The Quackometer

Let’s run with an idea and see where it goes.

The 10:23 campaign has now had loads of publicity and Boots have failed to address any of the central concerns: mainly, that homeopathy is a daft pseudoscience. Moreover, the pharmacy profession and the drugs regulator have remained silent.

In all likelihood, Boots will not withdraw their sugar pills and pharmacists will continue to take your money in exchange for pseudo-medicine. An immediate capitulation was never on the cards – the world does not work like that. But the Boots brand has been damaged as thousands of people have become aware of just what they are prepared to sell you in order to make money.

And let us also take on board the homeopaths argument that banning homeopathy would ‘restrict customer choice’. (Even though 10:23 did not seek to ‘ban’ homeopathy, only remove it from the pharmacy counter and, perhaps, into the health food shop next to the crystals.)

The campaign was really about making sure people understood what homeopathy is: it is not a herbal medicine, as herbs are often not used and any content gets diluted to the point where there is often nothing left. You are buying sugar pills that have had ritual magic performed on them.

As I have said, the villains here are the medicine regulators who allow deceptive labelling of these products. The MHRA say that they test the labels to make sure the public understand what they are buying. This is not true, as their recent submission to the House of Commons revealed. Nothing in their testing asked if customers understood they were buying pills that stated they contained an ingredient but that actually contained nothing, and that there was no reason to believe the pills did anything other than act as a placebo.

The legal blogger Jack of Kent has done a superb job of deconstructing the language on the labels.

Other industries have to battle with the problem with how to convey important information to the consumer that may affect buying considerations based on health: notably the food industry. In the last few years we have seen ‘traffic lights’ highlighting, for example the amount of salt in a ready meal.

Why shouldn't the packaging of items in the pharmacy not be subject to the same clear labelling requirements?

As Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary medicine, has said,

My plea is simply for honesty. Let people buy what they want, but tell them the truth about what they are buying. These treatments are biologically implausible and the clinical tests have shown they don't do anything at all in human beings. The argument that this information is not relevant or important for customers is quite simply ridiculous. If [pharmacists] are unable to stick to their ethical code, then they should change their code and be clear that it is alright to put profits before patients.

If we were expecting pharmacists to be honest, what would a typical homeopathic product label looks like? I suggest the following:

This quickly gets the key facts across that distinguish the product from others that might have survived some testing. After reading this, most people ought to be able to make an informed decision, and if you are the sort of person who uses crystals for deodorant then you still have your ‘right’ to buy this stuff. Everybody is happy.

Could we ever see such labelling? Somehow I doubt it, for a number of reasons.The government appears to be incapable of taking a position on pseudoscience. Indeed it has recently said that "The government does not find it helpful to define pseudoscience."

I am sure the businesses behind the pharmacies would resist such a move fiercely as it might be difficult to see how any reasonable person would purchase a product labelled as such. The pharmacists would undoubtedly resist it as it would expose them as having being flogging worthless shit for years. Plus, their ranks appear to be filled with supporters of pseudomedicines. The recently departed president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, the regulatory body of pharmacists, is now doing this. (Please empty your mouth of liquids before clicking link as otherwise your screen will get wet.)

Plus, and this is a big one, I would imagine that the majority of products for sale in a pharmacy such as Boots, homeopathic, complementary or regular, would be more likely to have red circles than green ones.

The fact that we could, in principle, have such a scheme and the distance we appear from being able to adopt something like this tells us how little our modern pharmacies have progressed from the quack’s apothecary of old.

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Update

Thanks to Richard's suggestion in the comments that the homeopathy in Boots simply be moved to a section labelled 'Placebos'.

Of course we get into a dilemma then when the professionals tell you they are giving you a placebo as is so well observed in the (hugely underrated) Smack the Pony sketch...

Labels: 10:23 campaign, boots the chemist, homeopathy

Thanks to Stephen Law at the Centre of Inquiry for posting this video of myself and Simon Singh, just after our talks at Conway Hall.

The day started with a mass overdose of homeopathic pills (see report in the Telegraph; it’s also on the front page of the BBC web site) , followed by talks on the evidence for alternative medicines and his legal battles (from Simon), the reasons why homeopathy might survive and other forms of quackery die (from me) and the problems diet quacks pose for people’s understanding of good eating and the inadequacy of the law (from from Professor John Garrow, Founder of Healthwatch).

For the record, despite my continuous consumption of Lachesis, Belladonna and Sulphur for about 24 hours, I am in good health and about to have my dinner. My arms work work and all appears well.

Labels: 10:23 campaign, homeopathy

Right now, if the homeopaths are correct, I should have paralysed arms, be in severe pain, have convulsions, delirium, skin itching all over and be unable to stand. That is because I have taken a massive overdose of the homeopathic remedies, Belladonna 30C, Sulphur 30C and Lachesis 5MM. I wrote this post last night and set it to appear at 10:23 today, the moment I will also be taking a whole packet of Boots homeopathic sleeping pills.

I expect to be quite alright because despite the labelling of these products, homeopathic pills are just sugar pills – there is nothing in them. They are inert and completely ineffective.

I am taking this overdose because Boots the Chemists sell these products as if they were real medicines. They make money by misleading the public that these pills can relieve them of various symptoms, from hay fever to infant teething pain. They do not, of course, and Boots know there is no evidence, but they sell them nonetheless. Hundreds of like minded people will be doing the same in cities throughout the UK as part of the 10:23 homeopathy campaign.

The Society of Homeopaths is condemning this protest as “an ill advised publicity stunt”. Why it should be ‘ill advised’ is not clear. They go on to say in their press release that they “would not therefore expect any reaction to the proposed ‘overdose’ by this group.”

Well we are all in agreement that nothing will happen then. And that is precisely the message that we want the public to take away – homeopathic remedies cannot have any effects because they contain no active substance – they are diluted to the point that no material remains. Homeopathy is a pseudo-medicine based on magical and pre-scientific belief systems that should have no place in a modern High Street pharmacy.

But, as usual, the Society of Homeopaths are not being straightforward with the public. For on another of their pages they repeat the homeopathic belief that their sugar pills can produce symptoms in healthy people. This is known as a homeopathic ‘proving’.

Volunteers or ‘provers’ take the new substance until they experience symptoms. All symptoms that result from taking the substance are recorded in detail.

Now of course this does not really happen. What homeopathic ‘provers’ experience are just random symptoms – there is no evidence that homeopathic pills can induce any consistent symptoms in people because they are just sugar pills. Such is the imagination.

If the Society of Homeopath believes this though, it is a mystery why they decline to warn the protesters about this.

The medical doctors who use homeopathy have come out strongly against this protest too. They say “The BHA regards the 10:23 stunt as grossly irresponsible”. Personally, I think that doctors misleading patients by telling them that a 19th Century pseudoscientific cultish quack medicine can help them is deeply irresponsible. I am amazed they are not struck off.

But to satisfy the homeopaths, in addition to downing by whole box of homeopathic sleeping pills, I have started taking the sulphur, belladonna and lachesis, 2 tabs of each at 2 hourly intervals. I started at 9pm last night and will continue until the tubs run out.

The lachesis is supposed to be particularly nasty. It is made from a snake venom (Bushmaster) and is supposed to induce horrific symptoms. Previous provers have reported paralysis of the arms and lots of pain. But because my pills do not actually contain any snake venom, I feel pretty confident I will be OK.

I am supposed to be giving a talk with Simon Singh and John Garrow in an hour, “Trick or Treatment: The Event.” If I am not there, you know why.

If you want to check I am alive, follow my twitter stream: http://www.twitter.com/lecanardnoir

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If you want to find out more about why I am doing this, read here.  And if you want to know why it is called the 10:23 campaign, you could do worse than read this.

Labels: 10:23 campaign, homeopathy