
Quotes from
`Coleman's Laws'
Vernon Coleman
`A 13-year-old child
weighing 6 stone will probably receive the same dose of medication as a
45-year-old man weighing 20 stone. The same medicines (often in the same doses)
are often prescribed for young and old, male and female, fat and thin. This is
bizarre, illogical and indefensible.' (page 18)
`Never take a new
drug if you are alone in the house. If you are alone and have an anaphylactic
shock reaction you could die. The number of people suffering from potentially
life-threatening allergic reactions has increased more than 300% in a decade. In
one recent year around 30,000 people in the UK had anaphylactic shock
reactions.' (page 19)
`In medicine the word `new' when used to
describe a drug means two things: the drug is expensive and no one yet knows
whether it will cure you or kill you.' (page 19)
`Only the most
bigoted member of the medical establishment would dare to describe medicine as a
science.' (page 22)
`Most of the clinical research published in
medical journals (and used as the basis for medical practice) is (how shall I
put it to be tactful) as bent as a paperclip.' (page 26)
`There
are 348,461 clinical research papers published every week. Most of them are of
no value to anyone except the author (and, perhaps a drug company).' (page
27)
`Nurses have now been given legal authority to prescribe. This
is lunacy and means that patients will, in future, have to take very special
care to protect themselves from incompetent, prescription-happy nurses as well
as incompetent, prescription-happy doctors. Nurses should dress wounds, soothe
brows, make beds and provide bedpans. If they want to prescribe they should
become doctors.' (page 31)
`Never be afraid to ask for a second
opinion. It is your life that is at stake - not a new sofa or curtains for the
living room.' (page 41)
`Screening examinations and check-ups are
more profitable for doctors than for patients.' (Coleman's 4th Law Of
Medicine)
`Nearly 200,000 people die each year in America as a
result of `medical accidents'. It is clear, therefore, that doctors kill vastly
more innocent people than terrorists do. What sort of panic would political
leaders be in if terrorists regularly killed 200,000 Americans every year?'
(page 51)
`A big chunk of doctors would prescribe arsenic if they
got a free pen from the drug company making arsenic tablets.' (page 55)
`Given a choice between an old and experienced doctor who is out of
touch with modern developments, and a young doctor who is fresh out of medical
school and who knows all the latest jargon, the patient who puts experience
ahead of knowledge will benefit.' (page 60)
`Any doctor who tells
you that you will need to take pills for life is an unimaginative (and probably
ill-informed) buffoon.' (page 61)
`Of all the bad things the drug
industry has done (and a list would fill this book and another eleven volumes
like it) the worst must surely be the way they have corrupted the entire medical
establishment. Not that the blame should be laid on one party. You can't be
corrupted unless you want to be.' (page 83)
`If there is a
high-tech and a low-tech way of doing things, doctors will choose the high-tech
approach even if it is less effective and more dangerous.' (page
86)
`Before the industrial age, hospitals were built like cathedrals
in order to lift the soul and ease the mind. Hospitals were decorated with
carvings, works of art, flowers and perfumes. Modern hospitals are built with no
regard for the spirit, eye or soul. They are bare, more like prisons than
temples, designed to concentrate the mind on pain, fear and death. Where there
are windows they are positioned in such a way that patients can't see out of
them (though even if they could they probably wouldn't be able to see anything
more enthralling than the refuse bins or the air conditioning units).' (page
91)
`Many senior nurses now spend their days closeted in their
offices, staring at computer screens and filling in assessment forms. Many seem
to regard themselves as above what they see as the menial tasks of nursing. They
leave the hands-on work to untrained staff. The introduction of degrees for
nurses has made things even worse by turning a fundamentally practical
profession into one with entirely spurious academic ambitions. The modern career
structure for nurses has taken the best nurses away from patients; it was driven
by a patronising and entirely inaccurate concept (that nursing is demeaning).'
(page 92)
`Time and time again patients report that nurses won't
lift them up the bed (it has been reported that some hospitals have posters with
the slogan `Nurses are not weight lifters' on their walls), won't help feed
them, won't bring bedpans, won't change beds, won't do anything for patients in
pain or distress and won't respond when the call button is pressed. They will
not, in short, do any of the things that nurses are traditionally supposed to
do. They are not interested in soothing or healing or helping because they have
become career administrators with aspirations and ambitions. In many hospitals
it is the patients who can get out of bed who end up doing all the nursing
work.' (page 92)
`The nurses who run our hospitals are the ones
who are least interested in the art of caring, least passionate about nursing as
an art and most anxious to climb up the career ladder by exhibiting their
prowess at managing meetings, mastering the double-speak that has invaded
hospitals and `giving good mouth'.' (page 95)
`The Government
would save more lives if it took down speed cameras and, instead, put up cameras
in hospitals to check that nurses, cleaners and doctors washed their hands
properly.' (page 97)
`There are fashions in medicine just as much
as there are fashions in clothes.' - (Coleman's 7th Law Of Medicine)
`The food in hospitals is diabolical and contributes enormously to the
death rate among patients. It is, for example, quite absurd that hospitals
should continue to serve meat dishes to patients. Since the evidence linking
meat to cancer is just as convincing as that linking tobacco to cancer it would
make as much sense for nurses to walk around the wards handing out cigarettes.'
(page 98)
`Doctors and nurses know little or nothing about
staying healthy. In particular, doctors and nurses know nothing useful about
food, diet and healthy eating. (Sadly, the same is true of nutritionists and
dieticians.) - (Coleman's 9th Law Of Medicine)
`The number of
in-patient acute hospital beds in the UK is approximately one third the number
in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.' (page 106)
`Hospitals are
filthy, dirty and badly run. Hospitals have too much money but ill-informed
uncaring self-serving bureaucrats spend it all on all the wrong things. If the
Gestapo ever gets back on its feet and starts recruiting it will have little
difficulty in finding suitable candidates among the administrators working in
hospitals.' (page 107)
`While people with suspected cancer have to
wait months for essential investigations our politically correct system means
that money and resources are spent on providing such non-essential luxuries as
cosmetic surgery and infertility treatment. (page 137)
`The
evidence shows that some vaccines kill and injure far more people than the
diseases the vaccines are given to protect against.' (page
177)
`If children scream or are unusually quiet or show other unusual
signs after a vaccination then there is, I suspect, a real chance that they will
develop autism. Sadly, of course, it is too late to do anything about it by
then.' (page 179)
`There is no such thing as minor surgery.'
(Coleman's 11th Law Of Medicine)
`My mother was in a small cottage
hospital which wanted to throw her out. They said they wanted the bed. My mother
was incapable of moving any limb. She could do nothing for herself. She was so
confused that she didn't recognise me when I visited. `We've got a shortage of
beds,' said the matron. `Your mother will have to go home.' She told me that I
had to attend a meeting. The meeting was held in a fully equipped but entirely
empty ward. No one but me saw the irony in this.' (page 214)
`At
the end of the day most doctors and nurses don't give a damn whether you live or
die. And if you're over 65 everyone wants you dead. Remember that. It could save
your life one day.' (page 220)
Taken from Coleman's
Laws by Vernon Coleman, published by EMJ Books. Coleman's Laws is available
from the bookshop on this website and from all good bookshops on and offline.
Copyright Vernon Coleman 2007
Home