“Officials have dropped charges against pharmacies alleged to have advised people to take homeopathic remedies to protect them against malaria instead of anti-malarial drugs. The General Pharmaceutical Council’s decision has been described as “shabby and irresponsible” by some who helped bring the case against the pharmacies. Charges were bought after an undercover investigation by campaigning group Sense about Science and BBC Newsnight. Experts advocate anti-malaria drugs.
Speaking about the latest decision, Tracey Brown, director of Sense about Science said “we may as well have no regulation of pharmacists at all”. It comes days after the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said they were “shocked” that one of the pharmacies involved, Ainsworths in London, is still suggesting taking homoeopathic remedies to prevent serious diseases such as typhoid, polio and malaria instead of proven drugs and vaccinations.
“I am shocked that a regulatory body would ignore its responsibility to protect patients”
Dr Simon Singh
Science writer and broadcaster
The 2006 undercover investigation showed that homeopathic pharmacies were recommending sugar pills which include no active ingredients instead of drugs and vaccinations for travellers to countries where malaria is endemic. At the time the head of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital Dr Peter Fisher told Newsnight “there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria… people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice”.”
Read more at BBC News (Thanks Katie)
If ppl are stupid enough to believe in em then let them die more good drugs for us
HOW? It’s impossible to tell how many lives these people have cost. That is just awful.
What happened to the oath doctors take? X
I wonder if they offer homeopathic remedies for afflicted people and animals entering the UK? Would the Council and pharmacies involved be willing to risk public health on the same terms?
Isn’t the main issue with PLACEBO that it only works while the person using it DOESN’T know what a placebo is?
Deuteronomiser: Not necessarily — a study in IBS patients last year found that those receiving a placebo plus an explanation of what it was (‘this is a sugar pill that contains no active ingredients, but people have been found to benefit by it’) showed a significant decrease in symptoms compared to those receiving no placebo at all.
And anyway, homoeopathy believers don’t see their sugar pills as just sugar pills, they see them as magical quantum pills.
(Heh. Loving my captcha code: AU AU ['ow ow' in my native language]. Appropriate.)
Er… Pharmacists aren’t doctors and take no oath.
We should still be able to put them out of business by taking away their licences for insanity like this.
Deuteronomiser,
Apparently not.
http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/part-two-of-my-radio-4-show-on-the-placebo-effect/#more-765
@ George –
despite frequent google searches and requests I have been unable to ascertain any real evidence or figures for people who have been:
bitten by mosquitoes, in a high risk malaria area, without taking the standard medical prophylaxis -
and similarly with taking the “malariinum” homeopathic dose…
I do know of several people who have claimed such a thing – and indeed do not have malaria – but that proves nothing
to present any case here at all – we need some evidence. a dead body or two – a homeopath with malaria, caught trying to hide the fact etc….
@Charlie
Unfortunately you need absolutely no qualifications or licence to call yourself a homeopath. There are professional bodies which homeopaths can belong to (like the one featured on the Newsnight piece referenced above) but they have shown themselves to be completely useless and unwilling to chuck people out for this sort of thing, or anything else.
The best explination of how H2Omeopathy “works”
http://www.b3ta.com/board/9863286
it’s easy to see how this could be dropped so easily when you spare a moment to think of the people prescribed over 20 different meds at a time.
What was wrong with gin & tonic?
Interesting that the words “proven” and “vaccine” have been used together here when there have never been long-term studies to prove either the safety or effectiveness of them.
In fact, I know of (through a direct friend of mine who is a nurse) that there was a group of nurses vaccinated against hepatitis, & when they were tested for antibodies a few months later, there were none. So they were re-vaccinated. And the same thing. They ended up being revaccinated 3 times (I think) for a total of 4 vaccinations & still no antibodies (which, btw, would have proven that the vaccine had inoculated them).
Mysteriously, all of those nurses developed chronic fatigue syndrome a few months later whereas none of their colleagues dis, and authorities couldn’t find any other commonality shared between them than the vaccine.
Previously before undertaking a course in first aid homeopathy I too was sceptical about the value of homeopathic remedies. I have used them for many different ailments and have become amazed at how quickly they can work without any toxic side effects so Bonus. There is mountains of collaborated research support the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies in children and animals where the idea of the placebo in not applicable. Homeopathic establishments such as the Homeopathic hospital have stated that they do not support the use of these remedies to protect against malaria,
I support individual choice of treatments available and I wonder how many of you are speaking from experince of using a remedy under the guidence of a established homeopath or are too quick to judge…
Where is the report that states how many people died of malaria when taking homeopathic remedies? and how many died when taking anti- malaria drugs? surely that is the most important information? ‘people may have died’ isn’t proof therefore there is no case. your health is your responsibility and your choice . . . . Choice while we still have it!
Jane: Fine, let them have their choice, but only if they stay in the malaria-infested areas when they get infected. If people bring the infection back home, European mosquitoes may begin spreading the parasite as well. That wouldn’t be a good thing.
survival of the fittest?
Remember when Cheryl Cole had malaria?
I dont even know anything about malaria anyway.
Alternative medicine has been around for thousands of years, modern science less than 400 years.
@ Vashti
Source/study citation please on your comment.
A friend of a friend doesn’t quite cut it in intelligent debate I am afraid.
@ fi
There is mountains of collaborated research (that) support(s) the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies in children and animals.
Links to this research please and an insight into the peer review and scientific method employed, ie doubleblind testing etc.
A little bit like Vishti, an imaginary best friend producing ‘mountains’ of research or studies sponsored by vested interests in homeopathy doesn’t quite cut it.
Especially when blithely quoting efficacy on children.
Please try harder.
As Dara O’Brien would say – “get in the sack”
James Parker: And your point is? They didn’t call it alternative medicine before they had a better alternative.
I’m sure the people dying of bacterial infections in the Middle Ages would have preferred penicillin to magic potions and prayer, but hey, they didn’t have modern science yet.
Berber Anna
I agree that it would unwise to use homeo as opposed to conventional medicine at this present time as we don’t know enough about them using the empirical belief system and the enormous epidemic that humanity faces.
However it is bad science to rule something out and be against it, in fact this is not science at all. Take Dawkins on God, he has totally moved away from objective science and gone into his own dogma. For instance a true scientific method would I just don’t know whether there is a God or not, neither for or against. TO believe there is a God would be bad science but also to believe there isn’t one is also bad science.
It seem, however Quantum physics is disproving the Descartes/Kant paradigm and ‘proving’ that there is consciousness beyond thinking.
James
Natural Selection at it’s best. People who believe in this rubbish deserve to get ill in my opinion.
James: Dawkins doesn’t say he wouldn’t accept the existance of a god when faced with unambiguous evidence of it, he’s just accepted the fact that there is no evidence to support the god hypothesis and moved on from there. There is no scientific reason to hang on to unprovable hypotheses, they just muddy the field.
You say that to rule anything out, to test any hypothesis and find the evidence lacking, is bad science. I’d argue that it is in fact the very core of science, One may revisit the hypothesis if presented with new evidence that point to it (just like court cases can be reopened when a novum is found), but to say ‘well, let’s just all accept that everything we think of is neither true not untrue, neither here nor there’ would be entirely opposed to the scientific method.
Secondly, I do not see how the properties of tiny wave/particles such as photons in any way prove the existence of any type of consciousness. They just show that the world works in rather interesting ways at that scale.
@James Parker.
You ever noticed that we are living longer?
@James Parker,
but also to believe there isn’t one is also bad science. Have you actually read Dawkins?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkins_Scale
As I recall, Dawkins places himself as a 6.something.
we don’t know enough about them using the empirical belief system
I’m sure they make much more sense in some other ‘belief system’.
Berber Anna, read Professor David Bohm, ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’ as one of many powerful scientific study into consiousness. Scientific materialists often close their minds to anything that they can’t understand and then label it as mumbo jumbo in order to protect the worldview they have identified with. This is similar to what happened to Einstein, Galileo etc, etc, etc…
The empirical testing belief system is relative and contextual. For example Newton physics is true from the relative position of gross matter/energy but then breaks down when you get to the subtler level of matter where a new context appears. Therefore all scientific discoveries are only true within a certain field, change the field the science no longer works.This is the same for Therefore science/the rational mind/part can NEVER understand the absolute/whole/non-dual reality or in other words GOD. The science method is only ever in a state of conceptual emergence, it is absorbed within its own conceptual framework and cannot see beyond it until it breaks down. To assume what Dawkins is assuming is to be absorbed within that conceptual reality ad is therefore no different to any religion.
Hey Berber
The wave/particle experiement suggest consiousness ‘knows what it is doing’ in the MOMENT in that it is aware, there is intelligence beyond the frontal lobes that produce the cage of rational thought.
Oh, so that’s what you mean. The frontal lobes are more of a ‘brake’ the way I see it. Most behaviour is started from the subconscious regions of the brain (which does not mean that you have no free will — those brain regions are as much a part of you as the conscious ones). The frontal lobe is where you go ‘WHOA no we’re NOT doing that’. That’s why certain poisons (alcohol, drugs, fatigue related toxins) make your inhibitions disappear — they fuck with that brake.
I still don’t see how the functioning of brain regions is related to the wave/particle behaviour of photons, though, apart from analogues people draw between the two processes.
Can’t help feeling that someone is missing a trick here. This seems like an ideal opportunity to conduct a scientific experiment, on film, vis-à-vis Homeopathy. Complete with assistance from a group of willing unpaid guinea pigs.
@ Vashti
If your anecdote is to be believed then the fact that a small group of nurses was vaccinated/tested/revaccinated etc. suggests that they were part of a clinical trial. This would mean that they were testing a new vaccine, so yes, it’s quite probable that the vaccine(s) didn’t work. However, it is by carrying out more of these tests with different potential vaccines that vaccines are found for diseases and proven to work.
@James Parker
Just because people have been doing something for a long time does not mean it is effective. To assume that it does is very bad science. In fact, it could be argued that in the case of remedies for communicable diseases, that people have been trying it for a long time and the disease still exists shows how ineffective it is!
If you go into and truly understand alternative medicine (particulary Chinese`medicine)`then you realises how advanced and systematic it is. It far surpasses the medicine designed control and attack the problem created by rational thought.
If any alternative medicines worked they would simply called medicine!
Effectiveness of any treatment must be undertaken by scientific study not old wives tales or ‘my Nan swears by it’ homeopathy regularly fails these studies let’s not forget
Effectiveness of any treatment must be undertaken by scientific study not old wives tales or ‘my Nan swears by it’ homeopathy regularly fails these studies let’s not forget.
Who conducts/funds the studies? The pharmaceutical industry?
Studies are often carried out by or on behalf of the pharm companies it’s true, however they have to submit a lot of research based evidence which has to be corroborated before the new drug is licenced.
Conversely, ‘traditional’ medicines rely on uncorroberated anecdotal evidence to make their claims.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a great believer in the placebo effect, but it is dangerous to rely solely on it when there are proven alternatives.