The Quackometer

The Eighteenth Century in England was the Golden Age of Quackery, with London being a world capital for mountebanks, charlatans and other practitioners of irregular medicine. Consumers in Georgian England had access to an unparalleled selection of medical entrepreneurship from regular doctors, lay quacks, foreigners with exotic elixirs, and even preachers such as John Wesley (as we saw a few weeks ago). So popular were these various tonics and treatments that it has been claimed that many newspapers would have gone bankrupt without the advertising revenues from quacks. Indeed, the proprietor of the Reading Mercury, used his proud organ to sell his own Fever Powders.

This thriving market was in stark contrast to many continental countries where quacks were often hounded out of both their establishments and their countries. Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy, and Mesmer, inventor of animal magnetism, were both forced to leave their home towns in search of more accepting jurisdictions. London was often the home for the displaced medical salesman.

The reason for this open market in quackery can be traced to the rather weak position of the regular physicians guilds and societies who failed to gain a real monopoly on the healing arts. The three main establishment bodies, created in the Tudor period, were the Royal College of Physicians, who looked after university educated medics, the Barber-Surgeons, and the Society of Apothecaries, the forerunners of the pharmacists. These bodies gave licenses to practice and prosecuted those who transgressed. However, Roy Porter, in his book Quacks, describes how this authority was systematically undermined.

Under Elizabeth, James I and Charles I, a fairly tight lid was kept on medical pretenders. However, after the civil war, the various trade guilds were too closely associated with royal patronage and Charles II, in a twist of irony, managed to exploit the new zeitgeist to his own ends. He used his newly restored royal powers to subvert the licensing scheme by shamelessly issuing his own medical patents that gave nostrum sellers exclusive rights to peddle their powders. This practice grew rapidly under Charles II and subsequent monarchs. Anyone could create a new quack concoction. They simply had to register their unique ingredients with the patent office. Importantly, they did not have to provide any evidence of any sort that their medicine actually worked. The license then gave them exclusive rights to peddle their cures and access to the courts to prosecute anyone who copied them.

This licensing essentially emasculated the power of the medical societies to stamp on quackery. A double standard was created and the quacks exploited their royal blessing to the full. As Porter describes,

…quacks could actually bask in official approval of a kind, much to the faculty's fury… All these state interventions were represented by empirics [quacks] as tokens of royal blessing, the highest of all testimonials.

‘By Royal Appointment’ was the stamp of approval on these ‘licenses to kill’ as they were called at the time.

The effect of these patents on the public were not medicinal but commercial. Before Charles II, the quack was typically a foreign mountebank, dressed in a ‘zany outfit’, and set up a market stall to sell a few bottles of their elixir. With a patent, the business turned into an industry of mass production with household brand names, marketed effectively in the newspapers, and selling in quantities of millions. Quackery blossomed on the emerging consumer society, and the undermining of the medical establishments created a thriving free market for medicine in England. Many became very rich on the back of their patents and the Crown enjoyed a healthy income from the levied stamp duty.

Charles II was interesting, not for only creating a legal framework for quackery, but for also for taking a very personal interest in unorthodox medicine. Indeed, Charles was to become the de facto head of the lay medical trade. He entertained in his court characters such as the Irish spiritual healer, Valentine Greatrakes (also known as ‘the Stroker’) who claimed he could cure all manner of diseases by laying his hands upon them. Even more wonderfully, Charles revived the practice of laying his own Royal hands on the sick in order to cure them of diseases such as scrofula (a manifestation of TB). More commonly, Charles would use Touch Pieces, coins he had handled and then given to the sick in order to minister his healing gifts. In 21 years, he ‘touched’ over 91,000 people.

Now, in the 17th and 18th century, it would be quite possible to argue that the King’s licenses merely created a level playing field amongst medical practitioners, destroying the vested interests of an Oxford and Cambridge educated elite, and gave the people what they wanted: their consumerist right to have their choice of cure. Indeed, the doctor and the quack both had little to offer the seriously ill person at the time and almost all practices would be judged as quackery by modern standards. Today, we are lucky to be one of the first generations to live in an age of scientific medicine, where we have a deep understanding of the causes of many illnesses and the tools to measure which treatments actually work and are safe. Medical regulation becomes meaningful now that we have objective standards by which we can judge competency and skill. It is therefore rather incredible that this 17th Century Royal tale appears to be replaying itself in the 21st Century.

Prince Charles, heir to the throne, is the modern day head of British alternative medicine. He has set up a campaign and lobbying organisation called the Foundation for Integrated Health, which promotes the wider acceptance of quackery in British life – he calls it ‘integration’. Charles prefers magic homeopathic sugar pills to magic coins. Both though are equally as ridiculous.

He promotes his own elixirs, through another company of his, Duchy Originals. In order to do so, he lobbied the Department of Health as part of their enquiry into allowing more lax regulation for herbal medicine. He obtained one of the first licenses from the MHRA and launched his Duchy range of herbal tinctures. I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about them and they found Duchy Originals to be making misleading and untruthful claims.

Much more worrying than these ridiculous potions is that fact that Prince Charles is directly involved in trying to establish new double standards in the regulation of medicine in the UK. Just has his namesake did, he is attempting to create new backdoors to allow mountebank practitioners to practice medicine without any of the ethical demands placed on real doctors. His Foundation was given money by the Department of Health to establish the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (more commonly known as Ofquack). This body offers voluntary regulation to a range of quack practitioners. There is no need for these practices to have any evidence base – the CNHC will just certify they have been well trained in their nonsense and give them the Royal and governmental stamp of approval.

Not satisfied with this, he is now lobbying the government to provide even more regulatory protection to herbalists. This has been planned for the best part of a decade now with the government trying to work out how to best protect the public by the dangers posed by unproven herbal remedies. Unfortunately, they appear to be going along with the idea that the way to do regulate pseudo-medicines is the same way you regulate real medicine. The much derided Pitillo Report recommended that Herbal Medicine practitioners be statutorily regulated and have protected title. The report made the fundamental mistake in that assuming a well trained herbal practitioner was a safe practitioner. However, it has never been explained how a training in nonsense can be considered a competent training. Indeed, Professor Colquhoun has exposed how such training is positively dangerous.

Nevertheless, the Prince’s Foundation has leapt on this report with relish. They are pushing hard to allow herbalists to have their own protected status. Matters have now come to head after the same College of Physicians having come out strongly against such regulatory moves. They say,

Statutory regulation of herbalists and Chinese medicine practitioners is ‘completely inappropriate’ and will put patients at risk. “Herbal and traditional medicine which are largely or completely of unproven benefit should be regulated in terms of consumer protection.”

The fear is that such regulation will not prevent the public from being exposed to dangerous practices, but instead give pseudo-medicine a false veneer of respectability and acceptance.

The Prince’s Foundation has not taken the College’s intervention lying down. They have accused the physicians of “washing their hands” of protecting the public. Of course, this is not true. They have stated that such protection should come through existing consumer protection laws, not through state recognition of their status. In other words, herbalists should be prosecuted for making misleading claims or importing dangerous concoctions. Interestingly, Dr Michael Dixon, one of Prince Charles's chief apologists, views the disagreement in 17th Century terms of the College trying to protecting a ‘trade monopoly’ as doctors. He fails to recognise that, in the 21st century, monopoly in medicine should come through evidence and reason, not regulation or commercial success. Dixon points out that herbalist do cause deaths through inappropriate and dangerous concoctions but offers no evidence to suggest that this was from an ‘uneducated’ minority. Irresponsible and deluded education in alternative medicine is the problem, not the solution.

The Foundation accused its detractors of “abandoning the public to quackery”. Professor George Lewith, another prominent proponent of unproven treatments, says,

Failing to introduce statutory regulation will amount to a Quack’s Charter. It is the incompetent and the irresponsible we need to stop. Not the well-trained, dedicated herbalists who put their patients first.

It is difficult to see how he could be more wrong. Introducing new regulation will indeed be a quack’s charter. How can using existing regulation to stamp out misleading and dangerous quackery be a ‘quacks’ charter’? Prince Charles’s friends need to show how recognising herbalists training will protect the public when it is likely that it is this very training that presents the clearest risk by indoctrinating students with nonsensical ideas about medicine, science and evidence.

Lewith’s aversion to the uncomfortable truths of medical science is made clear by his statement that “Those who oppose statutory regulation should consider the needs of the public and patients first, rather than the status of medical professionals or impractical notions about so-called science.”

The problems with statutory regulation are laid out very clearly on the dcscience web site from a rather good submission to the Department of Health. The Prince’s Foundation has yet to answer any one of these important criticisms and instead resorts to the usual quack trick of misdirection and obfuscation.

Prince Charles’ meddling represents one the greatest threats to the control of dubious medical practices since his namesake’s very similar personal interference. It is clear he wants to create a new golden age of quackery where modern scientific medicine is forced to compete (‘integrate’) with irrational nonsense, where the distinction between evidenced interventions and quackery is blurred by obfuscating regulation. History shows that creating double standards and allowing unfettered free markets in medical practices results in the exploitation of the public by deeply deluded or unscrupulous quacks. Pretending that freedom to practice, after licensing based on nothing more than unevidenced assertion of competence, protects people from harm is so obviously wrong. Let us hope that the government learns the lessons of history and ignores their current meddling Prince.

Labels: Prince Charles, regulation

 

If you haven’t managed to escape the winter sniffles, look no further than our new Echina-Relief Tincture, which offers natural relief from cold and flu symptoms.

 

This week were celebrating the launch of our brand new Herbal Tinctures range. Our Echinacea, Hypericum and Detox Tinctures provide alternative and natural ways of treating common ailments such as colds, low moods and digestive discomfort.

From the time I received the email to the time it was in the hands of the ASA was probably less than 120 seconds (a record I hope) thanks to their online complaint submission form. Investigating the claim took a little longer but now we can see the results of that investigation. I had complained that the company would not be able to substantiate the claims that these tinctures were  effective.

Previously, Andrew Baker, the head of Duchy Originals, had said of the detox tincture, “It is not – and has never been described as – a medicine, remedy or cure for any disease”. It was my view that the email advert made explicit claims to be a “medicine, remedy or cure” by saying that it provided, with the other tinctures, “natural ways of treating common ailments such as colds, low moods and digestive discomfort.”

The ASA agreed with me that the advert was misleading and upheld one complaint against each of the three products mentioned. Specifically, the advert breached advertising codes on truthfulness, substantiation  and the advertising of health and beauty products and therapies, and medicines.

This is not the first time that Duchy Originals has been censured over its tincture range. As I reported earlier (Duchy Originals Pork Pies), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had told Duchy Originals to stop making claims of efficacy for their products that cannot be substantiated after a complaint was made by the science group Voice of Young Science.  The Advertising Standards Authority have told me that the MHRA will also receive a copy of their adjudication. What can we expect  the MHRA to do given these blatant acts of disregard for medicines advertising?

Well, my guess is nothing. For the real villains here, in my opinion, are the MHRA themselves. In their response to the complaint, Duchy Originals stated that two of the three products, Echina-Relief and Hyper-lift tinctures, were licensed by the MHRA under the Traditional Herbal Medicines Directive. This directive allows license holders to make claims about their herbal remedies if the product has been ‘traditionally’ used. The rules are quite daft. In order to get a license, the applicant has to show that the product has been in use for 30 years in the EU, or 15 years in the EU and 15 years elsewhere. So, the product could have been ‘traditional’ in the same sense that ABBA is ‘traditional’ European music. There is no need to show there is any evidence for the product.

This is quite a shocking state of affairs. The MHRA have a mission to “safeguard the health of the public by ensuring that medicines and medical devices work, and are acceptably safe”. By taking on the Traditional Herbal Medicines Directive, the MHRA have undermined their reason for being because traditional use is no substitute for evidence when looking at what medicines work and are safe. In this regulatory regime we are subjugating evidence to the beliefs of any group of cranks (or fraudsters) who have stated that a herb can treat their illnesses.

So, could Duchy Originals have defended their claims with good evidence? The best place to look is to see what Cochrane reviews say about these herbs. The Echina-Relief tincture is probably best reviewed in a study entitled “Echinacea for preventing and treating the common cold”. The author’s conclusions are:

Echinacea preparations tested in clinical trials differ greatly. There is some evidence that preparations based on the aerial parts of E. purpurea might be effective for the early treatment of colds in adults but the results are not fully consistent. Beneficial effects of other Echinacea preparations, and Echinacea used for preventative purposes might exist but have not been shown in independently replicated, rigorous RCTs.

In other words, if there is a positive effect, it will be dependent on the specific preparation and product, and we have no great evidence that even this might be so. As far as I can see, no such evidence exists for the Duchy Originals product. Evidence for effectiveness is pretty slim and unconvincing.

How about the Hyper-lift tincture? The review on “St John's wort for major depression” might give us some clues.  The review of evidence is quite positive, but there is a major complication. Cochrane reports that “trials from German-speaking countries reported findings more favourable to hypericum”. Is it plausible that German speakers get a greater benefit, or are we seeing a greater placebo effect in countries where the treatment is more popular? Whatever, we might conclude, Cochrane is cautious - “St. John's wort products available on the market vary to a great extent. The results of this review apply only to the preparations tested in the studies included”. We cannot use these reviews as evidence that Prince Charles’ products work – even though his family is German.

Looking at the ‘non-medical’ tincture – the detox tincture – this is the most ridiculous of them all. It claims to be a “a food supplement to help eliminate toxins and aid digestion.”. However, the company is unable to name any toxin that is actually removed by this product and what the evidence for this is. It is pure pseudoscientific bullshit.

This inadequacy of evidence is important. The MHRA give themselves a get out clause for licensing these products that they have not used in these cases. They can refuse a license if the claims are not plausible. Given that the best evidence to date on these products is pretty cautious and specifically excludes products that are not explicitly tested, the plausibility that a company can just magic a product up and expect it to work is very low. It is not plausible that a pharmaceutical company could do this. It is not plausible that Prince Charles could either.

We have a situation where the government is now licensing medicinal products on the flimsiest of evidence. The idea that we can expect a product to work on the basis that someone in Europe in the past few decades have been gullible enough to buy the product is obviously daft. And I would suggest that the MHRA have obviously not been forceful enough on the requirements of their license. They state that the licensee must use very specific wording when making claims – that the product is a “traditional herbal medicine for use on [specific indications] exclusively based upon long standing [sic] use as a traditional remedy”. The stupidity of Duchy Originals is that they did not stick to this wording. The MHRA are supposedly convinced that the public can then interpret the wording as meaning that there is no real evidence for effectiveness. But we know that it is a common quack trick to suggest a treatment has ancient origins in order to sell their product. The MHRA have played right into quack hands.

And so when the MHRA give a license, we then are left with organisations like the impotent ASA to police it. I see little evidence of the MHRA taking a tough stance. I have one complaint against a blatant breach of rules that is now over a year without any action and despite requests for statuses on progress. The MHRA appear unconcerned about quackery claims. This also has to be looked at in the knowledge that we know that Prince Charles has written lots of letters to the MHRA and meetings have been held at Clarence house before these new directives came in. We are not allowed to know the contents of those letters.

The importance of this appears to need to be explicitly stated. We currently have a significant health risk in the form of swine flu. This risk may well not materialise quickly. Flu tends to strike in the winter months. The coming months may well see pockets of infection establishing across the world. Come the winter, we may then see this strain striking out in earnest, maybe even with some more deadly mutations. When our government explicitly licenses companies to make claims that their quack remedies can prevent or treat flu without evidence, they undermine their ability to issue meaningful, evidence-based and life-saving advice.

The MHRA, in taking on this role of licenser and legitimiser of quackery, undermines its ability to be an authority in this most important area.

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Coverage

Marketing of Prince’s remedies banned  - FT

Prince firm's advert 'misleading' – BBC

Prince of Wales's Duchy Originals herbal remedy claims were 'misleading' - Telegraph

Labels: Duchy Originals, MHRA, Prince Charles

 

Labels: Duchy Originals, Prince Charles

 

In today's Pulse, the magazine for GPs, a spat between Dr Michael Dixon and critics of alternative medicine has been reported. Dr Dixon, chairman of the NHS Alliance, was accused of breaking GMC guidelines by issuing ‘misleading or incorrect’ statements about alternative medicine.

The NHS Alliance is not actually part of the NHS, but is an independent body that acts a bit like a club, lobby and research organisation into matters concerning NHS Primary Care Trusts. Professor Edzard Ernst has accused the NHS Alliance of proffering a ‘dangerously one-sided’ view of alternative medicine.

They [The NHS Alliance] are an important organisation and have a responsibility to have a balanced view. What I have seen on their website is disturbingly devoid of any critical evaluation.

Instead of addressing the concerns, Dixon hits back with an ad hominen attack by describing Ernst as ‘graceless’ and saying,

As a commentator who has never practised general practice in this country, Professor Ernst should stop lobbing grenades and telling us how to do our job.

The Alliance publishes a lot on alternative medicine; a surprising amount given that the evidence for the effectiveness of just about any alternative medicine is slim at best. The documents appear to come from either the chairman, Michael Dixon, or from Prince Charles’ quackery lobby group, the Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH). FIH is behind a lot of propaganda trying to push quackery into the NHS, so that it can get its hands on public money. Alternative Medicine traders have a basic problem: their market is limited to those who can afford their expensive and useless treatments – typically the middle class, middle aged and middle educated. If the NHS could refer and pay for treatments, then the market could really open up. The Foundation for Integrated Health furthers this agenda in many ways: a few days ago I wrote about the FIH funded company, GetWellUK, that has taken £200,000 of public money to produce a useless market survey into how patients felt after their GP had sent them off to see a quack.

Dr Michael Dixon OBE is clearly a big fan of alternative medicine, although, of course, he prefers the PR friendly term integrated medicine. Dixon runs his own GP practice in Devon. By the look of it, it is quite a smart place. The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health ran an article about it a few months ago: Integrated Health at Cullompton. The College Surgery boasts a “fully integrated service”. What this means is that after visiting your GP, you can go along a see one of a couple of dozen quacks who rent rooms within the surgery. FIH see this as a model practice, naturally, by bringing in techniques that, in their words, “lay well outside the GP's sphere”.

Dr Dixon says 'obviously not all patients can afford complementary help, but many therapists are charging reduced rates. Patients are often keen to try a therapy, if they think it will help with a condition.' The offering is very wide: from massage, acupuncture and herbal medicine to healing and thought field therapy.

Wouldn’t it be a lot better if the NHS would pay for this? The Surgery offers all sorts of stuff including the batshit but humdrum nonsense of reflexology (your foot is connected to all your other organs though chi conducting meridians, or something), homeopathy (magic sugar pills cure all) and the discredited acupuncture (pins cure all). Dixon also rents rooms to freakier forms of fruitcakery. Frequencies of Brilliance is a technique that “is a unique energy healing technique that involves the activation of energetic doorways on both the front and back of the body.”

These doorways are opened through a series of light touches. This activation introduces high-level Frequencies into the emotional and physical bodies. It works within all the cells and with the entire nervous system which activates new areas of the brain.

Frequencies of Brilliance is referred to as a self-remembrance work because the activation that occurs as the body is touched awakens at the quantum level your spiritual aspect.[sic]

First class pseudoscience. I think that this is probably ‘well outside of the GP’s sphere’. I, for one, would be very alarmed if a colleage of my GP wanted to energetically activate my front and back doorways. 

Labels: Dr Michael Dixon, Prince Charles

 

Various news sources and pro alternative medicine web sites have been telling us this week that a trial involving NHS GPs in Northern Ireland has shown that referring patients for homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture and other CAM has highly successful outcomes. I see this as nothing short of an attempted fraud to extract NHS money for traders in quackery. Let me explain.

For example, the Princes Foundation for Integrated Health tells us, “It has demonstrated that integrating complementary and conventional medicine brings measurable benefits to patients’ health”. This is a deeply misleading statement and it does not take much to understand why. To do so, let us imagine another experiment.

In our imaginary world, the Apple Marketing Board approach the NHS and ask for £200,000 to do a study to show the truth behind the statement “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. The Minister, being particularly fond of apples, agrees and the study begins. A group of doctors, who are also apple eaters, agree to send selected patients for apple therapy. They will treat them as normal, give them advice and drugs, or refer them as they normally would, but also offer to send them to receive a daily apple from an apple therapist. Patients who also like apples agree and they are tested to see how they feel now, in the doctor’s surgery, and how they feel a few months later after they have taken their normal medicine and also eaten their daily apple.

It is not difficult to predict the outcome of this test. Undoubtedly people will report being better months after their initial visit to the doctor. People go to their GPs when their health is bad. Through the natural progression of illness, or through the effectiveness of conventional treatments, people will undoubtedly report being better at a time in the future. Even people with chronic conditions will, on average, report feeling better as the first measurement in the GP office was taken when it is very likely symptoms were bad. (People with chronic illnesses do not go to their GP quite so much when their symptoms are not too bad.) Some patients may even experience a placebo effect from the obviously pleasant and indulgent experience of feeling special and being given apples.

Only a fool would conclude that any reported improvements were due to apple therapy. From this study, we have no way of comparing apple eaters with people who did not eat apples. Simply proclaiming health improvements is not enough as that is what we would expect without any apple intervention. We would also expect GPs to largely be happy and patients to be happy with their apples as they selected themselves into the trial as they were predisposed to enjoying apples. We cannot conclude that all people would be similarly so grateful. We might quite rightly conclude that the whole thing is a PR stunt by the Apple Marketing Board.

But this sort of result is exactly what we see in the Northern Ireland study. There has been no scientific publication of the study. Instead, the groups behind the study have commissioned a market research company to compile lots of meaningless tables and graphs for them. And the obedient market research company has produced a report that shows that, basically, people get better after visiting their doctor and that they quite like the indulgence of alternative medicine.

Alternative medicine groups are now ecstatically happy. This should not be a surprise to them as they were in control of events all the way along. What is quite remarkable about this so called study is that the money to conduct the trial was given to a lobby group for promoting the inclusion of alternative medicine in the NHS. It is difficult to imagine any other area of government where a group with large vested interests was given permission to promote their business, under the guise of science, using tax payers money. Independent, this report is not.

Peter Hain, the then Northern Ireland Secretary and supporter of quackery, gave the money (£200,000) to an outfit called GetWellUK. GetWellUK, run by Boo Armstrong, is a private company specifically set up to be, in their words “the best supplier of complementary healthcare to the National Health Service.” Only a fool would think any dispassionate appraisal would come out of such a lobby group. Indeed, at the time, Professor David Colquhoun pointed out that the project was a farce,

At the end of the “pilot scheme” there will have been no proper assessment of the effectiveness of the treatments. We shall be none the wiser.

And that has come true. The analysis has come from a market research company called SMR, run by a chap called Donal McDade. It is not a scientific analysis. It is at best a customer satisfaction survey. At worst, it is a set of graphs and figures that will please SMR’s clients – GetWellUK - so that they can use it for misleading PR.

The report avoids all the important questions. Primarily, it would be useful to know if the therapies were effective. On that matter it is silent. It asserts that the therapies provided significant health gains and produced economic savings:

Given the evidence of health gain documented by patients, GPs and CAM practitioners, it is recommended that DHSSPS and the project partners explore the potential for making CAM more widely available to patients across Northern Ireland. Not only has this project documented significant health gains for patients, but it has also highlighted the potential economic savings likely to accrue from a reduction in patient use of primary and other health care services, a reduction in prescribing levels and reduced absenteeism from work due to ill health.

There is absolutely no evidence in the 146 pages of guff in this report to make that assertion. It is pure wishful thinking.

Of course, patients were going to report their pleasure with the therapies. People do tend to enjoy the pampering of alt med. But that does not mean that quackery is effective or economically efficient. I would love my GP to send me to a weekend country spa resort after each visit to her, and undoubtedly I would feel great about it. My health would improve no end – at least that is what I would tell the market researchers. But this is not France.

GetWellUK do not address the question of effectiveness for one simple reason. We already now how effective the treatments being considered are. Homeopathy is pseudoscience, magical thinking and a placebo. Acupuncture appears to be nothing more than a theatrical placebo too with limited evidence of any real effect. Reflexology is just plain nonsense and little more than a foot massage with some mumbo jumbo thrown in. Chiropractic and Osteopathy are useless for everything but lower back pain, and then no more so than a conventional (and cheaper) options. But of course to discuss these things, would be destroy the value of this report as propaganda.

It is difficult to forgive GetWellUK for this as there is a precedent here. In the Spence study of 2005, the customers of a homeopathy clinic in Bristol, were asked to rate their experiences. It was a simple customer satisfaction survey but written up as a test of the medical effectiveness of homeopathy. The report was berated for its unscientific approach and for its use as commercial propaganda. The Northen Ireland team must have known the weakness of such an approach. Or was there aim simply to produce good PR so they could push their quack agenda into the NHS?

And the PR is showing some signs of working. The survey got a free ride in the GP magazine Pulse. It also attracted a comment from a Pulse journalist who demanded that Professor Edzard Ernst hand over his £10,000 prize as it was now clear that homeopathy ‘worked’. The journalist simply showed himself to be a fool. The Ernst-Singh prize has simple winning conditions that are far from met in this shabby report.

No doubt the various quack pressure groups will be using this to promote their agendas. If this was a building firm bidding for a government contract, no doubt submitting such a misleading report would ensure they were barred from future tenders and maybe even prosecuted for fraud. But this is alternative medicine. It is not socially acceptable to call a fraud a fraud when it deals with quackery. And behind all of this, of course, funding GetWellUK, is our future head of state Prince Charles.

Michael McGimpsey, the Health Minister in Northern Ireland, has now had this report on his desk for quite a few months. The government web site describes this as an ‘independent report’ . It is anything but. Let us hope he has the wisdom to see through this charlatanism and let the report get buried under a mound of more pressing issues.

Labels: getwelluk, Prince Charles

 

The gullibility of British newspapers never ceases to amaze me. The British press today carried uncritical articles about the miracles of Deeside Mineral Water.

The Telegraph - a paper with no serious science credibility anymore - told us,

Scientists claim that Deeside Water can give drinkers a younger appearance and more radiant skin tone.

Those who drank the Scottish water, which is bottled from a spring near the Queen's Balmoral home, were 25 per cent more likely to report fewer wrinkles and better skin tone, the scientists found.

A separate study at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh showed that the minerals in Deeside fight free radicals - substances that can age cells.

Dr Mary Warnock, a lecturer in Dietectics, Nutrition and Biological Sciences at Queen Margaret University, said: "Free radicals are harmful to the body's cells and contribute to the ageing process. Reducing free radicals helps protect cells from damage.

"Deeside Mineral Water has some very unusual properties and we know that people have been drinking it for its curative benefits for centuries. The results from these tests are very exciting.

The Daily Mail went further,

The water was also found to beat other brands in hydrating the skin, making it appear more youthful and smoothing away wrinkles. If that were not enough, previous studies have credited the water with easing the pain of arthritis and thwarting the growth of cancerous cells.

This cancer claim, if made outside the 'reportage' of a newspaper would be illegal. We also see the press release copies onto the pages of the Sun and the Scotsman.

Shamefully, even the BBC carried a similar story some time ago on Deeside water. This time, Mineral water 'eases arthritis' we are told.

It is believed to have been a favourite of Queen Victoria, and has long been famed for its healing powers, supposedly helping to treat rheumatism, skin conditions and stomach complaints.

Martin Simpson, managing director of the Deeside Water Company, stressed that his product was not a "miracle cure". But he said: "It produces these positive effects because of unusual natural characteristics." The water is filtered through layers of ancient granite for 50 years, and some believe this is the process that makes it so beneficial for health.

This all smells very fishy. Water with 'free radicals' in it? Arthritis relief? Cancer cures? Naturally, we have to go and have a dig.

And, wow, we do find some woo.

Whilst the newspaper reports are all full of scientific words and scientists' testimonials, the website of Deeside water takes a very different tack. It is worth reproducing their healthcare claims...

Deeside Mineral Water is used by complementary health therapists because it helps enhance their treatments. If you are a therapist, please test Deeside Mineral Water by your preferred method, whether Vega test, pendulum, intuition or any other. We are sure you will find positive results. If you would like to know more about the applications of Deeside Mineral Water in energy healing, please feel free to contact us.

Deeside Mineral Water is used in herbal essences, tinctures, creams and supplements, combined with other ingredients, to improve their performance. It is also used by many therapists as the water to be given to patients after a treatment and as the recommended water for their ongoing consumption, because of its properties.

Deeside Mineral Water has scientifically proven effects, understood in traditional circles, but also has great appeal in complementary fields because of its living energy and higher vibration than other waters. Water is the basis of all life and we understand its role at a much deeper level than most, having undertaken research into this area over many years. We have also investigated some of the less well know and alternative theories on water, energy and health. Ask your pendulum which water is the best for well-being!

Vega testing? Intuition? Living energy? Energy Healing? Higher Vibration? Ask your freekin' pendulum?

The Quackometer has exploded.

It gets better. This water is good for your pets too. "Birdline UK tested Deeside Mineral Water on troubled parrots and found a significant improvement in a short time." So, the water can also prevent Norwegian Blues from pushing up the daisies.

So, what of this new 'research'? Well, I can't find any. Maybe it is out there. The lead researcher in all this appears to be Dr Mary Warnock, of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. She "carried out experiments designed to gauge the ability of various waters to mop-up free radicals." Her home page at the University does not list this amongst her published papers. Her bio page tells us that one of her research interests is in Complementary Medicine.

With the Balmoral connection, it is of course no surprise to find out that Prince Charles has got his organic mitts involved. Yes, his Dutchy Originals bottled water uses Deeside Water. Yes (I can't resist this) Deeside water has been passed by Prince Charles: "It embodies The Prince's commitment to what he calls a ‘virtuous circle’ of providing natural, high-quality organic and premium products, while helping to protect and sustain the countryside and wildlife."

Only one interesting question remains? What is the relationship between Dr Mary Warnock and Deeside water. A cryptic comment on the Scotsman website says,

Dr Mary Warnock, like no relation to Frank "Mad Frankie" Warnock of Deeside Mineral Water fame eh ? So mineral water slows aging does it ? What is the scientific word for pants ?

Can anyone shed any light on this? Answers on a postcard please.

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Update

Well, after some correspondence with Dr Mary Warnock of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh it would appear that the press release, and hence these newspaper reports, were based on unpublished and non-peer reviewed results. No one is surprised.

Dr Warnock has kindly offered to update me when the results are published and I will be sure to examine them on this site. Unfortunately, she has not clarified for me her relationship with Deeside water, despite asking several times.

What I find very alarming here is that Queen Margaret University are able to issue a press release that says,

For the first time, scientists can prove that Deeside Mineral Water actually slows the signs of ageing and does so 50% more effectively than other tested waters on the market.In the first of two new research studies, Deeside Mineral Water was rigorously tested against other major international market leading brands of bottled water. The study was undertaken by scientists at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh and confirmed that Deeside Mineral Water is 50% more effective than other waters tested in suppressing free radicals.

and this is based on unpublished research. What this has resulted in is massive publicity for a quack water company and column inches in newspapers that would cost a fortune if paid for. Unpublished research is by its very nature highly provisional. It has not gone through the processes that can lead to confidence in a result. Researchers have not been able to fully explore their results, formulate their conclusions and test them with their peers. Premature publication of results by PR undermines the scientific process and should be condemned. Such activities corrupt science and diminish the authority of scientists in public debate.

QMU ought to be ashamed of themselves.

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Follow up on Freedom of Information Request:

Queen Margaret University and Prostituted Academia

Labels: newspapers, Prince Charles

 

Prince Charles' Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) is listened to by many in our Government as a sound source of information on complementary medicine. It has been given large sums of money over recent years by the Department of Health to set ways of regulating CAM sellers. The result has been the moribund Ofquack: the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council.

FIH has been regularly criticised for being hopelessly naive and uncritical of alternative medicine. FIH likes to call quackery ' Integrative Medicine' and sound like it is calling for the integration of 'natural' ways of healing with modern healthcare. In reality, it does little but uncritically promote bonkers charlatanism.

The latest promotion comes in the form a news item on their web site telling us that "Dr Richard Niemtzow has developed a form of 'Battlefield acupuncture' which will be used by the US Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan." We are told that,

This method of acupucture [sic] involves inserting very tiny semi-permanent needles into very specific acupoints in the skin on the ear to block pain signals from reaching the brain. This method can lessen the need for pain medications that may cause adverse or allergic reactions or addiction.

...

'This is one of the fastest pain attenuators in existence,' said Dr. Niemtzow 'The pain can be gone in five minutes.

Remarkable stuff. Niemtzow is the Editor in Chief of Medical Acupuncture, the journal of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. Are we seeing the integration of ancient Chinese practices into modern battlefield care? Of course not. The whole thing is a fanciful charade.

Auricular Acupuncture, or Ear Acupuncture, or even auricolotherapy, is indeed part of what is called 'Traditional Chinese Medicine'. It was included into Mao's re-invention of Chinese medicine as part of the Cultural Revolution's Barefoot Doctors' repertoire. However, the roots of ear acupuncture do not lie in ancient Chinese medical beliefs but in 1950's France. Yes, like its auricular cousin, Hopi Ear Candling - also found in your High Street Chinese Medicine Shop, it has roots that are thoroughly western. Ear Candling is a recent invention and nothing to do with the Hopi Tribe - who are hopping mad about the appropriation of their name to Western quackery.





The UK Auricular Acupuncture College tell us that it "is an ancient Oriental therapy using acupuncture on points of the ear to treat specific parts of the body". This looks like it is simply untrue. In a 2007 review, published in Evidence Based Complement Alternative Medicine, Luigi Gori and Fabio Firenzuoli tell us that ear acupuncture was invented by Lyon based doctor, Dr Paul Nogier, who is now known as the "Father of modern auricolotherapy".

The son of Paul Nogier, Raphaël Nogier, tells us,

1951, Paul NOGIER received in his consultation a patient, who explained to him that he was relieved from a sciatica pain by a cauterisation on the ear carried out by a quack in Marseille, Madame BARRIN

Nogier's remarkable 'insight' was to realise that the ear was a little homunculus - a man in the ear - in the form of a foetus. Thus, sticking a pin in the right part of the ear could somehow heal the corresponding part of the body. It turns out that Dr Nogier was a homeopath and so we do not need to concern ourselves too greatly about the battiness of these ideas.

Nogier's son, Raphaël, continues the pace of invention admirably and has developed this science to even greater extents. From Madame Barrin's humble quackery has grown a mighty and imaginative worldwide quackery. Electrical instruments are used to detect the appropriate points on ears to stick pins in. Furthermore, Nogier developed "auriculomedicine" - a technique for diagnosing problems by measuring the pulse whilst putting pressure on various parts of the ear.

It would appear that the French ear pin therapy quickly spread via Japan back to China where it was re-interpreted in terms of Chinese acupuncture:

The discovery of the system spread to China and led to intensive research by the Chinese medical authorities at a time of renewed interest in Traditional Chinese Medicine. After learning about the Nogier ear charts in 1958, a massive study was initiated by the Nanjing Army Ear Acupuncture research Team. This Chinese medical group verified the clinical effectiveness of the Nogier approach and assessed the conditions of over 2000 clinical patients, recording which ear points corresponded to specific diseases. The outcome of that research was very positive and resulted in the utilization of this therapy by the ‘Barefoot Doctors’ of the Cultural Revolution. In China was published an Ear Chart remarkably similar to that of Dr Nogier in 1958.

So, from the Chinese Army to the US Air Force. Richard Niemtzow, MD, PhD, MPH appears to have been developing his own version of ear acupuncture using tiny needles that you leave in your ear until they drop out. We are told,

Using ancient Chinese medical techniques, a small team of military doctors here has begun treating wounded troops suffering from severe or chronic pain with acupuncture.

In a deviation from the Nogier philosophy, Niemtzow believes that the "ear acts as a "monitor" of signals passing from body sensors to the brain. Those signals can be intercepted and manipulated to stop pain or for other purposes." A remarkable scientific discovery. Give that man a Nobel Prize.

The clincher for me is that he calls on the Wisdom of Pirates. Niemtzow says" Even 18th-century pirates were convinced of the value, piercing their lobes with earrings 'to improve their night vision'". Did the British ever tell the US that eating carrots improved the night vision of Royal Air Force pilots during the Battle of Britain?

This French, Chinese and Pirate wisdom is proving very useful apparently as "Battlefield acupuncture has been especially effective among patients suffering from a combination of combat wounds, typically a brain injury or severed limbs, burns and penetrating wounds along with severe disorientation and anxiety."

So, we shall see. It has yet to be deployed into Iraq battlefield operations and has to "overcome skepticism within the ranks of military doctors". I doubt it ever will be. What we do know is that the organisation that Niemtzow works for does quite a good job of promoting acupuncture in the US. For an academic institution, it is quite surprising to find on their home page that the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture says that it can "Find an Acupuncturist Near You".

Well done to the Foundation for Integrated Health for uncritically carrying this story. I am sure the acupuncturists of the USA are very pleased.

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If you want to know more about Niemtzow, the excellent blog Science Based Medicine takes him apart here.

Labels: acupuncture, Prince Charles, pseudoscience, quacks, Traditional Chinese Medicine

 

Today Prince Charles visited the Nelson's Homeopathic Pharmacy manufacturing laboratories in London. He was supposed to be turning up with his wife, Camilla, but unfortunately she has not been taking her magic sugar pills and was too ill to inspect the identical tubs of white sugar pills.

It looks like Charles and his spin off commercial enterprises, "Duchy Originals" is getting into bed with the magic pill manufacturers to produce his own range of "herbal products." Charles, destined to become King, is also becoming the nation's healer.

We scoff and scorn third world leaders who in feats of pure derangement and power proclaim their bizarre healing powers. In Gambia, President Yahya Jammeh announced he had discovered a cure for AIDS. Gambian Health Minister, Tamsim Mbowe, a trained doctor and obvious sycophant, supports his president's belief that he can cure AIDS in three days with his secret medicinal herb concoctions.

Ex South African president Thabo Mbeki wallowed in his own murderous AIDS denialism and allowed his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, to promote her own cure of garlic and beetroot whilst actively preventing a roll out of antiretrovirals to the vast HIV+ population. The University of Cape Town estimates that 340,000 deaths could have been prevented if the government had not been enthralled by quack alternatives.

In both cases, delusional health beliefs were allowed to reach murderous proportions because no one dared question authority, without fear of reprisals. In Gambia a UN representative pointed out that there was absolutely no evidence that Jammeh's cures worked. She was given 48 hours to leave Gambia.

We are shocked at such 'backward' antiscience and quackery. But we have own chief witch doctor a heart beat from being head of state. Charles' views on alternative medicine are well known. When Professor Edzard Ernst criticised his views, Sir Michael Peat, Prince Charles's private secretary, made an official complaint about him which resulted in his employers at Exeter University spending a year running disciplinary hearings and investigations.

As Ernst remarked, "I have repeatedly been told he cannot tolerate advice which is not 100% in line with his opinion ... I think his advisors are all sycophants".

Charles talks of 'Integrated Medicine'. It is a euphemism. There is no way you can integrate nonsense with reality - and that is what homeopathy is. The real agenda of Charles is to promote alternative medicine and force it upon the NHS at all costs. His main vehicle for this is his Foundation for Integrated Health and his involvement with ensuring new bodies are set up to give official sanction to quacks, such as the newly emerging Ofquack.

At his tour of Nelson's today, he praised them for their efforts in "leading the way to integrate natural and conventional ‎healthcare". Again, it is difficult to see what Nelsons are doing to integrate with conventional healthcare. It is difficult to talk about a homeopathic pill manufacturer without calling it a fraud. The picture above shows Charles inspecting a number of vats containing wing of bat or hyena saliva. No matter what is in those vats, after it has gone through the magic rituals of homeopathic preparation, the pills leaving the factory are to all purposes identical and contain no meaningful active ingredient. They then ship them off to pharmacies like Boots where they are sold in packages and given nice names like Teetha - a remedy for teething babies which contains no medicine.

I have sometimes wondered if all they do is scoop out pills from one giant pot into little pots and just label them differently. The effect would be exactly the same. Nelson's manufacturing process is indistinguishable from a fraudulent activity in its output. And here we see Charles endorsing it.

I have recently asked each of the Universities offering a BSc in homeopathy in the UK, to see if they can do a simple test to tell one homeopathic pill from another. I have written twice now to ten homeopathic academics and none have seen fit to reply to me yet. The only academic studying alternative medicine in the UK who is willing to put such beliefs to objective test is Edzard Ernst and his team at Exeter. And for doing so, it causes nothing but contempt from the homeopathic community and their royal patron.

Charles is set to be King. His constitution role is being stretched to intolerable levels by his insistence to move into commercial exploitation of quack products. We may think we live in a sophisticated and developed nation, but Charles may play a useful role of reminding us we are still easily enthralled by authority and magic. We risk a health despotism in the UK no better than a failing African state run by a self aggrandising mad man.

Labels: homeopathy, Prince Charles

 

Andy Burman, Chief Executive of the British Dietetic Association, appears to have resigned his post from the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack).

This news follows my recent criticism on this site of the BDA for not doing enough to educate the public about the difference between pseudoscientific Nutritional Therapists (as to be 'regulated' by Ofquack) and professionally trained and regulated dietitians (as currently represented by the BDA). This came in the wake of the news that a brain damaged woman had been given £810,000 by the insurers of self-styled nutritionist Barbara Nash. I commented that the situation was being made worse by the emergence of the ill-conceived, government sponsored and Prince Charles driven, CNHC. Ofquack will not protect the public from the practices and commercial motives of Nutritional Therapists and will do nothing to improve the public understanding of nutritional science - indeed, it will substantially undermine it.

It was therefore something of a shock to read a comment left on my blog that said that Andy Burman, Chief Executive of the BDA, was on the board of directors of the newly emerging Ofquack. The commenter said, "Instead the management of the BDA is actively undermining their own members." My simple response was that the BDA was therefore doomed.

It would appear that I have poked a sharp stick into a dyke of sleeping dogs and unleashed a hornet's nest of discontented angry bear dietitians. What became clear, by further comments on my web site, was that many grass roots dietitians were livid about the situation. A selection of some of the comments follows:

I wonder how much time Dieticians spend disabusing the general public of some wacky notion they have picked up from non evidenced based nutritional practitioners?

Might as well all raise a white flag to McKeith, Holford et al and face the fact that evidence based nutrition is a dead duck.

Is the chief exec of the BDA further providing legitimacy to the very nutritional therapists that are a danger to the public and in doing so professionally humiliating his own members?
Yes.
Should dieticians now be demanding a change of direction and chief exec at the BDA or just abandoning the pointless organisation?
Yes.

I am a proud HPC registered Dietitian and up till recently I was also a proud member(albeit diminishing) of the BDA. However on discovering that my very own Chief Exec Andy Burman is, a member of the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council's Federal Regulatory Council I am truly mad and embarrassed.

It looks like a storm was brewing. Indeed, Andy Burman appeared to feel it necessary to leave his own comment on my blog. In that comment, Mr Burman defended his role at Ofquack and the need for the organisation itself. Also, on his biography on the Ofquack website, he says,

Andy is committed to voluntary self regulation within complementary healthcare and honoured to be part of this new development.

This defense did not appease his critics. Further comments ensued.

I'm sorry - I find the response from the Chief Exec of the BDA beyond belief. How can you possibly maintain standards for stuff that doesn't work? All you will do is provide legitimacy to those practitioners who do not maintain the high standard of your own members (who, by the way - must be absolutely livid that you are choosing to tacitly support quack therapists by providing legitimacy to them via regulation).

Ladies and Gentlemen It's time to reclaim the place that is rightfully ours and maybe look at who we choose to represent us -because let's face it in any other business our PR agency would have been well and truly fired by now!

I'm also very concerned at the news about Andy Burman. Maybe we should be reviewing his position as CEO of the BDA.

I think Andy has made his position untenable - the membership is mad as hell. Those of us who work in the private sector have all dealt with clients that have seen these therapists - some of the rubbish they sprout is quite unbelievable. The new council I think is a sham - and the NTs themselves do not want any more reg because they will end up halfing their income from all the supplements they sell [The BANT code of 'ethics' explicitly allows Nutritional Therapists to take commissions on supplements they sell. - LCN]

The final comment today from an anonymous dietitician reads,

I understand that Andy Burman has resigned from OfQuack. Good news for dietitians.

Although, I have not has direct confirmation of this yet, it is backed up by the disappearance of his biography on the Ofquack web site (compare the current version with Google's cache). This was the very least that should have happened. It is obvious that some people believe that the involvement with Ofquack has undermined his role as Chief Executive at the BDA.

Ofquack was founded as a result of a monumental governmental mistake. The House of Lords, in 2000, recommended the government look into the proper regulation of alternative medicine. It was concerned that the public was not sufficiently protected from the alternative medicine trade and recommended that ways were sought to ensure practitioners were well trained, safe and effective in what they did. In an act of blazing naivity, the government saw fit to hand over this responsibility to Prince Charles and his bizarre organization, the Foundation for Integrated Health. The task defining what regulation should look like was handed over to the very people that cause the problem with their loony beliefs.

The result was predictable. FIH took to the task with gusto, forming important looking committees and consultations. The only thing dropped from the Lord's recommendations was the question of efficacy. Ofquack are only interested in showing that boxes can be ticked regarding training. It does not matter one iota that the practices of those they seek to regulate do not work.

Indeed, this was against the very wishes of the House of Lords. In their summary they said,

Many CAM therapies are based on theories about their modes of action that are not congruent with current scientific knowledge. That is not to say that new scientific knowledge may not emerge in the future. Nevertheless as a Select Committee on Science and Technology we must make it clear from the outset that while we accept that some CAM therapies, notably osteopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine, have established efficacy in the treatment of a limited range of ailments, we remain sceptical about the modes of action of most of the others. We therefore emphasise that in recommending the regulation of training in CAM we specifically exclude training in the asserted modes of action of many CAM therapies. We do so because regulation could lead to a misleading public perception of improved status; such regulation is in fact an attempt to safeguard the public. (My emphasis)

It looks like our vestigial feudal wing of government can duly show wisdom and insight when required, even in the face of their overlord, Prince Charles. Magna Carta rocks.

Despite Prince Charles FIH’s stated commitment to evidence based alternative medicine being ‘integrated’ with real medicine they avoid the evidence base like the plague. They embrace nonsense healing rituals like homeopathy and reflexology without appearing embarrassed about the utter lack of credibility for these techniques. Just check out their site. Can you spot any alternative medicine that Prince Charles says to avoid because of its lack of a credible scientific evidence base? I can see no reason why the claims of nutritional therapists will not be treated in exactly the same manner. As long as they can claim to hold some sort of training they well get the Ofquack seal of approval. The content of that training will not be important.

Andy Burman, in my opinion, is making the same mistake that everyone in the sorry tale of Ofquack is making - that the way to protect the public is to regulate the trades of alternative medicine in the same manner that you might regulate real medicine. The flaw with this idea is that you cannot regulate nonsense. Professor David Colquhoun has demonstrated the central weakness of Ofquack in the THES and on his own blog (1) (2). Is a homeopath a safer practitioner because they have successfully completed the modules that teach them that illness is caused by imbalances in the Vital Force and that a medicine's effectiveness increases with more dilution? Does a Nutritional Therapist, after completing professional development courses in Hair Mineral Analysis or Allergy Testing offer a better service to their punters or allow them to fleece the public better with fraudulent pill selling techniques?

We do not provide astrologers and psychics with state money to set up their own self-regulatory bodies. Instead we allow existing mechanisms to ensure the worst of their practices are curbed by using the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards to warn and prosecute where necessary. And it does not matter if a quack genuinely believes that reflexology foot massages can help you with constipation (or whatever). Many people genuinely believe pyramid selling schemes can get you rich. We do not offer accreditation and state regulation to the owners of pyramid schemes - no, we educate the public about their dangers and prosecute those who profit.

If we believe the public should have some protection from quacks, the answer is two-fold: public education and prosecution. Not accreditation and meaningless self-regulation that only serves to aggrandise. And in anycase, Ofquack is a dead duck and is doomed to whither, mainly because the quacks do not want to be regulated by any sort of outside body and self-regulation cannot compell them to become registered. In short, a monumental folly.

The BDA could and should be offering more public education. Every time there is some self-appointed and under-educated nutritionist on the day time television couches, the BDA should be ensuring the producers know what unstable ground they are on. In Germany, they fire TV nutritionists who spout nonsense and self-servingly promote their own quack products. We should be doing the same here. The BDA should be ensuring that the public see dietitians as the first port of call for dietary advice - not the last, after the nutritionists nuts have filled peoples' heads with dietary nonsense. And the BDA should be assisting the authorities where necessary to enforce existing advertising and trading standards legislation. The legislation is not perfect, but is a damn good start.

Can Andy Burman do an about turn and work with his colleagues at the BDA to this end? Let's hope so.

Labels: Natural Healthcare Council, nutritionist, ofquack, Prince Charles

 

It has not been a good few weeks to be a supporter of alternative medicine. We have seen reports that GP prescriptions of homeopathic remedies are in terminal collapse. A Nutritional therapist has had to get their insurers to fork out hundreds of thousands of pounds after a patient was left brain damaged. And of course, genocidal maniacs appear to be able to shift their talents quite easily into becoming homeopaths and live unnoticed for years.

In the Guardian, Rose Shapiro described how this was the week when "alternative medicine finally gets the reputation it deserves and is seen for what it is - a massive social and intellectual fraud". Not to be disheartened, the Prince of Wales is announcing large cash prizes for quacks that do well in infiltrating mainstream medicine. Or, in his words,

[The] prestigious Integrated Health Awards shine a spotlight on outstanding examples of how integrated health can make a real difference to people’s lives. Where treatment is offered they should draw on the best that mainstream medical science and complementary approaches have to offer in order to prevent illness and treat the whole person.

A Judges' Special Award is going to be made for "the project that in some way stands out from all the rest as a great example of integrated health." The prize money of £2,500 to each region is generously being provided by ConvaTec who make things like 'faecal incontinence management systems', which I thought was nicely ironic for an award for people who cannot stop spouting shit.

ConvaTec specialise mainly in 'wound care'. They are a subsidiary of Bristol-Myers Squibb; about as Big Pharma as you can get. BMS is as guilty of all sorts of dodgy commercial practices as any other Big Pharma company, including anti-competitive obstructive measures to stop the development of competitive generic versions of its cancer drugs.

I cannot wait for the results. Who in the alternative medicine world, is going to be prepared to accept the Big Pharma money? Will the homeopaths take the allopathic penny? Will the Reiki healers withstand the bad vibrations from the cheque? What a hoot.

Labels: Prince Charles

 

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people. - Jean de la Fontaine.

Quackery in the UK has friends in the highest places. Despite constitutional restrictions on the monarch's role in politics, our heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has decided to meddle most wholeheartedly in how public healthcare is provided.

The main channel for this interference is the Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health. This organisation claims not to promote alternative medicine, but instead to "offer healthcare which makes use of all appropriate therapeutic approaches, healthcare professionals and disciplines."

Strip away the rhetoric and what is revealed is the uncritical promotion of the public funding of quackery, fraudulent treatments and pseudoscience. 'Integrated health' is an idea borrowed from the American rebranding of alternative medicine. Rather than marketing quackery as 'alternative', it became 'complementary' and then 'integrative'. Quite how it is possible to integrate science with nonsense, reason with irrationality and thought with ignorance is never made clear.

Professor David Colquhoun has been recently exploring the rise of 'integrative medicine' in the USA. He says,

Remember that the terms ‘integrative’ and ‘complementary’ are euphemisms coined by quacks to make their wares sound more respectable, There is no point integrating treatments that don’t work with treatments that do work.

His blog entry charts the penetration of quackery into medical schools. Being America, money is the major motivational factor involved here and we are shown where the money to corrupt is coming from. One of these sources is the Bravewell Collaborative, a 'charity' run by the wife of the billionaire boss of Morgan Stanley. Bravewell conducts 'initiatives' to change the way physicians are educated. They want to ensure that American doctors are taught baloney treatments such as homeopathy and herbalism. Research is not the major focus - rather cash 'Leadership Awards' are made to those academics and doctors who 'champion' quackery in previously prestigious medical schools, such as Yale.

And so it is rather disturbing to see that Prince Charles has signed an agreement to "establish a partnership with the Bravewell Collaborative focused on improving the health of the public in both countries by advancing the use of integrated health."

We are beginning to see what this means. Already, the Prince's Foundation are offering all-expenses-paid 'Fellowships' to GPs and academics to become promoters of quackery within the NHS.

What we will not see is this money being used to understand if any alternative medicine actually works and to conduct research into the impact of quackery on the public health. Only one department in a medical school in the UK appears to undertaking proper academic research into this area under the Professorship of Edzard Ernst at Exeter University. Despite the fevered imaginations of homeopaths, this department is not awash with the dirty money of pharmaceutical companies and no doubt would benefit greatly from the committed income of philanthropic billionaires. But Prince Charles is no fan of Ernst as he has been rather effective at establishing a sound evidence base into the effectiveness of various alternative therapies - and that evidence base is not good news for quacks.

What Prince Charles and his mindless followers feel unable to grasp is the difference between the critical appraisal of alternative medicine and the unquestioning promotion of organisations like Bravewell. Ernst is an academic and has a 'love of truth' that our Prince feels so ready to abuse. Uncritical promotion will not serve patients well. It corrupts the notions of patient choice, informed consent and medical ethics. If Charles genuinely cares about the health of the nation he will one day reign, his ignorant fairy tale fantasies of magical cures need to be abandoned in favour of proper intellectual enquiry. At the very least, he could stop meddling in the politics of healthcare and simply shut up.

Labels: Bravewell, Prince Charles