihypertensives (by  15%  of  adults) and  lipid-lowering  medicines (14%);  followed  by  proton-pump  inhibitors  for reducing  acid  in the  stomach  (11%); analgesics and  non-steroidal anti-inflammatory  drugs (11%); and antidepressants  (10%)’ The idea that ten percent of the population could be taking something to cause them to behave in the way my ex wife did should shock...

One of the (many) things my ex wife used to criticise me about was that I was sceptical about, well, almost everything. Ever since I was a child I have been wary of believing what others tell me; there are dark episodes in my past that may at least partly explain that. The fact is, I do have an ‘enquiring mind’. I don't like being told something, and then being told to believe it ‘because I say so’. I’m awkward; I’m probably somewhat ‘on the spectrum’; but I believe that I should be able to understand almost anything, if the person I’m listening to can communicate effectively, and that I should also be able to satisfy myself that what they are saying is, in fact, correct. If they can't, and I can't, I won't trust them. I’ve therefore earned a reputation for being sceptical on, among other matters, medical topics. Some may think that I’ve developed this attitude only in response to events in the last ten years or so, but that’s not the case at all: I have had my concern...