Calling Society of Homeopaths members

[ciphergoth]

The Society of Homeopaths is Europe's largest professional organisation of homeopaths. If you haven't heard about this already, you may be horrified to learn that they have forsaken answering their critics in favour of suppressing them with legal threats.

Earlier this month, Dr Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog posted the results of a little bit of investigative journalism he did. The Society's Code of Practice forbids members from claiming to cure named diseases in advertising, but a Newsnight investigation presented by Simon Singh showed over a year ago that this rule was routinely flouted, with claims to cure malaria rife. Lewis wanted to know if the Society had done anything to get its house in order and enforce its Code of Practice since then, so he picked a homeopath at random from the Society's website and looked at what they claimed.

You can read the results here. You may note that this link does not go to Dr Lewis's website...

What was the Society's response? Did they contact the homeopath in question and demand they take down the leaflet in question? Did they conduct a thorough investigation to make sure the homeopaths advertised on their website complied strictly with the Code of Practice? Did they, by contrast, roundly defend the wording in the leaflet as entirely in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Code of Practice?

No, of course not. They threatened to sue.

But they didn't threaten to sue Dr Lewis. There was a risk, after all, that he might stand up to the threat, and that the matter might be decided on its merits. No, instead they followed in the grand tradition of Dr Lawrence Godfrey and went straight to his ISP, who following the Godfrey decision had no choice but to fold no matter what the merits of the original discussion. They haven't made the slightest effort to answer what Lewis has to say; a threatening letter, with no specifics of how the post is meant to be libellous, has been their only response. Isn't this the sort of thing that Big Pharma is supposed to do to suppress alternative medicine, not the other way around?

The good news is that there's nothing they could have done to more effectively raise the profile of this blog entry. It has been copied into zillons of blogs around the world and propogated far and wide.

Now for the important bit. Some of you are members of the Society of Homeopaths. I'm guessing you're not at all happy to see the Society so lax in enforcing a Code of Practice that is vital to the credibility of the Society and its members. However even if you think that Dr Lewis's criticism of the Society is entirely wide of the mark, you're probably unhappy to see them choosing not to respond to criticism but to suppress it by heavy-handed legal means. I urge you to contact the Society and tell them you will reconsider your membership unless they withdraw the threat against Dr Lewis's ISP, and act to ensure their Code of Practice is strictly enforced. I know I'd be unhappy to be associated with a society that responded to criticism in this way and I hope you would too. Thanks.

Comments

[lovingboth]

She's disappeared from the SoH searchable list.

Someone should point him at to how to do his own hosting. Or at least do it outside the UK...

[reddragdiva]

Why, everyone else is doing it for him ;-)

Stop press

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It's made The Guardian.

Re: Stop press

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was seeing it in bad_science that prompted me to get around to posting it.

I am just hoping that at least some of the pressure on the SoH will come from its members, and not just from those of us who don't think all that well of homeopathy...

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

GAH! Pisses me off when people do things like that! I studied homoeopathy, but had to quit, as you may well know. I am quite convinced that it works, and have used it successfully for minor ailments in humans and animals (want those bruises to fade quickly after a lot of BDSM? Maybe going on the beach? Try arnica - works well in around 80% of cases!)

What is weird about it is that it's so difficult to prove medically - although it has worked very successfully for me, I have no idea WHY it works - and was hoping the course would help teach that!

Why can't homoeopaths simply accept that right now we don't KNOW how or wy it works, and to simply be honest and say so!

[reddragdiva]

Because there's MONEY in it.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

There's a very good reason why homeopaths are ambivilent about having homeopathy scientifically proven to work and finding just what the reasons are for its efficacy: government regulation. At the moment, homeopathy is very much viewed as a "quack" therapy by scientists - and as a result, there is no legislation governing its use or restricting it. The moment it gains "official" standing, there'll be legislation from Brussels to control its use and availability and regulate the industry.

Just look at all the restrictions and regulations around herbal remedies and vitamins to see what would happen if homeopathy became accepted by the medical profession; right now, it's actually in their interests for it to continue to be viewed as a "quack" therapy.

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

Bastyr University in Seattle has an entire research program devoted to proving the efficacy or non-efficacy of various herbal remedies, because they do care that if they're recommending someone ingest something to improve their health that it's actually going to work. I think using the scientific method to see if these remedies actually work is very smart and I'd think concerned medical professionals of any stripe would support that activity.

[adjectivegail]

Either homeopathy is not particularly effective and so does not need regulation, because the statistical significance that it has a helpful effect is so low; or else it causes measurable and directly attributable effects on the body, in which case surely questions of when to take it and how much to take are important??

I've heard, for example, that echinacea works by stimulating white blood cell response. I have no idea if it's actually true, and a quick google didn't turn up anything to support this. But if it is true then, for example, leukaemia patients, or HIV patients, or patients with systemic lupus, should surely be warned that they should not be taking it, as there'd be contraindications?? This is the kind of thing that regulation would be extremely important for - if, that is, these therapies have any effect. And surely we won't know unless/until rigorous studies are conducted.

Unless/until that happens, I can't help but think that the biggest losers will be the patients - are surely any self-respecting therapist, of any stripe, would want their patients to have the best products and the best chances?

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

There's a very good reason why homeopaths are ambivilent about having homeopathy scientifically proven to work and finding just what the reasons are for its efficacy

Yes, because it doesn't work, and homeopaths (the intelligent ones) know at the back of their minds that it doesn't. Because if they actually believed it worked, they'd be dead keen on double-blind controlled trials, which would prove it works, and would allow more people to be treated with it.

Of course, homeopaths don't use that line of thinking, because they aren't interested in healing the sick. They arre concerned about extracting money from gullible fools, which is why lack of regulation of homeopathy works very well for them.

Basically, homeopathy is no better than a placebo, which is what you would expect when it consists of diluting something so much that no trace of the original substance remains.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I wonder how they wash their equipment...

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Basically, homeopathy is no better than a placebo

I do agree with this, but I also agree with Doctor Ben of Dad Science that placebo effects are more complcated than most people realise and that we should not underestimate how effective they can be (in fact that's the reason double blind trials which mimic the *way* the proposed treatment is applied are so essential)

[lovelybug.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. It seems to be the time and attention that people get from homeopathic doctors, coupled with the placebo, that helps some people

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

I agree that placebos can be effective.

I don't think that placebos are a good alternative to real medicines when a patient has a life-threatening illness such as malaria, TB, or AIDS. And for homeopaths to get people to use homeopathy instead of real medicine in those cases amounts to manslaughter.

Remember, homeopaths make a good living selling what is effectively water for an enormous markup. They either think it works, in which case they should welcome double-blind trials, or they think it doesn't, in which case if they suggest people use it instead of real medicine for serious diseases, they should be charged with fraud and endangering life, and put in prison for a long time.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

What do you make of Ben Goldacre's ethical bullshit kitemark?

[fizzyboot.livejournal.com]

I'm in two minds about it. One the one hand I agree with the idea that it's all a bit of harmless fun. On the other hand, if people start taking pseudoscience seriously, and it leads (for example) to people being treated with vegetables and vitamins for AIDS, then that's very bad.

Some nonsense can very pernicious indeed; how many millions of people have died in religious wars? If humans go extinct this century, it's quite likely that religion will be implicated.

I liked the idea of one commenter of having "a Rational Field at Glasto next year; full of stands showing the wonders of vaccination, flushing toilets and nuclear power".

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

I was in the chemist recently and looked at the homeopathic remedies to see what was actually in them (I suspected alcohol like in the Bach flower remedies).

I was surprised to see that the arnica one actually contained 10% arnica (whatever that is - a plant extract?). So I owuldn't be at all surprised if it works.

One issue with homeopathy is the word is used to cover two different concepts: first the idea that symptoms can be cured by a substance that produces the same symptoms, which is a perfectly testable hypothesis and with all the substances out there I'd expect a few to be useful.
The second is the idea that diluting the remedy so there's none left makes it work better, and people talking about homeopathy usually but not always mean this - and the subset of homeopaths who refer to the former being successful in trials and claim that therefore the latter work, are particularly annoying.

As you say, there's no reason why homeopaths couldn't say they don't know why X works, and it shouldn't matter if it's a placebo - if we knew how to create effective placebos, medicine would have made a great step forward.

[deliberateblank.livejournal.com]

We know how to make effective placebos - the trick is in the delivery. The effectiveness ultimately rests in the interaction between the "doctor" and the patient, or in the belief of the patient if self medicating. And placebo can have limited effectiveness in some people. This is what homeopaths are really trading in - if the substance itself could be shown to have significantly higher efficacy than placebo in a properly controlled trial, it would be a medicine.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have classed arnica as a homeopathic remedy, although it is a herbal remedy.

I know a few herbalists who get mightily irritated by the fact that many people confuse what they do with homeopathy.

As I understand it, homeopathy is specific to the use of extremely dilute solutions of the 'toxin' which would in larger doses produce the same symptoms. A herbal remedy might actually be quite concentrated (which is not to say that it's necessarily the right / best treatment or will definitely work).

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

arnica is available in herbal doses, in cream, which is medically proven to work. it is also available in pill form from Weleda - who do a mix of herbal and homeopathic preparations. The Weleda arnica tablets are labelled something like 24x, which I presume is a dilution and hence homeopathic and I haven't seen a study on efficacy.