Richard House ( Letters 17th Aug) apparently sees no irony in the frequency with which the SNJ publishes his complaints about being “cancelled”. This time it is once again “Big Pharma”.

You do not have to be an uncritical admirer of the Pharma industry, or it’s government supporters, to feel that his arguments have long lost any rational foundation. Like any big business, including the so called alternative health industry, it seeks to maximise its profits and is often none too scrupulous about how this is achieved.

Like other businesses it often uses political donations to further its interests. But to leap from there to talk of Covid conspiracies and dismissal of the whole medical establishment is just nonsense.

He says we should turn away from western medicine and embrace indigenous medical systems.

He is vague on what this means but presumably is referring to the various forms of alternative medicine which surround us.

Let’s be clear, in the west we do suffer from over prescribing and some medicines have proved less effective than claimed or subject to side effects. But we also have many treatments which prevent illness, mitigate its effects and enable many affected by disease to continue a healthy life.

I have yet to see evidence that any so called alternative medicine has any significant beneficial effect, meaning better than a placebo. And some have serious side effects including death in the case of chiropractic.

In the case of Covid the vaccines have undoubtedly been effective, if not 100%.

True they have also been profitable, which is unusual as vaccines are mostly loss making.

Of course they are not the only answer as in particular we need to fix the conditions which allow Covid and other viruses to emerge and spread so rapidly. But merely repeating conspiracy theories and promoting bogus solutions offers nothing.

Jim Watson

Stroud