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Homeopathy banned in Belgium.

Damien Evans said:
Audrey Hepburn was from Brussels, Eddy Merckx is from Meensel-Kiezegem, I'd say they both count as interesting.
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Oh no - we have got 8 more to think of... :-)

Very good news re tap water science though.

I might have posted this before, but when my father was being treated for his terminal illness, quacks and charlatans would wait outside his hospital in Liege offering 'alternative' treatments, homoeopathy being one of them.
 
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Oh no! Now I'll have to resort to rubbing ordinary candles on my forehead whenever I get a migraine in Belgium.
 
Mojo said:
Or an Order in Council.
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That's probably closer. SI's don't require the consent of the President/Monarch.

Mojo said:
Professor Regan's Medicine Cabinet.
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I do believe that's it. Have a muffin:


Belgian triple chocolate of course
Craig4 said:
You mean they have great beer and have banned homeopathy?! What a terrific country!
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And it's the home of Hercule Poirot.

Frozenwolf150 said:
Oh no! Now I'll have to resort to rubbing ordinary candles on my forehead whenever I get a migraine in Belgium.
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You could try rubbing a piece of willow bark...
 
Mojo said:
Professor Regan's Medicine Cabinet.
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Yes, that's the BBC programme I was talking about. I'm so glad that my memory still turns out to be pretty accurate most of the time.

In the meantime, I've had the opportunity to do some more googling on the law that is being applied here, and it's even more entertaining than I thought.

It's known as the Colla Law, after the minister who introduced it, Marcel Colla. (I remember I always had an intuitive dislike for the man, even though he's a local, and a member of the political party I usually, not always, vote for.) Shortly after it got through Parliament, he had to resign in disgrace because of an unrelated public health scandal, and that ended his political career for good. The law then, apparently, lay dormant for over a decade, with no measures being taken to apply it in practice, until now, when it has been used to, for all practical purposes, outlaw homeopathy.

But what makes it entertaining is that Colla intended to do the exact opposite, and the law named after him was widely condemned at the time by just about anyone who supports evidence-based medical practice. It was a harebrained attempt to legitimize four "alternative medicine" practices (osteopathy, chiropraxy, homeopathy and accupuncture), by having them regulated the way proper medical professions are. Which means a lot of self-policing from professional bodies, with requirements for proper academic qualifications, but all under the ultimate oversight of the federal Ministry of Health. It was basically an attempt to separate the good, supposedly properly qualified alternative medicine practitioners from the bad quacks. But it was never appplied. And then recently, somehow, someone at the Ministry of Health must have realized, "hey, don't we already have a never-used law on the books that allows us to ban this quackery?".

I think it's brilliant. As well as very, very Belgian.
 
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catsmate1 said:
Nitpick, using distilled or deionised water (if that's all it is) for ironing isn't a bad idea as it prevents the annoying deposition of salts from hard water.
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Exactly, that's why supermarkets sell it. The stuff from the tap is pretty hard, across most of Belgium, AFAIK. Although I've been told that a lot of the bottled so-called "mineral waters" sold in those same supermarkets actually contain so little minerals, they're pretty close to distilled water, so you might as well use that for ironing (it's cheaper). In particular, the iconic Belgian brand Spa (named after the town that of course gave the English language the word "spa"). I'm not sure if this is true, however, so I buy the occasional bottle of distilled water for ironing. I haven't experimented with using Spa Blue instead.
 
Rincewind said:
So Belgium isn't just a motorway connecting Calais to Germany?
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A writer from the Netherlands, the late Hugo Brandt Corstius, once defined Belgium as: "our fat border with France".

It says something about Belgium that we not only get those kind of jokes, we think they're funny, and don't take offence.

Meanwhile, Oxfam has declared Belgium the winner of their inequality Football World Cup, for having the smallest gap between rich and poor.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/11/belgium-win-2014-world-cup-oxfam-inequality
 
Yay, I am proud of our Southern neighbours.
 
FromBelgiumWithLove said:
Yes, that's the BBC programme I was talking about. I'm so glad that my memory still turns out to be pretty accurate most of the time.

In the meantime, I've had the opportunity to do some more googling on the law that is being applied here, and it's even more entertaining than I thought.

It's known as the Colla Law, after the minister who introduced it, Marcel Colla. (I remember I always had an intuitive dislike for the man, even though he's a local, and a member of the political party I usually, not always, vote for.) Shortly after it got through Parliament, he had to resign in disgrace because of an unrelated public health scandal, and that ended his political career for good. The law then, apparently, lay dormant for over a decade, with no measures being taken to apply it in practice, until now, when it has been used to, for all practical purposes, outlaw homeopathy.

But what makes it entertaining is that Colla intended to do the exact opposite, and the law named after him was widely condemned at the time by just about anyone who supports evidence-based medical practice. It was a harebrained attempt to legitimize four "alternative medicine" practices (osteopathy, chiropraxy, homeopathy and accupuncture), by having them regulated the way proper medical professions are. Which means a lot of self-policing from professional bodies, with requirements for proper academic qualifications, but all under the ultimate oversight of the federal Ministry of Health. It was basically an attempt to separate the good, supposedly properly qualified alternative medicine practitioners from the bad quacks. But it was never appplied. And then recently, somehow, someone at the Ministry of Health must have realized, "hey, don't we already have a never-used law on the books that allows us to ban this quackery?".
I think it's brilliant. As well as very, very Belgian.
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Ha. Ha. The highlighted part is what is happening here in Ontario. And I'm hoping the results will be the same. The Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners quackers are the furthest along in the process and are now busy fighting with each other over who's a True Scotsman quack. The actual issue is that the government wants the "College" to require the quackers speak English and make their notes in English (or French). Much hilarity all around.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Ha. Ha. The highlighted part is what is happening here in Ontario. And I'm hoping the results will be the same. The Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners quackers are the furthest along in the process and are now busy fighting with each other over who's a True Scotsman quack. The actual issue is that the government wants the "College" to require the quackers speak English and make their notes in English (or French). Much hilarity all around.
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It does sound very similar to what happened here. Even though the law was intended to regulate just four specific forms of "alternative medicine", it quickly led to the formation of no less than thirteen self-proclaimed "professional bodies", each of them claiming to be the one and only true representative organisation for practitioners of their particular form of quackery. No wonder the Ministry of Health gave up on trying to implement the law as originally intended.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I'm a bit confused because Edzard Ernst seems to think this "officially recognises" homeopathy in Belgium.

http://edzardernst.com/2014/05/homeopathy-was-officially-recognised-in-belgium/

I've pointed him towards the link in this thread's OP, and am hoping he or someone else can clarify.
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No delight from homeopaths can be seen in the op's link. There appears some difference in wording and circumstances between the pages linked to in the op and the one by Ernst.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I'm a bit confused because Edzard Ernst seems to think this "officially recognises" homeopathy in Belgium.

http://edzardernst.com/2014/05/homeopathy-was-officially-recognised-in-belgium/

I've pointed him towards the link in this thread's OP, and am hoping he or someone else can clarify.
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An interesting demonstration of how news can be distorted in the retelling, especially when it has to cross a language boundary or two. In this case, at least some homeopaths in Belgium seem to have been caught out by the clever wording of this Royal Order as well, and didn't realize it put them out of business (maybe they were misled by the sunset clause that's included, allowing people with proper medical degrees currently practicing homeopathy to continue for a while.)

I've now also found out that the translation "Royal Decree" is in use as well for the legal instrument we're discussing, but that's a really bad one IMO. In Belgium, the cognates "decreet" in Dutch and "décret" in French specifically refer to laws passed by regional or community Parliaments, rather than federal legislation. And a Royal Order is a decision from the federal executive, that's why the King as the titular head of that executive signs it, it's not a law as such. That's Belgium for you: what we lack in size, we make up in complexity

Let me add one more general observation. I have this occasional hobby: on the rare occasions something happens in Belgium that makes international news, I look at foreign websites in those languages I can read to see how it's being reported. The distortions, as well as the gross errors, are highly amusing. The completely different cultural emphasis can be funny too. When Belgium's current (now caretaker) Prime Minister got the job, almost every article in the foreign media mentioned the fact that he's openly gay, either in the headline, the opening sentence, of at least the opening paragraph. In Belgium itself, that was barely mentioned, let alone newsworthy (after all, everyone had known for about 15 years, and nobody had ever cared). Here, the main focus was on whether his limited command of Dutch would be acceptable to the 60% of Dutch-speaking Belgians.
 
FromBelgiumWithLove said:
Exactly, that's why supermarkets sell it. The stuff from the tap is pretty hard, across most of Belgium, AFAIK. Although I've been told that a lot of the bottled so-called "mineral waters" sold in those same supermarkets actually contain so little minerals, they're pretty close to distilled water, so you might as well use that for ironing (it's cheaper). In particular, the iconic Belgian brand Spa (named after the town that of course gave the English language the word "spa"). I'm not sure if this is true, however, so I buy the occasional bottle of distilled water for ironing. I haven't experimented with using Spa Blue instead.
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And also that wonderful racetrack.:)
 
FromBelgiumWithLove said:
An interesting demonstration of how news can be distorted in the retelling, especially when it has to cross a language boundary or two. In this case, at least some homeopaths in Belgium seem to have been caught out by the clever wording of this Royal Order as well, and didn't realize it put them out of business (maybe they were misled by the sunset clause that's included, allowing people with proper medical degrees currently practicing homeopathy to continue for a while.)

I've now also found out that the translation "Royal Decree" is in use as well for the legal instrument we're discussing, but that's a really bad one IMO. In Belgium, the cognates "decreet" in Dutch and "décret" in French specifically refer to laws passed by regional or community Parliaments, rather than federal legislation. And a Royal Order is a decision from the federal executive, that's why the King as the titular head of that executive signs it, it's not a law as such. That's Belgium for you: what we lack in size, we make up in complexity

Let me add one more general observation. I have this occasional hobby: on the rare occasions something happens in Belgium that makes international news, I look at foreign websites in those languages I can read to see how it's being reported. The distortions, as well as the gross errors, are highly amusing. The completely different cultural emphasis can be funny too. When Belgium's current (now caretaker) Prime Minister got the job, almost every article in the foreign media mentioned the fact that he's openly gay, either in the headline, the opening sentence, of at least the opening paragraph. In Belgium itself, that was barely mentioned, let alone newsworthy (after all, everyone had known for about 15 years, and nobody had ever cared). Here, the main focus was on whether his limited command of Dutch would be acceptable to the 60% of Dutch-speaking Belgians.
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Thanks very much for that. Interesting and educational!

I guess the difference between this thread's OP and Edzard Ernst's blog is in the details.
 
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