Then again, you might not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember, Dr Jenifer Worden could be your GP.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related posts:

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2. The British Chiropractic Association Humiliated. People who work in public healthcare, or are involved with the promotion of health practitioners or techniques, do not have an absolute right to a reputation. It is most important...
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Dear Professor Bellamy,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Lewis.

Related posts:

1. Homeopathy: A Warning from Africa   This video is starting to do the rounds about how wonderful homeopaths are helping people in Ghana in malarial areas. I hope as many people as possible watch...
2. The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing 11 October 2007 11:47am My web hosting company Netcetera have received a complaint from the legal representation of the Society of Homeopaths about this posting. On the request of my...
3. Neal’s Yard Remedies ‘rapped by medicines regulator’ In a recent post, I described how Neal’s Yard Remedies had withdrawn their Malaria homeopathy pills. Their press release said, as this is obviously a contentious issue which is causing...

It has come to my attention that, this autumn, I will become a father for the second time. We have been very fortunate in that we are not spring chickens and achieving this feat has been quite straightforward. A near 100% hit rate.

For many couples, it is not so easy. Getting pregnant can take some time. Even if you are both healthy and you are managing to have regular sex, your chances of getting pregnant in any particular month are only about around 20%. According to the NHS Choices web site, this means that for every thousand couples, about 150 of them will not have been successful after a full year of trying.

Of course, it could be worse than that. Two people in busy careers, long commutes, social lives and so on, may find it hard to keep up the effort. And indeed, if you do have a genuine infertility problem, such as ovulation issues, low sperm counts, infections or being overweight, then conception can take much, much longer. Some couples simply have no explanation for their infertility.

Given these numbers, then there will always be a very large pool of people, who are probably quite healthy and fertile, who are becoming desperate that it is ‘just not happening for them’. And other people who may have significant health issues that need sorting out. And it may well be quite difficult for any particular couple to know whether they are just being unlucky or need some medical advice and treatment.

Such a potent mix of high hopes and frustration, surrounding a problem that may well be self-correcting, provides a natural hunting ground for quacks to offer their wares and claim any subsequent success.

One such organisation that has come to my attention is the 30 year old charity called Foresight Preconception. A ‘non profit’ organisation, Foresight has a list of registered Foresight practitioners who “improve natural health in both parents” and so “enhance fertility and successful pregnancy”.

On the face of it, there are some fairly sensible looking angles they take – looking at nutrition, cutting out alcohol and checking for genito-urinary infections. But scrape away ever so slightly and the approach that Foresight promotes starts to get worrying.

Let’s look at some of those aspects.

Firstly, nutrition. The headline advice is to go for “filtered water, organic food, free from pesticides and additives.” There is no good evidence that eating organic food helps with fertility. This sounds more like Sunday supplement advice rather than anything serious. But it gets worse. Instead of straightforward advice on eating a balanced diet, good food preparation tips and how to manage weight, we are presented with lists of foods to avoid, specialist foods to east (such as Alfalfa and Mung beans, Goat and sheep milk products), and a warning to look out for “individual allergies, food intolerances”. This looks more like a classic nutritionists sales pitch rather than sensible eating advice, usually the prelude to selling vitamin pills. The tactic amongst nutritionists is to make diet look really hard and complicated – this softens people up for the shortcut pill purchases.

And my suspicions are raised further.

Foresight base much of what they do on Hair Mineral Analysis. They do this to look for trace element deficiencies and heavy metal contamination. However, Hair Mineral Analysis has been described as ‘a cardinal sign of quackery’. I have previously gone into detail about why this technique is not useful for deciding if you need mineral and vitamin supplements. Indeed, HMA is used solely used as a sales tool, whether wittingly or not by practitioners. The results are not reproducible and reliable and there is no good way of interpreting results to allow people to decide if they need to take a supplement. Most people do not need supplements of this sort – but the practitioner’s interpretation of the test will invariably say you do. (I note, for example, this one person in a forum is saying they were recommended supplements costing £130 per month.)

Foresight say that they have “been testing hair and giving supplement programmes to restore natural fertility and ensure successful reproduction for over 30 years” and that it is their “most vital component”. There is no good scientific rational for why this might be so. Indeed, there are lots of good reasons to think this is nonsense and that couples will be buying lots of expensive “Foresight formulated” pills for no reason.

Hair Mineral Analysis is so popular because it looks really scientific.  Print outs of lots of data from computers and everything. Foresight say “it is an essential part of the Foresight philosophy that recommendations to clients are based on solid scientific evidence”. Hair Mineral Analysis cannot provide that and it looks like they have been misled and are misleading their clients.

More worrying signs are they part of their programme is all about cutting out “Electromagnetic Pollution”. We are told that ‘electrosmog’ can be “valid reason for headaches, dizziness, sleeplessness, fatigue, depression and we now know – ovarian failure and low sperm count.”

There is no good reason to think this is true. Indeed, the idea that the electromagnetic radiation from domestic sources can be the source of such illnesses is the invention of a few characters who have built businesses from selling solutions to protect you from such ‘dangers’. And indeed, they are advised by the usual suspects, including the high profile and doubtful Powerwatch.

Foresight say they will advise a ‘geopathic survey’ for your house. This is likely to be expensive – and completely useless as it is based on pure pseudo-science – it is a form of dowsing. Typical more ‘solutions’ are sold on the back of a meaningless report.

Where things start to get really alarming is on their advice on sexually transmitted diseases. Quite rightly, Foresight advise their couples to get tested. Where they go off the deep end is to advise them that a suitable treatment can be found in homeopathy. Homeopathic pills have ben so diluted that all that is left is the sugar pill. Treating infections with sugar pills is the same as leaving them untreated. And of course, it is worse than that because people may feel they have received treatment when they have not.

Foresight do say that antibiotics may be used. However, and this is a real worry, many of the Foresight practitioners are indeed homeopaths (e.g. see Rachael Leffman, member of the Society of Homeopaths, for her approach and costs.). Homeopaths believe that mainstream medicines, such as antibiotics,  can produce greater illness in people later on – they are likely, of course, to propose homeopathy as a treatment and so leave patients at risk and untreated. Such advice is not just counterproductive to Foresight’s aims, it is deeply irresponsible.

There are many other worrying and dubious aspects of their approach. Not least is their homeopath fuelled rejection of vaccination. So, not only do they put their clients at risk, they advise their clients to be suspicious of treatments that could protect their child. Such are the risks of alternative medicine – it is not the treatments that are dangerous, it is the untreated illness and dangerous advice that pose risks.

But Foresight say they have lots of medical advisors to make sure they are doing things right. Looking at the list of their advisors, it becomes quite apparent that the advisors live on the fringes of medicine. We see homeopaths such as Dr. Anne Wynne-Simmons (who trained at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital) and Dr Sheila Gibson (who used to work at the Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital) . We see ‘ecological medicine’ specialists such as Dr Stephen Brooke (who advises ‘electosensitivity’ support groups) and Dr Sarah Myhill (who was investigated by the GMC last year and had her ability to prescribe taken away).

Dr Jean Munro is also on the list. I have written about her private clinic and bizarre treatments on several occasions. Munro was the subject of an investigation by ‘World in Action’ in 1990 for “allegations of wrong diagnosis, useless treatment and a death following the failure of treatments.”

There are some even odder characters too, such as Roy Riggs B.Sc who descibes himself as a “Holistic Geobiologist” and is “an “professional Earth Energy dowser”. He guest lectures at the London Westminster University’s School of Integrative Medicine and The Baltic Dowser’s Association of Lithuania. (Do you see what company you keep, Westminster?)

Foresight are keen to present some evidence that they are successful, but from their figures it is impossible to tell how much of the ‘success’ is due to their intervention and how many pregnancies would have occurred anyway. As time is one of the best factors in achieving a successful conception, all Foresight may be doing is taking hundreds of pounds off people in the meantime and waiting for nature to take its course..

But some of their practices –such as unnecessarily complex dietary restrictions, obsessions with non-existent harms and, useless treatments for significant problems, might actually be making it much harder for couples to have a baby. Just because something sounds natural and good and someone is paying attention to you does not mean that the result will be good.

For that reason, I would suggest couples are very cautious before approaching a Foresight practitioner and go and have a talk with their GP instead. To begin with, your doctor might not do much and simply advise you to keep trying whilst cutting down on alcohol, taking a folic acid supplement and eating well, but that might indeed be the best advice you can have.

Related posts:

1. Pulling My Hair Out or, The Role of Mineral Hair Analysis in the Sale of Food Supplements initially posted on Holford Watch. Patrick Holford has set up a charity. Not poorly, fluffy kittens or...
2. Which? Uncovers Dangerous Advice from Nutritionists. Having just had a baby girl and moving house, I thought I would subscribe to Which? magazine as I knew I needed to make a few critical spends over the...
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(See Update below: The Independent has now covered this story in detail with article, leader comment and columnist’s reaction.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update May 3rd, 2011

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

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

The Leader column is very direct: Resist this medical obscurantism

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

He says,

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

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

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

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

The Homeopathic Action Trust is controlled by the Society of Homeopaths

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

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

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

Related posts:

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

Science is a human activity. And as such, it is subject to the full range of fallibilities of thought and action that people are capable of. Within science you will find sloppy and wishful thinking, error and even fraud. But science, rather uniquely, has methods designed explicitly to minimise human biases, reduce error and correct mistakes when they are found. It is this inherent error correction that makes science a reliable source of knowledge about the world.

Peer Review

One of the mechanisms that aims to increase the reliability of the published results of science is peer review. Scientists are required to fully disclose their results and the methods by which they came by those results so that others can criticise, replicate and confirm – or otherwise. But before a paper is published, a journal will ask some other specialists in suitable fields to ensure the results are valid, significant and original. The reviewers check the paper to ensure that a minimum standards of quality is met. This ensures that what we read is a valid contribution to scientific debate.

But peer review itself is not a perfect process. The reviewers can be subject to their own biases – accepting papers that fit their preconceptions or rejection those that might conflict with their own work. Journals have a pecking order of credibility, with the best journals enjoying a reputation for thorough and impartial peer review, whereas those at the bottom can just be seen as promoting special and commercial interests. The process of peer review in these journals is a charade with little real meaning.

At the heart of peer review is trust. We cannot escape it. We have to assume that, at least in publishing houses and journals that we rate highly, editors and reviewers have properly undertaken thorough peer review, without grace nor favour, and only allowed through the academic work that merits publication. Of course, subsequent errors can be found in peer reviewed work and that is inevitable. Reviewers themselves have to trust that procedures were carried out as described and that mistakes were not made. Peer review is just the first independent layer of checking of results. But the badge of peer review on an article allows the results to be discussed with an authority that could not be achieved prior to publication.

Failure of peer review happens across all areas of science, but the publication record with complementary and alternative medicine is especially troubled. So much so, that Professor Barker Bausell, who ran the American National Institute of Health Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialized Research Center, has written that no credence should be placed in the results of CAM journals because of the total lack of effective peer review. That is not to say that all CAM results are unreliable, but that those published in specialist CAM journals lack rigorous review and, for example, positive results are published regardless of merit and negative results ignored.

Oxford University Press and eCAM

Oxford University Press is a publishing house that deserves a good reputation. However, it has been publishing its own CAM journal, eCAM.

Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine(eCAM) is an international, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to understand the sources and to encourage rigorous research in this new, yet ancient world of complementary and alternative medicine.

Surprisingly, and contrary to what you might think given its stance on evidence, this journal is not really thin. The journal is filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful papers, a couple of my own recent favourites include, “Clowns Benefit Children Hospitalized for Respiratory Pathologies” (which I am sure they do), and “How Far Can Ki-energy Reach?—A Hypothetical Mechanism for the Generation and Transmission of Ki-energy” (which I am sure is utter nonsense).

One paper that was published earlier this year, caught my eye. Written by America’s chief homeopathic apologist, Dana Ullman, it was entitled “The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy”. Now this surprised me because Ullman had written a book making all sorts of daft claims about Darwin and Homeopathy. I wrote about how Darwin’s own letters allow you to see that he thought homeopathy was absurd and “a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clairvoyance”.

A Dismal Paper

Despite this, Ullman used the peer reviewed journal to repeat nonsense about Darwin and homeopathy. In the paper, he makes several claims, the worst being.

1. Firstly, Ullman claims that Darwin might not have lived unless he had been ‘cured’ by homeopathy. It is true that Darwin did take some homeopathy pills (which he said he did “without an atom of faith”) but this was while undergoing other treatments at a hospital in Malvern. Darwin had an undiagnosed disease that came and went throughout his life. Ullman attributes a certain remission to his sugar pill taking – and indeed claims that he only lived because of homeopathy.

2. Ullman writes “After just a month of treatment, Charles had to admit that Gully’s treatments were not quackery after all.”, trying to suggest Darwin had become a convert (not true). There is nothing in his letters to suggest such a thing. To overcome this obvious deficiency in Ullman’s argument, he makes up a fantasy world,

Despite Darwin’s greatly improved health, he never publicly attributed any benefits directly to homeopathy. However, one must also realize that even though homeopathy achieved impressive popularity among British royalty, numerous literary greats, and many of the rich and powerful at that time, there was incredible animosity to it from orthodox physicians and scientists. Because Darwin was just beginning to propose his own new ideas about evolution, it would have been professional suicide to broadcast his positive experiences with homeopathy. Having to defend homeopathy would have damaged his credibility among his colleagues who were extremely antagonistic to this emerging medical specialty.

Given Darwin published one of the most audacious books on science for all time, it is a massive slur to suggest he was a coward when it came to his views on medicine. This passage is nothing short of disgraceful.

3. Ullman claims that Darwin experimented on homeopathic dilutions. Again, this is absurd. Darwin did do groundbreaking research on dilute solutions of ammonia salts on sundew plants, but they clearly were not homeopathic preparations. And Darwin never suggested or believed they were. Ullman desperately wriggles to try to suggest that Darwin was in awe of the power of homeopathy.

In all, the paper is confused and desperate in its attempts to suggest that science history should be rewritten to include Darwin’s so-called experiences and experiments with homeopathy.

A Failure of Peer Review

Why was it published, and why did peer review not stop such obvious drivel from being put in the scientific record?

Well, the paper was peer reviewed and it would appear that it was outright rejected by at least two reviewers. Nonetheless, the paper got published. This is nothing short of a complete breakdown in trust that ought to exist between journal readers and it editorial process.

In fact, I had a discussion with one of the reviewers. He said, “I pointed out the many gaping holes in the narrative – historically inaccurate, factually misleading etc – and recommended outright rejection. Needless to say they asked him to revise and re-submit.”

The reviewer did not expect to have a second chance at reviewing the revised submission. Indeed, he then told me, he had been taken off the list of reviewers at the journal, and was given no reason as to why he was not asked to re-review. Concerns were raised with the editor, Edwin Cooper, but apparently, ‘he did not want to know.’  The reviewer also says that he found out a second reviewer had also advised outright rejection.

Consequences

So, a junk piece of work has been published on the history of Charles Darwin. Does this matter? Ullman’s book, which he has been heavily promoting and using Darwin as one of its central characters is based on the premise that so many ‘cultural heroes’ have used homeopathy that it ought to be taken seriously. It is nothing but quack propaganda – but it may be compelling to many. The fact that Ullman can now boast that his ideas have been published in peer reviewed journals gives his stance an authority that it does not deserve. It is now taken ‘as fact’ that  Darwin was cured by homeopathy and did important experiments on it. Other ‘peer reviewed’ papers reference Ullman’s to back this up. (e.g. see here). Quacks, of course embellish even further. For example, a homeopath called Kaviraj writes, “He discovered that however much he reduced the dose of the substance he used, salt of ammonia – prepared according to the homoeopathic method with dilution and succussion – the effects were always visible in the plant.”. This is simply not true.

Ullman himself now boasts of this paper’s peer reviewed status. On an online discussion, he taunted me,

I have published in peer-review journals on Darwin and his homeopathic doctor. Please enlighten me where your writings on this subject have appeared. Oh, in your own blog! Wow, now THAT is high quality pee-review. Yeah, that typo is purposeful. You’re good a yellow journalism.[sic]

All this does is add to the fog of intentional confusion and dishonesty that surrounds alternative medicine. There is indeed an important need for sound research to be published about CAM. We need to understand why people are drawn to superstitious treatments, what are the potential harms – and what benefits, if any, might be expected. But CAM research is so full of propaganda masquerading as serious academic research that it is a constant battle to have to point out why so many conclusions in the field are not worth anything. This can only harm people – it actually risks people’s health and life. And that is why failures of peer review are not just a breach of trust but of deep moral concern.

Fortunately, it is possible that Oxford University Press have seen good sense and decided that they do not want such a journal sullying their reputation. It has now been sold to Indian publisher Hindawi.

Related posts:

1. A Footnote to Darwin and Homeopathy The homeopaths, like Dana Ullman, treat original scientific works like scripture – as a source of truth. Their own Hahnemannian scriptures trump scientific knowledge and evidence at all turns. This...
2. Charles Darwin and Homeopathy The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This...
3. The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman: A Review There can be few comment-enabled web pages left in the world that do not testify to the fact that Dana Ullman has published his latest book: The Homeopathic Revolution:...

From the very first decades of homeopathy’s existence in the early 19th Century, mainstream scientists have dismissed its claims for one simple reason: the extremely dilute nature of the remedies. As Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked in 1842 “So much ridicule has been thrown upon the pretended powers of the minute doses”.

Today’s modern understanding of the atomic nature of matter makes the homeopathic principle of dilution appear nonsensical. Many remedies are repeatedly diluted to the point that not a single atom of the main ingredient remains. What is remarkable is that debates about the dilution problem continue into modern times.

And Wendell Holmes’ arguments sound remarkably resonant to those still going on today,

But so extraordinary would be the fact, that a single atom of substances which a child might swallow without harm by the teaspoonful could, by an easy mechanical process, be made to develop such inconceivable powers, that nothing but the strictest agreement of the most cautious experimenters, secured by every guaranty that they were honest and faithful, appealing to repeated experiments in public, with every precaution to guard against error, and with the most plain and peremptory results, should induce us to lend any credence to such pretensions.

Of course, the dilution problem is just one of the many implausible aspects of homeopathy, and I do not intend to cover all those today.

Why I choose to write about this now – and much of this has of course been written before – is that, as I reported last week, a prominent homeopath, John Benneth, gave a talk at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, at the invite of Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson, on his ideas about how the dilution problem can be overcome. But as Benneth is now taunting in the commentson my blog in his own inimitable manner that I cannot refute his hypothesis, I thought I had better put some thoughts down.

But I would suggest Benneth is neither here nor there. What is so incredible is how a respected solid state physicist can entertain such dubious science. Perhaps, more interstingly, Josephson could respond to these following points.

So what are the problems with physical explanations for the dilution problem?

What set of data are we trying to explain?

The first problem is that is is not obvious what set of data any new theory must explain. Homeopaths themselves most often resort to saying that the only evidence they need is their ‘cured cases’ over two hundred years. But anecdotal evidence such as this has been the underpinning of all false medical beliefs. The psychological reasons why someone can be fooled into thinking a treatment has worked when it is simply inert are well understood and nothing more is required to explain such beliefs. The  most implausible treatments can appear effective to the unguarded or ignorant.

Treatments can however be shown to be effective through clinical trails where the biases that infect direct observation can be minimised. Evidence from carefully controlled trials can be very powerful evidence of efficacy. But despite the claims of great superiority for homeopathy, the accumulated trial data is very disappointing. Yes, indeed, the majority of trials do tend to show an effect over placebo, but when the trials are weighted for factors such as quality and size, the better trials tend to show no effect whereas the weaker trials – the ones subject to greater bias – tend so show the larger effects. This is precisely the pattern that we would expect when large numbers of inferior trials are performed on an inert treatment. An objective evaluation of the totality of clinical data, combined with the prior improbability of its claims, can only result in the conclusion that homeopathy is an ineffective treatment.

But even if the trial data could be shown to show a consistent effect for homeopathy, this would still lend no light on explaining the mechanism of action.

For that, we must look to basic laboratory tests of homeopathy.

Homeopaths make several basic claims about the nature of dilution – in particular, that the potency (a somewhat ill defined term) increases with repeated dilution. Given that, we should expect that we could show a ‘dose-response’ curve where some property of the remedies increases as the dilution level increased.

It is worth noting at this point that this ideas flies in the face of both common sense and well established chemistry. Homeopaths repeatedly empty a container of the solution, add new water/solvent, shake and then repeat. Homeopaths call this dynamisation or potentisation. Other people call this ‘washing up’.

In two hundred years, homeopaths have been unable to produce any experiment that consistently produces anything like such a curve. If homeopathy is a science, then it is the only science subject where students cannot product a laboratory experiment that replicates one of the essential foundation results of their subject of study. That ought to be a damning enough fact in itself. It is exactly what we would expect from a pseudoscience.

Now homeopaths do claim that there are laboratory experiments that support their claims. Various types of experiment covering a range of physical measurement techniques have claimed to show differences between potentised solutions and controls. All appear to be characterised by a lack of adequate controls, lack of independent replication and lack of coherence with other experiments. The most often cited  include Rey’s thermoluminescence experiments, which had a lack of proper controls, and Roy’s Raman spectroscopy experiments on ethanol that failed to source control solutions from the same stock bottle.

All these experiments have failed to demonstrate a most important result: that under blinded conditions, the experimenters could distinguish one remedy from another. My Simple Challenge would be easy to win if this was so.

So, any theory of homeopathic dilutions is hampered by a lack of consistent and reliable data that needs explaining.

What is the nature of the homeopathically active entity?

Since homeopathic remedies can be given in material doses – where material from the original ingredient is present – and ultra-dilute doses – where all material is no longer present, the active ingredient in remedies must be something other than the named ingredient. Homeopaths claim that the effects of the remedy do not alter in form, only in degree, as dilution increases.

The well established understanding of physics and chemistry would suggest that no such entity could exist – and I shall explain why here.

But this does not stop homeopaths hypothesising what this entity might be. Candidates have included such things as the silicates from the glass preparation vials, stable water structures bound by hydrogen bonds and clathrates, to more esoteric entities such as Quantum Coherence Domains, which are supposedly stable quantum entities that can form from groups of water molecules.

All such candidate explanations suffer from two major objections – which we shall come to. But it is first mentioning that there is a range of plausibility in these explanations. No-one doubts that tiny particles of glass may be added to solution during remedy preparation. No one also doubts too that water is a complex and unusual solvent and that structure can form from the hydrogen bonds between the molecules. However, stable water clusters are doubted to exist on their own beyond a few picoseconds due to the thermal forces at work in the liquid. Benneth’s favourites, clathrates, can indeed form in solution and persist – the stability of the hydrogen bonded structure is then facilitated by the enclosed  molecule. Other quantum explanations can, at best , be described as ‘highly speculative’ and probably more reasonably as ‘inconsistent with what we know about quantum coherence’.

But all of these explanations, on their own, can be discounted as they do not show how the dilution problem can be overcome. If the initial molecules of the remedy do create other stable entities in solution, then these new particles or structures will be diluted out of solution even faster than the original molecules.

Take Benneth’s clathrates. If the original molecule is surrounded by a lattice of hydrogen bonded water molecules, then we are left with a much larger supra-molecule. But large molecules will be diluted out faster than small molecules. Such structures make the dilution problem worse not better.

For the homeopaths who are paying attention and have read this far, imagine a dustbin full of marbles. Take 90% of them out and fill with water. Now take 90% of the remaining marbles out and repeat. With, say, 10,000 marbles in the bin originally, after 5 dilutions, we can be sure we have no marbles left. Now repeat with tennis balls (clathrates). There may be only room for a few hundred tennis balls originally now and 2 or 3 dilutions will get rid of them all. Bigger structures dilute out faster.

The second objection is also quite simple. If the remedies do contain such novel structures, then it ought to be possible to measure them. But as we have seen, we have no data to support any novel entity in the homeopathic remedy that behaves in the required way.

Substituting one entity (the original molecule) with another hypothesised structure or entity does not in itself solve the dilution problem. Indeed, it may make the problem worse.

Does homeopathic succussion come to the rescue?

Homeopaths will quite rightly at this point point out that remedy preparation is not just about repeated dilution – it is also about succussion, the repeated banging and shaking of the remedy between dilutions. Traditionally, this has to be done on a leather Bible.

Can the process of rapid shaking do something that rescues the remedies from oblivion?

Benneth will claim that very high pressures are formed during the shaking. Is this true and does it do anything?

Whatever is going on during succussion, then its action must be to overcome the dilution of the active entity. If some structure has formed in the water as a result of the presence of the original molecule, then succussion must do something to multiply the numbers of the entity so that the subsequent dilution does not remove them all. What is more, that multiplication must be done so that the new entities are not dependent on the original molecule.

If clathrates are the answer then new clathrates must be formed that no longer have a central guest molecule. But without their guest, they are not clathrates anymore – their are just empty cages of water, very loosely bound by hydrogen bonds,  that will vanish in thermal noise as quickly as any other temporary hydrogen bonded structure.

These newly created structures must also be capable of self-replication. As dilutions progress beyond the Avogadro limit, then all that is left is the new entities, without the original molecules and these new entities in themselves must replicate in order to overcome the unrelenting forces of dilution.

This in itself appears to be highly implausible and unprecedented in material science.

However the problem is even worse.

The rate of replication must be finely tuned.

Commonly, homeopathic dilutions are 1 in a 100. So any multiplication during succussion that creates fewer than a 100 replicas is doomed to be diluted out – maybe more slowly than the original molecule, but it will not be able to account for the homeopaths increase in potency created.

But multiply too fast and the solution can quickly become saturated as the structures grow exponentially. This too is also fatal for the homeopaths, as once saturated, the solution can no longer change its character to account for increased ‘potentisation’. And the range of dilution factors that must be gone through without saturation is vast – some remedies have been serially diluted thousands of times.

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations would suggest that is multiplication factor must lie within a very small range of values if the claims of homeopaths are to be accounted for. But since the nature of dilution and succussion is not standardised in the world of homeopathy – huge ranges in dilution factors and amount of succussion exist – then any finely tuned process would not be occurring under most real world homeopathic conditions. Worse, these multiplication rates must be similar for all types of starting molecules – from plant extracts, minerals and salts to more exotic and complex remedies such as hyena saliva and the ‘nosodes’, such as puss and blood containing infectious agents.

To me, this is fatal. Even if we were to find some entity that was created under homeopathic dilution and succussion, then it appears to have to exist in near ideal circumstances for it to play any role in the therapeutic process.

Unlike other fine tuned processes in nature, the anthropic principle cannot rescue homeopathy as it is a human invention and not a fundamental part of our existence.

But then again homeopaths may claim that it is – and this will no doubt lead us into the more mystical nature of their claims – an area, I feel, that may provide more fruitful ground for coming up with explanations for their beliefs.

In order for succussion to rescue the dilution problem, we must assume a significant number of implausible and finely tuned processes that could not possibly play a role in the ad hoc world of homeopathic remedy preparation.

And another thing

If, despite all this, my reader is still clinging to the hope that physical explanations can solve the riddle of homeopathy, then there are, of course, still many more plausibility problems to solve. I will not go into detail on these – it is late – but it is worth listing some of them for the sake of completeness.

So, after repeated dilution and succussion, the resultant solution is often dropped into a vial of sugar pulls to ‘take’ the remedy. The solution of water, ethanol will evaporate. How do the sugar pills then carry the homeopathic active entity? Does sugar then take on the structure? A whole new range of material science problems then ensue.

How is this homeopathic entity then used by the body? How does it know that this is a healing structure? How does this entity carry the information about the original molecules that cause the symptoms that are supposed to be cured?

And on and on.

After writing this, I feel that it is all for nothing. Homeopathy is not a rational belief system. Supporters will not engage in serious debate of the issue – with few exceptions. Objections will be ignored by the vast majority of its practitioners. I am debating a faith system with physics. No good can become of it. But homeopaths hijack physics to give undeserved legitimacy to their claims. And the only possible response is to show that this is an abuse. People with little knowledge of physics may benefit from knowing that the appropriation of the subject is the action of intellectual imposters.

And people like Benneth are obvious imposters. We should not lend any credence to such pretensions.

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On the 1st of October, a rather unusual talk was held at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge, entitled “The Supramolecular Chemistry of the Homeopathic Remedy”.

The talk was at the invite of Nobel laureate Brian Josephson and was to be given by a chap named John Benneth. Josephson is a known supporter of parapsychology, telepathy and homeopathy.

Now Benneth may well be known to critics of homeopathy as he is one of the practice’s more absurd advocates. He specialises in producing Youtube videos that range from the unhinged to the deeply offensive.

I was not alone in thinking that such a character does not deserve the esteem of speaking at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Benneth is not a scientist – as he clearly demonstrates when he opens his mouth. He advocates a discredited form of supernatural medicine whose practitioners are a threat to their customers’ wellbeing through their deluded beliefs about medicine.

Indeed, a mild twitter storm blew up when it was realised that Benneth was speaking and many people took to writing to the head of the Cavendish suggesting that it was inappropriate to host such a talk about a pseudoscientific subject from such an objectionable character.

The talk went ahead. It became closed to non-university people and its location became secret to all but those who were thought not to be a threat. Josephson explained that he did this “because opening the lecture to all could lead to an unacceptable lowering of the intellectual level of the discussion”.

A claim that might be hard to justify, unless cattle were allowed in.

You can hear a recording of the meeting here. It is worth listening to just so that you can image the squirming that must have gone on as Benneth makes basic error after basic error.

An analysis of the talk is perhaps best left to the words of Brian Josephson himself.  He explains,

This talk was an experiment, somewhat of a gamble perhaps. John Benneth is an ‘enthusiast’ for homeopathy, not a scientist, and what he said in the seminar might well have made him (and myself) look foolish.

Indeed.

Josephson adds,

On a number of occasions a failure to understand particular scientific issues was apparent, but nevertheless he gave an interesting exposition, which has in fact led to discussion between an open-minded colleague who was present and myself. It was thus felt worthwhile, despite clear deficiencies in the presentation, to upload to this site the audio recording of the talk made at the time, with a link to the accompanying slides.

Should this talk have been given?

For me, there is a clear tension. Academic freedom is extremely important. And the freedom to hold academic talks within a university setting is fundamental to what universities are about. It is also quite important for people to be wrong – indeed, seriously wrong, foolish and delusional. And for that reason, ‘banning’ a talk should not be done lightly – if at all.

But countering this is that the agreed fact that Benneth was not a scientist and not capable of giving an academic talk. He basic understanding of physics is very limited and essentially just a barely understood sequence of unrelated facts about water and structure. What was quite noticable in the talk was the complete lack of any data to support his assertions. Benneth, as is apparent in the talk, was well expecting to have his knowledge demolished by those far more capable that he. His talk was not used as an academic discussion forum, but as a platform for promoting his own standing. He can now claim that he has lectured at one of the worlds greatest universities, at the invite of a Nobel prize winner, about homeopathy and physics. This talk gave his ideas an imprimatur that they do not deserve.

The consequences of this are not slight. Fundamental to the beliefs of homeopaths is that their medical philosophy is the One True Way and that modern medicine is a dangerous force that does far more harm than good. They are fundamentally opposed to many of the key advances of modern medicine and as such are a threat to people’s health. Benneth has a right to his views, but he does not have an automatic right to a platform for those views from such a major institution. For that reason, Josephson should have been far more circumspect in his decision.

Josephson’s own defence of his actions are quite bizarre. He says,

If videos in bad taste are an issue, we should also ban Sacha Baron-Cohen, while if lampooning of public figures is an issue we should also ban Bremner, Bird and Fortune from speaking on university premises. Would Benneth’s critics also do that? Further, on checking Prof. Colquhoun’s Twitter pages to check on his current activities I was fascinated to see there hostile comment on the law firm Carter-Ruck where the ‘R’ of ‘Ruck’ was replaced by another letter of the alphabet? Is that something a respected academic should be doing, even if it is in his spare time and the Twitter pages are not hosted by UCL?

One obvious point is that Josephson does not read Private Eye, who only refer to the esteemed law firm as Carter Fuck in recognition of their role in taking on libel cases, often with doubtful merit, and using the extreme costs of libel actions as a way silencing critics – allegedly.

But to compare Benneth’s homophobic rants with comedians?  It’s far off the mark.

But the most bizarre aspect of Josephson’s defence is his invocation of a conspiracy theory. In full,

Let me however refer to what seems to me to be a sinister aspect of the whole episode. After the lecture had been publicly advertised on the talks.cam site for a whole week, the Head of Department found himself suddenly in receipt of a large number of emails asking if his department should really be hosting a lecture by a person who had posted rather disagreeable videos on YouTube.

It seems highly unlikely that all these people just happened to see the announcement at the same time and all just happened to know about these YouTube videos, and then all thought it worth complaining about having the speaker give a lecture in the department. One might think it curious also that the people complaining about the speaker (as opposed to his subject matter) all wrote to the HoD rather than taking up the issue in the first instance with myself.

This much seems clear: someone did not want the lecture to take place and organised a campaign against it. One must assume also that whoever orchestrated this campaign advised writing to the Head of Department rather than myself, in the belief that this would be more effective (as it would have been had I not stood my ground).

Now we may enquire as to the motive of the person who orchestrated this campaign? What does the dictum ‘follow the money’ suggest in this case? There is a lot of money in the pharmaceutical industry, which might be harmed by too much interest in the idea that structured water could have health benefits. Might this be the thinking underlying this campaign? But that is only a suggestion, and I leave it to the reader to consider alternative explanations.

Is it not possible that a large number of people could be troubled by this dubious talk without requiring the dark forces of pharmaceutical companies to orchestrate an offensive?

There are indeed “alternative explanations”. And ones that do not require fantasy, conspiracy and corruption. They are not hard to work out, and I will too leave it to the reader to come to appropriate conclusions.

Follow Up

My response to the science of clathrates and other physical mechanisms to explain homeopathy.

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2010/10/the-futility-of-finding-physical-explanations-for-homeopathy.html

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I also put in a Freedom of Information request to the PCT to see how much money was being spent on Iscador – the brand name mistletoe treatment. That was a dead end, but it would appear that the PCT have taken notice of the attention.

The pages offering this treatment have now been taken down. The page (http://www.liverpoolpct.nhs.uk/Provider/Services/iscador.asp) just reads ‘page not found’ now. Other mentions of Iscador have also been removed from the PCT website. (You can see the original here: http://www.freezepage.com/1269087512ATMZEZMHJV)

Is this a coincidence? Probably not. There are a number of reasons why this could have occurred. Maybe someone came to their senses and realised what the bonkers homeopathy clinic was spending their budget on and decided to stop it. That would be nice, but there may be other reasons. A simpler reason might be that the homeopathy clinic at the Old Swan Health Centre thought better of letting the world know what they get up to and thought it might be better to operate a little more discretely. This might also be unlikely as the site still feels happy to advertise that it offers more supernatural homeopathy treatments for other ailments.

But it also might be possible that the PCT realised that they might be subject to prosecution under the Cancer Act of 1939. It is particularly reprehensible that they were naming a branded preparation as what they offered and so basically advertising the rather dubious products of the commercial arm of a mystical sect.

So we shall see. If anyone has any insight into this then feel free to drop me a line in confidence. Meanwhile, the Freedom of Information Act will be used, albeit slowly.

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

Update: 30/03/10

I have received some correspondence which sheds light on the removal of the mistletoe references.

A reader complained to the PCT about their promotion of Iscador on the NHS web site: this is their response.



So, the PCT wants to attempt to justify this mystical quackery with an appeal to popularity in Germany and gives no real reason for its removal.

It may be worth noting news today from Germany where a 12 year old girl recently died after relying on Iscador and her mother now faces a prison sentence for trusting in this stupidity and “breach of duty of care”.

http://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article6973356/Fuer-Vertrauen-in-Wunderheiler-droht-Gefaengnis.html

(Translation via Google here)

Thanks to GG for this.

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2. Mistletoe and Cancer Merry Christmas! Last Christmas, we looked at the quackery surrounding myrrh. This year, it is time for me to have little whine about mistletoe. Christmas would not be the...
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The publication of the report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee Evidence Check into Homeopathy has resulted in a lot of misinformation about how much public money is spent on homeopathy. The report states that there are four homeopathic hospitals in the UK, based in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow.

How much do these hospitals cost and what exactly is going on within these institutions?

Various figures abound. The Society of Homeopaths, misleading as ever, chose to highlight the lowest figure they can find and state in a recent press release that the NHS spends £152,000 on homeopathic medicines. The irony of this is that homeopaths claim that the benefit of homeopathy comes from the ‘whole package of care’ and not just the pills. What this complete package costs is more difficult to discover. The Guardian has reported that a Freedom of Information request suggested that the NHS spent about £4 million per year on homeopathy.

What is widely unreported is that the MPs, in their report, state quite clearly that it is not known how much is really spent. These figures are almost certain to be inaccurate and underestimates as they do not take into account all costs. For example, the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital has recently undergone a £20 million refurbishment and such figures do not reflect such expenditure on maintenance and running costs. The report requests that the government investigates and publishes what the true costs have been over the past ten years including purchasing of the sugar pills, referral and running costs.

However, it is also worth investigating what the true nature of the services are in these homeopathic hospitals. The four remaining hospitals are used to legitimise the nature of homeopathy both here and abroad. If the NHS provides public NHS hospitals then it must be a valid treatment option.

The truth is though that these four hospitals are not really hospitals at all. They are the sad vestigial remnants of what were once proud and well funded homeopathic hospitals reduced to rooms and annexes of real hospitals. The UK once boasted many homeopathic clinics and hospitals, mainly founded in the Victorian age by rich and aristocratic benefactors. Many small hospitals existed in the rich spa towns and South coast resorts where the wealthy and aristocratic could indulge in their exclusive magic medicine. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the support of the aristocracy waned and it was left to industrialists, such as the tobacco magnate Wills, in Bristol, and the sugar family of Tate in Liverpool to fund the philanthropic city homeopathic hospitals. Come the foundation of the NHS, the few remaining homeopathic hospitals were nationalised as part of the wide ranging negotiations between doctors and the government in the creation of welfare state.

Since then, the homeopathic hospitals have been in continuous decline with the complete closure of the remains of Tunbridge Wells Homeopathic Hospital almost two years ago. So, what is the status of the remaining four? None can really call themselves hospitals anymore. Gone are the full range of services you would expect from a hospital with in-patient facilities, dedicated buildings, independent management and budgets. Instead, we find mainly simple out-patient facilities annexed to bigger institutions.

Bristol Homeopathic Hospital was built in 1921 at Cotham House. It is now reduced to a new annexe of this building where it was moved to in 1994. The main building is now used by the University of Bristol as a home for its Primary Health Care research unit. Some inpatients may attend Bristol Eye hospital and a few ‘satellite clinics’ exists provided by GPs who support homeopathy, such as Dr Michael Dixon OBE who is a director of the Foundation for Integrated Health – the charity set up by Prince Charles to promote quackery in the NHS. The remaining annexe is used to treat chronic illnesses and for complementary cancer care. Their web site states that

Homeopathy is useful in the management of:

• Rheumatology
• Allergic conditions
• Asthma
• Eczema and other dermatology conditions
• Menstrual and Menopausal problems
• Digestive and Bowel Problems
• Stress and Mood disorders

We are not given any references to evidence for this. It is ironic that the ASA has found lay homeopaths in breach of their rules for making similar claims.

Liverpool Homeopathic Hospital is now perhaps the saddest of all the old hospitals. It now occupies space in the Old Swan Health Centre and no longer calls itself a ‘hospital’ – just a department.

It gives a similar list of complaints to Bristol. However, it does have a very peculiar speciality in that it offers mistletoe treatment for cancer. This is a hocus-pocus treatment based on the mystical musings of Rudolf Steiner who believed mistletoe was a cancer on trees – and given the homeopathic mantra of like-cures-like, mistletoe can cure cancer in humans. The Liverpool departments makes all sorts of wild claims for mistletoe including,

• It can induce cell death in cancer cells, so helping to stop or reverse tumour growth
• It allows immune cell populations affected by cancer to regenerate
• It protects the DNA of healthy cells from the harmful effects of cell toxins. It makes the effects of chemotherapy or radiation treatment more tolerable and lessens the damage caused by these treatments to healthy cells.
• In addition Iscador therapy has a direct effect on the patient’s quality of life
• Cancer patients taking iscador feel better and stronger
• Their appetite returns and they start to gain weight
• They sleep better and are more resistant to infection
• Tumour pain is often lessened
• It has been shown in several studies that mistletoe therapy can prolong  survival
• Iscador treatment is safe and has very few side effects

The Cochrane review of the evidence is much less favourable, as you might have guessed. Even worse was a review in the BMJ that simply said,

Mistletoe has been tested extensively as a treatment for cancer, but the most reliable randomised controlled trials fail to show benefit, and some reports show considerable potential for harm. The costs of regular mistletoe injections are high. I therefore recommend mistletoe as a Christmas decoration and for kissing under but not as an anticancer drug. At the risk of upsetting many proponents of alternative medicine, I also contend that intuition is no substitute for evidence.

So, Liverpool homeopathic hospital has not just shrunk in size, but shrunk into complete mystical delusion and cancer quackery too.

The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital is the flagship institution in the UK. It is undoubtedly known as the most famous homeopathic hospital in the world – but a hospital it is not. Like the other facilities, London now occupies a fraction of its former space. Still housed in its traditional building, with its famous sign outside, the homeopathic facility is now reduced to one floor, and even this space is shared with other complementary therapies. The rest of the building is used by University College London Hospitals and their witchcraft occupant must be something of an embarrassment to them. The RLHH lost is status as an independent hospital in 1974 and has been withering since. It is quite possible it will disappear entirely and the remaining doctors who cling to their homeopathic beliefs know it. They defend their facility by making a virtue out of the fact that that they can offer other forms of quackery too, like acupuncture and nutritional therapy.

They even have a specialist clinic run by Dr M Taufiq Khan for homeopathic treatment of foot problems. The Marigold Clinic uses sugar pills and magic water to treat Verrucae and Athlete’s foot. Dr Khan is also able to offer an ‘authentic range’ of Marigold foot care homeopathic products through his web site at marigoldfootcare.com. Apparently, as was spotted by David Colquhoun, 4.2% of all prescriptions at RLHH are paid to Marigold Footcare Ltd. It’s a rather blatant conflict of interest – the RLHH not only appears to be a remnant of Victorian quackery, but of antiquated medical ethics too.

Perhaps, the best thriving NHS homeopathic clinic is in Glasgow where the ‘Centre for Integrated Care’ has a purpose built clinic in the grounds of Gartnavel General Hospital. The homeopaths boast of their ‘design team’ that created the new building at a cost of £2.8 million with an annual running cost of up to £1.9 million.

What is a pity is that such a building could be using money to offer evidence-based palliative care and support for those with serious chronic illnesses, but unfortunately it is run by homeopaths who really believe their magic sugar pills will do the trick. The Greater Glasgow Health Board had considered closing the clinic down but the Scottish homeopaths appear to be quite good at mobilising support. They use the language of ‘integrative care’ to disguise their homeopathic quackery and turn the issue onto one of ‘freedom of choice’. Of course, this choice ignores those who wish the money to spent on care that does not depend on voodoo thinking and misleading people.

The homeopaths are right about one thing: the amount of money being spent on these tiny facilities is not large within the grand scheme of things. But the millions that is spent on indulging the homeopathic fantasies of these few doctors is still money that could be spent on treatments that have an evidence base, that are based in science and not magic, that could provide effective treatments and even save lives. But what is really wrong about these facilities is that they allow a double standard to exist and fester in an environment where it is important to hold all treatments to the highest levels of scrutiny. Homeopathy cannot demonstrate any cost-effectiveness, it poses serious ethical issues that remain unaddressed by its practitioners and it gives an imprimatur to the non-medically qualified homeopathic quacks who use the same reasoning to inflict their murderous delusions on people with AIDS or malaria in developing regions, such as in Africa or India. If the NHS cannot recognise the blatant nonsense it funds, it does not bode well for the same people fending off the far more sophisticated drug companies when hard decisions need to be made.

The politicians will be spineless here. But the managers in the PCTs who control the budgets can do no worse than follow the example of West Kent PCT and recognise the serious issues funding homeopathy raises – and stop it right now. These vestigial stumps will not be missed. Time to let them go. They are on borrowed time and we need to be concentrating on bigger problems.

Related posts:

1. Liverpool Homeopathic Hospital has Gone It would appear that, quietly and without fuss, the NHS Homeopathic Hospital in Liverpool has closed. It is difficult to know precisely what has happened. But there now appears to...
2. Liverpool NHS PCT Drops Supernatural Cancer Claims from Website Six weeks ago I wrote about how Liverpool Homeopathic ‘hospital’ was advertising that it offered cancer treatments based on the supernatural beliefs of mystic Rudolf Steiner. Observing that mistletoe grew...
3. Liverpool NHS PCT Offering Quack Mysticism as Cancer Cure Liverpool NHS Primary Care Trust funds a Department of Homeopathy, one the last four remaining publicly funded homeopathic hospitals in the UK. It publicises that the clinic in the...

George Vithoulkas is considered to be one of the top intellectuals in the homeopathic world. Revered for his teachings and fundamentalist approach to the teachings of Hahnemann, he is probably one of the best known homeopaths alive today. His writings underpin much of the contemporary homeopathic opposition to modern medicine, vaccines and science. He thinks AIDS was caused by repeated use of antibiotics amongst homosexuals with venereal disease. You can find out more about him from the Google Knol he wrote about himself.

From his Greek lair, he has obviously been watching the collapse of homeopathy in the UK, and has decided to intervene with a challenge to the critics of his chosen art.

It is worth reprinting his challenge in full.

George Vithoulkas challenges the Sceptics! (22.2.2010)

As the sceptics have made a website calling it 10.23 http://www.1023.org.uk/ in order to degrade homeopathy, George Vithoulkas is suggesting to them the following proposal!

I challenge the Sceptics !

Several sceptics in 10:23 anti homeopathy campaign (swallowed in public each one a full bottle of different homeopathic remedies  just to show that there was nothing in them.

I propose to swallow the same content of about 60 tablets but in a different way:
Swallow one tablet every day.

I propose the remedy to be Alumina 200C ( a dilution far beyond the Avogadro number) and I promise them that in the end of 60 days a considerable number of them (up to 10% or more)  will be suffering with slight to severe constipation.

In homeopathy one bottle or one tablet is considered as one dose only. Most probably they knew this?

The first condition for the participants of  this experiment  will be to have a good general state of health and  a normal stool once a day.

The second to be brave enough to continue with the experiment till the end of 60 days and not stop with the first signs of constipation.

Tthe [sic] third, to be   honest enough to report the effect.

I promise you that this experiment will  settle the matter once for all.

You need to find 40 sceptics for this experiment.

As for the side effect? It will be over within a week or two after stopping the remedy.

If you are real sceptics dare to stay with your convictions and do the experiment publicly!

George Vithoulkas

The stupidity of this test really deserves no comment. But should any homeopath be reading this, I will spell it out for them.

Constipation is a normal condition in that any individual can expect to experience some mild (or more) form of this as part of the natural rhythms of our bodies. Anyone with a sufficiently varied diet and with a normal active lifestyle can expect their digestive process to show some variations. Only the dull are clockwork.

So, given any group of individuals, with normal stools on day 1, you can expect a small number of them to be suffering ‘slight to severe’ constipation at any arbitrary date in the future. Quite what number I would not like to say, but “up to 10% or more” is a pretty good guess as this covers a very large range of possibilities. George fails to say what would constitute a ‘slight constipation’. Would missing my ‘ten o’clock’ regular’ by two hours count as mild constipation?

Thus, without even taking the magic sugar pills, we should not be surprised at achieving Vithoulkas’s rather wide ranging blockage goals. George does not give us an expected baseline measure for what would constitute a failure of this test. Even better, he could have proposed that the trial was blinded and controlled so that we could compare taking the magic sugar pills with people who just take an identical placebo. We could then apply appropriate statistical tests to see if any result was significant. But no.

As such, any conceivable outcome of this test would be completely ambiguous and not allow any conclusion to be made. If George did, as no doubt he would, he would just be laughed at by anyone who used their brains to think rather than their bowels.

And this is supposed to be from homeopathy’s greatest mind. This test is from the man who appears to delight in proclaiming that James Randi bottled out of testing his homeopathic powers, when in reality Randi has asked Vilhoulkas to fill in the application form before going further.

But George appears to be above application forms.

If George is keen to demonstrate the powers of homeopathy, perhaps be would like to take my simple challenge – which is blinded and unambiguous. Given any six different bottles of homeopathic pills of his choosing, but with the labels removed, can he tell them apart using whatever method he wants and with as many helpers as he sees fit.

Nothing to stop you Georgie Boy. No annoying and demeaning application forms fill in. Just the regular guts to do it.

Related posts:

1. Extending the ‘Simple Challenge’ Homeopaths claim that their pills can induce predictable and distinct sets of symptoms in healthy people. That is how they prove their powerful medicine. This is basic stuff for homeopaths...
2. A Simple Challenge to Homeopaths Homeopaths are feeling under threat at the moment and are scrambling around wondering what to do about it. I think there are a number of things they could do:...
3. The $100 Homeopathy Challenge: Update Well, I have had two conversations with homeopaths now about taking the challenge. Recap: its a simple challenge to see if a homeopath can determine which remedy is which out...