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…]
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…]
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…]
Imagine the not too distant future. You book an appointment with your GP, as you have had a persistent and bad headache for a while now, and before you talk to the doctor, you are encouraged to see a number of in-house ‘experts’ who take your pulse on your wrists and feet, examine the patterns in your irises and look at your tongue. You are given a cinnamon paste to [read more…]
How are we to understand the persistence of alternative medicine beliefs? Despite the absurdity of many of the claims of the various superstitious medicines, we see very entrenched positions amongst believers, hostility to criticism and an imperviousness to external mainstream views. Why do people fervently lock themselves into such positions? Over the past few years, as I have researched the the world of alternative medicine , one of the most [read more…]
This the BBC Radio 4 programme that was on today about the Life of Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathy. It is well worth a listen.http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/wdk90/ This is not a programme about whether homeopathy works or not. But an examination o… [read more…]
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