The Quackometer

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

 

The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This blog entry would have taken many months of library work and correspondence without the web and some of its amazing content, and now I can do it between mowing the lawn and popping down the pub for a pint.

Dana Ullman (8 Canards), an American homeopath, is just about to publish a book. Titled, The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy he describes it as,

the most important work of my life. It is a project that may actually change the face (and the heart) of medicine and may make homeopathy a household word. This is a bold statement...and yet, I sense deeply that it is true. The feedback that I have received to date has further confirmed this.

The book is given a forward by the Queen's Physician and Clinical Director of the London Homeopathic Hospital, Dr Peter Fisher.

Now, it is a usual quack's trick, when you have little scientific evidence to back up your claims, to fall back on celebrity endorsements. This book is a big list of celebrities, politicians and other prominent figures who have allegedly been duped into using homeopathy. His number one claim is,

Charles Darwin could not have written Origin of Species without the homeopathic treatment that he received from Dr. Gully (based on Darwin's own letters!).

This is a very important claim as obviously Darwin is a hugely important icon within the wider sceptic community. Darwin's achievements are a huge intellectual monument to the power of rationality over superstition, religion and unreason. To claim that Darwin is on the side of homeopaths ought to be a big blow to us doubters. Ullman's claims are spreading quickly amongst the homeopathic community to tell of the revelation that the Great Scientist is actually on their side.

But is this true? Well an hour on a sunny Saturday afternoon reveals a lot about Dana Ullman's research methods for his 'most important work'. You see, just about everything that Darwin ever wrote is available online. Not just his books, but his letters, and letters sent to him. The words to and from scientists, doctors, his family and wife are all there - we can peer into his personal thoughts. The University of Cambridge gives us the Darwin Correspondence Project. We can check out Dana's claims.

So, a bit of background. Darwin was a sickly man for most of his life. He suffered from stomach cramps, vomiting and other symptoms that made it difficult for him to work. Some have suggested that his symptoms were brought on by the stress of work and the difficulty of facing the controversial nature of what he was doing. It has been suggested too that he was suffering from a disease he picked up when on his Beagle voyages in South America. Whatever the cause, his doctors could not do anything for him.

Eventually, he sought the services of a Dr James Gully of Malvern who offered a treatment based on bathing and douching in cold water. In a letter to Richard Owen, coiner of the term dinosaur and founder of the Natural History Museum in London, Darwin wrote,

I have resolved to go this early summer & spend two months at Malvern & see whether there is any truth in Gully & the water cure: regular Doctors cannot check my incessant vomiting at all.

Dr Gully was an unconventional doctor with unconventional methods, including the water cure (hydropathy) and homeopathy. What Darwin makes quite clear in this letter and others is that he is interested in seeing if the Water Cure works. Darwin demonstrates he knows about homeopathy and has a high degree of derision for it. His first impressions at Dr Gully's hospital are expressed to a cousin,

Dr Smith, I think, is sensible, but he is a Homœopathist!!

Unfortunately for Darwin, it would appear that the regime at the hospital pretty much ensured he had to go along with the homeopathic beliefs of the doctors, as he says to his sister Susan,

I grieve to say that Dr Gully gives me homoœopathic medicines three times a day, which I take obediently without an atom of faith.

Charles is an unwilling participant in homeopathic cures. However, his stay in Malvern appears to do the trick and his health improves somewhat. In a letter to the Cambridge geologist, Adam Sedgwick, he writes,

I most sincerely hope that your health is pretty good: mine is much better, thanks to the inestimable Water Cure, than it has been for several years, but I see that I shall never have a sound stomach & therefore never be really strong again.

If Darwin's health problems were related to overwork and stress then some time away from his work and a rest in the countryside may well have done the world of good. Nonetheless, Darwin attributes his improvement to Dr Gully and the Water Cure because he continues to take the treatment over the coming years.

His thoughts on homeopathy were clearly mocking,

You were quite right to send me sneers versus Mr Scott— I have amused them here with Homœopathetic stories.— My Father observes that as long as he can remember, there has always been something wonderful, more or less of the same kind, going on & there has always been people weak enough to believe & he says, slapping both knees, he supposes there always will be—so that he thinks Mr Scott no greater a fool than the other past & future fools; a more charitable belief, than I can indulge in

It's good to see a glimpse of Darwinian humour with his 'Homœopathetic ' jibe. I wonder what Darwin would make of the 'future fools' who still follow homeopathy despite the incredible advances made over the last 150 years in physics, chemistry and medicine?

There is a dichotomy in Darwin's view of Dr Gully. It is expressed well in a letter to his second cousin and collaborator, William Fox,

You speak about Homœopathy; which is a subject which makes me more wrath, even than does Clair-voyance: clairvoyance so transcends belief, that one's ordinary faculties are put out of question, but in Homœopathy common sense & common observation come into play, & both these must go to the Dogs, if the infinetesimal doses have any effect whatever. How true is a remark I saw the other day by Quetelet, in respect to evidence of curative processes, viz that no one knows in disease what is the simple result of nothing being done, as a standard with which to compare Homœopathy & all other such things. It is a sad flaw, I cannot but think in my beloved Dr Gully, that he believes in everything— when his daughter was very ill, he had a clair-voyant girl to report on internal changes, a mesmerist to put her to sleep—an homœopathist, viz Dr. Chapman; & himself as Hydropathist! & the girl recovered.

Darwin obviously sees Dr Gully as a friend, but just cannot understand why he would believe in such an obvious nonsense. What is also enlightening is Darwin's understanding of how you might make a start at a trial of homeopathy. Homeopathy makes claims that can be tested, despite its inherent implausibility. And, he fully recognises that anecdotal evidence is not enough. This is well before the invention and standardisation of the Randomised Controlled Trial. Homeopathy might well be the same as 'doing nothing', and you need to fully understand how a disease would take its own course to assess claims of efficacy.

Unfortunately, his trust and friendship in Dr Gully took a turn to the tragic. His daughter Annie, who he adored, became very ill with extreme vomiting. Fearing she had the same illness as himself, he put her in the care of the Dr Gully. The anguish in Darwin is plain in his letter to his wife,

Sometimes Dr. G. exclaims she will get through the struggle; then, I see, he doubts.— Oh my own it is very bitter indeed.

Despite all of Gully's quackery, little Annie died. It was a turning point in Darwin's life. No longer could he believe in a benevolent god. Intellectually, he was ready to publish his life's work that would provide the underpinning of modern biology.

Dana Ullman's claim is that Darwin was cured by a homeopath and without homeopathy we would have no Origin. The truth is that homeopathy may have played a pivotal role, but only in its utter failure to save the life of Darwin's precious daughter. Darwin was torn with doubts whilst working on his theory about the effect it would have on his wife, who was devout, and on the religious authority and structures in society in general. Having his own faith ripped away was an important removal of a barrier to publication.

Of course, the death of children in the Victorian age was indeed common. Scientific medicine was in its infancy and had barely made an impact on the lives of people. We were at the time when it was first realised that cholera could be stopped by reducing infection from contaminated water sources. A real understanding of disease was emerging and it had nothing to do with vital forces, miasms and the humours. But, this still was the golden age of quackery with there being no clear divide between doctors and quacks. As far as Darwin was concerned, Gully was trying plausible but new treatments, like the Water Cure, alongside utter nonsense, like homeopathy.

But it is indeed Darwin that paved the way for the emergence of modern medicine. By providing us with a naturalistic and non-supernatural view of our origins, Darwin placed humans firmly within the realm of phenomena that could be examined and understood by science. The careful and methodical work that he performed on barnacles, earth worms and pigeons could be put to work on understanding the human body. Before the publication of the Origin, humans were spiritual creatures under the mercy of 'God's will'. Annie's death may have had wider implication for us all.

So, what will Dana Ullman have to say in support of his claim that we owe Darwin's works to homeopathy? It is true that Darwin took homeopathic cures, but it is also obvious that he only did this as part of the hospital regime he was in and that he was utterly contemptuous of the practice. We know that Darwin felt somewhat better after his stay at the Malvern hospital, but Darwin believed this to be due to the Water Cure. Darwin self administered the cure over time whenever he felt he needed it. He did not do the same with homeopathy. Maybe Dana will claim that it actually was the homeopathy that helped Darwin whether he believed it or not. But this would just be the usual homeopaths' mistake of post hoc reasoning and practitioners' wishful thinking as there is not a shred of evidence that this is true. For Ullman's 'most important work' and a book that will 'change the face (and the heart) of medicine', it would appear that this book is no more important, or intellectually rigorous, than the celebrity endorsements of quackery found in Hello, OK! or the Daily Mail.

Maybe Dana has found some letters that do support the idea that Darwin was a fan? But I have not found them and I have been through nearly eighty letters of his that talk about Dr Gully and ten or so more that talk about homeopathy. I have found nothing to suggest that Darwin was a believer.

And the beauty of it is, and the moral of the story, is that you do not have to take my word for it. You can go and check too.

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

My full review of Dana Ullman's book can be found here.

Labels: dana ullman, homeopathy

 

Homeopathy is under threat within the NHS. A good thing too. But homeopaths are mounting a campaign to help ensure our health service spends its money on voodoo. Some MPs are calling for a debate in parliament in support of homeopathy. You can find out if your MP is on the 'deluded list' here.

The Early Day Motion being signed by MPs says the following,

Labels: homeopathy

 

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

 

Mrs Canard Noir has been looking after a friend's horse for the last few weeks while the owners were on holiday. So, I too have been up at the yard pretending to help out, whilst actually being a bit scared by the big buggers.

Not actually riding, and preferring mine with frites, I had a little time to ponder what was going on around me. One thing I noticed was that owners were mixing up food and adding in this powder. What was that? Turns out it was a magnesium and herb food supplement that is supposed to calm stressed horses. Good grief! I had stumbled into a horse nutritionist's lair.

Called Magic Magnesium Calmer, this supplement is,

important for the maintenance of healthy, relaxed muscle tissue, combined with herbs known to help stress and tension. Designed to be given on a daily basis to tense, highly-strung horses.

Looking at the web site of the manufacturer, NAF, it is impossible to tell this site apart from any human quack nutritionist selling food supplements -the same sort of claims about the need for supplementing diet, talk of research without sound references and talk of 'naturalness'. Now, horses may well be calmed by a mix of magnesium, hops and passion flower, but I would be deeply suspicious of this claim and I would really like to see some good evidence. My guess is that this is just one more way horse owners are burning money.

Talking around, I hear that one of the visitors to the yard can perform Reiki on horses. Now, we are without doubt into 'mad as a box of frogs' territory. It got me thinking. Owning a horse requires a huge amount of spare cash if you are in full time work, or a lot of spare cash and a lot of spare time if you want to look after the beast yourself. Having that spare cash probably is a good indicator that you have even more spare cash. You are probably also constantly beset with health concerns about the 'investment' you call 'Rosie'. And that is what quacks like: health concerns and spare cash. You could then predict that horse ownership should be saturated with quackery. So, I did a quick ten minute web review:

Reiki
Alison Hastie offers to 'channel the Reiki energy' for horses. We find from her site that this technique has been proven by NASA. Apparently, Alison can also dowse a horses' chakras.

Homeopathy
This looks quite widespread. Apparently, according to the Alternative Horse Society, you have to treat the whole horse and not just their symptoms. The British Association of Homeopathic Veterinary Surgeons has no trouble with its conscience when treating sick animals with magic pixie pills.

Magnetic Therapy
You can pick up magic healing magnets in many tack shops. The same old fruit loops, Bioflow, are in on the act with making a range of horse products.

Bach Flower Remedies
Now for nags too. Identify your horses emotion and pick the right label on the tiny bottle of cheap brandy. Keep a bottle of Rescue Remedy in your horse first aid kit.

Bioresonance
An electronic box to restore homeopathic energy balances to your animal's vital force, or something.

Aromatherapy
Andy Barson tells us about using essential oils on horses. If you don't have a horse, find a friend's and practice on theirs.

and finally,

The Equine QLink
Those unrelenting scammers at qlink produce a lovely leather and brass fastening version to attach to your horse. Apparently, it improves its golf game no end.

And according to one owner at the yard, if the horse is too difficult/old/ill/expensive then the 'alternative' approach of 'lead therapy' is the route to go. This is an option not yet available on the NHS for humans.

After ten minutes work it looks as if horse ownership and quackery could form a whole blog in its own right. There is something particularly disturbing about animal quackery. Undoubtedly placebo and delusional forces are at work, but it is the owners getting the benefits of their own sloppy and wishful thinking. Somehow it feels especially disturbing to think about vets that dabble in homeopathy. Perhaps it is wrong to think so, but because the horse has no chance of reasoning its way out of being fooled and conned that the crime appears even worse. The horse is not complicit in its own suffering or loss. What does this say about our attitude to human quackery?

Labels: animals

 

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.

Labels: homeopathy, Society of Homeopaths, SoH

 

Six meddlesome members of the public have complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that Clarins have been making untruthful, unsubstantiated and scaremongering claims about their E3P product. Previously, I wrote about this product and how it is making claims that it can protect against 'Artificial Electromagnetic Waves'. The claims made and the evidence given by Clarins were utter tosh.

Labels: cosmetics, electromagnetic quackery

 

Let's jump off the deep end again with the Breakspear Hospital. Previously, we saw Dr Jean Monro using unproven allergy tests with highly questionable electromagnetic 'therapies' to treat food allergies. Recap: the Breakspear have started to suggest they can treat Electrosensitives. They have been accused of using highly unorthodox treatments for a whole range of illnesses.

Next up, a way of 'treating' allergies with their neutralising vaccines. I'll use their own words to describe what this is all about:

 

Don't forget to watch Channel 4 on Monday 13th. Richard Dawkins is delivering his documentary 'Enemies of Reason', with the first part entitled, 'Slaves to Superstition'

The blurb says,

There are two ways of looking at the world – through faith and superstition or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence – in other words, through reason. Reason and a respect for evidence are precious commodities, the source of human progress and our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth.

Yet, today, society appears to be retreating from reason. Apparently harmless but utterly irrational belief systems from astrology to New Age mysticism, clairvoyance to alternative health remedies are booming. Richard Dawkins confronts what he sees as an epidemic of irrational, superstitious thinking...

So, just as all religion has now dissapeared from the world after the publication of his book, 'The God Delusion', we can now expect the full erradication of all forms of quackery.

Homeopaths! The End is Nigh! Wha Ha Ha Ha

Will the Quackometer be shutting up shop? Somehow, I expect I will still be here in a few weeks. My guess is that the Enemies of Reason will be watching '6ixth Sense with Colin Fry' on ftn at 8pm, 'Slim to Win' on ITV at the same time, or even those Grand Master Enemies of Reason, 'Brainiac: Science Abuse' on Sky Three.

 

Two classics from the Daily Mail today. An example of two types of quack story perpetuated by the media. Firstly, a good old scare story. Secondly, an unquestioning promotion of a quack remedy after a press release has been issued.

But first, the paper reports that Orange have removed a mobile phone mast from a tower block in Staple Hill, Bristol, after pressure has been put on by local residents. Apparently, over ten years seven people in the block have had cancer. Three have died. The block is now called the 'Tower of Doom'. It just has to be the mast. The rate of cancer is 10 times the average, whatever that means.

It is of course impossible that the cause has anything to do with the fact that, by the look of things, the tower is occupied by a fairly elderly and not too wealthy population. The tower block could also just be unlucky. The elderly residents also complain of headaches and 'other ailments'. Most unusual for old folk. Out with the pitchforks! Burn the mobile masts now!

What ever happened to the 'mustn't grumble' mentality that we expect of good old British grannies and granddads?

Next up, Israeli firm Brainsway are promoting their new magnetic hair dryer that can cure depression.

Labels: daily mail, electromagnetic quackery

 

The development of new forms of quackery continues with the publication of the latest research from the University of Essex showing yet again that mobile mast radiation was unlikely to be the cause of electrosensitivity. The excuses from the lobbies that support sufferers is piling in with a trend towards excommunication of those that failed the tests as being 'psycho cases' and so probably not worthy of support of the groups that first embraced them. What is building up quite nicely though, is ever more complex 'explanations' of what electrosensitivity is and how it is caused. It is getting quite difficult to pin anything down now and some fighting factions within the lobbies are now bound to emerge, with simple mast-induced illness on one side and the other, more complex explanations including 'information carrying' EMFs , and low frequency EMFs. Some of these explanations appear to be mutually exclusive and incompatible with each other.

This is generating quackfusion - a smog of confuddled quackery, obfuscation and confusion that allows the quacks to move in and take advantage. The quackometer has been following the growing list of dodgy products and services entering the market, and its getting bigger week by week.

The web site electrosensitivity.org, run by Troy Knight, has its own theories about cause.

Troy says,

There is a strong link between chemicals toxicity [sic] and electrical sensitivities, i.e. that the latter may well be a by-product of the former. The UK based Breakspear Hospital reports that when one removes the chemical sensitivities from the body, the electrical sensitivities disappear also.

It looks like the Breakspear needs a little investigation by the quackometer.

The Breakspear is a private hospital based near Hemel Hemstead in the UK. It is run by Dr Jean Monro and specialises in 'allergies and environemental illnesses'. The hospital boasts a pharmacy full of vitamin pills, which you can, of course, order online. It claims to treat autism spectrum disorders, food allergies and ME. It offers nutritional therapy, chelation therapy and single MMR jabs (with the option of a pre-injection detox). It will remove your dental amalgams, give you antigen vaccines (which we will have to look at later) and offers something called electromagnetic therapy.

Now, these sorts of conditions and treatments are often associated with quackery. For example, chelation therapy has been seriously criticised as a dangerous quack remedy for autism. An electrosensitive self-refering themselves here could risk dishing out thousands for absolutely worthless treatments. Is the Breakspear Hospital just a quack hospital? Let's look at one of the therapies on offer in a bit more detail.

The Breakspear gives details of a therapy is offers, unique in the UK by all accounts, called Electromagnetic Therapy. It is, of course, ironic that electromagnetic fields both cause all sorts of illness as well as cure all sorts of illness. But, Monro is quite specific about a number of conditions that she claims to be able to treat.

The web site starts off,

It is believed that pulsed electromagnetic fields are able to rectify the abnormal responses that people have to everyday food and chemical encounters. This is critical in the management of patients with chronic inflammatory disorders.

Now, the first sentence is noticeable for its use of weasel words. 'It is believed...'. We obviously have to ask, 'Who is it that believes?' Looking in the Cochrane Library fails to yield the 'believers'. In fact, we can quickly find a lot of unbelievers. Quackwatch considers such therapies to be dubious and it is easy to see why. Just as there is little reason to believe that low intensity, non-ionising electromagnetic radiation can cause significant harm to you, nor can it magically cure you of illnesses. Breakspear give a long list of things that 'it is believed' can be cured by the therapy.

But hold on, Monro appears to offer her own evidence on the site. The Breakspear hospital has conducted its own studies. I will repeat their study in nearly its entirety,

At Breakspear, we undertook research into electromagnetic field therapy using pulsed electromagnetic fields. Our small scale test was to assess whether patients, after undergoing pulsed magnetic therapy, would react to foods with the same intensity as previously experienced.

The first step was to conduct the ALCAT blood test for sensitivities on each of the 5 patients. This involved taking a blood sample and sending it to the AMTL Corp laboratories for evaluation on the 100 foods on the food panel. We then exposed the 5 patients to 1 hour’s treatment on our Magnoter D26 and conducted a second ALCAT test on each of the 5 patients. We continued to treat the patients with the pulsed magnetic therapy for 1 hour per day for 1 week and then repeated the ALCAT test for the third and final time.

Of the 5 patients tested, the results for Patient E were not able to be interpreted. The results of the panel of 100 foods for the 4 interpreted patients are as follows:

Patient A— initially reacted to 25 of 100 foods. After 1 hour’s treatment, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 22. After 1 week of therapy, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 11 out of 100.

Patient B— initially reacted to 30 of 100 foods. After 1 hour’s treatment, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 21. After 1 week of therapy, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 7 out of 100.

Patient C— initially reacted to 22 of 100 foods. After 1 hour’s treatment, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 14. After 1 week of therapy, the number of reactive foods was reduced to 9 out of 100.

Patient D— initially reacted to 11 of 100 foods. After 1 hour’s treatment, the number of reactive foods increased to 12. After 1 week of therapy, the number of reactive foods increased to 16 out of 100. We hypothesise that Patient D had developed a viral infection between the post and final tests, which may explain
the lack of improvement measured.

The results clearly show that 3 of the 4 patients show a remarkable improvement on the ALCAT results after receiving electromagnetic therapy.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. Stop it. You are killing me.

Calm down. Let's pull this apart. It won't take long. Firstly, there is no control group. We have nothing to compare these patients against. How do we know any 'improvements' were due to the therapy? Next, drawing conclusions from four patients is extremely risky. Drawing conclusions from such small numbers might even make Andrew Wakefield blush. If the ALCAT diagnostic test is not good, then we might just be seeing random noise. The ALCAT test might just be giving out random results for all we know.

To claim that 75% of patients might show 'remarkable improvements' just cannot be justified from this study. It is nonsense and it is difficult to believe that it is serious. This study is marketing blurb designed to pull in punters.

What is interesting is the device used to do the treatment, the impressive sounding Magnoter D26. At first glance, it looks like a typical hospital gurney with a wide plastic hoop stuck on top. Plug it into a box with some dials on it and you have a complete healing system. The device has visual echoes of certain diagnostic imaging kit found in hospitals. It might look the part, but is it actually doing anything?

The device appears to be manufactured by a Polish company called MARP Medical Electronics Ltd. The company makes devices that claim to offer 'electrotherapy, magnetictherapy and laser therapy'. There are no claims on their site for what conditions these therapies may be appropriate. Magnetotherapy is listed as an 'unnaturalistic method' by Quackwatch. I have said before that magnetic therapies are almost undoubtedly quackery. So, what is this device doing? A Google search reveals a lot of Polish web sites with the Breakspear featuring prominently in English search results. Not widely used then. The whole concept of magnetic therapy is highly doubtful. Since we have little idea of what any biological mechanism might be for healing, then any therapy protocols applied (field strength, frequency, duration etc.) are just plain guess work. With the sort of 'clinical trials' mentioned above as our best evidence, then the therapy is being given arbitrarily. No wonder it is considered plain old quackery.

But what about the 'results' above where food intolerances appear to decrease in 3 patients? The ALCAT machine needs looking at. Well, an NHS web site says that 'no study has ever shown the test to be accurate'. A published article from the University of Zurich concluded 'results are not reproducible when subject to rigorous testing and do not correlate with clinical evidence of allergy'. Those South African vitamin pill pushers, Bioharmony, recommend it and say that the ALCAT is recommended by Patrick Holford. I think that is all the evidence we need to know that the technique is utter rubbish.

So, we have a therapeutic technique that is widely associated with quackery, treating illnesses that are not always widely recognised, using diagnostic techniques that are unreliable and based on laughable clinical evidence of efficacy. Its difficult to call it anything other than quackery.

Breakspear themselves give an excuse as to why there is no better evidence,

Since most of the patients fund their own treatment, it would not be appropriate to provide placebo treatments or other comparative treatments that our medical team do not consider to be the most appropriate clinical management for their patients.

In other words, clinical trials might interrupt the flow of cash from patients and risk proving the technique inadequate.

I am not the first to question the treatments on offer at the Breakspear. The University of Birmingham Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF) have their own concerns and I will discuss these in a later post.

Interestingly, in 1990 Granada Television's 'World in Action' programme produced a documentary called 'the Allergy Business'. It focused on the activities of Dr Monro and the Breakspear hospital and said,

The Breakspear Allergy Hospital in Hertfordshire has been the subject of allegations of wrong diagnosis, useless treatment and a death following the failure of treatments. It is run by Dr Jean Monro who charges extortionate fees for bizarre treatments.

The programme was so damaging that the hospital shut down for a while. Dr Monro sued Granada and they had to apologize four years later for suggesting that Dr Monro took "wrongful advantage of her patients' vulnerability". Their other charges stood. I guess that attributing motives is always hard. Dr Monro might truly believe that her treatments work and are in the best interest of her private patients, even if others find that view is hard to support.

Nearly twenty years later, the Breakspear is still offering the same sort of unorthodox treatments to privately paying customers. Some placebo effect might be forthcoming for placebo responsive conditions. But is this worth thousands of pounds? A new class of prospective customers is now emerging in terms of electrosensitivity sufferers. Without any clinical diagnosis available for this condition, any understanding of what might relieve it and the best evidence to date suggesting it is psychological in origin, it is the perfect condition where you might take wrongful advantage of a patients vulnerability.

Labels: Breakspear Hospital, electromagnetic quackery

 

I have now added a counter to the front page of the Quackometer to show how many weeks it has been since the Observer has failed to print a proper correction of its glaring errors about MMR and autism and to offer an apology for misleading its readers.

Others have fully documented and made available to all the problems with the article about MMR by Denis Campbell. The Observer web site version of the story has been removed - it looks like it may contain a legal problem. But this story was so bad it needs a full print correction and apology.

Follow the story here:

Bad Science
http://www.badscience.net/?cat=21

HolfordWatch
http://holfordwatch.info/tag/mmr/

BreathSpa
http://breathspakids.blogspot.com/search/label/MMR

Quackometer
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/labels/MMR.html

.

Labels: MMR

 

Denis Campbell, the sports journalist, who raked up MMR fears in the Observer and got it all horribly wrong, is now back on the health theme debunking various health fears that crop up in the papers.

I spat out my coffee when I saw this in the Observer. My contempt for the paper is growing.

Denis says,

It kills you; no, it does you good. Hang on, here's another report that says ...

Denis Campbell looks at the muddled world of medical research. Office printers are as likely to give you cancer as smoking. Men who eat cauliflower or broccoli once a week have less chance of prostate problems. The biggest female binge drinkers are women in their forties, not teenagers and twentysomethings - at least in Cardiff.
And it was reported that sunshine is actually good for preventing breast cancer, then the common perception was that too much sun gave you skin cancer.

These were among many media reports last week detailing new medical or scientific research on key health issues. Some involve real breakthroughs, others are more questionable.

Poacher turned gamekeeper.

Campbell goes on to list a whole host of modern worries including mobiles, wifi, coffee, vitamin C and so on. He gets some stuff wrong, but let's not worry about the minor details, when Campbell is quite capable of generating real howlers.

Of course, what is most conspicuous by its absence is the press role in generating false fears about MMR and autism, and particularly this sports writer's role in those fears. This article is just barefaced cheek, hypocrisy and cowardice.

Campbell quotes,

'The public ends up very confused,' says Professor Jack Winkler, a sociologist of science at London Metropolitan University. 'Every week we are told about some new wonder ingredient in our diet that's different to the one we read about a year ago.'

Why not discuss your own role in this and the role of the press who consistently print 'leaked reports', do not care if a result has been peer reviewed, or is just a marketing press release? Why not discuss the way you distorted unpublished autism figures?

Campbell, isn't it about time you and your paper apologised for your own contribution to health scares? Its been a month now and your blatant mistakes have not yet seen an appropriate correction and apology.

Labels: MMR