Experts With Feet Of Clay

Experts with Feet of Clay

 RHODA WILSON

Most experts’ opinions are bought and paid for. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

Dr. Vernon Coleman, having at one time been described as a “leading expert” in mass media, gives his insights into how the system of “experts” quoted in corporate media works.

By Dr. Vernon Coleman

There are very few independent experts left in the world today. Most people who are described as experts (or who like to describe themselves as experts) are bought and paid for; their opinions are controlled by the company, university broadcaster or non-governmental organisation (“NGO”) which pays their wages.

When fact-checkers want a quote from a so-called expert they contact one or more of the well-known names in their book of contacts – and they invariably get the officially approved quote they hope for. Drug companies sometimes provide journalists with “tame” spokes-doctors. The following essay is taken from my book ‘Medical Heretics’ which is subtitled `How the medical establishment crushes the truth and suppresses good ideas’.

Today, television and radio programmes always present experts as though their word is beyond discussion. Newspapers do the same, quoting experts as though they are bringing us solid evidence that the rest of us could never find without them.

It is frighteningly easy to become an “expert.” When I was in my 20s and newly qualified, I was regularly described as a “world famous expert” or a “leading expert” whenever I was quoted in the media. At least I was only ever giving my opinion based on the facts which were available – I have never been paid or otherwise bribed to offer an opinion or a particular point of view.

There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that now I am much older, and I hope wiser and better informed, I am never invited to give my opinion on TV or radio shows or for the press. The mainstream media prefers its experts to stick to the official and accepted line on whatever topic is under discussion. What viewers, listeners and readers don’t know is that many so-called experts have been bought and paid for, and when they open their mouths, they are merely saying what they’ve been told to say by their employers. The drug industry has an army of doctors who will say whatever they are required to say – in return for a large cheque, a holiday abroad or a new television set. Special agencies offer these so-called experts to media groups who are looking for someone who can provide an apparently expert view. Television reporters, radio presenters and newspaper journalists like the fact that these experts work free of charge because they are paid by their sponsors. The “experts” are known as “rent-a-quote experts.”

The other part of the problem (and the subject of this book) is the way that the experts within the medical establishment frequently suppress and crush important and original work that could save lives and improve the health of patients around the world.

This isn’t a new phenomenon – it’s been happening for centuries.

The medical establishment will always take decisions on health matters which benefit industry, government and the medical profession, rather than patients. And the Government will always take decisions on health matters which benefit the State and the pharmaceutical industry rather than individual patients.

Responsibility has been separated from authority with disastrous consequences for patients.

There is something uncivilised and inhuman about a health system, designed by experts and reliant on experts, in which patients with suspected cancer must wait weeks, months or years to see a specialist, wait weeks or months to be diagnosed and then wait weeks or months or years to be treated – hoping that they won’t die on one of the waiting lists.

Finally, look at the way that experts have allowed our environment and our food to be poisoned by chemical companies, farmers and others involved in “serving” our communities.

Poisons in our environment are now one of the most significant modern causes of illness in general and of cancer in particular. As a result of the contaminants in our food, drinking water and the air we breathe, human breast milk contains so many chemical contaminants that it couldn’t possibly be sold as safe for human consumption. And human bodies contain so many chemicals (some consumed in additive and pesticide-contaminated food and some acquired accidentally from our polluted environment) that a human steak would never be passed fit for consumption by cannibals.

Children’s bodies are routinely contaminated with scores of potentially hazardous chemicals. The susceptibility of the young body, and the wide availability of toxic chemicals in the surroundings in which children live, mean that those as young as nine years old have far more toxic substances in their bodies than their grandparents ever had.

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