10:23. My Personal Homeopathic Overdose
Right now, if the homeopaths are correct, I should have paralysed arms, be in severe pain, have convulsions, delirium, skin itching all over and be unable to stand. That is because I have taken a massive overdose of the homeopathic remedies, Belladonna 30C, Sulphur 30C and Lachesis 5MM. I wrote this post last night and set it to appear at 10:23 today, the moment I will also be taking a whole packet of Boots homeopathic sleeping pills.
I expect to be quite alright because despite the labelling of these products, homeopathic pills are just sugar pills – there is nothing in them. They are inert and completely ineffective.
I am taking this overdose because Boots the Chemists sell these products as if they were real medicines. They make money by misleading the public that these pills can relieve them of various symptoms, from hay fever to infant teething pain. They do not, of course, and Boots know there is no evidence, but they sell them nonetheless. Hundreds of like minded people will be doing the same in cities throughout the UK as part of the 10:23 homeopathy campaign.
The Society of Homeopaths is condemning this protest as “an ill advised publicity stunt”. Why it should be ‘ill advised’ is not clear. They go on to say in their press release that they “would not therefore expect any reaction to the proposed ‘overdose’ by this group.”
Well we are all in agreement that nothing will happen then. And that is precisely the message that we want the public to take away – homeopathic remedies cannot have any effects because they contain no active substance – they are diluted to the point that no material remains. Homeopathy is a pseudo-medicine based on magical and pre-scientific belief systems that should have no place in a modern High Street pharmacy.
But, as usual, the Society of Homeopaths are not being straightforward with the public. For on another of their pages they repeat the homeopathic belief that their sugar pills can produce symptoms in healthy people. This is known as a homeopathic ‘proving’.
Volunteers or ‘provers’ take the new substance until they experience symptoms. All symptoms that result from taking the substance are recorded in detail.
Now of course this does not really happen. What homeopathic ‘provers’ experience are just random symptoms – there is no evidence that homeopathic pills can induce any consistent symptoms in people because they are just sugar pills. Such is the imagination.
If the Society of Homeopath believes this though, it is a mystery why they decline to warn the protesters about this.
The medical doctors who use homeopathy have come out strongly against this protest too. They say “The BHA regards the 10:23 stunt as grossly irresponsible”. Personally, I think that doctors misleading patients by telling them that a 19th Century pseudoscientific cultish quack medicine can help them is deeply irresponsible. I am amazed they are not struck off.
But to satisfy the homeopaths, in addition to downing by whole box of homeopathic sleeping pills, I have started taking the sulphur, belladonna and lachesis, 2 tabs of each at 2 hourly intervals. I started at 9pm last night and will continue until the tubs run out.
The lachesis is supposed to be particularly nasty. It is made from a snake venom (Bushmaster) and is supposed to induce horrific symptoms. Previous provers have reported paralysis of the arms and lots of pain. But because my pills do not actually contain any snake venom, I feel pretty confident I will be OK.
I am supposed to be giving a talk with Simon Singh and John Garrow in an hour, “Trick or Treatment: The Event.” If I am not there, you know why.
If you want to check I am alive, follow my twitter stream: http://www.twitter.com/lecanardnoir
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If you want to find out more about why I am doing this, read here. And if you want to know why it is called the 10:23 campaign, you could do worse than read this.
Related posts:
- We would be the Sceptics answer to Jedward, if I had any Hair. Thanks to Stephen Law at the Centre of Inquiry for posting this video of myself and Simon Singh, just after our talks at Conway Hall. The day started with...
- 10:23, Homeopathy and the Shame of the Pharmacy Profession This Saturday, hundreds of people, in many cities, will be demonstrating outside Boots the Chemists about their selling of homeopathic remedies. Each volunteer will be taking a homeopathic ‘overdose’...
- The MHRA and the Labeling of Homeopathic Products Further documents have been published after the House of Commons held its enquiry into the evidence base for government policy on homeopathy. There are some real treats in there,...
- The $100 Homeopathy Challenge: Update Well, I have had two conversations with homeopaths now about taking the challenge. Recap: its a simple challenge to see if a homeopath can determine which remedy is which out...
- Dispensing with Homeopathy: A Proposal Let’s run with an idea and see where it goes. The 10:23 campaign has now had loads of publicity and Boots have failed to address any of the central...
30 minutes later and everyone still seems OK!
The idea of a homeopathic "snake venom" remedy containing nothing, and then homeopaths vehemently denying it is "Snake Oil", even though in their Homeo-Verse it should supposedly evoke venom-effects…
…well, let's just say my meta-Unreality Filters are on overload.
I am tired of telling people on more credulous blogs that as well as being totally useless, homeopathic remedies don't spare animals – the lists of provings contain everything from alligators to pig embryo. A minor concern for the non-veggies, I know, but so many innocents think homeopathy is all-round beneficent it is often salutary to remind them that it has its basis in the frantic castings-around of humans to cure themselves, using and abusing anything that comes to hand.
Still alive? Me too. I bought sepia 30C because I liked the name and then discovered that it's for brunettes so it's handy I am one.
Mmmm sepia. i used to work in Venice. Everything is cooked in sepia. It does terrible things to the digestive system.
You are a fucking idiot- see if the docs can cure that
"I bought sepia 30C because I liked the name and then discovered that it's for brunettes…"
Does it cure them or attract them?
I agree that homeopathy doesn't work but it seems to me that the bit in the
article about »homeopathic provings« is not quite correct.
Homeopathic proving means that one takes not the homeopathic »remedy« but
whatever the remedy is derived of, and records the symptoms one experiences
after that. The homeopathic »principle« of »like cures like« then claims that
the stuff, when made into a homeopathic »remedy« according to the official
ritual, will cure these symptoms even if you have them from elsewhere.
If you take undiluted belladonna, which is quite poisonous, this will cause
you to experience a wide range of nasty symptoms including dilated pupils,
staggering, and rashes, and will eventually kill you. The homeopath says that
if you dilute belladonna enough (say, to 30C, which is 100 to the 30th power)
it will, in fact, *relieve* you from symptoms such as staggering and rashes.
(They are clever enough not to claim that it will bring you back from the
dead.)
The way this was established was because some intrepid volunteer once took
a (hopefully small) nibble of belladonna and wrote down everything they
experienced after that, so presumably belladonna 30C was declared to be good
against staggering and rashes. If, for whatever reason, the intrepid
volunteer had also experienced sneezing and smelly feet, then belladonna 30C
would have gone on the homeopathic books as good against those, too.
You would have thought so, wouldn't you Anonymous.
But no. Hahnemann was quite clear that provings should be done at a dilution of 30C.
§ 128 5th edition Organon
“The most recent observations have shown that medicinal substances, when taken in their crude state by the experimenter for the purpose of testing their peculiar effects, do not exhibit nearly the full amount of the powers that lie hidden in them which they do when they are taken for the same object in high dilutions potentized by proper trituration and succussion, by which simple operations the powers which in their crude state lay hidden, and, as it were, dormant, are developed and roused into activity to an incredible extent. In this manner we now find it best to investigate the medicinal powers even of such substances as are deemed weak, and the plan we adopt is to give to the experimenter, on an empty stomach, daily from four to six very small globules of the thirtieth potentized dilution of such a substance, moistened with a little water, and let him continue this for several days.”
Bonkers. Yes. But that is homeopathy.
Yesterday I took half a bottle of aconite 30C* and today I have a cold. Thus I have PROVEN!!!1!! that the symptoms of aconite poisoning are a stuffy nose, headache and generally feeling a bit crap. The paralysis and cardiac arrest observed when people have actually been poisoned with the stuff are just fabrications of scientists in the pay of the allopathy industry. Obviously.
* I'd have taken the whole bottle but the clicky bit kept jamming. Shoddy manufacturing standards.
Anonymous said…
"You are a fucking idiot- see if the docs can cure that"
Yet another persuasive argument from an articulate homeopathy supporter.
"Homeopathy … has its basis in the frantic castings-around of humans to cure themselves, using and abusing anything that comes to hand."
Beautifully expressed. And another great piece by le canard noir.
It's this sort of thing that we need more of: merciless picking apart of the homeopathic method.
Forget the trials. We don't consider random controlled trials of witchcraft or voodoo. We shouldn't consider them concerning homeopathy either.
First, they need to present a watertight method (quite literally), or at least propose a means of achieving one. Then we might be more interested in their results.
Finally, if anyone counters with argument such as "look, some things like aspirin took ages to work out, so science also uses things even though it doesn't know how they work" I would remind people that premier aspirin researchers such as Dreser, Collier and Piper did not go about proposing magic as the reason why aspirin works.
And of course, aspirin does actually work.
Conclusion from the press release of the Society of Homeopaths is that you should get an prescription and then ovedose on that medicine. Would be interresting to see what they come up with then. You should then of course have a real illness or you would be back to start.
Some day you will be burned at the stake…..
"Forget the trials. We don't consider random controlled trials of witchcraft or voodoo. We shouldn't consider them concerning homeopathy either."
Yes, it's time to stop.
Homoeopathy is not worthy of an RCT. They just give people like Dullman an excuse to keep posting the unreliable and discredited ones.
Enough already. It's time just to keep poking fun.
Should we now be worried about your excessive sugar consumption?
It is funny how the homeopaths change track to its direct opposite depending on which audience they are speaking to at any given time.
Sometimes they want to show off how powerful homeopathy is, so they boast about provings and all the weird and wonderful things that happen when people take their sugar pills and it's all caused by the pills even car crashes outside the prover's house (I kid you not). At other times, homeopathy is so amazingly safe that no harm can ever occur. Except at other times again homeopathy has to be used with great caution because great harm can result from aggravations. Then again their pills don't need to be regulated and tested as drugs because they are completely safe. Except when they are used in healthy people as part of a proving: from Jeremy Sherr's book The Dynamics and Methodology of Homoeopathic Provings
"However it is true that a small number of provers do not emerge unscathed. Usually these sufferings do not last long, but on rare occasions I have known problems to last for months or even years"
Is homeopathy both the cause and cure of the whiplash readers must suffer when trying to follow what homeopaths say?
It's one thing to just make stuff up because none of it is anchored in reality, but one might wish they could at least keep their story straight and self-consistent.
….so… you so don't want to meet up and chat- you send me Quackers- I send you peace, love, understanding, respect and support.
Anonymous said: "Homeopathic proving means that one takes not the homeopathic »remedy« but whatever the remedy is derived of, and records the symptoms one experiences after that."
LCN said: "But no. Hahnemann was quite clear that provings should be done at a dilution of 30C."
If you want a more recent source for this try Kayne SB (2006), Homeopathic pharmacy: theory and practice, Elsevier Health Sciences, 2nd ed. p. 52:
"While, in the beginning, Hahnemann mainly used mother tinctures and low potencies for homeopathic provings, he later switched to centesimal dilutions (30C), and many of his followers did the same. most modern provings have been conducted with ultramolecular dilutions (>12C). It is highly unlikely that any original molecule is present in such medicines."
Anonymous's confusion is understandable, though, because homoeopaths appear rather unwilling to attract attention to this.
Have a look around the internet, and you'll find reports of 'provings'. Invariably they seem to use potentised remedies, almost always at 30C.
You clearly don't understand how homeopathy works. Of course an "overdose" won't hurt you! The whole point is that the *less* of an active ingredient you have in a homeopathic remedy, the *more* potent it becomes. Therefore, by taking too much you are actually make it less potent, and less likely to have any side effects.
Duh!
that must be why they instruct you to take not one but two tablets, and not once but twice a day, and not for one day but for several days.
….oh wait
[...] 10:23 campaign has now had loads of publicity and Boots have failed to address any of the central concerns: [...]
I found the slightly horrible thing was that homoeopaths couldn’t even agree on what would happen if you did overdose (taking the wrong treatment in the right sort of doses, over days rather than all at once).
Imagine not knowing what can go wrong with your treatment, what kind of a butcher would that be?