The Failure of Openness at Ofquack

6th April, 2009 12

I was going to call this post “The Failure of IT at Ofquack”, but I think the failure is a little deeper than computers. The Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council have recently put the following announcement up on their web site: Website Hackers We are extremely disappointed to have to share with you that we have had a number of unprecedented attempts by hackers to disable our website. We are [read more…]

Samuel Hahnemann and his Frankenstein Experiments

1st April, 2009 75

My automated scans of the internet for all things about quackery have thrown up some interesting news today. The German newspaper Bild is reporting that an academic homeopathy journal is about to publish the discovery of fragments of a new edition of Hahnemann’s Organon. (translation here from “Die Entdeckung einer verlorenen siebte Auflage des Organon?”) For those not familiar with the origins of homeopathy, its inventor, a German doctor, wrote [read more…]

Top Ten Tips For Creating Your Own New Alternative Medicine

29th March, 2009 29

The economic downturn may mean that you are thinking of retraining as an alternative healer. You might be tempted to invest your redundancy money or savings in training courses and equipment. Think again. It may be far cheaper and much more lucrative to invent your own brand new form of quackery. Most forms of alternative medicine are at most only a few decades old or have only become popular recently. [read more…]

Will the Government Bail Out Ofquack?

23rd March, 2009 17

It does not take a lot of analysis to realise that the newly formed Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council is going to be in a desperate financial state quite soon. The CNHC, or Ofquack to its friends, was launched this year after being set up by Prince Charles’ charity, the Foundation for Integrated Health, backed by funding of about £900,000 from the Department of Health. Ofquack is the “national voluntary [read more…]

Duchy Originals Pork Pies

11th March, 2009 26

Prince Charles is being labeled a quack in today’s news. And not a moment too soon. The BBC report that “Prince Charles has been accused of exploiting the public in times of hardship by launching what a leading scientist calls a “dodgy” detox mix.” Dodgy Originals, as now they will become known, is selling three herbal tinctures. Two of them, echinachea and hypericum, are the first herbal preparations to be [read more…]

The Graceless Dr Michael Dixon OBE

25th February, 2009 47

In today’s Pulse, the magazine for GPs, a spat between Dr Michael Dixon and critics of alternative medicine has been reported. Dr Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, was accused of breaking GMC guidelines by issuing ‘misleading or incorrect’ statements about alternative medicine. The NHS Alliance is not actually part of the NHS, but is an independent body that acts a bit like a club, lobby and research organisation into [read more…]

The Northern Ireland NHS Alternative Medicine ‘Trial’

23rd February, 2009 26

Various news sources and pro alternative medicine web sites have been telling us this week that a trial involving NHS GPs in Northern Ireland has shown that referring patients for homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture and other CAM has highly successful outcomes. I see this as nothing short of an attempted fraud to extract NHS money for traders in quackery. Let me explain. For example, the Princes Foundation for Integrated Health tells [read more…]

Queen Margaret University and Prostituted Academia

19th February, 2009 14

A few weeks ago, newspapers were carrying remarkable stories about a Scottish mineral water, Deeside Water, that could halt aging, reduce wrinkles and have amazing anti-oxidant effects – a remarkable fountain of youth. Newspapers gushed with reports of this amazing scientific discovery. Even the BBC had previously reported that Deeside Water could “treat rheumatism, skin conditions and stomach complaints” . Deeside water were celebrating a press release from Queen Margaret [read more…]

London’s Biggest Conversation

11th February, 2009 22

Just a short post to note how radio station LBC 97.3FM (London’s Biggest Conversation) have utterly failed to understand the strength of feeling that exists out there about their attempts to silence debate regarding their appalling coverage of the MMR issue. My blog has seen one of the biggest spikes of traffic since the Society of Homeopaths tried to shut me down. They failed. I became stronger. Thousands of people [read more…]

Is Chiropractic X-raying Illegal?

29th January, 2009 24

Chiropractors have achieved a status amongst practitioners of alternative medicine that is almost unrivalled. In the UK, they have achieved a level of mainstream acceptance, regulation and recognition that must be the envy of homeopaths and herbalists. Such is their standing that I suspect that many people would not even consider them as part of the alternative medicine scene. Chiropractors, like their close cousins the Osteopaths, are statutorily regulated in [read more…]

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