VIEWPOINT:ON BEING A DIAMOND HUNTER

Every so often, I’m reminded of why I do what I do. Recently, I had two salient reminders. A few weeks ago, in the Mail on Sunday, I heard that someone had taken at swipe at me from beyond the grave. That someone was the late Times columnist John

The article was intended as a broadside attack on alternative medicine for being hopelessly unproven. In the course of that attack, he ridiculed something I said on radio, presumably to demonstrate the flimsy and unscientific nature of the alternative camp’s argument.

I was a bit taken aback that he’d summed up my arguments in a quote, and ignored the 400 pages I’d written and 900 references I’d cited in What Doctors Don’t Tell You, the book which constituted my full critique of modern medicine. But that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re desperately grasping for affirmation of the position you’ve decided to take.

Then I got the following letter from the Walkers the real family name of the ‘Smiths’, the parents threatened by social services with having their child taken away for not vaccinating and other unorthodox practices:

Dear Lynne and Bryan,

I am writing to you with wonderful news we are parents again. At Ruyl Court recently, we successfully beat the social services and the judges ordered “No order! Case closed.”

We have agreed to a 12 month voluntary ‘order’ which contains items we want to do anyway, such as attending parent and toddler groups. We feel such elation.

The tide really turned recently, especially since I (John) represented myself. We challenged the interim court order, and ‘accepted’ an interim supervision order to demonstrate our cooperativeness, successfully appealing against our son being on the ‘at risk’ register. And now our latest victory.

May we thank you and your readers for your support. At times, we have despaired at humanity, but through the brilliant support of friends like you and our family, we have found enormous strength. We thank your readers from the bottom of our hearts for the money they donated. It was a godsend; the case has caused financial hardship (it is incredible how I had legal aid for a solicitor, but not a penny when representing myself). We now will enjoy being parents like never before, although we have always savoured every moment especially during those dark times when we felt we could lose our much loved son.

Whilst we are determined not to let it interfere with being parents, we now are ready to seek truth and justice. No human being should ever be treated as we have been. We have various ideas on how to publicise our case and are looking at possible action over violation of human rights. We are not seeking vengence, but the system sucks, and we have to fight for others.

We welcome you to contact us to see how we can move forward. It would be nice for you to inform your readers of our wonderful news!

Again, many thanks. We look forward to hearing from you,

John, Kay and Alexander Walker

Through all of our support, one small wrong like the Walker’s case was righted. (You can write to the Walkers via us.)

I am not upset by the John Diamond article so much as immensely saddened by it. The fact that he died would tend to argue that he bet on the wrong horse. In my heart, I will always wish that John Diamond and I could have debated these issues face to face. I like to think the sheer weight of our evidence against chemotherapy and in favour of many alternative approaches to cancer by qualified doctors might just have chipped away at his utter certainty. I sit where I sit not just to help the Walkers, but in some way to reach the Diamonds of this world as well.

Lynne McTaggart