swine flu h1n1 is a con job designed to sell pharmacy products

Sitting in the kitchen at the old chateau with Doctor Barn and the Mammy.

I am telling them about my latest scientific advance.

They are listening enraptured.

"So," says I, "for twenty years I've had some sort of a snuffle in my nose. Occasionally it becomes the flu. Occasionally it's just a niggle. Then earlier this year I began to think logically about what I might do. Just because I'd always had it, didn't necessarily mean I always had to have it. I suspected the cause was multi factorial. A few causes. It seemed that the cigarette smoke in the house might have been one cause. My mental state might have been another. The old psychosomosis and all that. You know. That stuff about me being a werewolf. Anyhoo. So what I did was made sure the house was aired out. I kept a window open in my bedroom. Regularly aired out the rest of it. My symptoms reduced drastically. Then about a month ago I got the flu. Woke up with it. Shrugged my shoulders and said: Ah well, there goes the next six months. Only I decided to look around for logical steps I could take to help myself. No, not pharmaceutical products. Although I did drink Lemsip. I read in Padre Peter's herb book that garlic had strong medicinal qualities. Now I don't believe in con job natural remedies sold by confidence tricksters any more than I believe in con job pharmaceutical remedies sold by Merck Sharpe Dome Steinervortzel and their collection of associated Frankensteins. But I decided to give the garlic a chance. I went and bought some garlic in the supermarket. Only I didn't know what garlic looked like and ended up buying a red onion by mistake. I spent a week eating slices of the red onion every morning, along with apples and bananas, and drinking Lemsip. The flu cleared completely. My nasal passages are clearer than they have been for twenty years. What I want to ask you is this. Is it possible that the onions have a practically curative effect? I mean is it possible that since onions open up the tear ducts and make us cry, that they could also open up other ducts. The Eustachian tubes in the ears. The nasal passages. I submit my thesis for your consideration. The whole world is throwing money at scare mongering pharmaceutical companies when people should be just looking after themselves and eating onions. What do you think?"

Doctor Barn did not reject this in the decisive manner he reserves for most of my crackpot theories.

"Actually," he murmured thoughtfully, "you might have something there. About the nasal tubes."

The Mammy chortled.

"Really?" quoth she. "And do you not think all the millions being spent on research, all those people in laboratories, would have found out if onions could cure the flu?"

The noble Heelers furrowed his brow furrowingly.

"I'm not so sure," he said thoughtfully. "I think maybe they find only what they want to find. The observer affects the thing observed. Sometimes people only find what they are prepared to find. No researcher is going to get an extended grant from a pharmaceutical company if he contacts them and says: Your products are rubbish, but onions can cure the common cold. There's no immediate multi billion dollar profit for a pharmaceutical company that tells people: Go to bed, eat full meals, join a prayer group and eat onions. Although I think the very integrity of it would mean more sustainable and more honourable profits for them eventually. But you can see how they might be reluctant to advocate healthy lifestyles instead of a lifetime's addiction to their products. Even though ultimately their lies must destroy them. They will follow the lie right to the end. And the lie always collapses on itself eventually. They are so limited morally that they can't see any possibility of making billions in profits simply by telling people the truth. They have no business model for that."

"Unless they start selling onions," crowed the Mammy cheerily.

And there our story ends.