This little beauty is worth preserving, just in case someone sees a modicum of sense and removes it…
Originally here.
Complaints About Homeopaths To The UK Advertising Standards Authority
Posted by Sue Trotter on May 12, 2011 at 3:30am in Social Media-Twitter-Questions-Answers-News
Chatting with my husband last night about the complaints by the Advertising Standards Authority here in the UK agains homeopaths, we think we have come up with a plan to put an end to this nonsense. We can play the race discrimination card if we get this right. Please bear with me whilst I explain.
If we can find some British Indians/ Pakistanis or Bangladeshi's they can complain to the ASA explaining that homeopathy is a prefered system of medicine in their countries of origin, used to treat a wide range of illnesses. The current wave of complaints against homeopaths would therefore seem to be an attack on their culture and beliefs and therefore discriminatory. (I know homeopathy is not a belief system but many think it is, so why not use that to our advantage). If we can get figures for the numbers of people using homeopathy as their primary healthcare in India and the rest of the sub-continent, even better!
They can also claim that it is akin to Christians claiming that Hindus and Muslims cannot call their beliefs a religion because it is not Christianity.
If they go on to suggest that the current wave of complaints may have been instigated by someone who has an agenda that is perhaps something other than scientific (just make a suggestion and leave it to them to work out what that agenda might be).
We would need to get a smart lawyer to draft the letter/s but if we could get the ASA to look at this as potential discrimination that may well decide to back off. If we can find someone on the ASA's complaint list who's family hail from the Indian sub-continent to complain they are being discrtiminated against, even better …. and if the ASA find in their favour but still go for those of us of European descent we can then go for a different race discrimination angle.
Got to be worth a try….. you know how twitchy we are here in the UK at the slightest sniff of racism or other discrimination!
I am not sure how to co-ordinate this so have forwarded to a couple of homeopath groups and see what people think.
Time for homeopathy to stand up for itself !
with love and peace
Sue
Also preserved here: http://www.freezepage.com/1305212280ZNHZGCORQS Although the page formatting seems to be a bit off, it has all the text and has been archived by a neutral 3rd party (freezepage).There has to be a law against this sort of thing, surely.
I think they have taken it down already. My first reaction to seeing it was to take a record of it too.
If homeopathy could stand up for itself, you wouldn’t have to play the race discrimination card to get around the fact it doesn’t fucking work.
:-oUnsurprisingly that page has come down but what an interesting read! Apart from the fact that it’s ridiculous and devious I don’t think religions are allowed to go round claiming that their medical treatments work when they don’t (I’m thinking of evangelical churches one of whom was reported to the ASA for making health claims in an advert) so I suspect they’ll be a bit disappointed by this one 😉
Do you have any notion of how offensive this is?? Laying aside the intrinsic worthlessness of your objective there are few things more fundamentally racist than the idea that you can collect a few conveniently ethnic individuals simply for the purpose of exploiting their ethnicity in the name of your cause. British Indians and Pakistanis should not be alluded to in a manner that, unavoidably, suggests that they are a mere means to an end, a blank collective waiting to be marshalled for the purpose of fulfilling your ambition. Now I’m willing to allow for the fact that you are just an idiot with a poor grasp of political correctness and the English language. Doubtless you thought you would only be employing individuals with a sincere advocacy of your objective who would therefore not balk at functioning as little more than an aesthetic prop. But let me give you a lesson in common decency and basic grammar. When you say, "Play the race card", that is innately offensive insofar as it implies a strategic utilisation and exploitation of a person for their ethnicity at the expense of all other legitimate battles currently being waged against racism. Every time a person plays the ‘race card’ for strategic purposes, they trivialise actual racism. Essentially, you have written a poorly-structured, inarticulate, morally reprehensible piece of drivel that not only exposes you as a bad scientist but also as a deeply insensitive individual.
My comment, by the way, is obviously directed at Sue (the delightful author). As for the person who enshrined this particular jewell of idiocy in cyber-space, good for you! It’s not the sort of thing that the infamous Sue should be allowed to forget that she wrote…
Thanks for clearing that up. i was getting worried for a moment…
Somebody liked it.http://homeopathyworldcommunity.com/profile/SueTrotter
A successful appeal to discrimination law (unlikely now this has been published) could give homeopaths the right to say "We believe this works" but not "This works".The law gives people the right to express themselves (within reason) in accordance with their beliefs, and the right to enjoy equal treatment in terms of the provision of goods and services. It doesn’t give them the right to make money by providing false information.
We should be careful not to get carried away with this one. My thoughts are longish, and therefore are here: http://www.squaregoldfish.co.uk/2011/05/12/the-homeopathy-race-issue/
You might want to listen to the Pod Delusion podcast tomorrow.
*cough*Drawing attention to Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi use of homeopathy is a road of misery for any BHMS/DHMS qualified homeopath that practices in the UK and calls themselves "Doctor".
SeanA formatted cached page is available here: http://www.freezepage.com/1305215058MOAQHSIAEC
I just wanted to say thank you so much for your comment, Serena. I wanted to say something along those lines but I wouldn’t have nailed it like you did. 10/10.