I have not been so annoyed since, about 18 months ago, I wanted to track down some Epsom Salts. I tried local chemists and even found myself in Epsom on one occasion and the answer was the same everywhere 'we can't get that any more'. In the even Ron looked up in the horticultural supply catalogue and bought a bag with his next order for the nursery - it was only £8 and weighs about 20kgs.
This week it came to my attention that Gentian Violet was a safe and effective method (if somewhat messy) of treating thrush during breastfeeding. It seems that 2-3 days of treatment sorts out the problem. I called in at Boots in Weybridge yesterday. I asked at the pharmacy counter for gentian violet. The girl behind the c0unter treated me like I was not speaking the same language - I had to repeat myself 4 times (interspersed with definitions...) and the girl next to her asked did I mean 'ginseng' (funny, my mother never told me about that.....). I wonder whether either of these poor girls even knew what a violet WAS! Enquiry was made of the pharmacist who was too distant for me to hear word-for-word but the gist was 'cancer risk.... can't get it anymore'. Does anyone KNOW who controls the supplies for pharmacies? Do you think there might be MONEY influencing the decision not to stock such tried and tested (and without long-term side-effects) remedies as were used in the pre-NHS days by ordinary folk?
My children just see it as another opportunity for me to mount my soapbox - I feel I am expressing concerns which, sooner or later, they will come to appreciate. We are being treated like children and while on the one hand we can not exercise the right to buy gentian violet we could go next door into the newsagent and purchase cigarettes (with a warning, yes, but STILL we can purchase them...) from which we see people dying all around us. Of course we are 'allowed' to buy cigarettes because someone makes (a lot of) money from their sale. Gentian violet and epsom salts on the other hand are very cheap and there is no money to be made on them.
CS Lewis pointed out that during the Middle Ages people were at liberty to do anything which was not forbidden. Now we are in a situation where most people will think ' are we allowed to do that' or 'is it safe to use that' (which is another way of asking 'is it approved by the gods of science').
If my pharmacist has been told that there is research regarding cancer did a lab buy a load of G.V. and then feed it to rats in whom, subsequently, cancerous cells were detected? What about all those drugs tested on a wide range of animals before being launched on humanity which are pronounced 'safe' in the lab (I don't know about you but I don't have the same constition as a bunny rabbit, or a rat....) and which are silently withdrawn once the side-effects are discovered in use on the living guinea pigs....
Do you know that Thalidamide was tested on lab animals and out of hundreds of tests the only case of birth-defect was in one rabbit - that was not 'statistically significant' of course - so the product went on the market - the result? Well, I was in school with some of the luckier victims - one was an excellent trumpet player, I remember....
If we don't wake up to what is going on before it is too late, we will all be victims of science, as will our children.