The Quackometer

In a recent submission to the House of Commons Evidence Committee on Homeopathy, the Society of Homeopaths proudly assert that,

The Society has long been committed to the highest standards for homeopathy, having run a voluntary regulatory system for the last 30 years and a course recognition process for the last 15 years. Further, it was the first homeopathy organisation to institute a Code of Ethics & Practice. Members must meet the stringent standards of competence for clinical and administrative practice set by the Society. Consequently our members are trained to very high academic and professional standards.

The government appears to be convinced that the public can be protected by ensuring that the practitioners of pseudomedical treatments have had proper, accredited training. Setting up the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack) is predicated on that only people who have met standards of training can be registered.

I would suggest that the exact opposite is true. That training in irrational beliefs is likely to create a more dangerous practitioner.

To highlight my concerns, I want to discuss some course notes that arrived in my post. They were sent to me by a homeopath (let me call her P) who, after a great deal of reflection, had become quite concerned about what and how she had been taught.

The notes consist of a course outline, handouts and hand-written notes and describe a series of lectures on treating cancer with homeopathy. All the courses were given by the same lecturer, let’s call him homeopath H, at a college that was one of the first accredited by the Society.

First of all, it is quite a shock to see that a homeopathy college is giving lectures on treating cancer with homeopathy. Let us remember that homeopathy is just a chat and sugar pills. One would have thought that the best a homeopath can do is be supportive of their customer when going through difficult treatments – basic tea and sympathy. We would expect the homeopath to comply with the Society’s Code of Ethics and ensure that they have a “sound, open, co-operative and professional relationship” with their customer’s GP and act within “the bounds of their legal and ethical responsibilities and competencies”.

However, my previous investigations of homeopathy in the UK would suggest the exact opposite is true; that the Code of Ethics is a mere unenforced fig leaf and that homeopaths are trained to have a huge antipathy towards real medical practitioners. Furthermore, what homeopaths say to the outside world is quite different from what they say to each other.

These course notes are a horrifying example of this. Breathtaking in their stupidity, arrogance and cruelty.

At the centre of the lectures is a detailed case history and video of the treatment of a patient with cancer. Patient J appears to be refusing to speak to his GP anymore and H starts off by advising the patient to eat organic brown rice and drink spring water “to detox as quickly as possible”. Right from the word go, the homeopath puts their customer on a very restrictive diet for nonsensical reasons.

It gets much worse.

The lectures describe the homeopath’s responses to the progression of J’s illness and why different sugar pills are selected. And it is worth remembering this as you read the notes. No matter what justifications are given for each pill selection, J will have been given just plain sugar pills: the only difference being what might have been written on the labels.

A word of warning is given to the students on the course:

It is illegal to treat cancer. Treat patients who happen to have cancer

So, the lecturer understands that as homeopaths, advertising and offering to treat cancer would be breaking the law. Never mind. Use some weasel words in a shallow attempt to circumvent such inconveniences. Now, before I go on, I would say that I fully understand and could support genuine complementary therapies helping people with cancer cope with the emotional trauma of their disease and treatments. This is not what we see here though. We see nothing complementing a patient’s treatment and nothing about just happening to treat people who may have cancer. These notes describe a direct attempt to rid J of their cancer, no matter what word trickery H tries to pull.

Indeed, the antipathy to real treatments is clear in the notes. It is even suggested that it might be the chemotherapy (Rx) that kills patients:

It is the Rx that kills them. When people choose only to be treated homeopathically – have to have strength of character to see it through - pressure from allopaths and family.

It is not clear who has to have the ‘strength of character’. No doubt the patient must have their beliefs reinforced that homeopathy will save them, but also that the homeopaths must not buckle and allow the patient to return to real treatment.

Doctors are described as ‘allopaths’, the derogatory term used by the creator of homeopathy for those that did not adhere to his methods. From its inception, homeopath was never intended to be a complementary medicine to anything. It was designed as a complete system of medicine in its own right – suitable for everything and everyone. (The Society of Homeopaths still describes its methods as such on its home page.) Worse, Samuel Hahnemann saw the cause of many diseases as being due to treatments from ‘allopaths’. These beliefs obviously continue into current courses.

The students are told that,

Cancer in unvaccinated people tends to be in older people.

Another, near universal dogma amongst homeopaths are that vaccinations are ineffective and are actually the cause of many illness. Most see a conspiracy amongst ‘allopaths’ to keep us ill and in need of their drugs. The implication in these notes is that unvaccinated people are healthier and do not get cancer until later in life. These cancers, we are told, are slower growing and due to ‘psora’ (mythical homeopathic causes of illness), not vaccines, and these types of cancer ‘don’t kill them’.

If homeopathy is so good, then homeopaths are going to need good excuses for why their treatments fail. Homeopathy has had two hundred years to come up with good excuses. Again, allopathic drugs can destroy a patients ‘vitality’. H tells his students,

Not everyone has the vitality to deal with tumours – some people reabsorb – some people form calcification around it.

For those patients who kill themselves, “most people who commit suicide have been on antidepressants.”

The lecture notes are full of details about what homeopathic remedy can be used with what cancer symptoms. You can see similar sorts of nonsense on popular homeopathy web sites, such as hpathy. Along with these remedies, there are lots of unevidenced and irrational assertions about the nature of cancer, such as,

Breasts are the seat of mothering and there is usually a mothering issue in breast cancer.

When pain continues it is usually because we are denying something. When we deal with issue, pain goes away.

These ‘emotional’ issues are important for homeopaths as they see this as being ‘holistic’. We must not think that in describing these emotional states homeopaths are attempting to treat specifically these states – no, treating these emotions is indistinguishable from treating the disease. The direct implication is if that a sugar pill remedy can counter ‘mother issues’, the breast cancer will go away.

The remedy selection also contains advice for how to treat patients who have refused to go it alone with homeopathy and are also being treated in a hospital. There are remedies to ‘strengthen the kidneys’ after chemotherapy and bizarrely,

Potentised MRI can be used after scans.

Quite what this means is at first a little difficult to fathom. However, homeopathy is not just about diluted herbs. This is an example of an one of the more bizarre remedies where an ‘intangible’ essence is captured, usually by holding some vial in the vicinity of what you wish to make a remedy from, and then carrying out your magic dilution. You can find remedies made from ‘mobile phone’, the ‘light from venus’ and ‘antimatter’. Here, the MRI scan has been capture to counteract the bad effects (whatever they are) from an MRI scan.

It gets much worse.

At some point during the treatment of J, it became clear that he had TB and that this was being treated by a dreaded ‘allopath’ with their poisonous cocktail of drugs.

The lecture notes describe the drug regime that J was on. H makes it clear that TB is a notifiable disease.

Now has TB – TB notifiable disease.

So have to have Rx by law – or can be sectioned.

TB is notifiable because it is contagious and dangerous, killing about half of untreated infected people. Very effective treatments now exist, but it takes a long time on a cocktail of drugs which can have side effects.

In the notes, H appears to conspire with the patient to only take rifampicin, which can colour urine red, and another drug which may show up in a urine test, to convince the doctors that the treatment regime was being adhered to. In place of the real therapy, J is given more homeopathy and vitamin pills. (H, the lecturer, also runs an online vitamin store.)

P’s notes simply say, “This was illegal – [H]’s conscience dictated what he did.”

You may be shocked by this and quite rightly. Taking only part of the drug regime can lead to very bad complications, such as drug resistance. Such actions stand a high chance of killing someone with TB. But, even within the world of homeopathy, such actions are explicitly forbidden by the code of ethics. We can only ask, just what does this code mean when a homeopaths ‘conscience’ so easily overrides it?

J did not get better, as you might have guessed. The case study documents the terrible pain, fear and inevitable deterioration experienced by someone essentially untreated for cancer. Eventually, J declines further homeopathic help and dies some time later.

Now, all I have here is one student’s notes from a lecture series that happened over a decade ago. The college that this took place in has since changed hands. The lecturer is now running another accredited college and has since been made a Fellow of his registration body for services to homeopathy.

But this is not the only evidence to suggest that serious disconnects are manifest between the stated code of ethics of homeopaths and the actual practice of homeopaths in their training. Blogger ‘land tim forgot’ has documented his concerns about the Allen College of Homeopathy and their approach to cancer. Again, shocking stuff. Edzard Ernst has been reported in the BMJ talking about how the Society of Homeopaths appear to break their own code of ethics on their web site by posting “speculative," "misleading," and "deceptive" statements.

Can we really trust homeopaths to police themselves? The answer is a resounding ‘no’. They have failed to stop the extremes in their trade that threaten lives. They refused to condemn the homeopaths caught out handing out sugar pills to prevent malaria. When the WHO issued a statement saying homeopathy should not be used for the treatment of HIV/Aids, they resorted to misleading bluster. And it appears to be not just a fringe that have dangerous views. Fundamentalist approaches to homeopathy are taught as mainstream. In discussions with P, she tells me homeopathy in the UK has become dominated with a dogmatic approach to issues and that those that might question lecturers are bullied into silence.

Homeopathy in the UK has become a pseudomedical cult where the novitiates are quickly taught not to question, where conspiracy theories about Big Pharma are used to ensure external criticism is ignored and where irresponsible practices are taught as heroic actions.

All homeopaths need is blind and ignorant faith. One line in the cancer notes chillingly stood out,

If you do not understand what is going on – trust and wait. Homeopathy is the ability to trust and wait.

And in the meantime, their patients are being denied life saving treatments. Their fears about medicine are being turned into a distrust of doctors. Their autonomy is being replaced with false hope. Their chances for a longer life are being replaced by conspiratorial fantasy. This is not complementary medicine. It is the despair of our capacity for irrationality and delusion.

Labels: homeopathy, regulation, Society of Homeopaths

 

As I write this, two married Australian homeopaths are spending their first nights in gaol as they begin prison sentences for six and four years respectively for the manslaughter of their baby daughter, Gloria.

This is a tragic, not least for the convicted parents. A nine month old baby died unnecessarily in the most horrific way because of her parent’s belief in the superiority and power of homeopathic sugar pills. Gloria suffered from severe eczema where the sores became severely infected. She constantly cried in pain and her skin became broken and oozing with fluid. She became malnourished and died.

This case has very important implications for those who are seeking better ways to regulate the so-called ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM) sector here in the UK. Understanding the nature of this tragedy will highlight the shortcomings of the approaches being taken by the government.

The parents of baby Gloria Thomas have been branded “cruel”, “arrogant” and “irresponsible”. The couple wept in the dock and it is easy to understand why. It is not just the loss of their daughter, or their impending incarceration, but almost undoubtedly their complete failure to understand what has happened to them.

This gulf may be difficult to grasp by those who do not understand the nature of homeopathy and see it just as a natural and safe complementary medicine. It is nothing of the sort. Whilst its pills are completely safe (they are just sugar pills), the homeopathic belief system is quite dangerous. Homeopathy does not define itself as complementary. It is not designed to assist treatments by real medicine. Homeopathy defines itself as ‘a compete system of medicine’ in its own right and, importantly, it defines itself in conflicting opposition to what homeopaths call ‘allopathy’ – or mainstream medicine. Homeopathy is strictly alternative.

The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, was keen to discover the universal laws of health and to create general and complete principles of healing. Homeopathy is the result. Indeed, Hahnemann saw chronic disease as actually being caused by other forms of non-homeopathic treatment and that deviations from the strict homeopathic doctrines as being disastrous for health. The Society of Homeopaths describe homeopathy on the front page of their site as a “complete system of medicine”. It describes how homeopathy can treat “all a patients symptoms”. This is a system that is not presented as a complement to other therapies, but a full system in its own right.

These belief systems persist for many interesting reasons. In two hundred years, the homeopathic principles have not been underpinned with an evidence base of any reliable sort. Worse, the principles have been shown to be in direct contradiction with well established principles of physics and chemistry. Homeopathy is magical in its nature, not scientific. The beliefs persist not because of their veracity but because they are taught within a cult-like atmosphere. The homeopath, Michael Bridger writes that,

The unwritten rule is not to be critical or try to define. No one has to publicly burn the books; you simply deify the inane and render critical thought unfashionable. Politically, this is a sophisticated form of authoritarianism; medically and clinically, it is the seeds of psychosis.

Recently, another homeopath has commented on Gimpy’s blog about the cult like nature of homeopathy. She describes it as a ‘pyramid scheme’, and like all successful pyramid schemes you need to ‘sell the dream.’ In her words, “We alone care about health – everyone else (Big Pharma, allopaths, EU, WHO, in conscious conspiracy, only wish to destroy health.” and, importantly for the case of Gloria, “You can be a part of saving the world’s health – but you have to be brave enough to tackle any case”.

I have recently received in the post some lecture notes from a UK homeopathy school accredited by the Society of Homeopaths. The notes describe a case of someone with a notifiable disease who was treated homeopathically without alerting the authorities, on the basis that the homeopath’s conscience dictated that he should not. To legally notify an allopath would be to alert the enemy, no doubt. When treating cancer homeopathically, the students are told to ‘trust and wait’. I will be writing more about this soon. Being trained to avoid medicine and trust only in homeopathy is mainstream thought in homeopathy, not exceptional.

The other cult-like aspect of homeopathy is its insistence in believing in a spiritual force that is being manipulated by the pills. According to Hahnemann, it is the ‘Vital Force’ that needs help with the pills. This is a vitalistic belief system with no place in modern science. As such, homeopathy is a spiritual belief which requires adherents to accept this quasi-religious world view.

In this light we can see that the parents of Gloria were doing what they were trained to do by the cult of homeopathy. If they had been trained well and had bought into the whole Hahnamanian philosophy then to take their seriously ill baby to an ‘allopath’ would have put it in danger. The only method to treat Gloria was with sugar pills. Homeopaths are taught that symptoms inevitably get worse when treated homeopathically. An ‘aggrevation’ is the remedy working the illness out of the body. No doubt as Gloria deteriorated, their training would have told them that this was a ‘good thing’ and that they should ‘trust and wait’. Her death must have been quite unexpected.

The parents of Gloria Thomas are not an exception. They are not an extreme. They have been good homeopaths and have merely been unlucky and had the misfortune to have the courage to stick with their beliefs. We can see on homeopathic discussion boards that tensions exist about resorting to real medicine when things look bad and that the choice of sticking with homeopathy is a question of “staying strong”. I have written before about the prominent UK homeopath Grace Da Silva-Hill MSc LCPH MARH MAAMET RGN who says about the fatal childhood illness of bacterial meningitis that “It requires a great deal of trust between patient and homeopath, for a serious acute to be treated solely with homeopathy.” Grace also is a supporter of homeopathic treatments for malaria in West Africa.

The implication in all of this is that even with very serious illnesses the homeopath has to stay true and believe in their cult and not betray their beliefs by accessing the outside world and their allopathic ways. Their education is full of denouncements of mainstream medical practice. It is a fundamental part of the creed that vaccinations are harmful and that chemotherapy is a killer. Medical drugs are a collection of side effects and not effective in their own right. Conspiracy theories abound about how ‘Big Pharma’ is out to destroy homeopathy. Harald Walach, Research Professor in Psychology at the University of Northampton has written that homeopaths should “Be proud, not afraid, fight back and don’t duck.” in light of the conspiracy theory that ‘Big Pharma’ is attacking them for homeopathic ‘successes’. Robert Davidson, a founder of one of the London homeopathy schools, describes how Pharmaceutical companies are trying to eliminate things like vitamins “to ensure sickness, so that everyone has to take drugs with no other choices available”. He says they are “evil, so totally evil”. Cults need their evil opponents to survive.

How many Gloria Thomas’s are there out there? It is difficult to know. We hope Gloria is at the extreme end of cases. But how many cancer patients needlessly delay treatment? How many chronic illnesses remain untreated due to such beliefs? Part of the problem is that homeopaths themselves do not collate the sort of records that would help us answer these types of questions. Sites such as What’s the Harm gathers news stories but these must be the tip of the iceberg. In Africa, where missionary homeopaths use homeopathic pills prophylactically to prevent malaria or even treat HIV we can have little idea how much harm is being done. The homeopathic belief is absolute. The current regulatory bodies such as the Society of Homeopaths refuse to discipline their members or even criticise them for taking part in such activities. Understanding homeopathy as a cult makes it easy to see why.

So how can we protect other Glorias? The homeopaths themselves will do nothing. There will be no response to this tragedy from the Society of Homeopaths, the medical Faculty of Homeopaths or even Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health. When criticism of homeopathy strikes, these organisation most often engage in bluster and obfuscation – or simply ignore the problem.

But, the government recognises that harm can be done by alternative medicine and that some sort of framework needs to be in place to protect the vulnerable. There could be no more vulnerable victim than Gloria, and indeed future infants like her deserve protection. And it is not just homeopaths we need worry about. Chiropractors display similar cult-like attitudes, and indeed much of alternative medicine appears to use similar anti-medical rhetoric to define itself and lock its members into cultish denial. You need only look at at sites such as What Doctors Don’t Tell You to understand the mentality of people attracted to such beliefs.

Unfortunately, UK government, like many other governments, appears to believe that regulating such practices is best done in a way similar to medical practitioners: registration and accreditation of training.

The folly of this is to believe that in doing this you are regulating health care professionals. You are not. You are trying to protect the public from health-threatening cultish beliefs. This is not medicine – it is pseudo-medicine with deluded practitioners. We do not protect people from Scientologists by formally recognising their leaders and giving their ‘Bishops’ seats in the House of Lords. And neither should we protect people from homeopaths by giving them protected title and a stamp of official approval from the Health Professions Council.

The government has pumped lots of money into a new organisation called the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (Ofquack) that claims its primary goal is to “protect the public by means of regulating practitioners on a voluntary register for complementary and natural healthcare practitioners”. It does this by ensuring their members have “undertaken a programme of education and training which meets, as a minimum, the National Occupational Standards for that profession/discipline”. It appears to think that by ensuring that an alternative therapist has been through training then people are protected. Gloria’s legacy should be to show us that this is not the case. Training is the problem, not the solution.

The National Occupational Standards scheme has tried to draw up standards for homeopathic education. These standards are to ensure that practitioners have the right “knowledge and understanding”. But as Professor David Colquhoun says, “no attention whatsoever is paid to the little problem of whether the “knowledge and understanding” are pure gobbledygook or not.” The problem is caused by the fact that these standards were set up in consultation with the Society of Homeopaths; the very people whose members’ beliefs the next baby Gloria needs protecting from. I once complained to the Society of Homeopaths about a homeopath who set up an eczema and asthma clinic. Despite obvious breaches of their own code of ethics, and that the Advertising Standards Authority concluded that this homeopath made “untruthful, unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims”, the Society decided there was no case to answer. The Society of Homeopaths believed that their time was better spent attempting to sue me.

In France, it is illegal to practice Homeopathy without a medical license. There is no such thing as lay homeopathy there and the Society of Homeopaths would be an illegal organisation. How much this protects people though is debatable. France has an enormous over-the-counter homeopathy trade through pharmacies, with Boiron, a homeopathic sugar pill manufacturer, making hundreds of millions of Euros from their big vat of sugar pills. The French self-medicate with homeopathy and their doctors are free to dish them out, although the state is fortunately reducing the amount it reimburses people for sugar pills. At least if a doctor prescribes a sugar pill when a placebo treatment is not required, then the regulatory bodies could well step in.

In the UK, we appear to be moving in the direction of legitimising various forms of quackery through various forms of state approval and recognition through statutory regulation. It is a disastrous move. There are currently reviews taking place for the regulation of acupuncture and herbal medicine. The same problems exist there with degree courses in Chinese medicine teaching students how to weasel word around regulation when making claims to treat cancer. Regulation of this style will put people at risk. The chiropractors have already achieved protected title and statutory regulation. This may not last much longer though as the regulator buckles under the weight of hundreds of complaints about chiropractors bogusly claiming to treat children’s illnesses in the light of the Simon Singh affair.

I believe a significant part of the answer is already with us. We do not need new regulation and statutory recognition of pseudo-medical cults. We need prosecution.

We already have the laws that say you cannot make false claims when selling goods and services. The Trading Standards laws are explicit in saying you cannot make false medicinal claims. What is not happening is enforcement of these laws as Trading Standards do not appear to have the training to go after these sorts of breaches. I would think it would be far more cost effective to provide this training rather than set up useless regulatory regimes for registering quacks.

The other change that would greatly help is for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency(MHRA) to drop its ridiculous stance on believing you only have to ensure homeopathic medicines are safe. No one disputes sugar pills are intrinsically safe – there is nothing in them. The MHRA though allow homeopaths to submit pseudoscientific ‘traditional’ evidence for a pill’s effectiveness so that they can make claims on packets. The MHRA legitimises dangerous quackery with homeopathy and it undermines its authority in doing so.

In summary, protecting future children like baby Gloria will require authorities to abandon the belief that they need to regulate homeopaths like medical practitioners and instead treat them according to the more accurate picture of them being a pseudo-medical and mystical cult with dangerous and irrational beliefs.

Labels: CNHC, Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, homeopathy, ofquack, Society of Homeopaths, SoH, the law

 

The last time I said that, the Society tried to sue me and my web hosts for defamation. So let’s say it again. They are a shambles and a bad joke. Worse, their irresponsible behaviour puts lives at risk.

Today the World Health Organisation condemned the use of homeopathy for dangerous diseases such as malaria, AIDS and childhood diarrhea. It has taken a very long time for them to do this and has been a result of a campaign by the Voice of Young Science to draw attention to the murderous practices of Western homeopaths in Africa who dish out useless sugar pills in an attempt to prevent and cure these fatal diseases.

The Society of Homeopaths have been at the root of the problem here. Many of the homeopaths involved in this dangerously misguided enterprise are members of the Society and they have done nothing to stop their members from exporting their healing fantasies to some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Indeed, the Society hold conferences highlighting the use of sugar pills for such illnesses. They refuse to uphold their own code of conduct when these excesses are pointed out and they legally threaten people like me who shine a light into their shenaningans.

So, how do the Society respond to the WHO issuing this warning? Their press release is a text book example of disingenuousness, cherry picking and diversion.

They say,

[B]oth the BBC and WHO have failed to acknowledge the evidence base for the use of homeopathy in the treatment of childhood diarrhoea in which, using randomised, double-blinded trials, the results were significant versus placebo(1).

They then cite two studies and a meta-analysis. It is worth quoting them in full…

Treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea in Nicaragua
This trial involved 81 children aged from 6 months to 5 years in a randomised, double-blind trial of intravenous fluids plus placebo versus intravenous fluids plus homeopathic remedy individualised to the patient. The treatment group had a statistically significant decrease in duration of diarrhoea.
Jacobs J. Treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea with homeopathic medicine: a randomized clinical trial in Nicaragua. Pediatrics 1994; 93: 719-725.

Treatment of acute childhood diarrhoea, repeated in Nepal
In a replication of a trial carried out in Nicaragua in 1994, 116 Nepalese children aged 6 months to 5 years suffering from diarrhoea were given an individualised homoeopathic medicine or placebo. Treatment by homoeopathy showed a significant improvement in the condition in comparison to placebo.
Jacobs J., Jimenez M., Malthouse S., Chapman E., Crothers D., Masuk M., Jonas W.B., Acute Childhood Diarrhoea- A Replication., Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 6, 2000, 131-139.

A meta-analysis of childhood diarrhoea trials
This meta-analysis of 242 children showed a highly significant result in the duration of childhood diarrhoea (P=0.008). It should be noted that the World Health Organisation consider childhood diarrhoea to be the number one public health problem today because of the millions of children who die every year from dehydration from diarrhoea.
J. Jacobs, WB Jonas, M Jimenez-Perez, D Crothers, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Meta-analysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials

Let’s be a little bit more comprehensive. The Society have cherry picked their studies and failed to acknowledge the sticking points.

Here are all the trials published on childhood diarrhoea and homeopathy, including the ones the Society failed to mention.

1. Jacobs J, Jimenez LM, Gloyd SS, et al. Treatment of acute childhood diarrhea with homeopathic medicine: a randomized clinical trial in Nicaragua. Pediatrics. 1994;93:719–725.
2. Jacobs J, Jimenez LM, Malthouse S, et al. Homeopathic treatment of acute childhood diarrhea: results from a clinical trial in Nepal. J Altern Complement Med. 2000;6:131–139.
3. Jacobs J, Jimenez LM, Gloyd SS, et al. Homeopathic treatment of acute childhood diarrhea: a randomized clinical trial in Nicaragua. Br Homeopath J. 1993;82:83–86.
4. Jacobs J, Guthrie BL, Montes GA et al. Homeopathic combination remedy in the treatment of acute childhood diarrhea in honduras. J Altern Complement Med. 2006;12:723-32.

The obvious thing is that they have all been done by the same author. So, an alarm bell should ring that these studies have not been independently replicated.

The first of these studies was perhaps the most important, being published in a real journal, and not a CAM comic, and showing a 'significant' effect. The next issue of the journal contained a rather damning critique,

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/96/5/961

Analysis of Homeopathic Treatment of Childhood Diarrhea by Sampspon and London.

They concluded,

"In summary: 1) The study used an unreliable and unproved diagnostic and therapeutic scheme; 2)There was no control for product adulteration; 3)Treatment selection was arbitrary; 4) The data were placed into odd groupings without explanation, and contained errors and unexplained inconsistencies; 5) The results were not clinically significant and were probably not statistically significant; 6) There was no public health significance; 7) Selection of references was incomplete and biased to support the claims of the article, and references were quoted inaccurately; and 8) Editorializations were inappropriate."

When Jacobs did her own metaanalysis of the first three trials she acknowledged the lack of statistical power in these studies and recommended larger trials. She did the fourth larger trial (which was also of better quality) and surprise surprise,

The homeopathic combination therapy tested in this study did not significantly reduce the duration or severity of acute diarrhea in Honduran children.

The result of this careful study was that the homeopathic treatment was no better than a placebo. But the homeopath authors do not conclude that homeopath did not work, they speculate the tablets had not been stored properly or that the wrong combination of sugar pills was made. At no point do they propose as a possibility that homeopathy can have absolutely no effect on a third-world child with the squits. And joking aside, diarrhea kills hundreds of thousands of children around the world, so intellectual honesty in studies like this, is not an optional add-on.

The Society of Homeopaths have failed to note these severe shortcomings. I can only conclude that the Society of Homeopaths are intellectually dishonest and only interested in misrepresenting science for the sake of their shabby trade.

The Society cannot be trusted to give meaningful health advice and to rein in the dangerous practices of their members. In giving out this misleading press release, the Society once again endanger children’s lives.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

Appearing on the Society of Homeopath’s web site is a report that a member has been struck off their register. This is the first instance that I am aware of where the self-regulating body has taken the step of removing someone from their register regarding matters of their practice.

(Yes, SoH has removed people before and you can see a report on the same page, but this looks as if it was an offence concerning more to do with ‘relationships’ with a customer, rather than as a result of their direct practice.)

So, Ms. Alex Christie RSHom has been removed from the register. She is of course still free to practice and will simply be relieved of having to pay SoH her subscription fees. She may well join one of the other 'regulators' or just continue to practice without registration in her work at Neal’s Yard Remedies.

What was Ms Christie’s offence? The Society do not make this clear. There is no press release about this. No statement to warn the public about the nature of the problem. No reminder to homeopaths about the boundaries of what they should be doing.

What we do get is a list of rules that Christie has supposedly broken. We can see that she broke the rule that said that:

A competent homeopath identifies those occasions when a patient’s condition is:

• Beyond the present limits of their clinical competence and expertise
• Likely to receive more immediate, effective benefit from another form of treatment
• Showing signs and symptoms suggestive of an underlying condition which requires referral for investigation and other medical diagnosis

Of course, the problem with this rule is that homeopaths are systematically incompetent. By believing rather arrogantly that sugar pills are a ‘complete system of medicine, suitable for everyone’, as the Society describes homeopathy, then naturally we might see few expressed limits on competence. Indeed, we see wild claims that sugar pills can cure everything from hay fever, autism to cancer. One might jest that a client is ‘likely to receive more immediate, effective benefit from another form of treatment ‘ when they are simply ill. This rule, if honestly applied, could strike off any homeopath at any time for making claims that cannot be justified.

Given that homeopaths actually believe their sugar pills work magic, then it is difficult to see how a panel of homeopaths can decide that another homeopath is practicing beyond their expertise. The Society of Homeopaths has held conferences of homeopathic treatments for AIDS and shows no signs that this might be dangerous and murderous nonsense. Their directors believe sugar pills can replace childhood inoculations and even replace vaccines for dangerous third world diseases. Whatever Christie did, she must have really upset someone within the Society.

Tellingly, we are told that Christie broke the rule that says “When dealing with cases of a serious and possibly terminal nature, ensure that the patient is fully aware of the advisability of keeping their GP informed of their condition.” Homeopaths are renowned for denouncing modern medicine. Their founder, Samual Hahnemann, defined homeopathy in opposition to medicine and indeed blamed medicine for chronic illness. This paranoia and hostility is openly evident still on homeopathic discussion forums. Homeopaths are in denial of two hundred years of medical progress.It is no wonder that members might give misleading advice to their clients.

What is quite remarkable about this is that the Society of Homeopaths has received lots of complaints over the past year or so about homeopaths blatantly breaching their code of ethics, giving dangerous advice about their magic versions of vaccination and selling sugar pills as a malaria prophylactic and all these have been met with stonewalling, obfuscation and a refusal to recognise the problem.

So, why act now? That is a bit of a mystery. We know that the Society want to hand over their regulation activities to the Health Professions Council. Perhaps they are trying to appear to carry out what they say they carry out.

Perhaps thought there is more to this story that will reveal itself over time and that this move is tactical. That would be my bet. We shall surely find out soon.

Labels: regulation, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

This is an open letter to all homeopaths in the UK.

It has been a bit of a surprise to me to learn that the Society of Homeopaths is wanting to lobby the Health Professions Council to include homeopathy within its regulation remit. As such, you will receive protected title (only registered homeopaths will be able to call themselves that) and be held against a code of standards and ethics.

Why do you want to do this? I can guess some of the reasons.

Homeopathy has always battled to be recognised – both as a science and as a healing profession. Deep within the homeopathic mindset is a belief that you hold a valuable principle of healing, if not the fundamental theory of healing. Over two centuries you have battled to gain acceptance and validation against what you see as a hostile (even conspiratorial) medical profession. You call the medical profession allopaths and define yourselves in opposition to your own picture of them.

Undoubtedly, you see that statutory regulation will put yourself at least on a par with doctors. You will no longer legally be invisible in the healing professions. But there are other more economic reasons too. Being statutorily registered will make it easier to gain referrals from the huge source of cash that is the NHS. It will also make it easier to get payments from private health insurers. You won’t have to pay VAT, although I doubt many of you make enough to have to worry about that. Universities have recently said that they will not teach BSc courses to train homeopathic practitioners unless they achieve statutory regulation.

So, the prize appears to be huge. Recognition, financial gain and the secured future of your profession through accredited education. The Society of Homeopaths can free itself of the tedious burden of having to pretend to regulate you and instead become something like the BCA and concentrate more on trying to sue its critics.

But what of the cost? Such rewards will come at a price – and I am amazed that the Society of Homeopaths believes you will wish to pay that price.

First, before we look at what this might all mean for homeopathy, I would suggest that the path to Statutory regulation will not be easy. I am sure you are aware that there are many people who think such a step would be absurd, myself included. Homeopathy has failed in two hundred years to make any progression in showing that it is nothing other than a inert treatment based on pre-scientific and magical thinking. The basic science to show that your principles are true is not there. My own simple challenge to homeopaths to demonstrate their fundamental propositions has not been taken up in 85 weeks. More damningly, in the two hundred years since homeopathy was invented, our scientific understanding of medicine, chemistry and physics has moved on enormously and it clearly shows that homeopathy is not just implausible but is utterly contradicted by everything we know about the world. Homeopathy lies outside of reason and science. It is a pseudo-medicine and is just a placebo therapy. It is just not tenable to hold any other position.

To gain statutory regulation, you will have to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to have meaningful standards in education and training for a pseudoscientific subject. That is not impossible – the current government has on the whole failed to see the problem with regulating absurd treatments. It is funding Ofquack, the Prince Charles backed Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, as a voluntary regulator for a rag bag of quack practitioners. The government does not appear to see that upholding such people to high degrees of training and competence is problematic when such people believe in absurdities. I would suggest though that the HPC may well be tougher judges than Prince Charles.

So, onto the costs. In order to appreciate what such regulation might mean for homeopaths it is worth looking at what it has done for other statutorily regulated alternative medicines. Chiropractic would be a good example.

The regulation of chiropractic was not without its controversy. The Society of Homeopaths claim that 65% of its members support the route to such regulation. The Society of Homeopaths only represents 65% of homeopaths, so we can only be sure that 42% of homeopaths support such a route. Even then, this survey was taken in 2006 and a lot has changed since then. I would be very surprised if this support has grown. Are the majority of you in favour of this move? Chiropractors were also split when the Chiropractic Act was brought in. Many saw it as an attempt to control their practice and restrict what they could do. Chiropractic philosophy appears to embrace a libertarian stance and many resented passing control of their work to people who may not share their beliefs and views. Some were worried that the move had conspiratorial overtones of the medical community trying to suppress an alternative to them. There were quite a few who refused to be registered and had to cease calling themselves chiropractors and instead called themselves simply spinal manipulators or even the grand sounding osteomyologists.

Over a decade later, the political infighting still continues. Many resent that the McTimoney Chiropractors were let into the exclusive regulated club. McTimoney is seen as a chiropractic heresy where bones are not cracked so violently and training takes place through part-time courses. It is not seen as being real chiropractic and the practitioners as being undertrained – through cheaper courses. It represents a threat to the chiropractors who will have invested well over £40,000 in fees for their training at one of the other two ‘real’ chiropractic colleges.

The General Chiropractic Council, the regulatory body, appears to be popularly despised by the ordinary chiropractor. It is seen as heavy handed in its regulation, costly and not in tune with chiropractors’ needs (to be left alone). It has no duty to promote chiropractic but only to protect the public and enforce its code of conduct. It is also increasingly dominated by lay representatives – chiropractors are getting a smaller voice in its running. Much of this resentment has been well documented on the chiropractic blog chiropracticlive.com.

When the British Chiropractic Association decided to sue Simon Singh for criticising the lack of evidence base for the treatments it was promoting, I doubt they understood the difficulty they would be putting their members in because of the very fact that they were statutory regulated. The ensuing debate has exposed the non existent foundations of much of chiropractic care and this has led to an unprecedented number of complaints being made to the GCC about chiropractors misleading the public on their websites for the effectiveness of the treatments they offered. There are now perhaps 20-30% of the entire chiropractic profession undergoing statutory complaints procedures which could result in the loss of their registration and their ability to practice.

The mistake the government and chiropractors made in accepting statutory regulation was allowing it to go ahead before chiropractors could demonstrate that they were not simply a vestigial remnant of Victorian back cracking quackery. Now, chiropractors find themselves being held to the highest forms of professionalism and practice without an evidence base for pretty much anything they do. It is now possible that chiropractic in the UK will not survive the current onslaught of professional complaints and trading standards investigations being pursued against them. What will come out the other side is pretty much anyone's guess, but I am pretty sure it is not a situation that the majority of chiropractors would have wished for in their quest for recognition.

And this is what I find extraordinary about the attempt by homeopaths to join the HPC. At present, the nightmare that is happening to chiropractors cannot happen to homeopaths. Despite what you say, you have had the freedom of living without any form of genuine regulation. The Society of Homeopaths has never ruled against a homeopath for the way they practice when when faced with clear breaches of the code of ethics. Homeopaths have been free to indulge in whatever delusions they fancy without fear of sanction. You have claimed to treat malaria and AIDS and have done so without a single voice of censure from within the lay homeopathic trade. You have no idea what it is like to be regulated and to be subject to a real code of ethics and practice. I suggest you pop along to your nearest chiropractor to find out what it is like.

And I must say that chiropractors have it fairly easy. Their treatments (at least for lower back pain) have an air of plausibility and some evidence for effectiveness. Homeopaths lack these luxuries of plausibility and reliable evidence for anything. What makes your situation worse is that your belief set is acutely in conflict with those who will become your statutory medical colleagues. You regularly undermine public healthcare messages about childhood inoculation and believe your sugar pills are an alternative. You show no sense of boundaries for what you can reasonably hope to achieve and make claims to be a superior treatment for everything from asthma and swine flu to autism and cancer. Do you really believe you could continue with your alternative beliefs in a statutory world? And they are alternative. Whilst you denounce the side effects of real medicine as being avoidable by homeopathy you pitch yourself against the medical world. And I doubt that a regulated profession could last long with such rhetoric.

Homeopaths. You have never had it so good. And you do not realise it. You are pretty much free from any constraint on what you say and do. You may moan about the continuous criticism you get from people like me – but that is the worst you have to suffer at the moment – criticism. If by some fluke you do manage to achieve full regulation, expect your cosy world to come crashing down very fast. Your quest for regulatory recognition will be hubris. It took over fifteen years for the chiropractors to realise they had been practising on borrowed time. Your regulatory nemesis will come much quicker.

Labels: British Chiropractic Association, chiropractors, CNHC, Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, homeopathy, regulation, Society of Homeopaths, SoH, the law

 

Today has seen lots of extraordinary news in the world of quackery. I am rushing around too much to digest it all fully, but I thought some of it deserved a brief mention.

We hear today that Steve Jobs of Apple is to step down as top dog at apple while he battles with health problems. The Guardian reports that it took some time earlier to persuade him to undergo surgery for his cancer as he was trying a 'homeopathic diet' - whatever that is. I sincerely wish Mr Jobs a full and speedy recovery. We cannot live without your gadget-tastic influence in our lives. Please, stay off the woo.

Next, the Times Higher reports that Salford is to close its Quack BSc course. We are told that "The University of Salford is to stop offering undergraduate degrees in acupuncture and complementary medicine because they are no longer considered "a sound academic fit".

That is rather good news and it is pleasing that it is for good reasons. Recently, the University of Central Lancashire said it was stopping its Homeopathy BSc this year due to lack of interest. It is currently reviewing these courses. We can only hope it comes to the same conclusions that these courses are academic bullshit that damage their academic reputation.

Hopefully, the other Wooniversities, such as Westminster and the University of Wales will be taking note. Will they be left holding the quack baby?

Gimpy has exploded the myth that Jeremy Sherr is some sort of Colonel Kurtz figure - a rogue homeopath gone bad and ended up with a heart of darkness in the depths of Africa, attempting to see if sugar pills can cure AIDS in deluded and dangerous experiments. With some marvelous research, we are shown how Sherr and his wife have been backed academically and financially by a string of prominent homeopaths. No one in the homeopathic community is standing up to the deluded and unethical practices going on in East Africa. The Society of Homeopaths wash their hands of him, despite Sherr being a Fellow of their society.

Gimpy concludes,

Jeremy Sherr is merely the prick that has burst the homeopathic boil and exposed the festering pus of ignorance and incompetence that defines the alternative sector. This movement is rotten from the heart of its establishment to the practitioners operating on the margins. Sherr, a respected teacher, is representative of homeopathy, not an individual acting on his own initiative. It is time these people were called to account and stripped of their influence.

The Horror. The Horror.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

Sense about Science, a UK charity who aim to assist and campaign for better science reporting in the media, have today launched a new pamphlet design to help people understand how medical claims on the Internet may be misleading. The report entitled "I've got nothing to lose by trying it" explains "how to tell the beneficial from the bogus in the face of the miracle cure stories, new wonder-drugs and breakthrough therapies that are increasingly promoted" on the Internet. In particular, they focus on how quacks and charlatans may exploit people with long term chronic illnesses into trying unproven alternative treatments - usually at a significant cost.


This is something the quackometer cares about. The quackometer was set up to help people think critically about health claims on the web (and I am pleased to announce that the original quackometer engine should be restored to full working status within days.)


Tracy Brown of Sense about Science describes the reason for producing the guide as follows:

We’ve been contacted by so many people exhausted from the pressure they feel to try advertised treatments, dietary regimes and exercises. One person told us how the last years of his wife’s life were spent endlessly pursuing new treatments, from goats blood serums to unlicensed stem cell treatments abroad, all to no avail. This guide aims to help patients and their families to evaluate the treatment claims they are bombarded with.

Giving people false hope may well provide some temporary relief from whatever fears and frustrations they may suffer. However, the realisation that you have been patronised, deceived and fleeced of money must be devastating. The realisation that you could have been spending your time concentrating on more fruitful and meaningful parts of you life must be terrible. In my last post, I described how the World Health Organisation are actively promoting government funded quackery around the world. Often the justification is that because poor people cannot afford real medicine then it is alright to offer them unproven and nonsensical treatments. Alternative medicine is so often a cruelly deceiving distraction from what really matters in life. For that reason, I support what Sense about Science are doing here.


The MP Phil Willis puts it very well,

The cruelest deception for a patient with chronic illness is the promise of a cure based on empty hope not evidence. The publication of ‘I’ve got nothing to lose by trying it’ is an inspired attempt to empower patients to evaluate so called ‘miracle cures’ with evidence based advice.

Empowerment is such a key word. Quacks often talk of giving patients choice and condemn people like me for trying to restrict choice. But there can be no meaningful choice without being accuratly informed. It is therefore highly amusing to see how the Society of Homeopaths respond to this development from their arch-rivals at Sense About Science. Today, they issued a rare press release. They have not issued too many this year, probably after learning that keeping a low profile is the best way to avoid criticism of their actions.

They say,

The Society of Homeopaths, the UK’s largest regulator of homeopaths, welcomes the call by Sense About Science today for tighter regulation of the internet, to ensure that vunerable people are not exploited by dangerous treatments.

Whilst there is a large body of published evidence to show that homeopathy is both safe and effective, The Society considers it important that people consult a qualified and registered homeopath.

Registered members of The Society of Homeopaths are clearly identifed by the designation RSHom, which reassures the patient that they have met the required education standards, have undergone The Society’s registration process, are fully insured and have agreed to abide by a strict Code of Ethics & Practice.

Regular readers of this blog will know what a crock this is.

We know exactly how the Society fail to condemn homeopaths who exploit vulnerable people. We know how little evidence there is of homeopathic effectiveness and just how bonkers the whole process is. And we know just how little their code of ethics actually mean. The SaS pamphlet is design to see through the hogwash on the net dished out by almost all homeopaths.

I too look forward to greater regulation of quacks and when irresponsible homeopaths are in court trying to explain themselves. You really have to hand it to the Society for the sheer temerity of this press release. Bravo!

Labels: sense about science, Society of Homeopaths

 

The Adverting Standards Authority has today found that a homeopath advertised their asthma clinic for kids by making untruthful, unsubstantiated and irresponsible claims. Archway House Natural Health Centre holds an Asthma and Eczema clinic for children, run by Julia Wilson, a member of the Society of Homeopaths.

Inasmuch, this is not news. The ASA make judgments like this every week. Their weekly published list today contains all sorts of findings against chiropractors and related quacks. But what makes this interesting is that this advert, in the form of a leaflet, has already been subject to a complaint directly to the Society of Homeopaths, who claim to regulate their members. Over a year ago, I was concerned that the Society's Code of Ethics was being widely ignored by their membership and there was no evidence that they took any steps to uphold their code which is designed to protect the public. If so, this was pretty serious. People would be visiting homeopaths under the impression that their membership of the Society of Homeopaths ensured that certain standards would be maintained and that they would not be misled or endangered as a result of the consultation.

I picked on one homeopath from their register pretty much at random. Not only was Julia Wilson making claims to treat asthma (which would be in breach of the code) but also she has spent time in Kenya in a clinic that dishes out sugar pills to prevent malaria and to treat HIV. One would have thought that a responsible organisation would want to rein in such dangerous excesses. This homeopath appeared to be in breach of several points in their code including treating named diseases and advertising in a way that claimed superiority to real treatments.

You can read about the Society of Homeopath's response here. Julia Wilson defended herself by claiming that her adverts (see here) did not claim superiority of homeopathy over conventional treatment, that she made no stated or implied claim that homeopathy can treat asthma, and that no cure was implied. She also said that she could not be held responsible for the Kenyan clinic's claims on their website and that she did not claim to cure HIV or malria when working there. I would suggest you read the leaflet yourself and see if this defence merits any credibility. The Society of Homeopaths wrote to me to tell me that they were satisfied that no breach of their code had taken place and that "no action will be taken."

Well, the Society of Homeopaths did take action. Their solicitor wrote to my web hosts demanding that I take down web pages that commented on this and other aspects of their lack of concern for the dangerous practices of their members. When I wrote to the Society's CEO Paula Ross asking for an explanation, I got a threatening letter back from their solicitor. Naturally, bloggers on the web went crazy, reposting my articles and condemning the behavior of the society, calling them 'Cowards and Bullies".

The ASA read this leaflet and decided that on four counts it was in breach of the CAP rules on advertising for being unsubstantiated, untruthful and irresponsible. They decided the leaflet did imply a cure for asthma because it denigrated conventional treatment - "puffers can provide temporary relief, they're not offering your child a cure. Homeopathy is different...". They asked Archway House for evidence that their treatments 'helps alleviate the flaring skin and tightening lungs of your child's allergic reactions". They could not answer this to any degree of satisfaction. Most strikingly, the ASA found the leaflet was irresponsible because it was likely to dissuade parents from seeking medical advice. A testimonial read "I was frightened by how much my daughter relied on her inhalers". Damningly, Archway house could not provide any evidence that the testimonials on the leaflet were real.

I have emailed the Society of Homeopaths to ask why their conclusions were so different from the ASA. I have also asked if they will relook at the complaint and take action against their member as it is a requirement of their code that member's adverts do not breach Advertising Standards rules. Importantly, I have asked if the public can have confidence in their code of ethics and complaints process. (Update: response, so far, below)

Does this matter? Asthma is not a trivial disease. Asthma UK report that,

A person is admitted to hospital every 8 minutes in England because of their asthma. That's on average 185 people per day and one in six people require further emergency care again within two weeks, yet 75% of admissions for asthma are avoidable and could save the NHS in England an estimated £43.7 million a year.

It is estimated that there are 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions for asthma each year in UK. A child whose parents go a homeopathic route rather than following the management plan of their doctor is being put at risk. The Society of Homeopaths do not appear to care about this. But people in the UK quite rightly have choices. When homeopaths take their sugar pills to Africa and tell them that they are better and cheaper than medicine at preventing malaria and managing HIV, then the delusion of homeopathy becomes truly murderous. If you want to believe the homeopaths that they act responsibly over this, then you should see the latest newsletters from the Abha Light Foundation in Kenya where Julia Wilson worked. They are handing out homeopathic remedies to 1,500 families and telling them that they are malaria prophylactics. 34,000 people die in Kenya each year from malaria. Over a third of children die before their first birthday from Malaria. Telling families that magic water pills can protect them will reduce the likelihood that they will seek proven safe alternatives, such as mosquito nets for babies. The Society of Homeopaths have never spoken out against this terrible western delusion inflicted on Africa.

In the year 2000, the House of Lords looked into the question of regulation of Alternative Medicine and made a large number of recommendations about how various treatments should be controlled. Eight years on and the government strategy is in tatters. The homeopaths have actively campaigned to be exluded from greater regulation and decided that they can regulate themselves. This is clearly not true. The deluded cannot regulate the deluded if the public want to be protected. The government has set up the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (better know as Ofquack). This has failed for a number of reasons. Firstly, few alternative medicine groups have wanted to join. As Ofquack will have council members that are not part of the alternative medicine communities that they will regulate, none of the practitioners want to be judged by anyone who does not share their delusions. And secondly, as Ofquack has failed to get up and running and will be entirely voluntary, there has been no compulsion for quacks to subject themselves to any meaningful scrutiny.

Prince Charles has been deeply involved in trying to set up Ofquack. The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health put one of their own people into a group that would try to unite the homeopathic profession and create a single register that could be effectively managed. The squabbling between homeopaths ensured this failed. Ofquack appears to have abandoned any pretense that it can now regulate vast swathes of the alternative medicine industry. The Society of Homeopaths have now stated that they intend to create their own 'single register' - a move that has angered the rest of the UK homeopaths and is doomed to failure too.

So, in the UK, when a member of the public seeks the services of an alternative medicine practitioner, they are likely to see someone with letters after their name and a web site that says that they are members of professional bodies with a strict code of conduct. This is a thoroughly misleading picture. Homeopaths and other practitioners may well sign up to a code of conduct, but in the knowledge that it will never be enforced.

In the Guardian recently, the same comment was made in an article entitled "A Question of Ethics". The article noted that one of the most senior member of the Society of Homeopaths was a strong advocate for providing homeopathic 'immunisations' - the belief that magic water can protect people from dangerous diseases. The arctile concluded, "It seems that codes of ethics are good for window dressing while pragmatism is better for profit. ". The Society responded with a press release,

The Society would like to advise Guardian readers that any suspected breach of The Society's Code of Ethics & Practice should be formally reported to its Professional Conduct Department where it will be fully investigated.

Investigated maybe. Enforced? Doubtful. The codes are an illusion and we are being taken for fools.

*****************************************************************************

Update

I have had a reply from Jayne Thomas, Chair of the Board of Directors at the Society of Homeopaths:

As we have not yet seen the findings of the ASA adjudication to which you refer, The Society of Homeopaths is unable to comment on the specifics of this case.

However, we would like to reassure you that due process was followed in the handling of this case.

By their own admission, The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), have been delayed in finding an expert to assess the evidence base for homeopathy, which was submitted to them earlier this year.

The Society of Homeopaths is therefore awaiting the outcome of this assessment to inform future guidelines to our members concerning the advertising of homeopathy

So, we will have to wait for a more detailed response. I must admit that I surprised that SoH have not seen the adjudication yet. The ASA release a preliminary report to all parties several weeks before publication to allow the advertiser to respond and make corrections. Did Archway House really not consult SoH both originally and on the preliminary finding? The advertiser would also have been aware of the final outcome about a week before publication too. How do the SoH know that the ASA could not find an 'expert' to help them? In what way have SoH been involved here?

Labels: ASA, homeopathy, Natural Healthcare Council, ofquack, Society of Homeopaths

 

Dr* T on his Thinking is Dangerous blog reports that Helios appear to have stopped selling their Malaria nosodes for the homeopathic prevention of Malaria. This is good news. A quick check also reveals that Ainsworths also appear to have stopped selling it too.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

The Society of Homeopaths have recently had their 30th Anniversary Annual General Meeting and Conference at Leicester University. Lots of pop and cake were undoubtedly consumed. Various guest speakers were there talking nonsense and various 'breakout' sessions allowed homeopaths to share their delusional experience with each other.

One session will be on "Perils and pitfalls in practice" given by Patricia Moroney the current Professional Conduct Officer. She says,

There will be an opportunity for you to assess the professional conduct issues that arise in a variety of situations. The workshop will be a fun and interactive way to engage with The Code of Ethics and Practice.

Now, undoubtedly 'Trish' has been having some fun with the code of ethics over the past year. A few months ago, the Society of Homeopaths produced the first documented expulsion of a member ever. The Quackometer has repeatedly criticised SoH for not taking action against members who obviously flout their rules and not being transparent and accountable in their approach to professional conduct. Could the Society be listening?


The Society claim in their Review of 2007 to have made only one formal investigation,

During 2007, The Professional Conduct Department responded to over a hundred logged telephone calls, letters and emails from members and the general public. Many of the queries arose from misunderstandings or lack of information. The majority were resolved swiftly through means of advice or where necessary mediation. During 2007 the department conducted one Adjudication Panel hearing. The complaint was upheld.

That is surprising given the fact that many bloggers have sent in complaints about members, fellows and directors of SoH who are blatantly breaching the Society rules. My own efforts to complain are well documented on this site. One complaint resulted in SoH taking legal action against me rather than address my concerns.

e.g. See

Homeopaths Through the Looking-Glass
The Society of Homeopaths: Truth Matters
Society of Homeopaths breach own Code of Ethics on website
Patricia Moroney Pwned

and so on.

So, the unlucky recipient of a Society of Homeopaths reprimand was a Mr David Evans of the North West College of Homeopathy.

What events resulted in this investigation?

We do not know.

All we know is the list of rules he was supposed to have broken. These range from "avoid disclosing any information concerning a patient to a third party without the patient’s written consent" and "Maintenance of appropriate records" to rather more disturbing rules such as "Maintaining appropriate boundaries Homeopaths, are responsible for avoiding exploitation of their patients financially, emotionally, sexually; or in any other way." and "Where a patient, student, or supervisee is expressing feelings towards the homeopath, tutor, or supervisor which cause problems for the maintenance of professional boundaries and the professional- for whatever reason- is unable to resolve the situation in an acceptable manner the professional relationship is to be ended"

The Society do not tell us what the defendant was supposed to have done wrong. Perhaps it is a new parlour game. Look at the list of rules breached and imagine the story that led to the hearing. What fun.

And what is the result of the hearing?

The Panel recommended to the Board of The Society of Homeopaths that Mr. David Evans be expelled from The Society with immediate effect. The Board ratified the recommendation of the Panel to be effective from 11th March 2008.

Now, the whole debate about regulation is how the public are best protected against dangerous practices and people who should, perhaps, not be in positions of trust. Is the Society of Homeopaths capable of fulfilling this role? What has the effect of this ruling been? To my best knowledge, the only effect has been the removal of the letters RSHom from the web site of the place where the subject of the investigation works.

So far, I have been complaining that organisations never use their code of ethics to protect the public from harm. Now that they have tried to do so, we are confronted with the obvious futility, uselessness and deceptive nature of the whole facade.

Such is the weakness of voluntary self-regulation. The government see this as the way forward for all of alternative medicine by setting up Ofquack, the new 'federal' register of all alternative healers. Just like the Society of Homeopaths, the code of ethics for Ofquack will be more about putting a veneer of professionalism on the indefensible rather than protecting the public.

Labels: regulation, Society of Homeopaths

 

Unbelievably, nearly two years after BBC Newsnight exposed ten homeopaths offering dangerous advice to travellers about malaria protection, the BBC have found high street chain Neal's Yard Remedies offering sugar pills as protection against malaria.

The BBC, in a press release, said,

The presenter of [BBC] Inside Out South West Janine Jansen was sold homeopathic remedies by the manager of Neal's Yard in Exeter and was advised that she could use them to help deal with malaria.

This is quite an extraordinary happening. The BBC first exposed the dangers of unregulated homeopaths offering lethal malaria advice on their Newsnight programme. The Society of Homeopaths, the largest members club in the UK, refused to discipline or even condemn any of its members caught out. Furthermore, it refused to offer proper guidance to homeopaths on this subject. What it did do was legally threaten me when I pointed out their lack of action, it issued guidance to its members to keep their mouths shut when answering queries about this, and issued thoroughly misleading press statements saying why it took no action.

Nonetheless, an enormous amount of bad publicity was generated and it cannot have gone unnoticed at Neal's Yard Remedies.

Neal's Yard is a very well known brand in the UK with operations now in Japan and the US. Founded in the trendy and touristy Covent Garden area of London, it is well known for its bath and shower products. It also thinks it is in the medical and healthcare market. Its web site shows it offering all sort of herbal and homeopathic remedies as well as in-store therapies. For example, it says it can offer Hopi Ear Candling and tells the fib that that it is "a traditional healing technique of the Native American Hopi Indians".

Neal's Yard Remedies is offering a Malaria 30C Homoeopathic Remedy on its web site. This is again breathtaking. In the past, people like Professor David Colquhoun have exposed the 'wicked scam' of such products, often sold overseas. We now see such products on the high street in the UK. A local newspaper has picked up on the story and interviewed Nicola Gillespie of Neal's Yard in Exeter who said, "Homeopathy can be used for that (treatment of malaria)", but then confusingly added, "We are not going to say they can prevent people from getting malaria".

Let's be quite clear. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that homeopathic sugar pills can prevent or cure malaria. The suggestion is utterly implausible and is no different from witchcraft. Dr Ron Behrens, the Director of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases Travel Clinic in London, said

making claims that homeopathic remedies can prevent or treat malaria was potentially highly dangerous and it puts people's lives at risk.

Dr Peter Fisher, the Director of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and the Queen's Homeopath, has previously said about such advice,

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.

Unfortunately, whilst Dr Fisher is absolutely right that people will get malaria if they follow such advice, he is wrong that you cannot find it in homeopathic textbooks. I founnd a book in my local bookshop this afternoon carrying this crazy nonsense. Rob Hinkley at SemiSkimmed has written about this in detail in response to this story.

We can perhaps understand Neal's Yard's position here when you appreciate that their 'Director of Medicine', Susan Curtis, has herself written a book entitled, Homoeopathic Alternatives To Immunisation, which is promoted as,

An invaluable guide for all travellers. This book contains practical information on preventing and treating major infectious diseases, including hepatitis, flu, malaria, measles and whooping cough.

Staggering. All these diseases are killers, especially in poorer countries, and if you were a traveller, you would want prompt and good medical care. Susan is a Member of the Society of Homeopaths. Their code of conduct expressly forbids them from stating or implying that they can cure named diseases. However, we know that the SoH will never discipline any of its members or fellows for doing so. We cannot look to homeopath's 'professional' bodies to stamp out this insanity.

According to Healthwatch, Susan Curtis has no medical training. She was interviewed by the BBC but walked out after 15 minutes in a bit of a huff. The interviewer had to yell after her to ask if what she was doing was criminal. On the programme, Professor Edzard Ernst, Britian's only holder of a chair in CAM, said,

It's awful. I would not hesitate to call this criminal. I don't know whether this is legally criminal but, in my view, this is so amoral and unethical that I would not hesitate to call it criminal.

This statement stands in stark contrast as to how Neal's Yard likes to portray itself as 'the ethical brand'. It won the Sunday Times 'Best Ethical Brand' last year. Will it put itself forward this year?

Curtis is well aware that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that magic sugar pills have any role in preventing or treating malaria. She is able to justify the sale herself by suggesting there is 'evidence by extension'. What this means is that homeopaths 'know' homeopathy works. They do not need real and direct evidence. They can just 'extend' their delusions in any direction they wish. Criminal? Definitely, irresponsible beyond belief.

One area of law breaking that does need to be fully explored is to see if Neal's Yard Remedies are in breach of the MHRA rules on medicines. Homeopaths have recently been given special dispensation to tell lies on the labels of their products, but as long as it is only for minor illnesses and after they have submitted a 'dosier of delusions' to the MHRA. The BBC have passed on their evidence to the MHRA to see if an offense has been committed. There are two possibilities - Neal's Yard are selling such products without a license; the MHRA have given a license (which I doubt). Both would be a disgrace.

In the meantime, what will Neal's Yard do? On their web site they say their values are to "take great care to be responsible in everything we do." The only responsible thing to do right now would be to fire their Medicines Director, Susan Curtis, withdraw their homeopathy products, conduct a thorough review and get back to the business of selling perfumed bathroom products.

Something tells me this will not happen.


*********************************************************************

A full transcript of the programme is now available at Thinking Is Dangerous.

See the follow up post to this at "Neal's Yard Ethical Bullshit Remedy."

And how the MHRA has clobbered them.


*********************************************************************

Labels: homeopathy, Neal's Yard Remedies, Society of Homeopaths

 

Here are the stated aims of the Society of Homeopaths for 2007 and set out at the start of the year...

Labels: Society of Homeopaths

 

We know it is going to be a fun year for watching Homeopaths. The fight is well and truly on for who gets to pretend to regulate the profession. The beleaguered Society of Homeopaths have today gone on the offensive for total and unyielding control.

The year started off with Prince Charles and the Foundation for Integrated Health announcing the arrival on the scene of the government backed Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council, or Ofquack. This was something of an ambush on the various factions of homeopaths. They have been fighting amongst each other, trying to poach members and accusing each other of dastardly crimes and not being true homeopaths, but on one thing they appear to be unanimous: their opposition to CNHC and 'federated regulation'. What this means is that they do not want to be regulated by non-homeopaths. Heaven forbid someone who does not 'understand' homeopathy, ever tell them what they can and cannot do.

But the CNHC know that the various groups' objections to Ofquack do not mean that individual homeopaths will object. There may well be advantages of being seen to be regulated by the Princes' organisation, not least of all that it might well be a lot cheaper then the subs that the SoH demand. So, CNHS have been ploughing on as if there is no problem and appearing in newspapers and on the radio telling the world that homeopaths are happy and ready to join.

No so fast.

Today, the Society of Homeopaths have upped their game and issued a press release to tell the world that they, and they alone, are ready to set up a single register. If the CNHC succeed, SoH may well cease to exist in a year or two. They are planning their counter attacks.

Consultation commences today on regulation of homeopaths.

The Society of Homeopaths resolves to divest regulatory framework from its membership organisation to create the UK’s first independent single register and regulatory body for homeopaths

The Society of Homeopaths, Britain’s largest professional association of homeopaths, today announced that it has begun a wide-ranging consultation as it prepares to launch the UK’s first independent single register and regulatory body for homeopaths. Following a recent meeting with the Department of Health, the Board of the 30 year old Society resolved to divest its self-regulation and governance arm from its membership and continuing professional development functions in order to create a first-class regulatory body, which will govern the professional practice of an
expanding number of homeopathy practitioners.

What this means is, at the moment, a bit confusing. First of all, what is new? SoH already have the largest single register and if it wasn't for those pesky, breakaway splitters, the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, they would have a near monopoly. They make no mention of working with other homeopaths groups and so we must assume that it this is an initiative solely within the Society and aimed at wrong footing the CNHC. How will they get ARH splitters to join the new SoH backed register and not Ofquack? My guess is that SoH believe that ARH will fold quicker than a spineless internet service provider as soon as members stop renewing their subscriptions.

There is also the implication that they are doing this with the approval of the Department of Health. But we know we have to be dead careful with Society press releases. Things should not be taken at face value. We know that the Department of Health are planning to bankroll CNHC for the next year and so it is unlikely they are supporting both initiatives. We must assume that the Society mean exactly what they say: they had a meeting with the DoH and then they embarked on this initiative. Two unrelated facts. They might have well have said that they had a bowl of cornflakes, brushed their teeth, and then decided to divest themselves of their self-regulatory powers.

The press release then goes on to praise the high level of self-regulation within the Society of Homeopaths. Regular readers here will know how difficult that is to accept. Despite obvious, numerous and well documented breaches of their code of ethics, there is little evidence of the Society ever making any adjudications and disciplining any of their members. They say in press releases that they have a "transparent complaints process". Can you find a list of their cases considered on their web site? We know complaints have been made. Where is the transparency?

So what is going to happen? Well, it looks like there is going to be a consultation,

Commenting on the Board’s resolution and the consultation process, Chair designate, Jayne Thomas said: “Today marks an important watershed in our profession. The consultation is to be widespread. We are seeking the views of patients, other homeopaths, the many colleges and universities that train the professionals, other organisations in the homeopathy field and of course politicians from all parties.

The one group that is conspicuously absent is scientists and the medical profession. And in that we see that this is one more futile bit of gesture and power politics. This is about control of the profession and not about protecting the public. My guess is that my opinion will not be welcome at this consultation.

If protecting the public was paramount then any regulatory structure must take into account the quality of advice that is given out by homeopaths. Both the CNHC and SoH want to control training standards but neither want to take on the content of that training. We know there is a deep problem within the homeopathic community that their training makes them systematically incompetent. They are trained not to recognise and actively reject normal standards of scientific evidence. They are trained to accept unquestioningly the teachings of their founder Samuel Hahnemann as if it was revealed truth. And in doing so they pose a real danger to their patients that they will offer useless or even dangerous advice, and worse, they will undermine the relationship that they might have with their GP. The failure of the Society of Homeopaths to tackle the problem of members giving out dangerous anti-malaria advice effectively rules them out as a competent body in regulating the profession.

Professor Dame Joan Higgins, who set up the CNHC, suffers from the same problem. Professor Higgins has recently given a presentation reviewing progress and expectations. One slide notes that there has been 'press criticism' that CNHC will 'endorse quackery'. Well I never! How does she respond to this criticism?

FWG role was not to evaluate the effectiveness of CAM and it did not have the capacity to do so. Its task was to establish a regulatory structure to protect the public not to promote CAM. This does not mean that it was positive/negative about CAM. It did not take a view.

This statement is somewhat disingenuous in that no one would expect them to evaluate the effectiveness of CAM, or at least homeopathy. That evaluation has already been done. Homeopathy is the ritualised prescription of plain sugar pills for all illnesses. As such, it is pure placebo and the best clinical evidence to date suggest that this is just the case. It is not a hard problem to understand. In principle, it is perfectly possible to draw up a set of regulations that take this into account.

So, Professor Higgins also washes her hands of the rather inconvenient problem that homeopathy does not work as described but practitioners are too deluded to work competently within the boundaries set by that knowledge. Whilst we have all these fighting organisations struggling to come out on top as the pretend regulators of the profession, we will have no one prepared to protect vulnerable people from homeopaths who practice their 'healing art' without care as to what is true and what is not true.

I wonder what is going to happen next?

Well, the CNHC will be late in setting up. There are already signs of slippage. There has only just been an advert go out to look for a Chair of the body. For an organisation that has stated it is ready to go in April, that looks rather late. A new chair may not be up and running until mid Summer at the earliest.

It's all going to be a complete shambles.

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Your contribution to the consulation can be made by sending thoughts to consultation@homeopathy-soh.org

Labels: Natural Healthcare Council, regulation, Society of Homeopaths

 

The ambush by the Prince of Wales on the various factions of Alternative Medicine by announcing the set up of the Natural Healthcare Council, Ofquack, is starting to have effects. In the Guardian yesterday, Polly Toynbee ran an article entitled, Quackery and superstition - available soon on the NHS. She argues that we should,

Labels: Natural Healthcare Council, ofquack, regulation, Society of Homeopaths

 

How should homeopaths be regulated? I am not sure I have made up my mind yet about what I would like to see and I am not convinced there is a perfect solution. However, I hope some debate has been kicked off by all the goings on last year, here and on various other blogs and forums. One thing I am pretty sure of is that homeopaths have pretty much ruled themselves out of the discussion. Adults only from now on.

And the reason for this is that they have had their chance - and a good shot at trying to regulate themselves. Indeed, this was the stated aim of the Society of Homeopaths last year. Two of their annual goals were:

To facilitate the smooth handover of Society regulatory processes to a new regulatory and registration body

and,

To uphold and review The Society’s professional standards especially in relation to the development of a new regulatory and registration body (NRRB)

They failed miserably at both.

The farce of creating a single homeopaths' single register is being documented at gimpy's blog. Squabbling about money made sure the register did not get off the ground. I believe this reflected deeper rivalry between the various homeopaths' groups based on philosophical differences and also just plain old human power struggles.

The Society also demonstrated that their code of ethics could not protect the public from the worst delusional beliefs of their members. Their utter two-faced failure to tackle the problems posed by members offering anti-malaria advice led to the Society being prepared to directly misrepresent their own actions to the papers. They were also last year promoting homeopathic intervention in HIV people in Africa. It is difficult to think of more exploitative, deluded and dangerous actions.

So, to start off - what are we trying to protect against? Ben Goldacre has been quite clear about the dangers of alternative medicine - bullshit. And that bullshit manifests itself in a couple of dangerous ways with homeopaths. Firstly, they may delay a customers access to effective treatment - in the case of serious illness this can be fatal. Secondly, they may present themselves as serious alternatives to real medicine. We have found this most shocking when homeopathic missionaries tell vulnerable African people with HIV that they can treat them. Homeopaths use the denigration of medicine as a standard marketing tool. Homeopaths stand out in the alternative medicine crowd in their anger and hostility towards real doctors and medical practices. It is how they define themselves and what makes them most dangerous to the public. They most definitely are not a 'complementary medicine'.

It is not that I want people to stop visiting homeopaths and other therapists. People often do get benefit from the self-indulgent friendly chat that a GP is just not in a position to offer. Homeopaths ought to be in a prime position to offer this as I have said before. However, in visiting a practitioner, we need to consider how the public may be protected against two main problems we find in quackery: being exploited financially, and being given inappropriate and dangerous medical advice.

One potential solution is coming from Prince Charles and his Foundation for Integrated Health. FIH is looking into setting up a Natural Healthcare Council that will offer regulatory functions to the broad church of complementary and alternative therapies. The Times reports that this new voluntary register should be established this year and,

will be able to strike off errant or incompetent practitioners. It will also set minimum standards for practitioners to ensure that therapists are properly qualified.

Their hope is that,

all practitioners will be forced to join or lose business as the public will use the register as a guarantee of quality. The council will register only practitioners who are safe, have completed a recognised course, are insured and have signed up to codes of conduct.

Funnily enough, the homeopaths appear to be deeply hostile to this move. "The homeopathy profession has been unanimous in rejecting federalisation as an option for regulation" reports the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths. But, as I have said, I am not really interested in what they think - their only motives in discussing regulation appear to be self-interest and survival.

So, will the chief tree-talker's ideas be a good move? Should Prince Charles' organisation be allowed to succeed?

I have some serious reservations.

Firstly, by what standards will the Natural Healthcare Council set for competence and training? Professor David Colquhoun has documented the training dilemma of alternative medicine by noting that most alternative therapies are based on nonsense ideas that have no scientific and objective merit. "It cannot be expected that a universities will provide a course that preaches the mumbo jumbo of meridians, energy lines and so on... Can any serious university be expected to teach such nonsense as though the words [of alternative medicine] meant something? ". Since, homeopaths cannot even agree amongst themselves what homeopathy is and what are its essential elements (not surprising, as it is not based on reality) then the Council risks either alienating large swathes of practitioners or being completely arbitrary in its criteria. Either will not protect the public. Setting education standards for homeopaths is like trying to accommodate Hogwarts into the National Curriculum.

Secondly, by what standards will practitioners be judged in handling complaints and when upholding professional standards? Should we uphold a homeopath to standards of homeopathy, aromatherapy, reiki or - heaven forbid - evidence and science? This is important. In deciding whether a homeopath has crossed a line of ethics in offering malaria prophylactics, who will judge them? If homeopaths are involved, the the public will not be protected as they have dangerous and delusional ideas about their magic sugar pills. However, if they are to be judged by the standards of best evidence, then no homeopath will join the organisation as they know that they cannot practice within their strongly held beliefs. In either case, the Council will fail to protect the public. You might think that homeopaths would be willing to disengage from their wilder healing fantasies in order to gain the credibility of the name of Prince Charles, but all my experience says that homeopaths are fiercely proud, angry and determined not to be constrained by any external forces (probably orchestrated by 'allopaths').

And if the Council do uphold the strongest standards and do this in a transparent and accountable way, will the UK suddenly be free from rogue practitioners? Well, no. My recent example of the the ASA upholding a complaint against Osteomylogist, Robert Delgado, showed that even statutorily registering complementary therapists has big loopholes. This non-statutory and voluntary registered body, the Natural Healthcare Council, will have even less power over practitioners.

But what it will achieve is that Prince Charles' name will give credibility to all sorts of unproven therapies and wacky non-medically qualified people to go out there and pretend to be healers. And at the same time, offer no guarantee of protection to the public.

I don't think this is the answer and I think it will even lead to a greater threat to the public.

Labels: Ben Goldacre, homeopathy, Natural Healthcare Council, regulation, Society of Homeopaths

 

In his Guardian article, Ben Goldacre wrote about how homeopaths respond to criticism:

Labels: Ben Goldacre, homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

One thing always puzzled me about Tony Blair (well in fact, many things) was when he rather suddenly came out in defence of homeopathy. Out of the blue, he told the detractors of this weird superstition to back off:

Labels: ARH, homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

This, morning David Colquhoun was on the Radio 4 Today programme (listen again, 20 minutes in) making the charge that today's Society of Homeopaths Symposium on AIDS was deeply irresponsible.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

On the eve of the Society of Homeopaths' symposium in London on homeopathy and AIDS, the SoH issue a press release. It is a statement about how they are warm and cuddly and complementary and working oh so hard to dominate create a single register of homeopaths. They are definitely not promoting quack cures for AIDS.

It is well documented now about how so many of their press releases are simply misleading. (The current press release is thoroughly taken apart by Gimpy).

What caught my eye was the link at the end to the National AIDS Trust. Did this organisation support them, endorse their views and think homeopathy has a role in AIDS management? I had to find out. So, I emailed their policy advisor, Alana Lewis.

Yusef Azad, their Director of Policy and Campaigns, emailed me back to say that, of course, they do not support the seminar and would be in contact with SoH. He rang them. And now, the reference has been removed from the online press release. Their excuse was that it was a reference for their AIDS figures. Typical quack referencing: incomplete, inappropriate and confusing.

Tomorrow is World AIDS day. Yusef has this to say:

"There is no current cure for HIV. But there is effective treatment in the form of antiretroviral therapy which is saving millions of people and enabling them to live healthy active lives. The tragedy is that there are still far too many governments not funding the treatment properly, and too many people with HIV who have not been informed of its benefits. Quack cures abound of course, all unproven, all cruelly deceiving, all a massive distraction from what we know genuinely works."

I really cannot add anymore.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

Readers of Prospect Magazine have voted Jeanette Winterson as one of Britain's 'top intellectuals', falling well below Richard Dawkins and Germaine Greer, and somewhat below Matt Ridley, recently resigned chairman of the troubled Northern Rock bank.

There have been a number of articles in the press recently criticising homeopathic remedies as worthless at best, and potentially lethal at worst, if they are being taken instead of tried-and-tested conventional medicines for conditions such as malaria or HIV.

Of particular concern is a claim by the British homeopath Peter Chapel [sic] and his Dutch colleague, Harry Van Der Zee, that Chapel [sic] has developed a remedy, PC1, that can be used to treat the HIV virus.

it is hard to talk about what it is that homeopathy actually does,

where is the [...] sense in saying that because [homeopaths] don't understand something, even though [homeopaths] can discern its effects, [homeopaths] have to ignore it, scorn it, or suppress it?

The patients in Botswana have no knowledge about homeopathy, and are very rarely interested in learning more. All they need to know is that the homeopaths have helped a neighbour or a relative and, personal recommendation being the way of life in Africa, they come full of confidence that they’ll be healed.

For the people visiting the clinic, we are “doctors”. A bit weird for doctors - no white coats, no nurses, the clinic is sometimes a bit of shade and a couple of plastic chairs, and the pills are small and few - but they seem to trust us more than the doctors in the hospital, who never seem to have time to listen.

Labels: celebrity quackery, homeopathy, Jeanette Winterson, Society of Homeopaths

 

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

I doubt we will ever see an X-Factor moment where a homeopath is forced to brutally confront the totality of their own delusions as they are exposed to a direct and uncompromising truth assault by a quackbusting Simon Cowell. Their emotional commitment to their healing fantasies is far stronger than their intellectual commitment to reason, truth and evidence. But I would have hoped that a homeopath's disregard for truth was limited to the truths of science, however, events in the last week or two have made me wonder.

Last week, Ben Goldacre wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper (Threats – the homeopathic panacea) about how the Society of Homeopaths had attempted to silence this site over its criticism of the Society's ability to protect the public from harmful advice from its members. This was highlighted by the BBC Newsnight/Sense about Science investigations into homeopaths giving advice about malaria prevention. As you might recall, at no point did the society try to contact me to explain their grievances - they used legal chill on my website hosts to silence me. The Society saw fit to respond the Guardian article and sent the editor a letter. To the best of my knowledge it has not been published. However, it is published on the Society web site and is the first insight into their thinking.

However, before exploring that, a number of things jumped out. In their letter of 22nd October 2007, they said (with my emphasis),

We contacted the programme makers directly to ask for their evidence that any Society members had given dangerous or misleading advice to members of the public. They were unable to provide a single example. The Society’s professional conduct procedures cannot be invoked without a specific complaint, an alleged offender or any evidence. In these circumstances, The Society was unable to investigate a specific case.

Elsewhere on their web site, they state that,

The Society of Homeopaths takes any alleged breach of its Code of Ethics & Practice very seriously and we must follow a due process when dealing with any allegation.

And,

The research conducted by Sense About Science failed to identify the homeopaths interviewed. Not all homeopaths are registered members of The Society. Nevertheless, any alleged breach by a registered member, of The Society’s Code of Ethics & Practice, will be investigated by our Professional Conduct Department.

Now, what I do not understand is how these statements can be made in light of the fact that I have an email from Paula Ross, Chief Executive of the Society of Homeopaths, addressed to the programme investigators (dated 22 August 2006), that starts,

"I am in receipt of your summary transcripts."

The transcripts contain two conversations between an undercover investigator and a named homeopath who just so happens to be a Fellow of the Society of Homeopaths. I will not name him, but I am happy to do so if the Society dispute this.


In the transcripts, the investigator asks if the named homeopath is able to offer a homeopathic alternative to her doctor-prescribed anti-malarials. The homeopath confirms that he is able to, and offers a consultation on that basis. In a subsequent transcripted conversation, when asked by the investigator why the Health Protection Agency web site says that you should not take homeopathy for malaria, the named homeopath laughs and replies “Of course they did. Right, if you are influenced by that go with whatever will make you comfortable.”


The investigator, still acting as a client, asks why the Faculty of Homeopaths says pretty much the same thing. The homeopath replies, “the faculty are all medics so they must more or less toe the medical line.” The homeopath constantly portrays this as an either/or choice for the client: either they stick with their side-effect inducing ‘orthodox’ treatments or go with homeopathy. The homeopath tells the investigator to do some research on the Society of Homeopath’s web site and on the What Doctors Don’t Tell You web site. When asked to confirm again that there is a homeopathic alternative, he replies, “The answer to that is yes, but not approved by orthodoxy. Plain and simply.”

(You can see a summary of all the transcripts here.)

So, what the hell is going on here? It is possible that the Chair of the Society of Homeopaths, Andy Kirk, who wrote letter to the Guardian, may not have been aware that the Chief Executive, Paula Ross, was in possession of the transcript evidence and had been given the name of the Fellow of the Society who gave the advice. Presumably, their complaints officer, Patricia Moroney, was also not in possession of the evidence. This would be fairly shambolic - a word I used in the first sentence of my 'banned' article.

It may also be possible that Paula Ross came to the conclusion on her own that the transcripts did not contain sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. However, the Society is quite clear that "we must follow a due process when dealing with any allegation". Was due process not undertaken? Again, they are quite clear: "the Society was unable to investigate a specific case." It is worth pointing out that Paula Ross is not a trained homeopath, nor is she trained scientifically. She is an English graduate who has a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management.

There are, of course, far worse interpretations of this situation. Unfortunately, it looks like we may never know why these contradictory statements have been made by the Society. Did an investigation take place? If not, why not? If it did, why no apparent action? And why make statements that suggest that it was the failure of the BBC/SaS team to hand over evidence and names that prevented the Society from taking action? They quite clearly did hand over the evidence required. I have written to the Society and Ms Ross twice now over the past week to help me clarify the issues and they have seen fit not to reply.

One reason they might not have replied is contained in their letter to the Guardian. Rather than highlight what they thought was defamatory in my blog post, they say,

Dr Lewis, in his article, stated as fact highly offensive comments about The Society and it is for that reason that The Society decided it had no option but to take action.

Due to the unpleasantness and surprisingly vitriolic nature of the postings on the Quackometer website and others, The Society has taken a conscious decision not to respond to these bloggers.

So first, offensive is not the same as defamatory. And, as Richard Dawkins put it so well, "offense is what people take when they can't take argument". Offense is so often the refuge of the unquestionably right. What I find offensive is the fact that a Fellow of the Society of Homeopaths is quite prepared to let a gap year student or young tourist travel deep into Africa with nothing but a magic fairy pill to protect themselves against a common and often fatal disease. And more deeply offensive is that his so-called regulatory body sees no reason to take any action at all and is even prepared to state untruths about the matter in a national newspaper and on their website. And unpleasant? I hear dying of cerebral malaria is unpleasant.

Vitriolic? Vitriol suggests I was abusive. That I was not. What I was, was shocked and angry at what I was discovering and I was forthright in my opinions. I was not the only angry person. It is always worth re-quoting Dr Peter Fisher - the Queen's Homeopath - on the affair, "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."

The vitriol undoubtedly came from a stream of emails from around the world to the Society following their attempt to silence me. I do not condone this abuse - reasoned argument is much stronger and it has given the Society a fig-leaf to hide behind. But their quoting of this vitriol is typical of homeopathic thinking - it has confused the nature of cause and effect. The vitriol was the result of their actions, not the prompt for them to take action.


And so, as Nick Cohen discussed in yesterday's Observer, we live in a society that sees organisations like the Society of Homeopaths as "a funny little alternative institute we too casually dismiss as quaint". But homeopathy is founded on a cavalier attitude to reason and truth and that makes the practice dangerous. Their propaganda tells us that homeopathy is safe, natural and effective. This is not true - and truth matters most when dealing with life and death issues. I do not favour heavy handed legislation to stamp out these practices - I still believe homeopathy could just about evolve into something genuinely useful. But maybe the zeitgeist is changing. Holding dangerous beliefs, that show such a lack of care for consequences, should be as seen as socially unacceptable and as selfish and as irrational as running a gas guzzling 4x4 for city school runs, or as dangerous and irresponsible as drink driving.

Labels: Ben Goldacre, homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

This is an old post, but I wanted to bump it up given the current homeopathic shenanigans

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originally posted: Monday, July 17, 2006

In looking at countless quack web sites and having discussions with various quacks on message boards, the inevitable question that I ask myself is "What sort of quack am I dealing with - deluded or fraudulent?" The fraudulent quack knows they are promoting cures and remedies that do not work (above the placebo) but make money out of it anyway. The deluded quack believes they are promoting something genuinely wonderful, but misunderstood by 'science'.

The more I delve into quackery, the more I believe that we are mostly dealing with the deluded. Frauds can be dealt with by legislation and prosecution. The deluded appear to be a tougher nut to crack - minds have to be changed. However, the belief systems around alternative medicine appear to be impervious to criticism and rational enquiry. The defensive walls are high.

This situation appears to be very similar to arguments surrounding religious beliefs. Religion is largely immune to rational enquiry with people who hold such beliefs as they have many defenses against such enquiry.

Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' to represent a 'replicator of cultural information that one mind transmits (verbally or by demonstration) to another mind'. The God meme is usually at the foundation of religious beliefs. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the meme then best start here. The point I want to make is that memes rarely appear on their own, but usually cluster together to form cooperating meme-plexes that help each other to survive. A God meme on its own may not last in a culture for long. Gods are notorious in their reluctance to offer direct evidence of their existence and so a God meme may soon be subject to attack from a sceptical mind. However, if you couple a God meme with a 'faith is good' meme and a 'doubt is bad' meme then together, these memes may form a more stable meme-plex. Any sceptic can be brushed aside as a 'doubter' and any self-doubt can be parried with a renewed sense of the need for faith.

I would suggest that Alternative Medicine advocates must surely also carry around similar meme-plexes of symbiotic ideas that prevent logic, reason, intelligence, science and experimental evidence from demolishing the core ideas of the practice.

However, a customer of alternative medicine need not carry around huge meme-plexes in order to take their medicine. A person need only believe a few things about homeopathy in order to try it - gentler than 'western' medicine, ancient principles, no side-effects, and so on.

However, the meme theory would predict that the stronger the advocate of homeopathy, the more memes need to be believed to fend off scepticism and evidence. This contrasts with a scientist; the closer you are to the science, the more facts and theory you will know - there is no need to hold beliefs that prevent rational enquiry about the science - their defense is the strength of the evidence. The homeopathists on the other hand needs more and more defensive walls around a small core of unchanging beliefs. So here is my hypothesis of the memetics of quackery and pseudoscience:

The greater advocate a person is for quackery, the more that defensive memes need to be held that can stall rational enquiry, whilst the core memes regarding the theory of the quack subject remain fairly constant with the degree of advocacy.

So we need to test this now. Maybe I can even build tests into the quackometer to spot pseudoscience and quackery!

Looking at the homeopathist example a bit further. The BBC's Newsnight programme this week carried a report into how high street homeopathists are giving dangerous advice regarding the prevention of malaria. Of ten surveyed, all offered a homeopathic sugar pill to act as prophylactic and gave no other advice about bite prevention and the need to see your GP. This is appallingly dangerous as malaria kills. Melanie Oxley of the Society of Homeopaths appeared on the programme to answer these allegations. Her response was breath-taking in her inability to grasp the nature of what the accusations were and was a classic example of complete internal denial. Is Ms Oxley stuffed full of quack memes to prevent critical analysis?

The Society of Homeopaths has a list of press releases, the most recent one about the above BBC report. These press releases appear to contain lots of 'official' responses to complaints or criticism and so, according to my hypothesis above, be rich with memes for preventing rational enquiry into homeopathy.

Let's dig out some of those memes...

1. In the response to the BBC report, the society is adamant still that homeopathy can act as an alternative to malarial prophylactics. (An utter outrage.) The society states the truth at one point:

At present, there is no large scale research evidence to support the use of homeopathy in preventing malaria.

but then goes to on to offer a list of memes to get out of this...

Consequently, there is substantial anecdotal evidence from around the world to suggest that homeopathy may offer a gentle, yet effective, complementary or alternative approach.
...
Clearly, this needs more research. Nevertheless, absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of inefficacy”.

So, we see several memes to ward of the uncomfortable nature of the truth - anecdotal evidence says is works and the (brilliant) "absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of inefficacy". We would love to point out to them that anecdotal evidence is not sufficient to prove efficacy and of course, that absence of evidence is not evidence of efficacy.

2. The next press release is about Professor Michael Baum's report that homeopathy is an implausible treatment for which over a dozen systematic reviews have failed to produce convincing evidence of effectiveness. The press release quotes a number of flawed studies to suggest that Prof. Baum is wrong, but also comes up with the exceptional defensive meme that

Access to [homeopathy] should be a matter of choice for individuals and The
Society of Homeopaths firmly supports the Government’s agenda of patient choice.

In other words, freedom of choice is more important than evidence of efficacy.

3. The next defensive press release concerns an article in the Guardian, by our friend Ben Goldacre, regarding recent meta-analysis of trials showing homeopathy as being just placebo. The Society naturally brush this off and use another well crafted meme to dismiss this criticism:

It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomised trial (RCT) is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy.

So, the cornerstone of modern evidence-based medicine cannot be used to test homeopathy - a very useful quack meme. Homeopaths complain that the 'individualised treatments' involved in 'real' homeopathy cannot be subject to placebo controlled trials. An obvious canard. Even more bizarrely, the claim here is that what is important is not what is in the pills, but the very experience of the consultation and dispensing of the pills. I would appreciate their sincerity in this belief, but I do not see the Society condemning Boots for offering off-the-shelf homeopathic pills.

I am sure there are more in there, but this blog entry has gone on long enough.

What does this mean for our fight against quackery? If it is true that most participants in quackery (both practitioners and customers) are more likely to be deluded and protected by defensive memes, rather than outright frauds, then legislation and prosecution may not do so much good. Rather we need ways to prevent these sort of memes and canards from being implanted in the first place. Better science education and science reporting in the press would go a very long way here.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths

 

That BBC Newsnight Video Again...



more info from the BBC

And James Randi giving his witty insights into homeopathic 'thinking'.

Labels: Society of Homeopaths

 

Just in case you were wondering, here is the letter I wrote to the Society of Homeopaths, asking them just why they were so upset about me.

This letter was written about in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday October 20th.

You can follow the story on BadScience, DCScience, Respectful Insolence, Gimpy's and Randi, plus many more too numerous to mention.

URGENT

For the attention of Paula Ross, Chief Executive of the Society of Homeopaths

Dear Ms Ross,

I have just received the email below from my web site hosting company. I believe they originally forwarded the email to an incorrect address and so today is the first day I have been able to respond to it. My name is Andy Lewis and I am the owner of the domain quackometer.net and I write the blog that can be found on that site. As such, I would very much like to make sure that I fully understand your concerns expressed in the fax to netcetera and I am keen to see that we can resolve any concerns and reach an amicable understanding for all.

I understand you are unhappy about this post, http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2007/08/gentle-art-of-homeopathic-killing.html. This post was written to highlight my concerns and opinions that the Society of Homeopaths is not taking a firm enough stand, and taking enough action, to ensure its members do not use homeopathy where it is totallyinappropriate. Furthermore, the widespread denigration of evidence-based medicine amongst homeopaths is something that the Society should be seeking to reduce should it truly wish to be complementary. It is my opinion thatthe Society should have done a lot more after the BBC Newsnight sting on homeopaths and malaria. As Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital said, "people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice". Hence, the title of my post. I have similar concerns about the role of homeopathy in managing AIDS and the advocacy for such treatment that so many homeopaths appear to make. The stark difference of opinion between medical homeopaths, such as Fisher, and your lay membership is concerning.

I hope you understand that my concerns are genuinely held and my motive is the wider highlighting of a problem that may well end in harm or even death to people unless action is taken. I am sorry you have felt it necessary to ask my web hosting provider to take down the page in question. If you could tell me urgently what the wording is that you feel is incorrect, defamatory or not fair comment I will examine it immediately and will ensure a friendly and swift resolution of this matter. In addition, if you wish to respond to my concerns on the site, I will be more than happy to prominently publish your thoughts in full on my web site.

I am sure we can come to a quick and happy conclusion here, but should you feel it necessary to follow a legal route directed at me rather than my hosting company, then please can I suggest you initiate the appropriate pre-action protocols to help ensure we all have the right information and communications. http://www.justice.gov.uk/civil/procrules_fin/contents/protocols/prot_def.htm

I am sure you are aware that, being scientifically trained, I am sceptical of homeopathic claims. However, as you might see from my site, I believe that homeopaths could play an important role in healthcare in the UK, but that a good, healthy debate amongst all opinions would be required to get there. I would be humbled to think that I could play a small part in that. I look forward to your
response,

Yours,

Andy Lewis

The Quackometer

Labels: Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

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 tomorrow with some more bumps and bruises.

I have written many times on this blog that there appears to be nobody in the homeopathic community who really wants to take on this role of referee. Without someone to blow the whistle, people may actually get so deep into the homeopathic game that they really start believing they can cure serious illnesses, like malaria and AIDS. And, as part of the role playing is to pretend that real doctors are nasty, conspiratorial and in it for the Big Pharma money, some of the patients may also start crossing the safety boundaries.

There are a number of homeopathic members' clubs out there that have ethics codes and complaints committees, but after the BBC Newsnight/Sense about Science malaria sting which resulted in little visible change, one has to wonder how effective these procedures are? As Simon Singh, the science writer and broadcaster, said at the time,

I was shocked that there was such willingness to give advice and sell products that would leave people exposed to a highly dangerous disease… Beforehand I suspected that one or two homeopaths might offer pills to protect against malaria, but it turned out that ten out of ten were guilty of such irresponsible practice. This makes me think that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way homeopaths are regulated.

Now, Peter Chappell, you may remember, claims to be able to do wonders for just about everything, including AIDS and cancer, with not only his own magic homeopathy concoctions, but downloadable homeopathic MP3 files. Peter sports the designation FSHom (Fellow of the Society of Homeopaths) in a number of places, so, I rattle off a quick letter to them to see what they make of his practices. The Society of Homeopaths complaints officer, Patricia Moroney, replies that Peter is 'no longer a member of the Society of Homeopaths and therefore is not bound by our Code of Ethics and Practice. He is not entitled to FSHom."

My mistake.

In my defence, Peter Chappell carries the FSHom designation all over the web. Surely the Society of Homeopaths will be furious that he is still promoting himself as FSHom, whilst outrageously breaking their own code of practice, and try to do something about it? So furious in fact, that there could be no way that they would still be promoting his book on the society web site, under "Recommended Reading", and describing him as FSHom and 'a Registered Member and Fellow of the Society"? And so furious that there is no way that they would be holding an AIDS symposium on the 1st of December (World AIDS day) which will specifically give a platform to Peter Chappell's ridiculous healing ideas?


The second complaint I made was regarding Julia Wilson RSHom who holds a homeopathic asthma clinic and says that she has worked in a Kenyan homeopathic AIDS, TB and malaria clinic. In my opinion, her advertising literature advocated specific homeopathic cures for asthma that are superior to real medicine. The Society of Homeopaths found that no breach of their code had been made.

Let me repeat what I believe to be one of the difficult sections of the leaflet.

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. ... The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Although creams and puffers can provide temporary relief, they are not offering your child a cure.

Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs...

Leaving aside the self-contradictory nature of these claims about suppressing symptoms, it appears to me that Julia is saying that homeopathic approaches can do things that medicine cannot and that it offers a better approach. Julia, in her defence, says that 'absolutely no cure is implied'. Please re-read the above to make your own mind up. Specifically, she says to the SoH complaints officer that 'my leaflet makes no claims, stated or implied, that homeopathy can treat asthma...Absolutely no cure is implied' and SoH accepts this. "No further action will be taken". What do you think?

The response to my complaint also pointed out that the leaflet made clear that 'it does not claim superiority over conventional treatment, it is at pains to make it clear that homeopathy can be integrated with conventional treatment'. The only section that goes anywhere near such a statement is 'Homeopathic treatments are safe for children – and they work alongside conventional medicines such as creams and puffers.' Is that 'going to great pains' and advocating 'integration'? I think not. Is this why she talks of a 'drug free approach'?

As for her involvement in the Kenyan homeopathy clinic that claims to be a centre for treating AIDS and malaria, "[I] did not, at any point, claim to cure malaria, HIV/AIDS or TB. ... Not only would such a claim contravene section 72 of the Code of Ethics & Practice, it would of course, be counter to the very way in which homeopaths practice'. It is well worth visiting the Abha Light Foundation's web site and attempt to understand if that is what Abha believe too.

I wish I could point you to a relevent page on the SoH website that publicised the outcomes of the above investigations, but their ethics and complaints procedures appear to be private and closed. It is worth comparing and contrasting this with the GMC and their conduct enquiries in doctors' standards. Full details of their current investigations and decisions can be found on their site. I would argue that the GMC was better protecting patients' interests by being open and public.

In closing, when dealing with homeopaths, it does look like we have to be very careful about words. Their world view is so far from reality that we can never be sure we are talking about the same thing. Many homeopaths do not recognise illnesses like AIDS, malaria and TB and their pathogenic origins . They see these illnesses as being symptoms of underlying imbalances in mystical energies, miasms, or fairy dust, or something. These 'life-force problems' are what homeopaths claim to be treating - not the disease. When they talk about 'treating' and 'curing' they are talking about the 'underlying reason' and the 'whole person'. Such pseudo-scientific subtlety will be lost on most people. And so, what look like contradictory thought process to us, make perfect sense in their Humpty Dumpty world. In a world where words mean whatever you want them to mean, it is difficult to see how any complaint against you could ever be upheld.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

After several decades of increasing popularity, the homeopathic community is finding itself under growing pressure. There is an increasing level of criticism of the practice coming from many quarters, including Richard Dawkins recent Channel 4 programme, lots of bloggers and academics too.

Importantly, homeopathy is not being seen as as benign as its adherents' propaganda suggests and that there are real dangers in the belief in magic water and sugar pills. It's not all bad news for homeopaths, there is unexpected support in some quarters. So, why is there so much pressure on them at the moment and where will this leave the homeopaths in the UK? More importantly, what should homeopaths being doing if they want to survive in any meaningful and respected way?

To make an attempt at answering this question, we need to understand a little history of homeopathy in the UK. The man considered responsible for introducing homeopathy into Britain was a Dr F H F Quin. He first starting touting his remedies in the 1830's, and being of aristocratic origin, his patients were the upper classes and nobility of British Society. He was keen to keep homeopathy within the medical profession and with the high paying aristocracy.

Another strand of homeopaths emerged in the wake of the ever increasing regulation and scientific nature of the medical profession. Lay homeopaths started emerging in the later half of the 19th century. These practitioners were not medical qualified and were from the start associated with more radical approaches to homeopathy. Despite offering their services to the lower echelons of society, radical lay homeopathy found it difficult to gain a foothold and homeopathy never really achieved mass popularity like it did in other countries.

The twentieth century saw the reversal of this picture with medical homeopaths in decline and lay homeopaths in ascendancy. The vestigial remnants of institutional medical homeopathy are now mainly centred within a few remaining homeopathic hospitals, and interestingly, they still have their aristocratic ties. Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital is proud to be called the Queen's physician. Homeopaths see this as a big stamp of approval for their quackery, although the HRH support says more about our royals than about the efficacy of homeopathy. When did we last see a Prince of the Realm educated in a science subject at university? We are much more likely to see them being trained in history, agriculture and how to kill foreigners.

But of course, the shocking thing is that homeopathy and these hospitals are funded by the NHS. It is a bit like finding a room in the cellars of a modern city hospital that still had working tanks for breeding leeches. This ghost of Victorian patriarchal medical quackery lurking within a modern public health service is of course an absurdity, and this is increasingly being pointed out both by senior academics and medics and the hospital managers who want to spend their limited budgets as wisely as possible. Medical homeopaths recognise the threat and are trying to campaign to save their funding. Even with their attempts to court members of parliament, it would look likely that those tasked with spending NHS money will make medical homeopathy an interesting modern historical anomaly. NHS Homeopathic hospitals are doomed by the simple asymmetry of their position. Stopping funding and closing hospitals is a fairly easy decision to make. Arguing for increased homeopathic provisioning and opening new hospitals looks almost impossible in today's climate. Would you want to argue for massive increased funding of contentious, unproven quackery in front of parliament? No, medical homeopathy will dwindle and die and be left with just a few GPs dabbling on the side.

That leaves the question of the future of lay homeopathy. Although somewhat antagonistic towards each other, lay homeopaths depend on their dwindling medically trained colleagues for a certain amount of credibility. However, lays have their own set of problems and these are mostly self-inflicted. Lays prefer to be called Professional Homeopaths as this gives them the appearance of, err, professionalism. However, their central problem is that they lack any sort of professional ethos whatsoever. Medical homeopaths are registered mainly with the Faculty of Homeopathy. However, they are ultimately accountable to their medical colleagues and can suffer severe penalty if they transcend their medical codes. Lay homeopaths are under no such sanction. This would explain the different attitudes of Dr Peter Fisher and his lay colleagues to the treatment of malaria with homeopathic pills. Fisher condemns the practice in the strongest terms whilst the Society of Homeopaths take absolutely no action to take their members to task over the widespread practice.

One could predict that without the constraints of either legislation, professional sanction or a commitment to rational enquiry that lay homeopaths will go off the deep end with ever increasing absurdity in their delusions. And that is just what we see. Not content with trying to treat a few headaches and grazed knees, their healing fantasies spread across the medical spectrum. Homeopaths take great pride in their work in 'helping' Africans with malaria or HIV. They proudly set themselves up as real alternatives to the medical profession and will tell their patients that. They splinter into factions with some saying that the only true homeopathy is that set out by Hahnemann whilst others take on more radical and 'progressive' approaches. Ever more 'inventive' remedies are produced from weird substances like hyena saliva, bewick swan and stone circles. Some are totally unconstrained and start believing they can make homeopathic mp3 files. Despite the various organisations that represent lay homeopaths expressly forbidding practices like these, no action ever appears to be taken. Homeopathic solidarity appears to be more important than constraining their members' out of control actions.

Of course, there is debate about these issues between homeopaths. One remedy at a time? Or multiple remedies? But having rejected the normal standards of scientific evidence and methodology that would normally settle such medical disputes, there are no ways of reaching consensus and so the community settles into its little-enders and big-enders groupings. Science has to be rejected as when it is used it consistently shows all homeopathic flavours to be equally as deluded. There is equivalence in all homeopathic delusions. And without a rational approach and mindset, homeopaths are free to drift off into deep and dangerous nonsense, best exemplified by the recent scandals of their advocacy of treatment of malaria and AIDS. This is not fringe behaviour. The Society of Homeopaths, the biggest register of lay homeopaths in the UK, is holding a symposium in London in December on the treatment of AIDS with homeopathy.

Criticism of homeopaths is widely seen as a conspiracy of vested interests and pharmaceutical company evil that is 'frightened of alternatives to their money making obsessions'. This is, of course, nonsense. Critics are just deeply concerned about the behaviour and consequences of the purveyors of unfettered nonsense setting themselves out to have healing responsibilities. This handy ready-made excuse of 'Big Pharma' prevents homeopaths having to think critically about what their detractors are saying. Few engage with the outside world and try to tackle their genuine concerns in a meaningful way.

There is, however, widespread recognition that they do need to get their house in order. There does need to be the appearance of a professional set of people able to look after their own affairs. Looking at other alternative medical practices, and seeing external regulatory pressures being put on them, homeopaths fear the consequences of either UK or European pressure to sort themselves out or restrict their activities. There has been a recent attempt to create a body that will oversee a single register of homeopaths as the first step towards a unitary self-regulatory body. However, the newly created body, CORH, recently collapsed with unpaid debts after some of the member bodies refused to pay dues and after widespread squabbling about what exactly homeopathy was. A new body is feebly trying to raise out of the CORH ashes, but the question of funding such a register is still undecided.

Regulation and legislation under the Blair Woo government has been lax and sometimes favourable. By giving fake pill manufacturers like Nelson's the ability to sell sugar pills as treatments for named conditions like hayfever and teething pains, homeopathy certainly gained some credibility and some profits for companies like Boots. This is unlikely to be maintained or strengthened under less 'new age' governments and after the torrent of criticism directed at the MRHA on the issue.

Attitudes of both the public and regulatory bodies tends to be fairly neutral towards homeopathy. It is seen incorrectly as a form of herbal medicine by some, or a benign nonsense by others and so not worth wasting effort on. Homeopathy rather slips under the radar and is not seen as something that can cause harm. What direct harm is done appears to be exported to developing nations with huge health care problems. Pretending you can cure AIDS with magic water will, of course, kill people. But it is tolerated in the UK by a society that likes the anti-establishment nature of it and the supposed self-empowerment. Jeanette Winterson writes in the Times about her first publisher, Philipa Brewster's attempts to export murderous delusion to Botswana without a hint of the controversy that such an action deserves.

Whether renewed UK or EU regulatory bodies wake up and take notice of homeopaths in the same way that they are curbing the excesses of vitamin pill sellers remains to be seen. What would be far preferable would be to see homeopaths take control of their own profession and reform it in meaningful ways. I must say that I see this as most unlikely as I cannot identify any leadership that could unite the majority of practitioners and take them towards a new vision. The depths of delusion, the resistance to criticism and the distrust of the wider medical community make my hopes rather futile.

But what sort of reform would be required? Well, there are perhaps a couple of levels of reform that could be made:

The first step would be to embrace the data. Just as the medical profession have spent the last five decades relinquishing their personal authority to the democratic pool of scientific evidence, so too homeopaths need to recognise that what they do is indistinguishable from providing placebos. That is what the data says, consistently. If homeopaths were to practice within the boundaries of that knowledge then almost all criticism would vanish overnight. Of course, homeopaths would have to start to understand placebos and let go of their more mystical notions of self-healing. Placebos have limits. Many complaints, and especially serious conditions, are not placebo responsive and so there would be no more dangerous nonsense about treating cancer, malaria or AIDS. Homeopathy could happily survive in a limited form if this was taken on board. At best, homeopaths could offer a lay complementary therapy alongside real medicine. At worse, it would be no different from any cranky new age crystal healer or aromatherapist. Maybe it would be just a bit of tolerated nuttiness.

The second and bigger step would be to fully recognise that the benefit that homeopaths give to their clients is all in the consultation. They are counsellors. Recognising this would mean abandoning the mumbo-jumbo of 'like-cures-like' and their crazy dilution/succussion rubbish. The homeopathic community represents a huge pool of people who are good at listening to people with health problems in a way that the GP cannot. Developing these skills, retraining and finding a way to integrate and exploit this pool would undoubtedly provide real complementary medical service within the UK, and almost certainly deserving of NHS funding.

They might not call themselves homeopaths anymore, but our society would benefit from a more rounded, effective, rational, caring, and, dare I say, holistic approach to health care.

And then pigs might fly.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

Peter Chappell (10 Canards) is a founder member of the Society of Homeopaths, he is a Fellow of the Society and has written several influential books on homeopathy. He describes himself as an inventor and a visionary, a charity worker and teacher. He also appears to be dangerously deluded.

Chappell makes his name by producing his own homeopathic preparations. His idea is to produce specific remedies to cure named diseases, despite this being very much against the rules of the Society of Homeopaths. His breakthrough is something called 'resonance healing'. I think you have to buy one of his books if you want some clues as to what this is. Apparently, he only 'partially reveals' methods. Cunning.

Peter Chappell's PC Remedies are clearly not normal homeopathic remedies. Whatever they are though, the Society of Homeopaths appears to want to give his ideas a big airing as they are being discussed at a special SoH symposium to be held in December 2007 in London on the treatment of HIV/AIDS with homeopathy. Chappell advocates the use of his remedies on his website. You will have to log in as a homeopath and answer secret questions that only a homeopath could answer to view this stuff, but it is well worth it (clue: Hahnemann, Kent, Pulsatilla). You will also have to offend the souls of your ancestors by ticking a few declarations, but in order to find out how prominent homeopaths are advocating mad treatments in Africa for deadly diseases then I think my gran will understand.

Chappell is selling remedies for not just AIDS, but just about everything including:

• Bilharzia
• Diarrhoea in infants and children in Africa
• Malaria
• Leprosy
• Nagasaki and Hiroshima Atomic Trauma
• Snake Bites Antidote
• Mobile Phone Toxicity
• Bed Wetting in children
• Religious Fanaticism
• Pornography

and so on.

This is what he says about his HIV vaccine:

This is my attempt to produce a vaccination. No one has tried to use it yet, I think. The ideal scenario is to give it to teenagers in one village and watch the HIV rate over a year compared to a similar village. It should be given daily for a month. That’s it.

Now, as with all homeopaths, what Chappell is missing is the slightest bit of evidence that anything he is offering is effective. He makes staggeringly bold claims, such as "it works in urgent situations in seconds or minutes. " For his AIDS work he says,

we have no proof in scientific terms that the AIDS treatment is effective, in practice it is very reliable and thousands of people have recovered

This is difficult to understand. On one hand he is quite clear he has no evidence for any healing claims but then says it works anyway. This is typical homeopath double-think. There is the belief that scientific evidence is only one form of evidence when in reality it is the only sort of evidence that is justifiable to use when playing with the lives of desperate people. For homeopaths, their personalised 'evidence' of anecdotes, delusions and wishful thinking trump real objective evidence - and that is why they are deadly dangerous. The behaviour of homeopaths cannot be constrained by reason. People who are fooled by this narcissistic nonsense will have deaths on their hands.

But Peter Chappell FSHom does not stop at African healing delusions. He has another web site where he claims that he can capture his homeopathic resonances and implant them in mp3 music clips that you can listen to and download. Healingdownloads.com gives you a free sample, but then you have to fork out for further remedies. But, apparently you can cure pretty much everything including cancer. This is almost undoubtedly in breach of the Cancer Act of 1939.

The resonances are not audible of course. You just get some jazz clips whatever illness you have. Also, there is some special 'copy protection' to stop you healing your friends without paying. Damn. Don't you hate Digital Rights Managament? In his FAQ, he acknowledges that all this is pretty difficult to believe,

When Faraday suggested electricity and magnetism were connected, the scientists scoffed.

Yes, people find it hard to believe when claims are made that Elvis is still alive, the moon is made of cheese and sane adults can really believe all this homeopathy nonsense.

Chappell makes great play of all this being done for charity. If money is not the answer, then why not start broadcasting resonance-loaded tunes over Nairobi radio, or distributed via iTunes?

After all this, I just have to wonder what a homeopath would actually have to do or claim for the Society of Homeopaths to actually take action, strike off and disown one of their fold?

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

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 on Ben Goldacre's BadScience

James Randi discusses the affair here with some insight into potential problems.

The homeopath named in this article was subject to an official complaint. You can find out how the complaint was dealt with here.

The Guardian Newspaper has reported on the issues raised by the response of the Society of Homeopaths and compares it to how evidence-based medicine deals with criticism.

The Society of Homeopaths responded with a press release and letter to the Guardian (so far unpublished) and gives some insight into their thinking.

I have written to the Society of Homeopaths again about this press release as I believe it contains some incorrect and misleading information about the BBC Newsnight/Sense about Science malaria sting. No response so far.

Their thoroughly misleading statements in their letter to the Guardian and on their web site are discussed here.

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

It is now over a year since Sense about Science, Simon Singh and the BBC Newsnight programme exposed how it is common practice for high street homeopaths to tell customers that their magic pills can prevent malaria. The Society of Homeopaths have done little to stamp out this dangerous practice apart from issue a few ambiguously worded press statements.

The SoH has a code of practice, but my feeling is that this is rarely used to censure homeopaths and is therefore liable to mislead the public. If the SoH cannot deal with the malaria issue raised by Newsnight can the public expect them to deal with wider issues? .

As a quick test, I picked a random homeopath with a web site from the SoH register to see if they flouted a couple of important rules:

48 • Advertising shall not contain claims of superiority.
• No advertising may be used which expressly or implicitly claims to cure named diseases.

72 To avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease.

The homeopath I picked is called Julia Wilson and runs a practice from the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. What I found rather shocked and angered me.

Straight away, we find that Julia M Wilson LCHE, RSHom specialises in asthma and works at a clinic that says,

Many illnesses and disease can be successfully treated using homeopathy, including arthritis, asthma, digestive disorders, emotional and behavioural difficulties, headaches, infertility, skin and sleep problems.

Well, there are a number of named diseases there to start off. She also gives a leaflet that advertises her asthma clinic. The advertising leaflet says,

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. ... The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Although creams and puffers can provide temporary relief, they are not offering your child a cure. Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs...

Now, despite the usual homeopathic contradiction of claiming to treat causes not symptoms and then in the next breath saying it can alleviate symptoms, the advert is clearly in breach of the above rule 47 on advertising as it implicitly claims superiority over real medicine and names a disease.

Asthma is estimated to be responsible for 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions in the UK each year. It is not a trivial illness that sugar pills ought to be anywhere near. The Cochrane Review says the following about the evidence for asthma and homeopathy,

The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective.

This is not a surprise given that homeopathy is just a ritualised placebo. Hopefully, most parents attending this clinic will have the good sense to go to a real accident and emergency unit in the event of a severe attack and consult their GP about real management of the illness.

However, a little more research on her site reveals much more serious concerns. She says on her site that 'she worked in Kenya teaching homeopathy at a college in Nairobi and supporting graduates to set up their own clinics'. Now, we have seen what homeopaths do in Kenya before. It is not treating a little stress and the odd headache. Free from strong UK legislation, these missionary homeopaths make the boldest claims about the deadliest diseases.

A bit of web research shows where Julia was working (picture above). The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for 'treating' various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked practice recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let's remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

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.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

Ironically, the WHO has issued a press release today on cheap ways of reducing child and adult mortality due to malaria. Their trials, conducted in Kenya, of using cheap mosquito nets soaked in insecticide have reduced child deaths by 44% over two years. It says that issuing these nets be the 'immediate priority' to governments with a malaria problem. No mention of homeopathy. These results were arrived at by careful trials and observation. Science. We now know that nets work. A lifesaving net costs $5. A bottle of useless homeopathic crap costs $4.50. Both are large amounts for a poor Kenyan, but is their life really worth the 50c saving?

I am sure we are going to hear the usual homeopath bleat that this is just a campaign by Big Pharma to discredit unpatentable homeopathic remedies. Are we to add to the conspiracy Big Net manufacturers too?

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?

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

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 homeopathic remedies might start out as herbs, but then they get diluted to the point where none of the herb remains, and eyebrows get raised. "Surely, most products in Boots aren't like that?". Well, pretty much, yes. You then explain the more bizarre elements (e.g. the more dilute the remedy the stronger it is) and the person either concludes you are a liar or makes a mental note to check this, or both. After all, we all know someone who swears by such stuff. They can't be wrong, can they? You might then discuss the futility of anecdote, the placebo effect, spontaneous remission, regression to the mean, wishful thinking, confirmation bias, and so on. By then, they have usually made their excuses. I am so interesting, it is amazing that I have so few friends.

Anyway, one aspect of homeopathy that does not get the coverage it deserves is the idea of homeopathic proving. Provings are the method by which homeopaths determine the effects of a particular remedy. In short, because 'like cures like' in the homeopathic world, if a substance makes you lethargic, then it can form the basis of a cure for tiredness. So a proving gives a group of volunteers substances that might tire you. Over a few weeks, diaries are kept of symptoms, dreams are recorded, star positions noted and poems are written. Afterwards, the investigators look through the diaries and record the experiences and conclude that the substance is now part of the suite of remedies.

It gets a little stranger, of course. Nothing is straightforward in the world of homeopathy. Hahnemann, the founder, started off using real poisons to do his Provings; making himself and his friends sick as dogs, blinding headaches, sweats and fevers, and so on. He found, funnily enough, that if you dilute the substance to non-existent levels, provings become a lot more palatable. In effect, you are now free to dream up whatever symptoms you want. Just as cognitive biases can convince you that homeopathy has cured you, cognitive biases can select particular symptoms as being significant. Provings are not done blind. Over the weeks you are going to experience a range of mental and physical states. This means that expectations can be set amongst the proving group, and availability biases, and selective thinking will ensure the proving gets the right 'result'. In summary, you should not confuse a Proving with proof.

Some more progressive homeopaths have had to admit that the whole concept of provings is deeply flawed. At Southampton University, Dr George Lewith has been working on the problems that such illogical and flawed procedures have:

Homeopathic pathogenetic trials (or provings) provide the foundations for the clinical practice of homeopathy. The most recent review of proving studies indicated that provings are generally of poor methodological quality. Methods to improve the quality and scientific rigour are needed to critically assess the clinical basis of homeopathy.

But few homeopaths take notice of such warnings. After all, they all have to undertake provings at homeopathy college and are indoctrinated to defend them. I can believe they are quite good fun. So over the years, many more substances have been drafted into the homeopathic fold through Provings. Given that remedies and provings rarely actually use the substance, doesn't that create a free for all? If the whole process is a delusion, what constrains the process and what substances are actually used?

I thought a competition would be good. Who could dream up the weirdest substance to use in a proving? Unfortunately, such a competition would be futile as the homeopaths are already doing it.

A good example of something I could never dream up is a proving of 'stone circle'. Carried out by 'very scary' Mary English RSHom, this proving took a piece of neolithic upright stone from Stanton Drew, near Bristol, and decided that a homeopathic preparation of rock was good for tiredness.

The longest serving director of one of the UKs' biggest homeopathy schools, Misha Norland, does a lot of new provings with his students. He is quite prolific. Here is a list of some of his provings:

• AIDS
• Trained Peregrine Falcon
• Positronium
• LSD
• Heroin
• Buckyballs
• Bewick Swan
• Condom
• House Sparrow
• Cockroach

That is going to take some beating. The positronium one is interesting. He is obviously quite proud of his antimatter homeopathy remedy. The AIDS remedy was taken from the blood of a man who died.

The sky is the limit for provings. I am sure you can Google your own. But here are a few:

• The light captured from Venus.
• Camel's milk.
• Plutonium
• Vacuum Cleaner Dust
• Caviar
• Tyrannosaurus Rex

It would be easy to think that this stuff is just on the fringe of homeopathic thinking. Indeed, the sheer incredulity of it is what allows homeopathy still to be funded by the NHS. This just cannot be true. But, one only has to visit the web site of UK homeopathy pill manufacturers to be reassured that this is not off with the homeopathic faeries. This is mainstream.

Let's look at Helios, one of the UK biggest fake pill manufacturers. They list their remedies by initial letter. Let's pick, at random, H. Remedies include,

• Hadrian's Wall
• Helicobacter Pylorii
• Helium
• Hepatitis A, B and C.
• Halogen Light
• Hyena Saliva

There are dozens of these, and this is just H. Feel free to explore the other letters.

So, should the NHS pay for Hyena Saliva? Well, if they are, what is sure, is that they are not getting any. For all pratical purposes, all homeopathic pills are identical: no active ingredient.

If I was running Helios, I would have a big skip of blank pills out the back. When an order came in, I would scoop up some pills into a pot, print out a label, stick it on, ship it out, and no one would be the wiser. There is not a diagnostic test in the world that would tell you whether you really had Hepatitis B or if you had Bewick Swan. You might think you are taking caviar but really you could be sucking on condom. Is your medicine really the dog's bollocks? No instrument in the world is sensitive enough to convict me in court of defrauding you.

And this is what your taxes are supporting. The NHS, by providing Homeopathy, is legitimising this fraud. The NHS is funding witchcraft. Dr Peter Fisher, the clinical director of the London Homeopathic Hospital and the 'respectable' face of homeopathy defends this voodoo. He may appear to make reasonable statements about homeopathy, but looks as if he is out of touch with mainstream practice.

Witchcraft does not belong in the NHS. It is not adding to patient choice. People are being conned, deluded and harmed. Let your MP know.

Oh, and if you can think up an even weirder substance to do a Proving on, please post below.

Labels: homeopathy, NHS, Society of Homeopaths

 

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 pills and the placebo effect and, as we are constantly reminded, there are no side-effects. But mainly because there are no effects too. Fine. All good and dandy.

It's not the pills that upset me. Its the dangerously deluded thinking that goes with it, the rejection of rational ways of understanding health, and the refusal to hold any sort of meaningful debate about what role complementary treatment might really play. Head in the sand. Three Wise Monkeys. It is this lack of self-appraisal and the refusal to draw boundaries that is scary. We saw this earlier with the Sense-About-Science and Simon Singh sting on homeopaths where the researchers asked several homeopaths for anti-malarial advice and without exception, got appalling, negligent and dangerous nonsense back. The homeopaths were quite prepared to send their 'patients' into high-risk malarial areas without protection and sensible precautionary advice. That sort of consultation could easily kill. The Society of Homeopaths initial response to this situation was bizarre and frightening, essentially denying that there was an issue that needed addressing. It responded in a confusingly contradictory way later on, with a little better advice.

It is not homeopathy necessarily that is quackery. It is the homeopathists' lack of awareness of the boundaries and limits to what they do that constitutes quackery. And dangerous quackery too. Here is another way that this recklessness has manifested itself and follows on from my earlier posting on homeopathic first-aid kits.

Homeopathic First Aid kits appear to drag homeopathy into an area that is far from its origins. Homeopathy has survived because it is a mostly harmless intervention for non-life threatening, self-limiting conditions, e.g. tiredness, headaches and minor aches and pains. Thus, the standard tricks of the mind, such as post hoc reasoning, misattributed placebo responses, regression to the mean, and so on, are systematically interpreted as proof of the effectiveness of the intervention.


But get into a First Aid situation and, by definition, you are dealing with medical emergencies where the immediate course of action can have far reaching consequences. It is life or death stuff. Homeopathic First Aid kits are manufactured by 'Big Alt.Pharma' companies like Helios in the UK. I first spotted the kit being sold through a distributor that was also selling the fraudulent Q-Link pendant. Their web site said the following:

An essential first-aid remedy kit for the home, car and workplace specifically formulated to be used in even the most severe emergency and accident situations.

I was somewhat alarmed that there was serious suggestion that homeopathy was a suggested course of action in the 'most severe emergency and accident situations'. First Aiders are trained to save lives by establishing airways and circulation and preventing shock. Sugar pills have no part here. So, I wrote off to a few people to see what I could do about it.

First, the manufacturers, Helios, responded as follows:

Thank you for your e-mail and comments. We have amended the information on our web site to clarify the intended use of this kit.

Please note it is well within the scope of homoeopathy to prescribe routinely for acute injury situations as they have have well defined similar symptom pictures in most cases. Within the range of remedies in the kit there is room for differentiation for the knowledgeable prescriber, paramedic or first aider for whom this kit is designed.

As a matter of precaution we have amended the wording on our site to include:“An essential first-aid remedy kit for the home, car and workplace specifically formulated to be used by first aiders and the more experienced user of homeopathy, for accident and emergency situations that require higher potencies.” The kit also comes with a comprehensive leaflet which in the introduction clearly states the following under the title of ‘Safety First’:"Serious injuries and illnesses should never be treated without seeking expert advice. Use your instincts and common sense; if you are worried call for help first then give the appropriate remedy whilst you are waiting for help to arrive. In cases which are less serious or urgent, if symptoms show no improvement or return always seek professional help."

I hope this allays you concerns.

Allay them? Partially. At least their web site, and their distributors' web sites, appear to have a less aggressive statement about their product. But, their belief is still that sugar pills have a role in "acute injury situations". I wonder what evidence there is for this? How do they avoid the homeopathic healing crisis that is talked about in an already critical situation? And aren't remedies supposed to 'take time to work'? Importantly, someone fiddling around in their little green box for the right 'remedy' is abdicating the prime responsibilities of the first aider. It is absurd to think there is a role in life critical situations for delusional healing fantasies.

So, I also wrote to the Society of Homeopaths. This body likes to think of itself as a professional regulatory body and surely, it would not endorse any practices within its remit that could injure patients. Surely, this is about as serious as it gets in he misuse of homeopathy.

I wrote,

Does the society endorse such products? If not, would a suitable announcement be important to alert the public that these products may not be in the best interests of injured people?

The response I got back was,

As to whether The Society of Homeopaths endorses these or any other products, the simple answer is that we do not. Our Code of Ethics &Practice states that 'no member may use their Society membership in the commercialisation of any product or remedy". We do have long standing relationships with all the homeopathic pharmacies, with a link to them from our own website. However, this does not extend to endorsing their products.

I hope this clarifies this situation for you.

With kind regards

Yours sincerely

Paula Ross

Chief Executive

So, my question about warning the public was ignored and they appear to be quite happy linking to the sites and saying you can buy first aid kits there. I found this quite alarming, so I wrote back to Paula Ross,

Application of homeopathy, or any other unnecessary intervention in 'severe emergency and accident situations', would be strictly counter to the immediate needs of the situation and could even be harmful.

So questions,

1. Is this a statement you would agree with?

2. By linking to the Helios and stating you can buy first aid kits there, are you not implicitly endorsing these products?

3. Should you agree with statement 1, should the Society be taking steps to ensure that it distances itself from such products and alerts its own members, and the public who may visit your site, that this is a dangerous and irresponsible use of homeopathy?

Surely as a recognised complementary therapy, users of homeopathy should be well aware of the boundaries of its complementarity and an emergency situation is one that should be left to trained paramedics and first-aiders?

I look forward to your response,

The response I got back was...

nothing.

It would look like the Society of Homeopaths does not give damn if the public or its member are under the impression that homeopathy can be used in critical situations.

This does not surprise me in the slightest. When you are immersed in a subject that is impervious to critical debate, evidence and reason then the boundaries around what might be good practice and what might be poor practice become totally arbitrary. There are no standards that you might apply to decide where to draw the limits. If you accept the ability for homeopathy to treat hayfever on very poor standard of evidence, why not accept that it can treat malaria, cancer and road traffic accident victims too? Indeed, the easiest path of all is to draw no boundaries whatsoever. Why get embroiled in a debate with your delusional members? It could only reduce membership levels after all.

The Society of Homeopaths would like to see itself as a regulatory body for the profession. Indeed, some members believe it is. But it is no more a regulatory body than a golf club is a regulatory body for golfers. It is a members club, a registrar of the delusional, and a cosy members club too. How many members ever get struck off? What would they have to do to earn the society's wrath?

So, does this sort of quack belief in the ability to treat acute situations ever really do any harm? There was case recently of a midwife that allegedly got in the way of paramedics to apply olive oil to the feet and herbal remedies to a baby in urgent need of resuscitation. The baby survived, but with severe brain damage. Yes, not homeopathy, but a person with the same bonkers belief that magic can be used to cure in life critical situations.

Homeopathy, with its ridiculous pseudo-scientific explanations, is not a complementary therapy. Its belief system is in direct opposition to evidence based medicine and rational approaches to treatment. It instills a distrust in the medical profession and their 'allopathic ways' and their iatrogenic deaths. It is only a small step towards thinking that trained first aiders and paramedics need to step aside for their caring, more gentle homeopath.


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Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH