The Self-Sovereign

Here it is: watch.sovrintv.com That’s the announcement. If you’d rather close this email and go and watch the film right now, please do. The rest of this will still be here afterwards. However, I would strongly urge you to read the description below at some point as I do think it helps to put the film into it’s proper context. It also explains why it’s free, who’s in it, and what I’d like you to do once you’ve seen it.

In the 4th and final part of the documentary further examples of the benefits of an integrated approach to medicine are presented. There is much work to do if we want to get back a more appropriate medical system that is based on the needs of the patient rather than the commercial interests and prestige of doctors. However, the more patients that raise these issues with their doctor and the more patients that do their own research, the closer we get to the solution.

By this stage in the documentary, we have moved beyond the historical origins of modern medicine and the structural problems that shape healthcare today. One of the most striking themes to emerge from the interviews in this chapter is that many of the proposed solutions are neither experimental nor particularly complicated. They often involve addressing the fundamental drivers of chronic disease rather than simply treating its consequences.

Throughout the scientific revolution, thinkers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon championed an approach that sought to understand nature by breaking it down into its constituent parts. This reductionist method transformed physics, chemistry and engineering, allowing scientists to isolate variables, identify causes and build mental models of the physical world. It also laid the foundations for modern medicine. This reductionism has achieved notable successes.

In March 2024 I published a short self-funded documentary film titled Deadly Quiet. The film is about the appearance of strange white blood clots in the bodies of the deceased. Deadly Quiet documents the testimony of a funeral director, John O’Looney, in the UK. John found an increase in the number of young people who were dying and an acceleration in the rate of growth of cancerous tumors. Along with the discovery of strange white rubbery clots in the blood vessels.

Part 1 of a 4 part series examining the impact of the Flexner report. This series is based on my feature documentary film In the Shadow of Flexer. I have decided to serialise the film with additional comments for ease of consumption. In 1910, an educator named Abraham Flexner published a report that would reshape healthcare throughout North America and eventually much of the world. The report is often celebrated as a milestone in medical reform. Before Flexner, medical education was chaotic.

It has been a number of months since I last wrote here. Last year, my mother passed away, and for most of the last eight months I have been back in the UK. My mother was the last of my family members so I had to clear a lifetime of belongings from the family home and prepare the house for sale. The emotional weight and the physical work required have been all consuming, as anyone who has been in this situation knows.

For more than 50 years, cancer research has focused on finding a single, silver-bullet cure - a breakthrough drug or device to eradicate the disease. But what if that search has taken us down the wrong path? Beyond Breakthrough: The Shift in Cancer Careexplores a growing movement of scientists, doctors, and patients who are challenging the conventional model and re-imagining what healing really means.

Everyone is talking about AI as though it’s a threat unlike anything humanity has ever faced. The conversations range from apocalyptic “AI will wipe out the human race” to utopian “AI will save us from ourselves”. In between are endless debates about regulation, ethics, and how AI might reshape human thinking. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: we don’t need AI to destroy ourselves. We’ve already built human-made systems that work directly against human well-being.

Human history is often told as a series of wars between nations, tribes, or ideologies. Yet a more fundamental war is unfolding today - one in which humanity is fighting against itself. The battlefield is not defined by armies or borders, but by the concentration of money, power, and influence in the hands of a small elite. The policies and structures that support this concentration operate as a form of systemic warfare against the vast majority of people.