Lord Saatchi is proclaiming his consultation into the new Medical Innovations Bill a resounding success with “a staggering 18,655 people” supporting his bill and “fewer than 100 were against it.”. Saatchi plans to use his Bill to sweep away a fear of litigatation and “defensive medicine” so that doctors can be free to try new treatments of the dying without fear of the courts. Last week I wrote about how I feared [read more…]
Maurice Saatchi, the former advertising businessman and Tory peer, has introduced a Bill to parliament designed to encourage medical innovation. After the death of his wife from cancer, Saatchi believed that doctors were being held back from making innovations that could save lives. The “Medical Innovation” Bill is designed to encourage and protect doctors who wish to try new things in cancer treatment with the aim of speeding up the rate [read more…]
The Society of Homeopaths are applying to become accredited as a voluntary professional register with the Professional Standards Authority. Should the PSA approve their application, it will mean that the PSA, rather than ensuring standards in health care, has become a direct threat to public health. The PSA are calling for feedback by the 17th of January on the Society of Homeopaths before they approve them. Perhaps you might want to [read more…]
The desire for homeopaths to obtain state-recognised legitimacy has been tearing the trade apart for a decade or more. On one side are those with ambitions to be seen as mainstream and respectable. On the other side, those that want to remain ‘alternative’, anti-establishment and to be able to make whatever claims they like about homeopathy. The latest instalment concerns homeopathy lobby group, HMC21. They plan to hold a demonstration outside the [read more…]
Health regulators do an important thing: protect the public from the potential risks that health care providers and their practices pose to their clients. Risks cannot be avoided in health care. For any treatment that will have effects, there is the risk that there will be detrimental effects which may outweigh any benefit. If a patient is informed of these risks and benefits, good decisions can be made. Alternative medicine [read more…]
When you lead children to feel the beauty of sunrise and sunset, to be sensitive to the beauty of flowers and to the majesty of thunder and lightening, when, in short, you develop in them the aesthetic sense, you are doing far more for them than if you were to give them the sex education which has now become customary to give to children at the earliest stage and which [read more…]
Nelsons, UK manufacturers of such products as Bach Rescue Remedies, and a range of Homeopathic sugar pills, such as Teetha, have been inspected by the US authority the FDA as their products are exported to the US. The FDA reports many concerns about their manufacturing processes in London and have ordered them to report how they are going to remediate their concerns. It all makes rather odd reading, as I [read more…]
Last Wednesday, I gave a talk at the newly formed Coventry Skeptics in the Pub on the ‘Persistence of Delusion’ – why some alternative medicines appear to thrive. One of the techniques that ensures a healthy quackery is to obtain official endorsement from statutory and regulatory organisations. Chiropractic and Osteopathy have benefited greatly in the UK by becoming a protected ‘health profession’. Homeopathy is also helped by some regulations that [read more…]
I first wrote about Ofquack, or the Complementary and Natural Health Council, during its formation in early 2008. I predicted it would not survive – and I was wrong. Ofquack was set up by the now defunct quackery lobby group founded by Prince Charles, the Foundation for Integrated Health. The aim was to provide voluntary ‘regulation’ for practitioners of superstitious and pseudoscientific therapies. I predicted it would fail as such [read more…]
Last week I reported that a top quack delegation was visiting the Advertising Standards Authority to tell them that they were being very mean to quacks by asking them not to make unsubstantiated claims in their websites. Well, once more, a leaked email landed in my inbox. And we also have an ‘official’ press release. And it shows a profession, if I can call it that, that is immature, confused [read more…]
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