In today’s issue of Spiked, you can read a review of a new book by Paul Offit entitled Deadly Choices: How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All. However, if you live in the UK, the review is all you can read, as publication of the book has been stopped after the publishers were threatened with a libel action. The book is an account of the rise of the anti-vaccination movement. [read more…]
March 1st sees the Advertising Standards Authority take on complaints about misleading claims on websites. This means that if your local friendly quack is telling people that they can cure gouty toes and windy bowels with the power of a magic knitting needle then you can write to the ASA who may ask them to stop if they cannot substantiate their claims. I have a feeling that it is going [read more…]
Government announces statutory Regulation to Save Herbal Medicines The SaveHerbalmedicine.com Campaign is delighted to announce and welcome the Government’s decision, issued today, that herbal medicine practitioners are at long last to be statutor… [read more…]
There are a number of differences between the practices of medicine and the pseudo-medicines, such as homeopathy, acupuncture and herbalism. One of the most important is the practitioners attitude to a treatment’s safety and efficacy. Within the world of alternative medicine, efficacy and safety is axiomatic. That is, practitioners believe in the power of their treatments because it is doctrinal and not as a result of robust empirical and theoretical [read more…]
More leaks from homeopathy land… Tomorrow is the last day that you can submit a response to the MHRA regarding how they should regulate the sale of homeopathic products – or ‘medicines’ as homeopaths like to call them. Meanwhile, it would appear that the homeopaths have been wanting to bombard the MHRA with responses. It would appear that the homeopaths, at all costs, do not want honest labelling on their [read more…]
What is science? And how do you define a scientist? Anyone who has given these questions any serious thought will realise that these are not trivial questions and they continue to exercise the philosophers of science. It might then appear quite harsh to then criticise the UK Advertising Standards Authority who recently were asked to decide upon just this issue. An anonymous complaint was made to the Advertising Standards Authority [read more…]
As I reported in December, various homeopathy groups from the UK have held a conference, hosted by a PR firm, in order to develop a ‘single voice’ in the face of criticism of their trade. One of the results of that conference was a ‘Media Code’, a set of rules designed to help homeopaths present their views to the media. Recent attempts to defend their practices have been pretty disastrous, [read more…]
It would appear to be a common mistake in the regulation of alternative medicine to assume that those trained in the subject, and who practice it, can be considered experts in the subject. And that those experts can help formulate good regulatory practices. The nature of expertise has plagued philosophers since the time of Plato, whose Socratic dialogues explored how you could tell a doctor from a quack. Plato struggled [read more…]
This week, the Canadian consumer affairs programme Marketplace devoted its episode to looking at the claims, practices and regulation of homeopathy. It is a pretty damning account and the homeopaths are up in arms about it, as we shall see. This prime time programme is likely to do the homeopathy trade a lot of harm in Canada. And the main reason is that it did a good job of exposing [read more…]
Hat tip to the Quackometer on BBC Newsnight… Before they reconsider their damning response. here it is… with annotations in red Society of Homeopaths does not endorse “preventative” treatment in serious tropical diseases The Society of Homeopaths, the UK’s largest register of homeopaths with 1,500 members, does not endorse the use of homeopathic remedies with a view to preventing serious tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever. [read more…]
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