Quack Treatments

Homeopaths Through the Looking-Glass

October 20, 2007
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Homeopaths Through the Looking-Glass

Homeopathy is fun. Pretending you can cure minor self-limiting ailments with magic water and sugar pills obviously brings countless hours of pleasure to lots of people and I, for one, would not want to take their ball away. Hey! You can even make some money out of it too, as lots of people like to join in and pay money to play patient and be part of the fantasy. But like all fantasy games, there really ought to be some pre-arranged agreement on limits; someone to shout a code word, or hold up a red card, when it looks like things might be going a bit too far, and where someone might get hurt. All participants can then step back, have a laugh, a cup of tea, and re-start...

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Charles Darwin and Homeopathy

August 26, 2007
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Charles Darwin and Homeopathy

The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This blog entry would have taken many months of library work and correspondence without the web and some of its amazing content, and now I can do it between mowing the lawn and popping down the pub for a pint. Dana Ullman (8 Canards), an American homeopath, is just about to publish a book. Titled, The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy he describes it as, the most important work of my life. It is a project that may actually change the face (and the heart) of medicine and may make homeopathy a household word. This is...

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The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

August 16, 2007
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The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

11 October 2007 11:47am My web hosting company Netcetera have received a complaint from the legal representation of the Society of Homeopaths about this posting. On the request of my hosting company, I have taken down this post while I try to understand the concerns of the Society of Homeopaths. Update 26 October 2007 The Society of Homeopaths have still not responded to requests to explain their position. To see everything on this site about the Society of Homeopaths, click here. If you are interested in finding out the history of this problem, a good place to start would be on the blog of Professor David Colquhoun FRS. My letter to the Society of Homeopaths to find out the nature of the problem, and a discussion, can be found...

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Should the NHS pay for Hyena Saliva?

July 20, 2007
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Should the NHS pay for Hyena Saliva?

Homeopathy, paid for by the NHS, is under threat. Millions of pounds of NHS money is pumped into a few Homeopathic hospitals so that patients can have ‘choice’. It is a good thing, choice. The Queen makes this choice. The newspapers promote this stuff. It is natural. No side effects. Health Freedom. Patient Options. Blah Blah Blah. Talking to people with jobs and mortgages and only one cat, I get looks of surprise at my hostility to homeopathy. I think most people just do not understand what homeopathy is. They think it is like herbalism – natural extracts from plants that might cure the odd thing. After all, so many modern medicines have their origins in traditional herbs, why not homeopathy? Well, of course this is nonsense. Explain that...

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Lethal Trust

July 1, 2007
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Lethal Trust

If you were to believe the Society of Homeopaths, the quacks that were handing out lethal advice to Newsnight investigators about malaria prevention, were just a few rogue and unregistered practitioners and unrepresentative of the profession. Peter Fisher , the Director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (currently funded by the NHS) told the programme that, 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. It is worth reading that quote again as it is going to be important. As we saw in my...

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Homeopathy Don’t Kill People, Homeopaths do.

June 21, 2007
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Homeopathy Don’t Kill People, Homeopaths do.

Right, let’s get serious. It’s the end of Homeopathy Awareness Week and enough of the jokes. You might be surprised, but actually, I don’t have too big a thing against homeopathy. If people want to pop into Boots the Quack and buy a tub of sugar pills and give one to little Timmy when he falls off his bike with a ‘there, there’ and a kiss on the forehead, then I would be really Mr Grumpy Spoil-Sport to object. If someone with a longstanding health complaint wants to spend an hour chatting to a homeopath and get lots of fuss and attention in a way that the NHS could never provide then I hope it turns out to be a valuable talking therapy session. After all, its just sugar...

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Events and Talks

Does Integrated Medicine Make Sense?
Great Hall, Dartington, Devon
I will be debating the role of Integrated Medicine with Simon Mills from the College of Medicine, Sarah Wollaston MP for Totnes, and Becky Simpson who used CAM when being treated for cancer.

Saturday 26 May, 2012. 6.00pm

A History of West Country Quacks & Rise of Evidence Based Medicine
Plymouth Skeptics in the Pub
The West Country, particularly in Bath, saw some the greatest quacks and also the greatest advances in evidence-based medicine. I will talk about how the two approaches fought each other in the 18th and 19th Century.

Tuesday, June 19 2012 at 7:00PM

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