NHS funding of homeopathy

Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Can anyone here substantiate a story I'd been told that the late QM dabbled with alt. med. to such a serious degree that she attempted to treat some symptoms for sufficient time before colon cancer was eventually diagnosed by real doctors that she required a permanent a colostomy and had a bag for the rest of her life? The definite implication was that intervention was delayed by the alt med dabbling resulting in an invasiveness of treatment that could have been avoided.
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Have you had any luck substantiating this? I've got a 1st-generation British-American sister-in-law who is super-scientific, yet knew nothing at all about homeopathy until the wife and I explained it to her. Last I talked to her, she was of the it's-weird-but-to-each-his-own mindset, although I might have made an impression by mentioning that it affected her insurance rates. If I could demonstrate to her that homeopathy was at least partly responsible for an unnecessary deterioration in the Queen Mother's health, it might help.
 
Beady said:
Have you had any luck substantiating this? I've got a 1st-generation British-American sister-in-law who is super-scientific, yet knew nothing at all about homeopathy until the wife and I explained it to her. Last I talked to her, she was of the it's-weird-but-to-each-his-own mindset, although I might have made an impression by mentioning that it affected her insurance rates. If I could demonstrate to her that homeopathy was at least partly responsible for an unnecessary deterioration in the Queen Mother's health, it might help.
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If you just want stories of people being harmed by homeopathy then:
http://www.whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
 
Mojo said:
Anyone heard anything about their march on Downing Street? It doesn't seem to have made the papers.

ETA: and there doesn't seem to be anything on the SoH's press releases pages about it yet.
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I just did a couple of Google searches. If it happened on 22 June (two days ago) then it should have made some paper or some blog wrote about it. But all I can find is this

Some 250 pig farmers marched on Downing Street yesterday, to hand in a 13,000-signature petition,
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link
 
Mojo said:
Anyone heard anything about their march on Downing Street? It doesn't seem to have made the papers.

ETA: and there doesn't seem to be anything on the SoH's press releases pages about it yet.
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It looks like it’s been rescheduled:

The original plan was for the demonstration to take place in June 2008, but is now planned for October. H:MC21 has been faced with the difficulty of publicising the campaign to a widespread and essentially isolated audience of practitioners and patients.

http://www.hpathy.com/papersnew/harper-homeopathy-worked-for-me.asp
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For those interested, my search for that update also turned up the following new developments:

The NHS National Electronic Library for Medicines (NELM) has updated its homeopathy section this month (scroll down the link):
http://www.library.nhs.uk/cam/ViewResource.aspx?resID=287641&tabID=289
Sourced from here:
http://www.nelm.nhs.uk/Record Viewing/viewRecord.aspx?id=594148

Then there’s this feeble answer given in response to a question put on 12th June 2008 to the Secretary of State for Health regarding his policy on homeopathic treatments remaining available on the NHS:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2008-06-12a.209341.h&s=homeopathy

And this is the Alliance for Natural Health’s look at the legislative and scientific risks to homeopathy:
http://www.anhcampaign.org/practitoners/homeopathy

Enjoy.
 
How can they re-schedule it? This has been planned for months. Found a reference to it made in February. Sounds like a weak excuse to cancel it.
 
Crundy said:
If you just want stories of people being harmed by homeopathy then:
http://www.whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html
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I know that site, and it incorporates a lot of inapplicable data that I would think a skeptic would shy away from using. Just picking one almost at random: In 2007 Healey underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his legs and both lungs. Radiation and chemotherapy failed to halt the spread of the disease, as did alternative homeopathic treatment in the U.S. this year.

Well, if radiation and chemotherapy didn't work, why blame the homeopathy? Especially since it seems he tried homeopathy only after conventional medicine failed. Besides, it was a "life-long" battle that the cancer was bound to win, eventually. You might as well cite the contribution to his death made by the french fries he ate three days before succumbing.

Sorry, I've got more respect for my sister-in-law's two master's degrees than to refer her to a web site that is so anxious to prove its case that it shoehorns "evidence" into places it doesn't belong.

Reminder: I'm not saying homeopathy can't be dangerous, I'm saying whatstheharm.net does a sucky job of making the case.
 
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rjh01 said:
How can they re-schedule it? This has been planned for months. Found a reference to it made in February. Sounds like a weak excuse to cancel it.
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Well, the pig farmers had nearly two thousand more signatures.
 
Beady said:
I know that site, and it incorporates a lot of inapplicable data that I would think a skeptic would shy away from using. Just picking one almost at random: In 2007 Healey underwent surgery to remove cancerous tissue from his legs and both lungs. Radiation and chemotherapy failed to halt the spread of the disease, as did alternative homeopathic treatment in the U.S. this year.

Well, if radiation and chemotherapy didn't work, why blame the homeopathy? Especially since it seems he tried homeopathy only after conventional medicine failed. Besides, it was a "life-long" battle that the cancer was bound to win, eventually. You might as well cite the contribution to his death made by the french fries he ate three days before succumbing.
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Although I agree with you on that particular case, I'm sure you could find some better examples there. I think the point of that example was that the person still died, but if they hadn't they would almost certainly have attributed a large part of their recovery to the homepathic treatment.
 
Crundy said:
I think the point of that example was that the person still died, but if they hadn't they would almost certainly have attributed a large part of their recovery to the homepathic treatment.
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You are going to have to quote the passage from which you draw that conclusion, and then you are going to have to explain, step-by-step, the chain of logic, unaided by unfounded assumptions, involved.

Although I agree with you on that particular case, I'm sure you could find some better examples there.
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I'm sure I could, too. That's how cherry-picking works, and you'd have to cherrypick from that site, as opposed to merely pointing to it for a list of examples. There are so many weak and inappropriate examples there that the site as a whole is useless, you might as well point someone to a daily newspaper. As we say around here, "Doubt cast on any aspect of the petitioner’s proof may lead to a reevaluation of the reliability and sufficiency of the remaining evidence in support of the visa petition."
 
For links to adverse effects from CAM & homeopathy try these -

Two doctors in Holland prosecuted over use of complementary therapy (including homeopathy) - BMJ paper here (with other links)
Homeopathic GP banned in UK
Baby dies as parents reject conventional treatment in favour of homeopathy
Patient dies when homeopathic GP stops heart meds in favour of homeopathy
Homeopaths' advice on malaria puts lives at risk
Alt med used to treat breast cancer reduces survival rates
Telegraph article about patients being put at risk
Potential interactions between conventional and alt meds
Death from 'Chelation therapy'
Adulteration of TCM remedies with heavy metals here and the same in Ayurvedic medicines here
Death due to rebirthing
Problems with other forms of CAM here - and (in BMJ) here
Cancer death here

There are quite a few anecdotes like these around and they make shocking reading but you will never get anywhere by using them as an argument against CAM because they will hit you with stuff like this:

Dangerous Deception — Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects
Brain cancer drug causes deaths
Blood substitutes linked to deaths

... and they will (quite rightly) point out that conventional meds cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year whereas CAM causes virtually none.

Homeopathic remedies being simply water, sugar or alcohol are virtually incapable of causing any effect, adverse or otherwise (short of choking on a tablet). Conventional meds on the other hand are designed to be powerful manipulators of the living body and as a result will sometimes act in a counterproductive, occasionally unpredicted way. This is especially true when drugs are used to treat serious, life threatening diseases in debilitated patients following an assessment of the relative risks of conventional treatment compared with the risks of doing nothing.

Thousands of terminally ill patients are on palliative care, receiving high doses of pain killers including opioids. In some cases these may contribute to a slightly premature death but that’s not to say they haven’t greatly increased the patient’s quality of life in the meantime.

Conventional meds do clever and wonderful stuff and that means occasionally taking risks when the stakes are high.

Looking at adverse CAM reactions is difficult, if not impossible because there are no regulatory bodies in existence other than a few self-serving groups incapable of taking an independent or objective view. Conventional medicine on the other hand is almost masochistically honest with itself. You only have to read some good quality scientific papers to realise that. There are state institutions dedicated to recording and investigating adverse reactions in every developed country in the world. If you talk about adverse reactions to people involved in conventional meds you will get concern and if there is sufficient evidence, an investigation. If you have the same conversation with an alt medder you will get excuses and evasions such as the infamous homeopathic “aggravation”, they may even take legal action as they did when they shut down David Colquhoun’s web site or when veterinary homeopaths tried to shut down the veterinary voodoo site. What you won’t get is a dispassionate, disinterested discussion.

Good luck.

Yuri

(PS get a copy of the book "Suckers - how alternative medicine makes fools of us all". If your friend isn't convinced by the arguments you can always hit them with the book)
 
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Thanks! We're about to go on vacation, but I've printed your post for reference when we get back.

I wonder, though, if it wouldn't be easier/better/more effective to look at homeopathy as a diversion of resources. Seems to me, as with the story of the Queen Mum (if true), that's where the real, tangible (ie quantifiable) harm lies.
 
Beady said:
You are going to have to quote the passage from which you draw that conclusion, and then you are going to have to explain, step-by-step, the chain of logic, unaided by unfounded assumptions, involved.
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Umm, no I don't, as I said "I think", which was my interpretation of it. You can come to your own conclusions.

Apologies for trying to help you. I won't bother in the future.
 
I have to say I'm sceptical about the QM story. It reminds me of the myth that Cliff Richard has a colostomy bag, which is quite untrue.

The QM is probably not a great example. She was about 104 when she died. Of course this was partly due to good genes, and partly due to second-to-none conventional medical care. However, she did like the sugar pills. So she tends to be one of these cases pointed to in favour of homoeopathy - hey look, she was a devotee and she lived to 104!

Rolfe.
 
Not to mention she was used as an example by those who drink whiskey at bedtime for its health benefits.
 
Beady said:
I wonder, though, if it wouldn't be easier/better/more effective to look at homeopathy as a diversion of resources. Seems to me, as with the story of the Queen Mum (if true), that's where the real, tangible (ie quantifiable) harm lies.
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Absolutely. A belief in homeopathy encourages 'magical' thinking where the believer is drawn into a world where no evidence is required; an alternative universe that even science people seem to be able to believe in, parallel to the real one.

So a physicist for example who would demand astronomically high levels of statistical probability when it comes to proof of something to do with physics, is able to hang up their rational brain when it comes to proof of, say, homeopathy and accept anything anyone claims about it so long as it's done with an air of authority.

Once you're in that mind set then it's 'anything goes' evidence wise and you risk being ripped off by any and every non-evidence based practitioner who comes along. From there it's a short step to millions of pounds of state money being diverted into homeopathic hospitals, the Prince of Wales trust pouring millions into alternative treatments and eventually CAM being used instead of real medicine - and that's when you get the deaths.

Enjoy your break.

Yuri
 
‘Halloween Science’

The latest from H:MC21:
19 April 2009

H:MC21 releases Halloween Science!
After five months of work, William Alderson's critique of Trick or Treatment? by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst is now available by clicking here. [http://www.homeopathyworkedforme.org/#/halloweenscience/4533482584]

This work reveals no less than nineteen serious flaws in Ernst and Singh's arguments, and concludes that:
"Trick or Treatment? has no validity as a scientific examination of alternative medicine"
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Blogged by lecanardnoir here:
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2009/04/homeopaths-attempt-to-rubbish-ernst-and.html#comments
 
Jolly good show, Simon Singh.

He has a good article on homeopathy and animal care here, including a shout out to the British Veterinary Voodoo Society:

To highlight the problem, one group of vets established a spoof organisation called the British Veterinary Voodoo Society. They were particularly annoyed that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was willing to publish an official list of homeopathic vets, thereby giving undeserved credibility to homeopathic remedies.
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Pipirr said:
Jolly good show, Simon Singh.

He has a good article on homeopathy and animal care here, including a shout out to the British Veterinary Voodoo Society:
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Thanks for that.

BSM Vice-Pres BVVS

Hey, Rolfe, if you're around, could you get the current round of Vet Times letters uploaded onto the BVVS site?
 
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