College of Medicine – The Quackometer Blog

Quack Aid – The Sunflower Jam

8th July, 2011 13

This evening, a gathering of aging rockers, are performing for a fundraising event aimed at helping children with cancer. The Sunflower Jam is an annual event that is being held this year at the Royal Albert Hall as the Superjam 2011. Live on stage will be rock legends such as Rick Wakeman and Deep Purple. Newton Faulkner will also be playing. The evening, costing £178 for some good seats, will [read more…]

Homeopathic Study of Cancer Treatment Fails. Homeopaths Conclude It Works.

14th June, 2011 39

Given that it is Homeopathy Awareness Week again, I thought it would be worth exploring how Homeopaths mislead us about science and evidence. So, from that site of uniformly misleading health advice, What Doctors Don’t Tell You, we learn that, Homeopathy has a ‘clinically relevant’ effect way beyond placebo Critics have always dismissed homeopathy as offering nothing more than a placebo effect – you just think it’s making you better. [read more…]

Of the Imagination, as a Cause and as a Cure of Disorders of the Body

3rd June, 2011 9

The Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry at Exeter and Plymouth Universities have issued an excited press release about how their researchers have demonstrated the benefits of acupuncture and how it would save resources for the NHS. They claim that ‘5 element acupuncture’ has been shown to be effective with people suffering from ‘unexplained symptoms’. A paper was published in the British Journal of General Practice that concluded that “acupuncture [read more…]

Doses of Expedience

22nd May, 2011 13

Last week, we saw the “first national conference” of the College of Medicine – the organisation that has arisen from the ashes of Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health. The Foundation closed last year after it failed to provide its accounts after an employee ran off with all the money. The College of Medicine appears to have perfected the art of ‘bait and switch’ within the world of quackery. Practitioners [read more…]

How to Spot Bad Regulation of Alternative Medicine.

17th February, 2011 22

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…]