Just before Christmas, Lia Burkeman and Stephanie Kramer, wrote an article for Urban Times that asked the question, “Homeopathy: Can it be a Success Story?”

To start, I would like to agree with the pair that indeed homeopathy is very successful. As a set of ideas, they have been around for about 200 years. Many thousands of people practice homeopathy based on the principles described by Lia and Stephanie. And undoubtedy, there are millions of people that believe homeopathy has helped them with illness.

Furthermore, there is significant money to be made from homeopathy. The largest homeopathic pharmaceutical company in the world is the French-based Boiron with a annual turnover exceeding half a billion Euros. The British homeopathic company Ainsworths, discussed in the article, is smaller. Nonetheless, it holds Royal Warrants from the Queen and Prince Charles. These are indeed successful businesses.

But it is clear that Lia and Stephanie do not want us to believe that homeopathy is successful just because of its longevity and financial success. They want us to believe homeopathy is successful because its ideas are true and that it is effective.

Before we explore that, it is worth stating what ought to be obvious: throughout the history of medicine, many people have held incorrect medical beliefs that have persisted for a very long time. Persistence of a belief by countless people is not an argument for effectiveness. For example, bloodletting was a practice that was widely used for about 2,000 years right up into the 19th Century. And yet, throughout that time, it was certainly mostly ineffective and quite probably doing a lot of harm. It is quite probable that bloodletting was the cause of George Washington’s death. Nonetheless, amongst mainstream medical practitioners, this technique was seen as a something of a panacea, with text books claiming cures for everything from acne to cancer and leprosy.

But why should this be so? Why is it that people find it so hard to tell if a therapy is effective or not?

In 1850, about the time that bloodletting was dying out, the American doctor Worthington Hooker was considering why people believe treatments to be effective when they are not. His book, Lessons from the History of Medical Delusions is still very much relevant today.

Hooker realised that the history of medicine was a “succession of error, standing out in bold prominence, each one having, as it rose to its ascendancy, supplanted some error that preceded it.” He believed that if medicine was to move from sequential delusions towards effective truth, then we should not just look at why each successive medical theory was wrong, but to come up with general reasons why doctors and their patients continually make mistakes about what is effective and what is not.

The first and most important source of error was “the too ready disposition to consider whatever follows a cause as being a result of that cause”.

That is, just because people report improved symptoms after a treatment does not mean that the treatment is effective. We all know that for many common ailments our bodies are quite capable of healing and recovery. We may suffer from hay fever, a bad back, an infection or an injury. We do get better. Our bodies are good at this. Just because we have taken a herbal remedy, been to a chiropractor, or taken some homeopathic arnica does not mean our actions were effective. We may have recovered without such intervention. Of course, people take different amounts of time to recover. It is impossible to predict just how long this bruise will last, or how quickly our cold will clear up. We may try successive cures until something works. Even if we have a chronic illness that might last for years, we know people have good days and bad days. People inevitably seek treatments when symptoms are at their worst. It is equally inevitable that we will subsequently have better days, even if our chosen treatment was ineffective. Jumping to conclusions, based on simple experiences of treatments, can quickly lead us to error. This point may appear trivial, and yet it is the foundation for belief in all superstitious and pseudo-scientific treatments.

And this is exactly the mistake that Stephanie Kramer appears to have made in her article.

Stephanie described how she had a painful eye.  Her doctor  informed her that she had adenoviral conjunctivitis and that she had to “fight this one out” and let nature take its course. She was obviously dissatisfied with this advice as it would  take “approximately 4 weeks” and she was in some pain.  The position Stephanie found herself in was ripe for exploitation by an ‘alternative medicine’: unhappiness with mainstream advice and having a painful but self-limiting condition.

And so Stephanie visited a homeopath working at Ainsworths homeopathic pharmacy in London. After a long consultation, her homeopath gave her three homeopathic remedies based on bee venom, the herb euphrasia and sulphur. After five days, her symptoms began to subside and she felt that homeopathy had ‘trumped medicine’.

Are we to be convinced by this? Of course not. Four weeks is the upper end of how long this infection lasts. Symptoms typically improve after a week or two. And this is exactly what Stephanie experienced.

But somehow, this experience has had a powerful effect on Stephanie and that now “homeopathy will be a part of [her] life forever”.

Nonetheless, despite the weakness of this anecdote, it is still possible that homeopathy was effective and that Stephanie’s illness was reduced in  severity. So, how do we know that homeopathy is a delusion? And why do people not spot the simple mistake they have made?

Let’s move onto Worthington Hooker’s second reason why people fall into medical delusions. The second error  is to “adopt exclusive views and notions“, that is to see an idea as being the One True Theory of medicine.

Once someone has had an epiphany with homeopathy, as described by Stephanie, then it is an easy to start getting steeped in the esoteric knowledge possessed by homeopaths. This is an extremely alluring process, much like how cults suck people in, where you feel like you are becoming privileged to exclusive knowledge.

Homeopathy is based on a number of so-called ‘Laws’. The first, as described by Lia in the article, is the principle of ‘like-cures-like’. For example, because onions make you cry, then onions can treat symptoms of runny eyes, such as in hayfever. Because bee venom causes swelling, then bee venom can treat swelling, such as in Stephanie’s infected eye.

Homeopaths claim they have found the true laws of illness and health. And indeed, the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemnann, denounced mainstream doctors as actually harming patients by not following his ideas and instead applying ‘allopathic’ medicine. But of course, such a law is nonsense. We now know that disease and illness are caused by many factors including different infectious agents, genetic and environmental problems. The homeopathic belief that living bodies have a ‘vital force’ that when imbalanced causes ill health is a pre-scientific and superstitious notion.

And as our initiate moves deeper into the exclusive cult of homeopathy, they become ready for making another of Hooker’s errors: to run to extremes, and to believe things that are quite the opposite of what the mainstream believe. The second law of homeopathy is quite bizarre and is not discussed in Lia and Stephanie’s article. Instead they present an ‘acceptable’ but misleading version of it in stating that homeopathy uses “highly dilute substances” to treat illness. This is not strictly true. Instead, homeopaths are taught that they should use the ‘minimum dose’ of their medicine and that you should prepare those doses by sequential dilution and shaking of the original tincture. And that the more you dilute a substance, the greater is its ‘potency’. In practice, this means that homeopathic remedies are so dilute that no substance remains and that all you are given is sugar pills. So, Stephanie did not receive bee venom, euphrasia and sulphur, but three sets of sugar pills merely labeled with these names.

Such a notion of dilution resulting in larger effects is counter to our everyday understanding of the world. You do not make coffee stronger by diluting it. You do not get drunk on shandy. Because all homeopathic remedies are essentially identically inert pills, homeopaths are free to make remedies from any and all substances no matter how poisonous, harmless or daft. On Ainsworths sales site, you can buy remedies made from Asbestos, Positronium, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Brillo Pad and Twiglets. You are not told about such remedies on public blog posts because you are not in the cult and you are still freely thinking.

The philosopher Stephen Law describes in his book Believing Bullshit how people get trapped in cult like thinking. He describes it as getting sucked into an intellectual black hole. That is, once you pass a threshold  of belief there is no way out for you. You are trained to think in certain constrained ways that prevent you seeing your own obvious errors. You are condemned to believe things that the outside world sees as absurd. Worthington Hooker anticipated one way you can get stuck in that hole in his next reason why medical delusions persist: the disposition to theorise instead of encountering the labour of strict observation.

Homeopaths do not allow their beliefs to be challenged by facts, instead the facts are twisted to fit into their theory. If a patient gets better, homeopathy works; if a patient gets worse, then that is a reaction to the remedy, and homeopathy works; if a patient stays the same then it is because you need to be patient with homeopathy, and homeopathy works. No outcome of a homeopathic encounter could challenge their belief in their theory. All narratives fit.

And as for me, I will be denounced conspiratorially as a shill for the pharmaceutical companies. I will be told I am closed minded and ignorant. I will be told to try homeopathy myself and not to try to shut down choice for others. I will be told how modern medicine kills thousands of people, apparently. Anything other than engage with the arguments that homeopathy is a delusion based on simple misunderstandings of cause and effect and of cult-like thinking.

And the harms? Well they are just sugar pills. But a wedge has now been driven between Stephanie and her doctor. She may have been given good medical advice about her conjunctivitis from her doctor, such as how to avoid infecting others. But instead she has fallen for the magical thinking of the homeopath. That did little harm this time – her condition cleared up on its own. But next time, with a more serious condition, who will she be listening to?

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Then again, you might not.

I used to think that medical doctors who practiced homeopathy were hopefully using it as a way of delivering an elaborate placebo ritual. You might argue that there are classes of patients where the best you can do is provide a convincing placebo, and that homeopathy might be seen as a very effective framework in which you might do that. You might disagree with that, but at least there is an honest debate to be had there.

But it would appear that the doctors, many of them employed by the NHS, who use this 19th Century superstitious simulacra of medicine, are True Believers and are incapable of having a rational debate about the role of placebos in medical care.

As Autumn and the new educational year begins, the BHA are advertising their sugar pills for those starting University and for children on their first day of school.

What we see here is not just some paternalistic advice regarding using a placebo to satisfy a need for medical action when none is indicated, but an expression of fundamental homeopathic philosophy.

Dr Jenifer Worden, a GP from the New Forest, tells us that children can be classified homeopathically according to behavioural traits and given a particularly named sugar pill in order to ‘treat’ them. She is exploiting the normal reaction of a child on their first weeks of school to promote her pseudoscientific beliefs in homeopathy. Instead of seeing the standard anxieties and fears of a child going to school for the first time as a normal part of this life stage, she is medicalising these reactions according to homeopathic philosophy, and telling worried parents that they need to buy ‘remedies’ for these emotions.

We are told that ‘Calcarea carbonica’ is for children who might be ‘misjudged academically’ and spend time with jigsaw puzzles. That Pulsatilla is for ‘clingy children’ who like ice cream. ‘Natrum muriaticum’ is for children who keep their rooms tidy but have few friends. Sulphur is for ‘show off’ children who might be happy wearing mismatched socks. ‘Phosphorus’ for kids who are afraid of ghosts and like to suck ice-cubes. “Tuberculinum bovum” is for children with long eye lashes who might do naughty things and then act all innocent.

What Worden is doing here is adhering the homeopathic belief that we all can be matched to a ‘constitutional remedy’, a particular homeopathic product that is based on our personality. And that personality can be adversely affected by an imbalance in our ‘vital force’, or a ‘miasm’. This miasm can be corrected by the appropriately chosen remedy. It is pure superstitious nonsense from the pre-scientific era.

Supporters of alternative medicine like to claim that pharmaceutical companies medicalise normal aspects of our lives and they invent illnesses and drugs to treat them. The irony here is that this homeopathic doctor is doing just that on a grand scale. Indeed, homeopathy itself is based on an all encompassing medicalisation of normal emotions, symptoms and experiences in its mantra that the ‘whole person’ needs to be taken into account when prescribing. That is why you will never visit a homeopath and walk away without being advised to buy some sugar pills. We are all affected by one miasm or another and our unique constitutional remedy can solve our deepest life problems.

Would that Jenifer Worden stick to fantasy medicine. But the advice also stems into real childhood illnesses. She recommends that “Belladonna 30c” can be given every four to six hours for a high temperature, and that “Spongia” can be given for ‘cough with spasms so severe that the child ends up vomiting’

Remember, Dr Jenifer Worden could be your GP.

This is nothing sort of insanity. The GMC, the body charged with regulating doctors, take a somewhat offhand approach to all of this. The blogger Majikthyse tells us of a recent conversation with the GMC about its policy on evidence-based practice. The GMC say that doctors are expected to “provide effective treatments based on the best available evidence’ (paragraph 3c of Good Medical Practice)”.

However, in order to not stifle ‘innovation’ a doctor “who believed that treatment, which would generally be regarded as outside the boundaries of conventional practice” should “seek advice from at least one experienced colleague or ask a colleague to provide a second opinion”.

In the case of homeopathy, the BHA and their sister organisation, The Faculty of Homeopathy, provide a list of ‘phone a friend’ doctors who will undoubtedly be happy to endorse that ‘Sulphur’ should be given to children with odd socks.

The GMC regulations appear to take no account that within the medical profession there are small cult like groups who share common delusions and are prepared to reinforce each other. Homeopathy is not “outside the boundaries of conventional practice”; it is absurd nonsense based on superstitious thinking and discredited and surpassed views of health and biology.

As a patient, this is all rather alarming. How can I know that my GP is acting with reason, insight, circumspection and evidence when advising me on various courses of treatments? I do not want my GP happily promoting bogus nonsense to the patient in front of me and then hopefully stepping back from Narnia and into the real world when I present my rational worldview to them. Frankly, I would argue that a GP that is prepared to believe that children have homeopathic constitutions that need correcting with sugar pills is systematically incompetent and should not be practicing. That they do undermines the foundations of trust that should exist between the pubic and health professionals.

It does appear that homeopathic prescribing is in catastrophic free-fall within the NHS with an eightfold reduction in prescriptions over the last ten tears. It may well disappear within a very short space of time. That will be good. But I would rather it was as a result of unequivocal action from the regulators over the minority of homeopathic cultists rather than through slow abandonment. That way, we can be more confident that there are not too many other pockets of delusion amongst our GPs and that a trip to them is not a lottery of rationality.

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Dear Professor Bellamy,

I am writing to you to ask for your help as Patron of the British Homeopathic Association.

But first I must say that I am somewhat surprised that you have taken this position. You were one of the people that inspired me to be interested in the natural world and to take a career in science. Your enthusiasm for botany, wildlife and the environment will be remembered by many of my age. But now after a training as a scientist, I find homeopathy to be utterly absurd. However, I that is not why I want to write to you.

Homeopathy within the NHS looks like it is on its last legs. The BHA exist to promote homeopathy within the medical profession. They are doing a pretty poor job.

According to the Telegraph today, spending on homeopathic prescriptions has plummeted eightfold since 2000. If this decline continues, we can expect no prescriptions to be written with public money within a year or two. That will place the BHA in a difficult position.

I am not sure why homeopathy has declined so precipitously. But the very vocal campaign over the past few years against the provision of this superstitious form of medicine with public money may have played a part. I cannot be sure since I know that correlation does not equate with causation.

Homeopathy within the public sphere has been declining since the formation of the NHS with it almost disappearing entirely in the ‘70s. There are not any real homeopathic hospitals left at all now – just a few small clinics clinging on. Tunbridge Wells homeopathic hospital closed down a few years ago and the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital had to stop pretending it was a real homeopathic hospital in its own right and changed its name to the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. Maybe we are just seeing the tail-end of a long decline.

But there are voices who are stopping PCTs referring patients for homeopathic treatment and many more people are now aware and shocked that the NHS still spends money in this area. I can quite see doctors practicing homeopathy will be forced into private practice before to long.

So why am I writing to you? I don’t think that this small band of NHS doctors would have attracted anything like the attention they do if they had done something very straightforward: and that is, set an example of responsibility to the large number of non-medically qualified homeopaths who practice homeopathy in very a dangerous manner.

The worst examples of this included UK homeopaths who travel to Africa to treat people with HIV, TB and malaria. They are fundamentalist in nature and tell patients that they do not need conventional medicine and that homeopathic sugar pills are all they need to prevent and treat these lethal diseases. Abha Light in Kenya was recently exposed by the Independent giving lethal advice to an undercover reporter. Jeremy Sherr in Tanzania is equally reckless with his programme.

The lay homeopaths have done nothing to stamp out this practice. Indeed, they raise funds for ‘charities’ that help in these people’s work. It also appears that the Faculty of Homeopathy (who are really one and the same with the BHA) are also fundraising for Sherr.

Only one medical homeopath has ever spoken out, to my knowledge, about these murderous practices. Dr Peter Fisher said after a BBC Newsnight sting exposed UK homeopaths offering sugar pills to prevent malaria,

I’m very angry about it because people are going to get malaria – there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won’t find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Fisher was correct that people will die. But he was wrong that these practices are not in any ‘textbook or journal’. Homeopathy is awash with such ideas. The BHA even highlighted a very suspect trial from Cuba that claimed homeopathy could prevent the lethal disease, leptospirosis. This was extremely irresponsible in that should homeopathy be relied upon to prevent outbreaks, then people will undoubtedly die.

Homeopaths around the world point to the NHS and the BHA as justification as why they can do what they do. That is the main reason why I oppose NHS homeopathy. If NHS homeopaths condemned the dangerous practices of missionary homeopaths then I am sure they would not meet such ire. But as they do not, the BHA and its members are part of this serious problem.

So, Professor Bellamy, as a trustee of the BHA, can I ask you to appeal to the organisation to take a firm and unequivocal stance against homeopaths using their products to either prevent or treat serious diseases such as HIV, malaria and TB? Can I ask you to make a firm statement yourself that you condemn this murderous use of homeopathic products?

Whilst I cannot speak for all critics of homeopathy, a step like this would make doctors who use homeopathy in the UK look like more of a part of a solution to these problems. Without such statements, then I can assure you I will still be doing my bit to rid the NHS of homeopathy.

Can the BHA make a last minute stand for a more rational and progressive form of homeopathy that uses placebos where they might make a difference? Can they confront the obvious ethical issues and show that the benefits of the consultation and placebo outweigh the obvious deceptions? Can the BHA make a stand against the aggressive delusions of lay homeopaths who cling to a fundamentalist notion of the evils of mainstream medicine and the Truth of homeopathy?

I think only a few people are capable of turning the tide for UK homeopathy. Perhaps you are one of them. I urge you to confront these issues and help save lives – and maybe just, UK homeopathy too.

Andy Lewis.

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On the 17th of May, David Tredinnick MP will be holding a reception in the House of Commons. In conjunction with the Homeopathy Research Institute, the reception is being held “to promote scientific research in the field of homeopathy.”

The invitation letter states,

There is currently a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that homeopathy offers an inexpensive, effective treatment option for many chronic conditions, however the only way to know definitively is by conducting further high quality research.

At this unprecedented event, there will be brief thought-provoking presentations by experts such as Professor Kate Thomas – Honorary Professor of Health Services Research, and the chance to exchange views with this diverse group of attendees.

We look forward to seeing you at this event. Once we have received confirmation of your attendance, we will send a printed invitation giving you access to the Members’ Dining Room from 4.00 – 6.00 p.m.

If you would like to bring a guest, please let us know their name and contact details.

I was really looking forward to going, as you might imagine. A journalist friend had received the invite and took advantage of their kind offer, as written in the invite, to ‘bring a guest’. The downside was that I had to provide my name and address for the pass. However, once this was submitted, the following email was sent,

As regards your suggestion to invite Mr Andrew Lewis, we currently are very stretched on numbers and hence will not be able to invite Mr Lewis to this reception. Were a place to become available we will keep him in mind.

Best regards,

Alex

That’s a shame.

Not too surprising though, as I have been very critical of the standard of Alex Tournier’s work at the Homeopathy Research Institute. And I have been most derisory about the host MP, David Tredinnick: the MP who is obsessed with homeopathy and protestors in Parliament Square, and also uses his expenses to buy astrology software and training.

So, by the by. Why is this reception happening and why is it horribly misconceived?

Undoubtedly, it is in response to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee report into the Evidence base for homeopathy.

The report was damning about the evidence base. It concluded,

In our view, the systematic reviews and meta-analyses conclusively demonstrate that
homeopathic products perform no better than placebo.

On the theoretical basis of homeopathy, they reported,

We conclude that the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak. It fails to provide a credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products. We note that this is the settled view of medical science.

We consider the notion that ultra-dilutions can maintain an imprint of substances
previously dissolved in them to be scientifically implausible.

The implications of homeopathy being a placebo based on pseudoscience are very significant for patient trust in the NHS,

When doctors prescribe placebos, they risk damaging the trust that exists between them and their patient

For patient choice to be real choice, patients must be adequately informed to understand the implications  of treatments. For homeopathy this would certainly require an explanation that homeopathy is a placebo. When this is not done, patient choice is meaningless. When it is done,  the effectiveness of the placebo—that is, homeopathy—may be diminished. We argue that the provision of homeopathy on the NHS, in effect, diminishes, not increases, informed patient choice.

On the specific question of government funding for research into homeopathy, the report is also clear,

There has been enough testing of homeopathy and plenty of evidence showing that it is not efficacious. Competition for research funding is fierce and we cannot see how further research on the efficacy of homeopathy is justified in the face of competing priorities.

It is also unethical to enter patients into trials to answer questions that have been settled already.

Now, naturally, homeopaths dispute that it is settled that homeopathy is an inert, placebo treatment. And this reception is a call for government to put research resources into homeopathic treatments. Indeed, the homeopaths state quite clearly in the invitation that “There is currently a growing body of scientific evidence”.

This is a deeply unethical position – and it is unethical for a single very important reason that the House of Commons committee did not highlight.

In order to understand the deep problems with undertaking research into homeopathy, it is worth considering why you would ever carry out medical research of any sort.

The best research is carried out to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of treatments in a way that will help better inform doctors and patients. Research starts with a question that is intended to reduce an area of ignorance, as current claims, experience and knowledge may be uncertain, or even misleading. As Evans, Thornton and Chalmers say in their excellent book, Testing Treatments (free pdf download here.)

Misleading claims about treatments are common, so all of us need to be able to decide whether claims about the effects of treatments are valid. Without this knowledge, we risk concluding that useless treatments are helpful, or that helpful treatments are useless.

The Advisory Group on Health Technology Assessment said in 1992,

From an ethical standpoint, clinical research and clinical practice should be considered congruent. This is so for very new forms of care intended to benefit patients (but whose potential for benefit or harm is unknown), as well as for more established forms of care, with which experience may be greater, but which are of unproven value. For the NHS, the ethical imperative is to encourage the research necessary to know how to use its limited resources to the best advantage of all in its care.

Good research leads to better decisions by doctors. And for patients, informed consent only really becomes meaningful when they are able to assess the benefits and risks associated with any treatment.

But research, no matter how well conducted, can only be meaningful and ethical if the results of that research are used to change behaviours. That is, if the research means that ineffective or harmful treatments are discontinued, and effective ones used appropriately.

And this is why research into homeopathy, and indeed all alternative therapies, is ethically dubious and should not be funded.

You see, for a homeopath, they already have the answers. They ‘know’ their sugar pills are effective. This is what allows them to tell HIV patients in Africa to stop taking ARVs and to trust homeopathy instead – even thought there is not a jot of evidence to think that this is anything other that murderous. No amount of evidence to the contrary would stop homeopaths doing this.

Indeed, a good question to ask a homeopath is ‘what aspect of your practice has ever been influenced by clinical trials?’ There are no claims that have ever been dropped by homeopaths as a result of the overwhelming evidence of the ineffectiveness of what they do. Belief in alternative medicine is more like a religious belief – based on revelation and scripture and immutable in the face of contradictory facts.

Homeopathy is a faith and not a science. It is the denial of evidence, and as such, new evidence will not influence behaviours and beliefs.

So, why do homeopaths call for more research?

Well, the research is not done to change their minds –it is done to try to influence the decisions of others. That is to make patients trust a homeopath. To make politicians invest more in public funding for homeopathic treatments. In other words, homeopathic research is used solely for propaganda – not for making informed treatment decisions. And that is why it is deeply unethical.

But if research is designed to uncover the truth, how can research be used to mislead people into thinking a treatment is effective when it is not?

The answer is that creating fair tests of treatments requires care, thought and, often, expense. It is the easiest thing in the world to design and conduct a trial that will give a misleading result. Make the trial too small, or with inadequate controls, or try to test too many things at once, and a result may emerge that reflects the biases in the trial and not the reality of the treatment.

And so when homeopaths claim there is a “growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that homeopathy offers an inexpensive, effective treatment” it is vitally important to look at the quality of those trials. And what is found is that most of these trials are very small, poorly controlled, or both. Indeed, every systematic review of homeopathy has concluded that the vast majority of studies into homeopathy provide low grade evidence due to trial quality. Worse, the latest systematic reviews have clearly shown that the highest quality trials tend to show no effect for homeopathy, and that if you exclude small and poor studies from your analysis, then there is no good evidence that homeopathy is anything better than a placebo.

And that is what the House of Commons Select Committee found.

However, homeopaths ignore and deny this. They resort to simply saying “look how much evidence we have” or even, as the Society of Homeopaths did in their submission to the House of Commons evidence enquiry, try to subvert the very notions of scientific evidence. When the Society state in the first sentence of their home page that “Homeopathy is an evidence-based medicine” we can be sure that this is a group of people that are, at best, completely ignorant and indifferent to the nature of evidence, or, at worst, deliberately deceptive.

The MPs on the committee were not happy about this. They put the following condemnation in their report,

We regret that advocates  of homeopathy, including in their submissions to our inquiry, choose to rely on, and promulgate, selective approaches to the treatment of the evidence base as this  risks confusing or misleading the public, the media and policy-makers.

For this reason alone, MPs who may attend this meeting should be sufficiently sceptical of any claims being made about the nature of the current evidence base into homeopathy.

Further research into homeopath risks adding to the misleading corpus of research already in existence. It will diminish resources that could be used to answer genuine uncertainty in clinical practice. Government funding also lends legitimacy to a superstitious form of medical belief that puts people at genuine risk. Dangerous homeopathy clinics being set up in the developing world are able to use the fact that NHS funds homeopathy as an endorsement of what they do.

For these reasons, MPs should ignore this desperate call to legitimise what can only really be described as unethical quackery.

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What is more, the investigation found that this quack clinic is being funded through NGOs by UK charities. Who are the people that are funding this shocking enterprise?

The answer to that question is even more shocking.

Abha Light itself describes where its money comes from. Gimpyblog has already described the UK charity SHEAF Trust and its support for Abha Light. Money mainly from homeopaths is channelled through this organisation by Dorset homeopath Penny Rowe. Support for such dangerous activities is not a fringe activity within UK homeopathy, but is actively supported through homeopath’s trade bodies, such as the Society of Homeopaths.

The largest provider of funds though, both in the UK and worldwide, is an organisation called AMURT. This NGO appears to do lots of good work in the world in the area of “community development work and disaster relief.” Whilst providing clean water and schools is all admirable stuff, the NGO appears to focus quite a lot on funding homeopathy clinics around Africa.

AMURT describe themselves as an “an international relief and development organisation, founded in India in 1965”. What it does not make clear in its description is that the Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team is actually a wing of the world-wide Ananda Marga sect. This Indian-based sect, the “Path of Bliss”, describes itself as a “social and spiritual movement that aims to transform society through meditation and yoga”.

The founder of Abha Light is an Anada Marga nun known as Didi Ananda Ruchira, or by her original American name, Barbara Lynn. Ruchira wears the orange robes of a yogic nun and studied homeopathy in the UK at the British Institute of Homeopathy. She was sent to Kenya under the instruction of Ananda Marga, which she calls an “an international socio-spiritual organization.”

Others, however, have different ways of describing Ananda Marga.

The Chicago Tribune ran an article on Ananda Marga that reported that the cult was under investigation by the CIA and FBA as a terrorist organisation that “has left a trail of blood around the world”. The Los Angeles Times reported that there were allegations of “murder of former members, wife beating, child molesting, and the sale of illegal drugs”.

The founder of the cult, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, or ‘Baba’, was convicted and jailed for the murder of seven members of the cult who wanted to leave. During Sarkar’s time in jail, cult members engaged in terrorist activities around the world in support of their founder.

One of the most deadly acts of terrorism on Australian soil was thought to have been conducted by Ananda Marga cult members when the Sydney Hilton Hotel was bombed in 1978. The Commonwealth Heads of Government were meeting there, including the Indian Prime Minister Moraji Desai. It is also thought the cult were behind the attack of the Indian attaché in Canberra and the stabbing of an Air India employee in Melbourne. Released cabinet papers showed that the government thought that Ananda Marga might be behind a long term revolutionary campaign.

Indeed, Sarkar boasted that the cult would “rule the world by 2005”. His views may be shown to differ from Ghandi’s somewhat when he said,

Like materialism, spirituality based on non-violence will be of no value to humanity. The words of non-violence may sound noble, and quite appealing, but on the solid ground of reality have no value whatsoever.

Helen Crovetto, in an article entitled “Ananda Marga and the Use of Force” in the The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions claims that the cult has a “well founded doctrinal basis for the use of force”. Terrorist activities appear to have taken place in London where three cult members were convicted for conspiring to murder the Indian High Commissioner and stabbing a member of the Indian Commission.

Sarkar died in 1990 and his dream of taking over the world with him. The University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism now classes the group as ‘inactive’ and says “Although Ananda Marga has ceased to carry out terrorist attacks, it continues to flourish as a religious movement, and has become one of the most well-known Hindu-based new religious movements in the West”.

Amanda Marga may no longer be deliberately killing people by stabbing them and blowing them up, but by funding homeopathy clinics to treat Africans with malaria and HIV and telling them that they should not take their medications, the death toll attributable to this cult will continue to rise. They might not be identifiable deaths, or the deaths of ambassadors and Prime Minister’s, but the deaths of nameless and desperately poor Africans living in the most helpless places in the continent.

The support of people in the UK and America for this death cult is unforgivable. If they stuck to building wells and schools they would be lauded, but their strange, irrational beliefs represent a form of violence that will kill people as surely as a gun, knife or bomb.

Related posts:

1. Abha Light Must Close Kenyan leading newspaper, The Standard on Sunday, has reported that an undercover investigator has exposed how a homeopathic clinic, claiming to treat people with HIV, is advising clients to stop...
2. Escaping the Cult of Homeopathy How are we to understand the persistence of alternative medicine beliefs? Despite the absurdity of many of the claims of the various superstitious medicines, we see very entrenched positions...
3. Secret Email Reveals more Homeopathic Killing in Kenya I have history with the Abha Light Foundation. I first criticised them three years ago when I wrote about a UK homeopath, Julia Wilson, who had joined Abha Light...

(See Update below: The Independent has now covered this story in detail with article, leader comment and columnist’s reaction.)

The paper also reveals that the Abha Light clinic has been receiving funds from UK homeopathy charities and rich individuals, such as newspaper man, Sir Richard Storey, and surprisingly even The Global Fund, partly funded by Bill Gates..

In an investigation, undertaken by the UK based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a reporter made an undercover visit to one of the Abha Light clinics in Nairobi and enquired about treatment for a HIV positive sister. The Homeopath Rachael Rawi advised the reporter that the sister need not take ARVs after homeopathic treatment had started.

Abha Light claimed in its defence that their practitioners “follow the ethical policy that they cannot advise and do not advise on the use of any medication that are prescribed by medical doctors.”

This blog has been heavily critical of the delusional practices of Abha Light for many years. Indeed, last July, I exposed through leaked emails how the clinic was telling its supporters to ‘keep silent’ on their unethical trials with homeopathic sugar pill treatments for HIV and malaria. The homeopaths do not want the world to know what they are up to and what they really believe.

This scandal then is no surprise. It is also no surprise that the clinic is being funded by Western homeopaths.

When I first wrote about Abha Light, I complained to the Society of Homeopaths that one of their members had travelled to Kenya to work at this clinic in ways that appeared to violate their code of ethics. The Society of Homeopath’s response was to whitewash the complaint and instruct their lawyers to get my web hosts to close me down with threats of legal action.

Anger at Abha Light is completely justified. Their clinic is based on the deluded and superstitious practices of homeopathy. Their so-called remedies are often so dilute that all is left is plain water, or a sugar pill that has had water dripped on it. And they claim their remedies can prevent and treat the most lethal diseases such as HIV, TB and malaria. It is a murderous delusion.

And it is also no surprise that their staff advise their clients to stop taking life saving medicine. Homeopathy is not a complementary medicine in that it does not seek to work alongside mainstream medicine. Nor can it be described as an alternative medicine as it does not see itself as an equivalent, alternative choice to other forms of treatment. Homeopathy is founded on the principle that it holds the One Truth to medicine: that illness has to be treated by poisons that create similar symptoms in healthy people (The Law of Similars). These ‘similar’ medicines must be given in the ‘minimum dose’ – a dose so small that it most often contains none of the original poison. Such is the central delusions of homeopathy. But homeopathy is also founded on the idea that people who do not follow the Law of Similars – the allopaths –inflict great harm by ‘supressing symptoms’ deep into the body, only to re-emerge as worse illness. It also often believed that many non-homeopaths deliberately give ‘suppressive’ medicines precisely to cause greater illness later on and, hence, more profit for the doctor.

It is therefore standard homeoapthic practice, not only to treat the symptoms of the disease, but also to treat the so called suppressive effects of other real medications that they may be taking and, eventually, to wean their client off the allopahic medications all together. Rachael Rawi’s actions are not the single aberrational act of a homeopath stepping outside of her code of ethics, but routine practice. Any code of ethics that may exist is a simple smokescreen, as is most readily demonstrated by the Society of Homeopath’s complete unwillingness to hold UK homeopaths to their own code.

Abha Light is the leading missionary homeopathic clinic in Africa. There are many springing up in Ghana, Malawi, Botswana and Tanzania. The founder of Abha Light, American Barbara Lynn (or as she prefers to be known, Yogic nun Didi Ananda Ruchira), has been the leading voice in advocating homeopathy in Africa. Her cult-like, superstitious and erroneous beliefs are a direct and immediate threat to the lives and health of those she comes into contact with. She is training locals in clinics to set up their own homeopathic practices. Every family who leaves them believing their are protected from malaria, or have effective management of their HIV infections, is a family put at real risk.

The Standard reports that National Aids and STD Control Program (Nascop) Director Nicholas Muraguri has termed the use of unproven homeopathy illegal and criminal. He said,

Under the Medical Practitioners and Dentists Board Act, somebody is not allowed to mislead the public. You cannot sell a product based on a lie to hoodwink the public. These people should be arrested.

It is time for the Kenyan authorities to take decisive action here. Barbara Lynn and the Abha Light homeopaths are not going to respond to reasoned appeals to stop making unevidenced claims. They are to deep in their cult, their conspiracy theories and their commercial enterprises. Until such time as Kenyan authorities dissolve this organisation, lives will be continue to be put at unnecessary risk.

And those in the UK who fund this atrocious organisation should be named and shamed.

Update May 3rd, 2011

The UK newspaper, the Independent, have now run with this story and have also written a leader comment on it. This must surely be putting lots of pressure of Abha Light now.

The article by Melanie Newman and Alex Chepkoit can be found here: An alternative for Kenya’s HIV patients – or a health scandal?

The Leader column is very direct: Resist this medical obscurantism

In his column, Jeremy Laurance is very direct:  The fight against diseases from malaria to typhoid is harmed by snake-oil pushers

He says,

There have been many snake oil salesmen purveying cures for Aids but to find their activities backed by UK charities may be a first.

Did the charities know what was being done in their name? Or did they hand over the cash and leave others to decide how to spend it?

It is good to see the mainstream media covering this issue so thoroughly. There have been a few blogs highlighting the terrible practices of these superstitious medical clinics and how they are supported by homeopathic organisations in the UK and their charitable offshoots.

For detailed undertsanding of who is funding people like Lynn and her crowd, it is worth following Gimpyblog who has done a great job of uncovering the links between various groups and homeopaths in Africa – e.g. See

The Homeopathic Action Trust is controlled by the Society of Homeopaths

It is time for organisations like the Society of Homeopaths to answer the questions posed by Gimpy, myself and now the Independent. As I asked at the end of my blog post that they tried to hide with legal threats (The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing)

It amazes me that to add to all the list of ills and injustices that our rich nations impose on the poor of the world, we have to add the widespread export of our bourgeois and lethal healing fantasies. To make a strong point: if we can introduce laws that allow the arrest of sex tourists on their return to the UK, can we not charge people who travel to Africa to indulge their dangerous healing delusions?

At the very least, we could expect the Society of Homeopaths to try to stamp out this wicked practice? Could we?

Related posts:

1. Abha Light Foundation: Funded through Violent Cult. So, today has seen a thorough investigation by the Independent into the Abha Light homeopathy clinics in Africa where HIV positive people are told to forgo life saving medicines in...
2. Jeremy Sherr: Daktari wa mchawi na dawa yake mbaya The Society of Homeopaths in the UK has constantly refused to engage in any meaningful way about how western homeopaths are travelling to Africa and setting up clinics that use...
3. Secret Email Reveals more Homeopathic Killing in Kenya I have history with the Abha Light Foundation. I first criticised them three years ago when I wrote about a UK homeopath, Julia Wilson, who had joined Abha Light...

A paper in the open access and non-peer reviewed physics arXiv (Electromagnetic Signals from Bacterial DNA; Widom, Swain, Srivastava, Srivastava 2011) reports that bacteria such as  E. coli may have a sort of WiFi communication capability. The authors suggest that a quantum mechanical analysis of electrons moving around loops of bacterial DNA will produce low frequency radio waves.

What is even more remarkable is that the authors, physicists Widom and Swain, suggest that these radio waves may contain biologically significant information that is being broadcast by either frequency or amplitude modulation of the signal (AM/FM).

They suggest that since photosynthesis requires the propagation of electromagnetic signals at optical frequencies, then lower frequencies may too induce “chemical reactions … at a distance due to the propagation of electromagnetic signals during intermediate chemical stages.”

Widom and Swain explicitly hypothesize that the electromagnetic signals between different bacteria within a community could form a “wireless” intercellular communication system, but that “there is considerable work required to extract the bioinformation contained in these electromagnetic signals.”

A number of alarm bells ring. Firstly, photosynthesis does not require an electromagnetic signal per se, that is an exchange of information between a sender and receiver, but an electromagnetic energy source. To suggest that whatever is being proposed here has an analogue in photosynthesis is misconceived.

The paper is technical in its approach and others will be best able to comment on its rigour. However, there is an obvious assumption that there are electronic orbital motions around loops of bacterial DNA. Without such currents, signals are moot.

But Widom and Swain claim that such electromagnetic signals have indeed been detected. And this is where this obscure paper descends into the Land of Woo. They reference a number of papers authored by Benveniste and Montagnier. The Benveniste paper claimed that homeopathic ‘signals’ could be transmitted over a phone line and the Montagnier paper claims that he could teleport DNA using equipment suspiciously similar to Benveniste’s.

Benveniste and Montagnier have been lauded by homeopaths as their research appears to lend support to their superstitious views of medicine – that water can retain a memory of substances through repeated dilution. Benveniste was humiliated when his research into homeopathy was shown to be due to poor laboratory controls. Nobel prize winning Montagnier has also been subject to such intense criticism with his flirting with pseudoscience that he has now fled to China to escape the “intellectual terror” of the harsh criticism leveled at him.

What is being proposed by Benveniste, Montagnier, Widom and Swain is a theory that can only be described as a fantastical theory contrary to all that is known about biology. They are advocating a new strand of biology called Digital Biology – where biological systems transmit digital information by coded  radio waves. Biological systems already have a digital code in the form of the base pairs in DNA encoding sequences to build proteins. Understanding this mechanism was the triumph of 20th Century biology. However, what is proposed by this group appears to be  a new encoding mechanism that uses radio waves to transmit information between organisms. Montagnier states that such a mechanism is elaborate enough to completely recreate strands of DNA.

Why is homeopathy tied up in this? That is a good question. The best that I can see is that homeopathy is also in dire need of an information transmitting mechanism. As the remedies have been diluted to the point where none of the original active substance remains, homeopathy also needs a way of transmitting information about the remedy to the body. This is why homeopaths have struggled so much with advocating that water has a memory. As the water memory hypothesis has failed and has not produced any reproducible results, then maybe, somehow, radio wave emitting DNA is the answer.

Yes, I know. Preposterous. But it looks like, as in much quackery, there is a conflation of mysteries being performed here – and it is hoped no one notices.  So-called digital biology cannot explain homeopathy for the simple reason (actually one of many) that many remedies have no DNA in them to start with.

So, Widom and Swain stand to be the new heroes of homeopaths. Their research will allow them to claim that the central criticism of Montagnier’s work – that such signals were ‘impossible’ – is not true. Leaving aside the difficulty that Widom and Swain predict signals at frequencies of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 kHz and that Montagnier claimed to detect signals at 7 Hz (close to the quack’s favourite Schumann resonance), there are obviously huge gaps between this paper’s contention that loops of DNA may emit biologically significant radio waves and a description of the mechanism of homeopathy.

So who are the authors of this paper and soon to be the champions of homeopathic quackery?

Lead author, Allan Widom is a professor at Northeastern University, Boston and has published recent papers with co-authors Sivasubramanian and Srivastavaon on various aspects of quantum theory. However, his paper list does not mention his work with Lewis Larsen where they proposed a mechanism for explaining results in cold fusion. Since there are no replicated and pursuasive results from research into cold fusion, explanations may be somewhat premature.

The homeopathic research of Benveniste and Montagnier as well as the lingering experiments with cold fusion represent classic pathological science. Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir is credited with being the first to describe how pathological science occurs. He described it as the ‘science of things that aren’t so’. Researchers can get lost in chasing effects where others around them see only foolishness. Langmuir explained it as:

These are cases where there is no dishonesty involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions.

As such, researchers into pathological science have lost the ability to introspect about how they may be deceiving themselves. This may be different from Feynman’s cargo cult science, I would suggest, where people have never been scientists and have never understood the foundations of the scientific method. Much homeopathic science is of the cargo cult variety.

Langmuir’s symptoms of pathological science include,

1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. Claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
6. Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.

It is quite easy to see how the Benveniste/Montagnier/Widom research into homeopathic signals can be described as such, although widespread support of such a theory has never been achieved. It is possible that classic pathological science, such as cold fusion, homeopathic water memory, ESP, polywater and mitogenic rays never quite dies away. There will always remain a small group determined to demonstrate the breakthrough.

Such is science. Research into the unthinkable and obscure is always required and inevitably some obsessive and futile science will ensue. But pathological science can catch out the unwary, the policy makers and the gullible by appearing to be mainstream when it is nothing but nonsense. I am sure this will happen with this paper to people eager to hear that science supports homeopathy.

The fact that papers can be published without sound peer review (as happened with Montagnier) or still be accepted by many after sound peer review has shown them to be nonsense (as happened with Benveniste) means that they can be used to give authority to ideas that do not deserve attention.

The scientific method is still struggling with how best to report results to the world. Open access journals and archives, such as arXiv, are a great liberation away from the closed paywalls of peer-reviewed academic publishing, but their cost is a proliferation of noise that means the true signals can be lost in the pandemonium of pseudoscience.

Related posts:

1. Why I am Nominating Luc Montagnier for an IgNobel Prize Luc Montagnier is an interesting and strange character. Last year he was a shared winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. A remarkable achievement. However, his latest research can...
2. The Curious Case of Nativis, The Forsaken Nobel Prize Winner and the Ghost of Jacques Benveniste I was recently alerted by Bob Park’s rather great What’s New email about an extraordinary new company in the US called Nativis.They have a swish new web site that...
3. The Breakspear Hospital and Antigen Vaccines Let’s jump off the deep end again with the Breakspear Hospital. Previously, we saw Dr Jean Monro using unproven allergy tests with highly questionable electromagnetic ‘therapies’ to treat food allergies....

In its first month, the Nightingale Collaboration asked people to report homeopaths who are making unsubstantiated claims to the Advertising Standards Authority. It would appear that each month, the group wishes to focus on a particular problem with the sector. The homeopaths were first.

And it would appear that this campaign is likely to have far reaching consequences. Indeed, I will argue that it looks like this simple campaign could severely constrain the ability for quacks of all varieties to advertise their misleading claims on the web, without facing very serious consequences. However, we are likely to see huge battles in the short term.

So, what has happened?

The ASA received over a hundred and fifty complaints about over a hundred homeopath’s websites. This, no doubt, has caused a huge amount of work for the ASA in their first month where they now have taken responsibility for monitoring online advertisements.

I made a single complaint about a homeopath making a claim advertising a telephone number on twitter. I was rather hoping to be the first person to instigate a complaint against an advert on twitter. Sadly, I will have to wait. The ASA responded to me saying,

We are seeking to enforce compliance with the Code even-handedly across the sector by contacting all of the advertisers we have received complaints about as well as the bodies that represent homeopaths and homeopathy in the UK.  We will be explaining the Code’s requirements, giving advice on how to ensure advertising claims do not breach the Code, and asking advertisers to remove any claims which do not comply.

The ASA will not be publishing individual adjudications on this occasion.

This is something of a shame as news of the new remit of the ASA has been around for many months and the homeopaths have had plenty of time to adjust. The ASA go on,

We will however publish specific, up-to-date advice to the industry and its representative bodies in due course and we will work with them to ensure that advertising for homeopathy is compliant with the Code.

The Society of Homeopaths, the largest membership body in the UK, published its own press release in response to this notice.

The Society of Homeopaths today welcomes the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) announcement that it is to set up a project to look into the evidence base for the efficacy of homeopathic medicine. The Society, the UK’s largest regulator of homeopaths, is looking forward to working with the ASA and will be submitting the well established and growing body of research evidence that shows homeopathy to be a safe, clinically-effective and cost-effective option.

Meanwhile, the Society were busily telling their members something else,

We know that there are orchestrated campaigns, organised by sceptic groups like the Nightingale Collaboration, encouraging people to complain about homeopaths’ websites to the ASA, Trading Standards and to the various homeopathy registers. The Society is seeking legal advice to support us in discussions with the ASA to make sure that we can advise members accurately and also that the ASA responds reasonably and is consistent in how it implements the Code of Advertising Practice (CAP).

The Society tells its members,

For many homeopaths, this means removing named conditions, patient testimonials, the words ‘treat’ and ‘cure’” from your website and any other advertising materials.

This is something of a surprising statement, as the Society of Homeopaths is quite clear about its members’ obligations in its Code Of Ethics:

Professional advertising must be factual and not seek to mislead or deceive, or make unrealistic or extravagant claims. Advertising may indicate special interests but must not make claims of superiority or disparage professional colleagues or other professionals. No promise of cure, either implicit or explicit, should be made of any named disease.

The Society of Homeopaths is merely asking its members to comply with its own code of ethics.

However, this blog has been documenting how this code is a sham and never enforced. It would appear that it has taken the ASA to make the Society tell its members to comply with the code of ethics they have signed up to.  Not surprisingly, the Society then go on to undermine themselves by saying that members can make claims if they reference research,

If you think you can make a good case for any research and are prepared to justify it to the ASA if a complaint is made, include it, and let us know the outcome. Although we know sceptics are challenging this, some members list books on homeopathy or include links to homeopathy books on websites such as Amazon.

Now, problems really began last week when the homeopathic one hundred started receiving notices from the ASA saying that they had received a complaint against them.

This letter was pretty hard hitting, but somewhat forgiving to the homeopaths. The ASA explain that,

We know that many web-based advertisers may not be aware of the ASA or its Code
and we are also aware that this letter may for some have come out of the blue.

This is simply untrue. Homeopaths most definitely should have been aware of the Advertising Code as the two largest membership organizations make explicit reference to it in their Code of Ethics that they ask homeopaths to sign up to.

The Society of Homeopaths require members to ensure that “All advertising must be published in a way that conforms to the law and to (the guidance issued in the British Code of Advertising Practice)”. The Alliance of Registered Homeopaths also say “All advertising must be published in a way that conforms to the law and to the guidance issued in the British Code of Advertising Practice.”

So, the public has a right to expect that when they visit a homeopath who is a registered member of one of these organizations that their advertisements would be in compliance with the CAP rules.

The ASA then tell the homeopaths,

The ASA has an established position on claims that can be made, and those claims that are not likely to be acceptable for homeopathy, based on the requirements set out in our Code and previous ASA adjudications. We accept that homeopathy might make some people feel better in some situations, however the Code requires all marketers to hold objective substantiation to prove any claims they make. Because the ASA has not seen reliable evidence to substantiate claims for the efficacy of homeopathy in relation to maintaining or improving health, you will need to remove any such claims from your website.

You must remove any content from your website that claims directly or indirectly that homeopathy and homeopathic products can diagnose/treat/help health conditions. This applies to claims made by both lay and medically trained homeopaths advertising their service and/or products. Please note that any reference to health professionals in the Code refers to those that are recognised within the Health Care Professions and therefore excludes homeopaths.

This was sure to be a massive shock to them. The ASA says it is giving three months for the necessary removals to take place and that they will revisit the sites, on the 1st of July, and take action against any non-compliant homeopath.

What is worse, the ASA appear to have changed their mind on conducting a review with the Homeopathic Organisations,

Those advertisers who are familiar with the ASA may want to know why, in this case, we are not inviting them to submit evidence to substantiate the claims complained about. This is because, to date, the ASA has not seen robust scientific evidence to support claims that imply homeopathy is proven for treating any specific health condition. We have seen the most recent, authoritative and comprehensive review of the scientific evidence by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee entitled “Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy”. This provided an analysis of evidence and opinion submitted by a range of proponents and opponents of homeopathy, including some of the organisations representing homeopathy in the UK and practising homeopaths. The conclusion made clear that there was a lack of objective scientific evidence to substantiate the efficacy of homeopathy. Because the documents submitted for the “Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy” report provided a comprehensive collection of data for assessment, and homeopaths and the various bodies that represent them were invited to submit evidence as part of a consultation process, we do not intend to duplicate that process or assess the evidence again. We know that some studies suggest a positive effect from homeopathy; however, we understand that the evidence, when taken as a whole, does not support the conclusion that homeopathy in and of itself is proven to help or treat health conditions.

This will be a body blow to the homeopaths as the House of Commons report was not just damning about homeopathy, but damning about the way homeopaths treat evidence. The report stated:

We regret that advocates of homeopathy, including in their submissions to our inquiry, choose to rely on, and promulgate, selective approaches to the treatment of the evidence base as this risks confusing or misleading the public, the media and policy-makers.

The ASA would be entirely justified on not engaging with bodies such as the Society of Homeopaths or the Faculty of Homeopaths as they cannot be trusted to take a dispassionate view of the evidence base.

So, how have the Society of Homeopaths responded to this?

Not well. They have informed their members,

On the 11th March we were told that:

“the ASA has decided to look into claims for homeopathy as a whole. A focus of that project will be to consider evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy and we will be giving the industry an opportunity to submit for assessment any clinical evidence it holds.”

The ASA now appear to have retreated from that statement and have accepted the findings of the House of Commons Science and Technology Homeopathy Evidence Check Report. Neither of these decisions is acceptable, and we are currently seeking legal advice to discuss how best we can represent your interests to the ASA. The process may take time, and we will update you as regularly as we can.

Battle lines have been drawn. I also understand that the Faculty of Homeopathy – the body that represents doctors and vets who believe sugar pills can treat illnesses – are also looking to see what legal action can be taken to avoid a catastrophic collapse in their ability to make claims in advertising.

It looks like it is time to get the popcorn.

Why is this happening? Why, uniquely, do the homeopaths feel that they have to get legally heavy handed with the body that is charged with ensuring advertising in the UK is “legal, decent, honest and truthful”? The ASA can be trusted to regulate the adverts of the alcohol, tobacco, medicine, car and food industries, but not homeopathy. All these industries would benefit from being allowed to make unevidenced claims – but they do not because they see the benefit in the advertising industry as a whole being trusted by the public not to mislead. The ASA creates a level playing field that only advantages those that can substantiate claims and not those that can shout the loudest with anything they feel they can make up.

To understand how the homeopaths will respond we must look at how homeopathy started. Samuel Hahnemann founded homeopathy on the belief that he had discovered universal laws of health and disease. Treating illness was a process of finding substances that caused similar symptoms in healthy people and then using these substances as medicines –like-cures-like. He also discovered the ‘correct’ way to administer these poisons by serial dilution and shaking – to the point where none of the poison remained – just the water and alcohol which would be dripped onto sugar pills. All other forms of medicine were not just incorrect, but corrupt. He called mainstream physicians ‘allopaths’ and described what they did as ‘suppressing’ illnesses by pushing symptoms back into the body only later to re-emerge as worse illnesses – thus enriching the doctor, who could continue “suppressing symptoms” and selling more medicine. Indeed, allopathy was seen a leading cause of illness and it was the job of the homeopath to correct these terrible mistakes. Homeopaths’ attitudes to vaccines, mainstream cancer, malaria, HIV and TB treatments must be seen in this light.

Homeopathy is not an alternative or complementary medicine – but the only universal and complete system of medicine available. Criticisms of homeopathy were seen as attempts to suppress this True Medicine and hence preserve the wealth of doctors. For two hundred years, homeopaths have lived in a conspiratorial world where they have had to fight orthodoxy and wealthy medics to get their message out. They see the criticisms from scientists and doctors not as debates about evidence, but tactics to destroy the homeopathic threat to their income.

In the UK, lay homeopaths are particularly gripped by this fundamental view of homeopathy and see all through the conspiratorial lens of ‘allopathy vs homeopathy’.

Thus, we can be pretty sure that most homeopaths will be viewing the ASA as an agent of the pharmaceutical companies. No doubt they have worked out that it is not a statutory body with no real enforcement powers, and that it is funded by contributions from mainstream advertisers, such as drug companies. The conspiratorial mindset will be seeing the ASA as an attempt to curb ‘health freedom’ and the truth of homeopathy.

Homeopaths genuinely believe they have evidence that their treatments work. However, this belief is based on elevating the importance of testimonials, anecdote and historical usage. They are taught that objective forms of evidence, such as clinical trials, cannot be applied to ‘holistic’ techniques. As such, not being able to present their case and instead having to take the word of the House of Commons Select Committee (which contained known allopaths) will be completely unacceptable.

So, how will this pan out?

Outrage, and an overwhelming sense of injustice and entitlement, will ensure that most claims will remain on homeopaths’ web sites. Those that do wish to avoid confrontation with the ASA will not be able to assess what claims will be allowed, despite the ASA making this perfectly clear to them. Some may be foolish and think the ASA is of no significance. We can therefore expect a large amount of blatant non-compliance come July.

Assuming that the homeopaths legal threats amount to nothing, and given that the ASA has taken a position of the evidence, adjudications should come quickly thereafter. Homeopaths will be told that they have broken the CAP code and they must comply. This will also mean that they have explicitly broken their own Codes of Ethics that they have signed up to putting bodies like the Society of Homeopaths in extremely awkward positions. (My guess is that the Society will not recognise the ASA as a competent authority for interpreting the CAP code for homeopathy – a case of special pleading unique in the advertising world.)

It is then likely to get messy. Continual non-compliance will pressure the ASA to refer advertisers to the Office of Fair Trading who have powers to initiate criminal proceedings against homeopaths who may have broken Trading Standards legislation. How many have the balls, or stupidity, to face up to this remains to be seen.

Much will depend on the OFT’s appetite to prosecute – and this may be the one glimmer of hope for homeopaths. We are in this position because regulators and enforcement agencies, including Trading Standards and the MHRA, have turned a blind eye to this sector of commerce, allowing exemptions and exceptions to practices that would be crushed in any other industry. The ASA are entering waters that others have explicitly avoided wading in. If the credibility of the ASA is to remain, then they need to ensure the statutory authorities who can enforce compliance through criminal sanctions are prepared, on board, and ready to take quick action.

Related posts:

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2. The Advertising Regulator Struggles with Homeopaths Last year, the homeopathic lobby group H:MC21, spent a significant sum of money by placing a full page advert in New Statesman magazine. The advert appeared to be calling for...
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Before they reconsider their damning response. here it is… with annotations in red

Society of Homeopaths does not endorse “preventative” treatment in serious tropical diseases

The Society of Homeopaths, the UK’s largest register of homeopaths with 1,500 members, does not endorse the use of homeopathic remedies with a view to preventing serious tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.

This is a very misleading statement as it implies that the Society is critical of such practices. The truth is that the Society does not ‘endorse’ any particular mode of treatment within the world of homeopathy. However, the Society quite happily organises conferences on such things as the treatment of HIV and malaria with homeopathy and it supports charities which do such work in Africa. Homeopaths routinely offer dangerous advice and the Society has done nothing about it. Indeed, its statements about such matters have been deeply questionable and misleading.

The evidence to support the use of homeopathic prophylactics, that is, using homeopathic remedies as a preventative treatment, is currently largely anecdotal and therefore the use of this method is speculative.

Again a misleading statement as all forms of homeopathy could, at best, be described as ‘speculative’. Homeopathy cannot be shown to be clinically effective for any condition – and evidence for success is mostly based on anecdotal evidence. The Society tries to make out that malaria prevention is somehow a special case. It is not. Indeed the first homeopathic cure devised by the founder was for malaria.

This is entirely different from treatment by a registered homeopath in the UK. Although more research is welcomed, the balance of evidence already shows that treatment by a homeopath is clinically effective¹, cost-effective² and safe.³

This is simply untrue. The overwhelming scientific evidence is that homeopathy is an inert treatment with no specific effects. The Spence trial referenced here to show clinical effectiveness did no such thing. It was a survey of patient satisfaction at the Bristol Homeopathy clinic without control groups. Such a study is incapable of  showing effectiveness. This has been pointed out to homeopaths many times. They keep misleading people with this minor study as if it is solid evidence.  The Witt study again suffers from lacking controls and not being randomised. The third paper is meaningless as all agree that sugar pills can be safe. The dangers of homeopathy come from using ineffective treatments against serious diseases – the central point of this Newsnight programme which the Society is refusing to address

By the end of 2009, 142 Randomised Controlled Trials of homeopathy had been published in peer-reviewed journals.⁴ In terms of statistically significant results, 74 of these trials were able to draw firm conclusions:  63 were positive (patients given a homeopathic medicine improved significantly more than the comparison group given either an inactive placebo or established conventional treatment) and 11 were negative (no significant difference was seen between the action of the homeopathic medicine and the comparison group).

Systematic reviews of the trials of homeopathy consistently show that most trials are of poor quality and therefore are likely to mislead. Furthermore, several analyses have clearly shown that the higher quality the trial of homeopathy the more likely it is to show a negative result – entirely consistent with homeopathy being an inert treatment. Again, this is continuously pointed out to homeopaths – and they ignore it- instead trying to bamboozle with the ‘most are positive’ gambit. This is deeply misleading.

Further, 75 per cent of in vitro experiments have found that substances as dilute as homeopathic medicines have specific effects.⁵ For example, [h]omeopathically-prepared thyroxine can slow down metamorphosis of tadpoles into frogs.⁶These results were replicated by five separate laboratories in Austria and confirmed by the results of similar experiments carried out by an independent team in Brazil.⁷ The homeopathic thyroxine used was so highly diluted that you would not expect any molecules to be present.

This is classic cherry picking of anomalous results. Why bring up this study? Clearly one set of anomalous results does not turn over classic chemistry. Much higher standards of evidence would be required.

It is recommended that anyone interested in homeopathic treatment consults a member of the Society (they will have RSHom after their name), who has completed three or four years of training and has agreed to abide by a strict code of ethics and practice.

I would suggest people do the exact opposite of this. If you want to understand what homeopathy can do for you, do not consult a homeopath as it is quite clear that they are incapable of appraising their own capabilities.

References:

• 1. Spence D, Thompson E and Barron S. Homeopathic treatment for chronic disease: A 6-Year, university-hospital outpatient observational study. J Altern Complement Med 2005; 5: 793-8.
• 2. Witt C, Keil T, Selim D, et al. Outcome and costs of homeopathic and conventional treatment strategies: a comparative cohort study in patients with chronic disorders. Complement Ther Med, 2005; 13: 79-86
• 3. Dantas F, Rampes H. Do homeopathic medicines provoke adverse effects? A systematic review. Br Homeopath J 2000; 89: 535–8
• 4.Mathie, R. The Research Evidence Base for Homeopathy. British Homeopathic Association, 2009.www.britishhomeopathic.org/export/sites/bha_site/research/evidencesummarymay09.pdf

5. Witt CM, Bluth M, Albrecht H, et al. The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies – a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med, 2007; 15: 128–138

6. Endler PC, Heckmann C, Lauppert E, et al. The metamorphosis of amphibians and information of           thyroxine. In: Schulte J, Endler PC (eds). Fundamental Research in Ultra High Dilution and Homoeopathy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998

7. Guedes JR, Ferreira CM, Guimaraes HM et al. Homeopathically prepared dilution of Rana catesbeiana thyroid glands modifies its rate of metamorphosis. Homeopathy, 2004; 93(3):132–7

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How are we to understand the persistence of alternative medicine beliefs? Despite the absurdity of many of the claims of the various superstitious medicines, we see very entrenched positions amongst believers, hostility to criticism and an imperviousness to external mainstream views. Why do people fervently lock themselves into such positions?

Over the past few years, as I have researched the the world of alternative medicine , one of the most striking aspects I have found is how few progressive views there are amongst practitioners. Particularly in the world of homeopathy, it is difficult to find people who express beliefs about their practice that take on board the criticisms that have been made over many years, and attempt to reformulate their ideas in light of modern views of science and health.

Instead, we see people dogmatically fused to positions usually taken by the founders of their belief system, and absolute hostility to anyone who dares question them.

I would not be the first to suggest that believers in alternative medicine often display the traits of members of cults. I have been in correspondence recently with a chiropractic student in the UK who describes how the abusive approach of tutors and huge fees for an MSc course ensured that students felt ‘locked in’ to following a commercial approach that they might otherwise be highly doubtful of.

But, it might be argued, this situation might also apply to more general vocational degrees. For cult-like pressure to apply to students, other factors may be required.

Of all alternative medicines homeopathy, to me, looks the most cult-like. It demands a strictly alternative philosophical approach to mainstream medicine. There is nothing ‘complementary’ about its views. Indeed, it defines itself in opposition to what it calls ‘allopathy’ and in doing so creates a straw man of what medicine is today. It lives in an “Us versus Them” world. Followers slavishly follows the ‘teachings’ of its founder, Samuel Hahnemann with the only internal debates being about how to interpret his words. They are zealous in their need to tell people that they hold the One Truth about medicine and people who question that are branded as corrupt shills for the conspiratorial pharmaceutical companies.

Over the past year,  I have been in conversation with perhaps the only homeopath I know that has been part of that world, has undertaken a full training, and yet decided to walk away and reject what it stands for. Her name is Wendy.

Wendy says she felt lost to her family for a while. Talking about these things is obviously painful to her, but her words are powerful in that they directly convey the trauma of her homeopathic experience. She has agreed for me to post some of her words. They are a small fraction of what I know she has to talk about, but they directly address this aspect of the cult-like nature of undertaking a homeopathic education. Wendy wishes that others, tempted to invest in a similar experience, have some insight into what others have gone through.

Wendy describes life inside the cult of homeopathy, a term she uses to describe the experience,

It is like living in a different culture.  Have you read some of these historical crime novels where they try to get you into how people thought then?  Margaret Doody is particularly good – Aristotle series.  Completely different assumptions and completely different ‘knowledge’.   Homeopaths live in the same space as you but are in a different world, and they ‘know’.  To come out of that world is a complete revision of assumptions, thought systems and thinking style.  It is very hard to do.  I think I’ve been trying to say that for a long time.  The larger the numbers have grown the easier it is for people to live in that world with others like them.

Wendy talks about how the training for homeopaths is vital for creating the cult-like mentality. Very early on she realised that questioning was highly discouraged. On her training, she says,

I wrote that I think that by month 3 or 4 I was buying into stuff I would not ordinarily buy into.  I never bought into soul or vital force but I’d lost any ability to challenge it within 6 months.  I did challenge homeopathic prophylaxis once, and did not get a satisfactory answer.  In homeopathy it would be ‘judgemental’ to say anyone is doing it wrong or say an idea is useless, which is why anyone can do what they like.  It would be judgemental to, for instance, campaign that prophylaxis has no backing in Hahnemann, or that the petrochemical miasm is just a figment of someone’s imagination.  Remember [tutor] pointed it out – you can not criticise or challenge how people operate or what they do.  If they say it works for them – anything goes.  So you have this bunch of people, all working differently, solely around whatever ideas they get in their head.  As we say – ‘whatever works for you’.  And no one ever discusses their results.  If they say it works, who are you to question.

If they say it works for them – anything goes.

My critical abilities were silenced within the first year – not by others – but because it would be considered judgemental in that society.

The discouragement of critical thinking left Wendy with no tools to evaluate good from bad. The authority of the tutors was paramount and critical thought was replaced with a general ‘New Age’ approach to reasoning which appeared to dominate the British lay homeopathy mind-set.

It is as if my left-brain got disconnected for a long time.  Ability to evaluate what ideas seem good to me and what looks like rubbish, went  – including evaluation of my own ideas.  The drama/wind-ups/illusions/influencing of the [tutor] period seems to have particularly geared there as I feel as I still had some common sense when I went in but it went quickly.

Self-belief – that your first stupid idea is the best one,  is what happens – because you only see good results (and part of the American New Age philosophies emphasises the positive) there is loss of reflection and insight.  This isn’t just the natural ‘looking for success’ that we all do – it is emphasised by the ‘positive-thinking’ philosophy.

I see it as a form of intellectual wanking – because there is no relating back to reality; and people now pay £40 an hour to their homeopath for that.

I have sometimes written the homeopathy might be able to reform itself into a more progressive form by recognising that its strengths lie in it being a form of counselling. Wendy takes issue with this,

You’ve said they might make counsellors – but they’re not trained as counsellors – they are doing amateur psychology based on reading a bit of Joseph Campbell or Jung or Louise Hay or whoever is fashionable this week.  Once again, whatever the first idea in their heads is what get addressed with a remedy.

Wendy has found the current sceptical blogging about homeopathy on the internet a useful tool in ‘de-programming’ and re-engaging with a critical approach to examining the claims of homeopathy. I know she does not agree with all that I might write, but the fact that we discuss and debate is important for her.

It’s great to have a bit of sense in my head again and it’s  good that you lads [the sceptics] disagree with one another sometimes because I get a chance to engage in some critical thinking and evaluation. Something that was missing for a long time.

Also, it was as if I got stuck there historically.  When I came round I hadn’t moved on to 2009, I was still trapped in some issues that existed in the 90s but are no longer relevant.  I feel as if I lost a decade.  Somehow I got trapped in a world that wasn’t mine and it was very uncomfortable.

As I say, I now see homeopathy as the disease.  I think it is a form of madness.  I feel adversely affected. I feel as if I lost a decade.  Somehow I got trapped in a world that wasn’t mine and it was very uncomfortable. I have had to work hard to rid myself of cult thinking and am still in that process but I feel that I have support and the Cult Information Centre are very useful.

I have never argued that homeopathy should be banned, or that people, in most circumstances, should be denied the choice of taking homeopathy. But it is testimony like this that makes me wonder what the limits of tolerance should be to such matters. Homeopathy appears to be unreformable, and it would appear to be unlikely that any progressive and modern form the practice could emerge from its current lay membership. Homeopathy is so strictly defined by its opposition to modern mainstream medicine that it will always lie at the fringes in a pseudoscientific bubble. It will always cling to its core dangerous beliefs of its universal claim to the True Medical Knowledge and its panacea-like approach to the world. In doing so, it must attack and denounce alternatives – such as scientific medicine – without any form of compromise.

I believe that understanding homeopathy requires a mental model that describes it as a pseudo-medical and superstitious cult. This model best describes its practices and the behaviours of its members. The cult model explains why virtually no homeopaths have condemned the murderous practice of using sugar pills to treat fatal diseases like HIV and malaria. The first treatment Hahnemann tried was for malaria. There is no question that he could have been wrong. It is why we see such a strong and universal anti-vaccination stance among homeopaths. Hahnemann believed mainstream medicine was the cause of disease, not its cure. The dogma persists in the thinking of the cult.

It is worth noting, in this light, that its practices are still provided by the NHS and some universities still teach it as fact. Homeopaths are lobbying government to make it statutorily regulated. Any decisions made in these areas need to take into account the cult-like dark side of homeopathy if people are to be protected from its harms.

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