On the Use of Red Wine for Paediatric Anaesthetics during Ritual Genital Cutting.

19th February, 2013 54

An ancient spiritual rite of initiation takes place. The foreskin of a newborn infant is to be removed. That area of the body that is most sensitive to touch and serves as protection to the infant’s penis it to be sliced off with a knife. It will be traumatic and will hurt the child enormously. The child may suffer complications, some life-threatening, and may curtail his sexual pleasure in the [read more…]

Biodynamic Farming: “A rather magnificent cow-dung ice cream cone”

15th February, 2013 144

More ill-considered tosh from our national broadcaster. This time it’s biodynamic farming. Sitting out on the bonkers fringes of the organic farming movement squats another of Rudolph Steiner’s bastard offspring birthed at a lecture series in 1924. [Follow the link and see what passes for research in some areas of social science. You can tell it’s ‘science’ cos it’s got numbers and some Σ symbols. Maths-tastic!] Among its principles are planting schemes [read more…]

Write to Your MP about NHS Choices

14th February, 2013 2

Today’s Guardian has revealed the extraordinary story of how the Department of Health corrupted information on the NHS Choices web site to make it more pleasing to homeopaths and the Prince of Wales.  The story was uncovered by a Freedom of Information request by Professor David Colquhoun. The Department of Health took a cowardly approach where they tried to minimise the possibility of homeopaths and their supporters complaining to them. They chose expediency over allowing [read more…]

Homeopathic Quality Control – It’s Nonexistent

12th February, 2013 51

Christopher Brookmyre’s short story place b., contained in his anthology, Jaggy Splinters, includes a rather amusing story about how a journalist goes undercover to sting the fictitious NHS Hospital, the Edinburgh and Lothian Homeopathic Hospital. What would happen if there was a break-in by sceptical activists at a homeopathic pill manufacturers where the pills were swapped for blank sugar pills? How would the homeopaths at the hospital react when newspaper stories [read more…]

Incurable stupidity and irresponsibility at WDDTY

1st February, 2013 206

Today, the latest version of What Doctors Don’t Tell you goes on sale in WHSMiths, Waitrose, Sainsbury and many other high street locations. The February issue makes some of its most startling and irrersponsible claims yet. The front cover proclaims “Mega-cure for the incurables – Vitamin C fights it all, from measles to AIDS”. That is quite a startling claim. The feature article is by WDDTY founder, Lynn McTaggart, and [read more…]