Immortality Medicine

The Quackometer has blogged on an astonishing secret email from the Abha Light Foundation in Kenya that boasts of unethical human experimentation, endorses homeopathy as a cure for malaria and actively undermines the use of effective and efficacious medicine for malaria, TB and HIV. Andy Lewis right calls for the criminal prosecution and deportation of the homeopaths of the Foundation.  However, as he also points out, it is the UK homeopaths who help fund and organise these activities, and these show no sign of giving up their delusions. The Homeopathic Action Trust (HAT), the charitable arm of the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are continuing to fund projects in the developing world and the SoH have organised a seminar by Jeremy Sherr, as part of the professional development of their members.

Jeremy Sherr is the homeopath who boasted of treating and performing research on AIDS sufferers in Tanzania while falsely claiming the support of academic institutions.  In response to this, and other examples, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that homeopathy has no role to play in the treatment of malaria, TB or AIDS.  In relation to Sherr, the SoH claimed that he was not a member and they did not endorse behaviours that were in breach of their Code of Conduct.

Now they have decided to invite him to give a seminar.

International teacher Jeremy Sherr will focus on the philosophical and practical approach to epidemics in this two-day seminar, which will include video and paper cases, new remedies and a fresh look at old materia medica.

According to Jeremy, acknowledged as a brilliant and creative thinker, “epidemics
are an advanced stage of homeopathic treatment that leads to a deeper understanding of individual treatment, proving and miasms.” This, he says, “is a subject we will all need to be versed in, with the return of many major epidemics to the west.”

This lecture will be based on the principles of the Organon and practical experience in this field. Jeremy has proved many new remedies and included in this two days will be Cryptococcus, Dama dama and Pomegranate.

As a homeopathic practitioner, Jeremy is known for his unprejudiced clarity and profound insight. His lectures are an inspiring blend of classical homeopathy and original thought, delivered with vitality and humour.

He has been a leader in homeopathic thinking and education for three decades. He taught in most British schools, before establishing the Dynamis School in 1985. Jeremy has taught the
Dynamis curriculum throughout Europe and North America, and has lectured in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, India and China, and was the first to re-develop the science and
art of provings after a century of near silence with his first proving – Scorpion. Since then he has completed 34 Hahnemannian provings.

Jeremy was born in South Africa and grew up in Israel, beginning his studies at the College of Homeopathy, London, in 1980, and completing a degree simultaneously in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Though he practices classical homeopathy exclusively, his knowledge of Chinese Medicine shines through his homeopathic thinking.

Such hypocrisy is a feature of the homeopathic movement and barely worth remarking on these days.  What is though is that the SoH have managed to attract sponsorship from two reputable multinational insurance companies, Royal and SunAlliance PLC and Lockton Companies International Ltd.

I tried to contact these companies giving them details of the activities of Mr Sherr, the WHO statements and the ongoing controversies regarding homeopathy in the UK to see if they would reconsider their sponsorship.  They did not reply.

If any readers would like to write to them then let me know if they respond.

I have no reason to believe that these companies endorse the views of Mr Sherr, or are indeed in any way aware of just what it is they are sponsoring.  Both of these provide insurance to homeopaths and I assume their involvement is related to that.  While this does not excuse their association, it does perhaps point to a wider problem in society, that many people who involve themselves in the activities of homeopaths are unaware of how they really behave and what they really think.  This is a concern given that the governments response to the Science & Technology committee’s evidence check on homeopathy is so lack lustre (my quick thoughts here).  Regardless of the science, the behaviour of homeopaths with respect to the developing world is genuinely disturbing to most people.  Perhaps more attention should be spent highlighting the problems with homeopaths, and other practitioners of alternative medicine, in their ethical conduct if we are to argue that such things have no place in a healthcare system.

The Guardian are reporting today that the British Government regards the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, as a ‘mistake’, but a matter for the Scottish Government.  This is consistent with their views in opposition.  Hilary Clinton is also reported as looking into claims by Democrat senators that BP lobbied Libya.  This is politics, the US is rapidly expanding its business ties with Libya and it is incoherent to criticise the release of a terrorist while doing business with the government under whose instruction he acted.  But that is not my interest.  The Guardian state that:

New York Democrat senators Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and New Jersey Democrat senator Robert Menendez called for an inquiry, after reports that a cancer expert, who backed the three-month prognosis, now believed Megrahi could live for 10 or 20 years.

But yesterday, professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartners UK, said his words were taken out of context, and that the chances of Megrahi surviving for a decade were “less than 1%”.

He said: “There was a greater than 50% chance, in my opinion, that he would die within the first three months then gradually as you go along the chances get less and less.

“So the chances of living 10 years is less than 1%, something like that.”

Sikora was one of the doctors who originally examined Megrahi and claimed last year that his 3 month estimate was made on the request of the Libyans.  This was not the first time Sikora has found himself in trouble.  Imperial College sought legal advice to prevent Sikora from erroneously claiming he was an honorary professor at the instituition.  He was also Dean of  the Faculty of Integrated Medicine until it has its contract terminated by the University of Buckingham, where Sikora is also Dean of the Medical School.  Sikora was also involved with the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, Prince Charles’ pro-quackery charity until it collapsed due to financial fraud.

With respect to the claims above about the chances of living 10 years as being less than 1%, according to Cancer Research UK (CRUK), in England & Wales (Scotland is similar) 10 year survival rates are approximately 70%.  The one year survival rates are close to 90%.  Sikora’s claims appear to be inconsistent with this.

It remains a mystery to me why figures such as Sikora are employed by governments and universities.

*Update*

A commentator has pointed out that al-Megrahi had metastatic prostate cancer with a Gleason score of 9 so the figures I quoted above do not apply.  This is quite correct.  Men with metastatic prostate cancer at the time of diagnosis and with a Gleason score of 9 have a 20% chance of surviving for 10 years for someone of Megrahi’s age.  Sikora is still out by a factor of 20 and my criticism stands.

Just another point, I do not intend to let the comments descend into conspiracy theories and will delete those that persist in posting them.  My focus here is on the public credibility of Sikora, not the wider detail surrounding the Lockerbie bombing or the politics behind the extradition of al-Megrahi.

As regular readers will know I have been covering the funding of homeopathic AIDS trials by the Homeopathic Action Trust (HAT), the charitable arm of the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), for some time.  HAT have been aware of my coverage and even invited a reader of my blog, Angus Wood, to give a presentation to them about the issues raised by their activity.  The World Health Organisation (WHO) have even criticised these kind of activities.

This did not change anything.  Their latest accounts are now available at the Charity Commission website and it is clear that they are still funding homeopaths who believe that sugar pills can successfully treat AIDS and malaria and are now expanding into India.

Health in Africa project
The charity has been fundraising to meet the requirements of what is now the Tanzanian project. With an annual volume of 12,000 patients in the Natural Therapies Centre, Dar Es Salaam, consultant Mr. Sigsbert Rwegasira, experienced in treating patients with homeopathy, is working closely with the team.

Africa Project
The projects are now undertaking a new series of research initiatives in Africa and India and are also putting in place a low cost clinic education and support structure for Africa, which involves special remedy kits, training manuals and clinical support. We have assured funding for this for the next year and we are also applying to the Gates Foundation for more funding and also the EU.

The Swaziland Homeopathy Project is one of HAT’s initiatives.  In their objectives they very clearly state their intent to perform medical trials on people with an incurable disease who do not have access to appropriate healthcare:

carry out a scientifically verifiable study on the effect of Homeopathy as a treatment for the side effects of the ART

This study, like previous HAT projects, appears to be in breach of the ethical requirements for human trials, not least The Declaration of Helsinki.

The homeopaths at HAT and the SoH are medical fantasists and cargo cult researchers, anybody who thinks they have a role to play in healthcare is very, very wrong.

Last week I mentioned that David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth, was being a bit silly in the lead up to his adjournment debate on integrated healthcare.  At the time I boldly suggested that if Tredinnick was the best ally alternative health had in the Houses of Parliament then it was in a great deal of trouble.  Sadly I may have been too confident.  The transcript of the debate is now available and Tredinnick’s contributions are as fanciful as you would expect.  However, it is not these that cause me concern, the man is not a credible figure and his voice carries little wait in tilting the healthcare debate one way or another, it is Anne Milton, the Under Secretary of State for Public Health, whose replies are troubling in many respects.  Readers may be interested in her pronouncements about ‘service providers’, and changes to the structure of NHS healthcare, which suggest some hard questions about their commitment public healthcare need to be asked of the new government.  My focus though, as usual, will be on those replies more pertinent to quackery and its regulation.  While Milton is clear and sensible on the need to defer to NICE and the evidence base, especially in these uncertain economic times where finite NHS resources are already strained and further threatened by the enthusiastic swishing scalpels in the Treasury, there are nevertheless some arguments that offer succour to alternative practitioners.

From her second paragraph:

My hon. Friend may be interested to know that although I trained as a nurse and worked in the NHS for 25 years in conventional medicine, my grandmother trained at the homeopathic hospital in London, and was herself a homeopathic nurse. Later, she became a Christian Scientist. I am therefore not without my own roots in alternative therapies. My hon. Friend may also be interested to know that my grandmother never, until her death at the age of 89, took any conventional medicine.

While this may be an opening gambit of flattery, designed to lessen the rejection of Tredinnick’s ideas, the claim about her grandmother does not seem particularly appropriate.  While good health, of the sort that lets you live until 89, may not require conventional medicine so much as luck, in both genes and environment, it is undeniable that many lives are saved by its use.  To imply by anecdote, not the most reliable of measures, that homeopathy may allow one to live long in the absence of accepted healthcare is unbecoming of a health minister upon whose decisions the health of millions rests. Worryingly the following paragraph suggests the the Minister may indeed have some mistaken opinions about the benefits of an agitated sugar pill.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of homeopathic hospitals and his concern about them. I understand that there are five such hospitals in the United Kingdom, based in London, Bristol, Tunbridge Wells, Liverpool and Glasgow. However, the Tunbridge Wells homeopathic hospital stopped providing services in March 2009 owing to the primary care trust’s decision to end funding. All the hospitals have experienced a reduction in the number of referrals over the past three years, and it has been claimed that all of them are now in a precarious position as a result of such significant funding losses. That is a matter of concern, given that they have clearly offered valuable treatments to patients.

I would like to know the evidence that showed clear benefit from these relics.  It certainly isn’t in the Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy, which the Minister claims to be considering:

I note my hon. Friend’s comments on the Lords [sic] Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy, and I am aware that it caused quite a lot of concern. It was published on 22 February, and we are still considering it and will formally respond in due course. He raised considerable concerns about the report, and highlighted the low cost of many alternative therapies and the important contributions they make. He also made reference to experiences from around the world-he mentioned Australia in particular, and also the USA-and he made an important point about the open-mindedness of some countries to alternative therapies.

In considering outcomes, patient-reported outcome measures must be an important factor. As my hon. Friend rightly said-and as I mentioned-individuals’ own experiences are very important, and if we want to achieve the best outcomes, one step we must take is to ask the patient whether they actually got better.

In conclusion, I wish to thank my hon. Friend for his contribution to the debate and to suggest that perhaps the picture is not as bleak as he fears-I noted a certain weariness in his voice; he feels that he has raised this issue on so many occasions and it has fallen on deaf ears.

I do not expect the government to fundamentally disagree with the reports recommendations, that would be a foolish fight to choose given homeopathy’s many vociferous critics, however the comment about patient-reported outcome measures intrigues.  As mentioned in the previous post on Tredinnick, these are the brain child of Boo Armstrong, ex-writer for an AIDS denialist magazine and former Chief Executive of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH), and a rather curious thing for the Minister to pick up on.  While an inherently weak form of evidence that NICE would not normally consider, they are amenable to misinterpretation by those seeking to attribute what most would consider human bias to unscientific modalities, or magic if you prefer.  One wonders who briefed Anne Milton before this debate and why she considers that alternative therapies are not as threatened as Tredinnick fears?

Perhaps the answer to this lies in the new government’s views on regulation:

The issue of regulation was raised, and it is a thorny one. When I was a shadow Health Minister, I met on numerous occasions psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors who were very concerned about the regulation of their professions. Across the professions allied to health care, there are those who are keen on regulation and those who feel regulation would be wrong and would be unable to deal with the intricacies of their work. There is no doubt that vulnerable people are often preyed upon by unskilled and unscrupulous practitioners, and I think that professions wanting to achieve the highest standards will welcome proper regulation. The issue for Government is always whether statutory regulation is the most appropriate way of dealing with that risk, or if a lighter-touch approach would be more appropriate. That is why, as I understand it, last year the Department of Health, along with devolved Departments, consulted on the regulation of practitioners of acupuncture, herbal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. As my hon. Friend will be aware, the consultation closed in November, and more than 6,000 responses were received. The high response rate is a testament to the strength of feeling about public access to complementary and alternative medicines; I am sure I am not alone in having received a huge number of letters on the subject.

The consultation examined in detail the options for regulation, including alternatives to statutory regulation. Once the Government have considered the consultation responses, we will make clear the next steps in the regulatory process. In acknowledgment of my hon. Friend’s keen interest in the matter, I am very happy to keep in touch with him about it. In the meantime, the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council [CNHC] provides for voluntary registration for practitioners from nine complementary therapy disciplines. I appreciate that my hon. Friend feels that that is not sufficient, but that is in place for the moment while we consider the consultation that has taken place and make a decision on what the next steps should be.

While there is no firm commitment to any particular position here there are two things the Minister needs to consider.

1) ‘light touch’ regulation does not work.

The CNHC have declared that they will ignore complaints from some members of the public, and have been utterly ineffectual in what little concerns they have considered. Not only that they have had to tolerate some outrageous conspiracy theories and false accusations widely circulated by email.

2) Statutory regulation does not work.

Consider the Chiropractors, The General Chiropractic Council (GCC) are supposed to be the statutory body that regulates Chiropractic.  However, since one of the GCC affiliate associations decided to unsuccessfully sue Simon Singh, the profession has found itself under considerable scrutiny, with many of its members subjected to professional standards complaints.  The GCC have been obstructive, inconsistent, dishonest and completely ineffectual in dealing with these.

The regulation of quackery requires some fresh thinking and if the government chooses either of the options above then there will only be chaos from quacks and complaints from skeptics.  Whatever their choice it looks like the eternal battle between reason and woo will continue.  With the collapse of the FIH, quackery is in search of new allies and its former employees may already be making contacts.  As the governments ideologically enthusiastic and economically necessary cuts bite, the temptation to favour cheap placebos may lead many astray.  Anne Milton may not yet have chosen her side, but her lack of commitment is telling, the dark mutterings of the deluded are being listened to if not yet obeyed.

David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth, fulfils a traditional role, required of those who are outliers to the left of the ability curve, in the Westminster Village.  The idiot.  This has enabled him to have a long undistinguished career, previously he was best known for his role in the ‘cash for questions‘ affair, taking a cheque for £1,000 to ask a question in parliament, now his concerns are quacks and their questions.

In an ePolitix article, to promote his adjournment debate on integrated healthcare, Mr Tredinnick presents all the ability and skills that have kept him out of the 3rd reserves for the Conservative front bench.  An ungracious observation about Evan Harris, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford and Abingdon, one of the previous parliaments most rational and respected members is followed by much crowing about the poor performance from one his challengers in Bosworth, the science writer Dr Michael Brooks.  Mr Tredinnick’s reasoning then goes the way of his charm with the following paragraph:

Surveys show that support for a healthcare model that allows doctors to refer to other therapists such as herbalists, acupuncturists, homeopaths and aromatherapists is increasing. The new coalition government seeking to both give more say to doctors and more choice to patients should embrace integrated health care as its model.

This is presumably referring to the infamous Northern Ireland Trial.  This was carried out by a marketing company, hired by a lobby group fronted by Boo Armstrong, who used to write articles for an AIDS denialist magazine and was latterly Chief Executive of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH), until it fell victim to fraud.

Tredinnick would like the new government to consider this report.  He would also like them to consider regulating alternative therapists through the Health Professionals Council (HPC), rather than the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC).  This is interesting as the CNHC, an offshoot of the disgraced FIH, has been struggling to recruit enough members to survive, and has already been rejected by herbalists and the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), who have previously collaborated with Tredinnick. Is this a move by these alternative elements and their political proxy reflecting a power grab in the alternative healthcare sector?

And what of Boo Armstrong, now that the FIH are disgraced she must be looking for a new job, is she in league with the legions of the dumb?  Is it coincidence that Tredinnick has cited her report?  Time will tell.  However, such an alliance would be a reflection of the fall of alternative medicine in recent years.  The collapse of the chiropractors, thanks to an ill advised libel claim, as well as the damning Select Committee report on homeopathy has put tremendous pressure on this sector.  Once Boo Armstrong and alternative medicine had the ear of Peter Hain, a former government minister of some considerable standing, now they have the ear of David Tredinnick, a minister only in his imagination.

Sometimes paranoia is rational, sometimes they really are out to get you and sometimes you can prove it.  But in situations like this you should ask yourself what it is you are hiding that you don’t want them to find out?  This seems to be the position homeopaths in the UK now find themselves.  Delusions of big pharma funded conspiracies of doctors ranged against the profession have long been prominent in their thinking, now it seems there may actually be an organised movement against them. The following excerpt is from an email posted to the Minutus mailing list:

Two months ago I accepted a position as research assistant to a London based office.

It has quickly become apparent that their sole remit is to discredit complementary medicine and the current focus is homeopathic education and the London Homeopathic Hospital.

In accordance with a very structured plan a bbc science correspondent has been hired to infiltrate homeopathic education. I am aware that he has been funded to attend a college in east anglia as an apparent homeopathic student. Last month he has been told to find fabricated reasons to move to another college. The college chosen for him to go to next has links to the Royal London Homeopathic hospital and he has been told to gain access to this hospital and to prepare articles to entirely discredit the treatment given there to pave the way for the hospitals closure. The new college chosen to receive this man is the biggest college and therefore when it is discredited and dragged down by this man and his articles the plan is that it will take all homeopathic education down with it.
Incidentally I saw part of his presented report on his present homeopathic college in east anglia and it is scathing of “magic black box sugar pills given to the vulnerable sick and dying”.

My reason for contacting you is that I feel an enormous debt to homeopathy and feel that this is an opportunity for me to give something back to homeopathy itself.

[...]I can only tell you to treat this with utmost care – the funding is very large and the people involved determined.

Now I have no knowledge of this investigation, I cannot confirm the veracity of the claims, it may be a spoof for all I know but the response from the homeopaths is telling.  Remember this is a profession whose educational colleges and degree courses have been ruthlessly exposed as presenting a dangerously misinformed understanding of scientific and medical realities by David Colquhoun.

Karin Mont, Chair of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, would prefer that the public’s knowledge of homeopathy is carefully managed:

we need to be extra vigilant in all matters relating to how we communicate with the public.

while Fran Sheffield of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is more critical:

Well, if this is true, and if there really is a college that is preparing standard remedies by radionics, it deserves to bite the dust for leaving the whole profession exposed, let alone the standards it is passing on to its students. There is no way responsible and respectful homeopathy can protect itself if associated with this practice.

And if this does result in a great deal of damage to homeopathy it won’t be the fault of the people involved in the sting but with the sloppy standards and behaviours engaged in by those who will do this because ‘it doesn’t matter’. It is like a decay within our profession.

It’s not so much the radionics that is the problem but the covert way they are used and the rationale (is there any rationale for standard remedies) behind a college that would do this with its students and a trusting public using its clinic. It’s about time this sort of thing did come out in the open and was weeded out.

And these comments are coming from someone who has no problem with radionically prepared remedies as a second best option when traditionally prepared ones are not available – just as long as everyone knows what is being done and the limitations involved.

Radionics is based on a belief that ‘energies’ can be tuned by a machine to remotely confer healing properties to an object or person.  It does not have a scientific basis and does not work.  Presumably this is the ‘magic black box’ referred to in the original email.  Ms Sheffield clearly believes that such a process is less efficacious than banging a sequentially diluted solution, to the point at which no molecule of the original solution survives, 50 times against a leather bound board.

Those friends of homeopathy in high places should be concerned by the attitudes revealed in these responses.  Ms Mont, who leads the second largest professional homeopathic body in the UK, is it seems dedicated to a culture of secrecy that is determined to keep the realities of a homeopathic education out of the public domain.  The apparently more considered views of Ms Sheffield should be seen in the context of her belief that ‘responsible and respectful’ homeopathy is defined as telling the public that vaccines cause autism and homeopathy can protect against the lethal diseases of childhood, from diptheria to whooping cough. Ms Sheffield is more concerned with ideological point scoring, there is ongoing debate with radionics vs succussion in the community, than actually examining the perception of homeopathy in public and its related problems.

However, assuming the veracity of the email, it is not just the behaviour of homeopaths themselves that is concerning, it is that their supporters are prepared to leak information to them and are in a position to do so.  One imagines that conspiracies are undertaken with a relative degree of secrecy, so having them leaked is unfortunate.  I am not bothered about the success or failure of any BBC report, rather that supporters of homeopathy seem to be present in organisations combating alternative medicine, whether mysterious London based offices, or the BBC.  My concerns are not those answerable by McCarthyesque interviews, but that despite all the exposes, scandals and reports into homeopathy it still has supporters willing to risk their jobs for the cause.  It seems the concerted efforts of the 10:23 campaign, bloggers, Ben Goldacre and the Science and Technology Committee have failed to quell the passion some feel for a well shaken sugar pill.
This then raises questions about the best ways to deal with a profession whose beliefs are dangerously wrong.  I have a lot of tolerance for people who hold views at odds with the evidence, I am sure facets of my own thinking could be described in this manner, but it is a problem when practiced by those with responsibility over others.  In the case of homeopaths this is primarily their patients so is a matter for the regulators of the profession.  It will be interesting to see if the new government offer any fresh thinking on this issue, the last government recommended regulation by the CNHC, something that split the homeopathic community.  It will also be fascinating to see if any of the new crop of MPs are avid supporters of homeopathy and are prepared to attempt to water down regulatory options, if they are inclined this way then informing them about the response of homeopaths to investigations will be necessary. Perhaps this will occur through a BBC report, I look forward to finding out.

I have not blogged about the election.  I was going to but other things got in the way and I decided not to.  However, if some really stupid MPs are elected then I will be sure to comment from my usual perspective.

If anyone is interested my voting intention is described on my posterous page.

http://gimpyblog.posterous.com/

Any comment should be left there.

The Quackometer has reported the recent departure of the Chief Executive, Paula Ross, from the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), sharing with us some of the more egregious examples of homeopathic conduct during her tenure. These include their inept strategy for dealing with homeopaths who claim their pills can treat or cure malaria as well as a misguided attempt to sue the Quackometer for reporting one of their members claims about malaria. Curiously, although having removed almost every reference to Ross on their website, the SoH have not yet issued a public statement on her departure, which comes just before this weekends AGM.  However, they did release the following statement to their members a few weeks ago:

Following a Board meeting on Friday 9th April, The Society of Homeopaths and its Chief Executive, Paula Ross, have agreed to part company amicably. The Board wishes to extend its thanks to Paula for all the hard work she has put into the Society over the last 7 years, and notes in particular that the Society is in a much healthier financial position than when she arrived.

With the AGM coming up this Saturday, there will be 4 new directors elected. The Board looks forward to the beginning of a new era for The Society, which will look to build on the solid foundations that Paula has laid in so many areas of its work.

The Society also intends to support and build on its long traditions of high standards in homeopathic education, as well as continuing to support the transition to independent accreditation for Course Providers.

The Board is looking forward to working in close harmony with other registering bodies, and all homeopaths and organisations who would wish to see the benefits of homeopathic treatment be made clearer to the public.

The Board wishes to take time to reflect on the best way forward following Paula’s departure, and will be exploring various options as a matter of high priority. Interim arrangements are already in place to ensure the smooth running
of the Society on a day-to-day basis, and all the usual membership services remain fully in place.

The Board also wishes to emphasise at this time its full support for all the staff who are carrying on their splendid work in the smooth running and operations of all aspects of the Society’s work.

Finally the Board wishes to reassure members that it is confident of continuing to deliver great value for money, and is looking to make The Society one in which its members can continue to feel proud as it prepares to deliver a clearer
and stronger homeopathic message to the public. May we all feel we can unite behind that vision.

Diane Goodwin
Zofia Dymitr
Caroline Jurdon
Phil Edmonds
Felicity Lee
Graz Baran

Diane Goodwin RSHom., PCH
Acting Chair
Director

While no reason for the departure of Ross is given, this statement is notably conciliatory on an issue that the SoH has taken a hardline on previously.  In the past the SoH has been keen to spike the regulatory guns of the other registering bodies, particular the ARH, now they call for harmony.  This position is also remarkably different from that expressed in their Annual Report of a few weeks ago, where there is much boasting of their increased market share of registered homeoapths in 2009 and this firm commitment for 2010:

Aim to increase our current market share of 65% of members registered with the 3 largest homeopathic organisations

This remarkable turnaround, correlated with the departure of Paula Ross, could be a sign that the homeopaths have finally realised that the divide and conquer tactics of Paula Ross, not a homeopath but a business woman, offer only short term gains at the expense of the profession as a whole.  Perhaps the SoH believe that no one can do better than the homeopaths themselves when it comes to saving the profession?

Sadly this view would be misguided.  The original article by The Quackometer that the SoH found so objectionable, ‘The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing‘, contained this criticism of a homeopathic clinic in Kenya:

The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for ‘treating’ various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked practice recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let’s remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won’t find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

The SoH have consistently supported and funded the use of homeopathy in Africa for years but under the PR savvy leadership of Ross they did not draw much attention to this following the Quackometer’s article.  This may now change.  Didi Ruchira, the director of Abha Light, has recently made the following claims:

in my own correspondence with my UK and USA homeopath colleagues, I’m advised to tread carefully and silently about malaria. The skeptics have them on the run in UK and we had better not shout too much of our successes. A bit odd, but that is the way to fight a battle sometimes.

Please, dear reader, just because UK homeopaths have decided it’s presently strategic to keep silent on Malaria, HIV and TB, doesn’t mean that we in Africa have stopped work in these fields. We are just working quietly, that’s all. This battle will be won ultimately by homeopathy, because drug-based medicine is running out of steam. Those of us working tirelessly on the ground for the benefit of humanity need your support, both morally and financially. I will suggest to you to select your favorite pioneering project in any country in Africa, South America or Asia and support it wholeheartedly.

Without the leadership of Ross it is likely that the membership of the SoH, believing as they do that conventional medicine is a big pharma conspiracy and that homeopathy cures everything, will give more prominence to views such as these.  Views that kill.  It is hard to see how this will be helpful to the reputation of homeopathy in the UK.

As well as appointing a Chief Executive who wrote for an AIDS denialist magazine, the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) have also come under scrutiny for alleged financial irregularities and channeling money from a disgraced politician, Dame Shirley Porter, to fund a commissioned report, the Smallwood Report.  Motivated by this I have examined the accounts for the FIH and some of the various bodies that have funded them, including the Porter Foundation- Dame Porter’s charitable organisation. This has revealed some unusual transactions.

The Smallwood Report was originally to have been funded by the FIH but ended up being directly commissioned by the Prince of Wales who, apparently, wished to remain discrete about the fact that it was funded by Dame Porter.

The 2005 accounts from the Porter Foundation show that £50,000 was given directly to the FIH as a grant, subsequent accounts from the Porter Foundation reveal that this was a one off payment and they did not fund the FIH further.  There is nothing untoward in the Porter Foundation accounts as far as I am aware.  However, there are some strange entries in the accounts for the FIH in this period.

The 2005 accounts for the FIH shows that £48,104 was received as a grant from the Prince’s Charities Foundation, another of the Prince of Wales’ charity organisations, to fund the Smallwood report.  This precise sum is listed in both the incoming and outgoing resource columns for that year, as well as in the incoming grants section, suggesting the money was spent or transferred outside the FIH.  There is no record of the £50,000 from the Porter Foundation in the accounts for this year.

There are also other incidences of discrepancies between the entries for incoming funds, and the accounts of these funders.

In 2004 the Prince’s Charities Foundation donated £447,500 to the FIH, yet the FIH accounts list a donation of £400,000 from this foundation.

In 2005 the Prince’s Charities Foundation donated £525,038 to the FIH, yet the FIH accounts list a donation of £598,014.

This information is taken from the FIH’s 2005 accounts and the 2004/05 accounts of the Prince’s Charities Foundation.

Curiously only the 2005 accounts from the FIH list the specific contributions from the Prince’s Charities Foundation, although the latter’s accounts make clear that they have donated large sums of money to the FIH in the form of grants, as follows:

2004 £447,500

2005 £525,038

2006 £587,604

2007 £528,742

2008 £400,052

2009 £250,000

These grants are roughly split in half each year as restricted and unrestricted funds. Their absence from the accounts maybe because these donations have been included as part of the voluntary income of the FIH, rather than listed as grants.  However, the accounts from all years do list specific grants of Restricted Funds as income, with the exception of 2005, there is no record of donations from the Prince’s Charities Foundation as Restricted Grants in the FIH accounts.  The Prince’s Charities Foundation have given the FIH £2,738,936 over 6 years and there is almost no record of this within the FIH accounts.

In summary;

1. the FIH have not listed grants from the Porter Foundation, despite this organisation clearly indicating it gave the FIH money
2. the money spent on the Smallwood report does not match that received from the Porter Foundation
3. in 2004/05 the sums received from the Prince’s Charities Foundation do not match those listed in the accounts
4. in all other years there is no record of grants from the Prince’s Charities Foundation, despite the latter donating almost £3million to the FIH

I have asked the FIH to specifically comment on these discrepancies for nearly two weeks.  They have not responded despite repeated requests for comment.  This may be indicative of wider problems at the FIH, they still have not submitted their most recent accounts to the Charities Commission, they now have less than 10 days to submit them before the Charity Commission is obliged to take action.

If, despite reminders, a charity’s accounts and Annual Return or its Annual Update have not been received 4 months after the end of the 10 month period in which they are required to submit the documents, it is a strong indication that they are no longer operating. The charity is notified at this point that if we do not receive their due documents in the following 2 months they may be removed from the Register or subject to further action.

Are the FIH still operating?

The implications of the FIH ceasing to operate would be enormous.  This is not a minor charity run by some incompetent quacks, this a charity whose founder and President is the UK’s future King, the Prince of Wales, and run by some of the most respected and influential advocates of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the country.  The charity helped to set up the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC), a regulatory body for CAM practitioners, as well as being a powerful lobby for the acceptance of CAM.  Without the FIH, the CAM community would find its influence in the elected and unelected of the Houses of Parliament compromised.  There would also be awkward constitutional issues raised, the Prince of Wales and the FIH have already been attacked for a ‘vendetta’ against Professor Edzard Ernst, despite the Prince being required not to involve himself in politics.  If it turns out that the financial discrepancies were part of a larger, very serious, problem then there would be considerable questions over the Prince’s judgement as well as character and his many critics would demand a full investigation.  This could result in the unprecedented investigation of a future monarch as part of a wider investigation into financial fraud.

We should find out the likelihood of this in 10 days.

*update*

The Quackometer has some analysis of the position the FIH finds itself in as well as strong words of condemnation for its actions.

The British Chiropractic Association have dropped their legal action against Simon Singh.

Many congratulations to Simon Singh and all those who have supported him.  However, Simon is going to be out of pocket by a considerable amount, even though the BCA are apparently liable for his costs.  Simon has succeeded not because he is right, but because he is both right and rich, and this is why we should still support libel reform.  Until libel claims are judged solely by the weight of evidence and not by the balance of wallets libel will remain a tool used primarily by the wealthy to silence criticism.

The fact that it takes hundreds of thousands of pounds and a particular blend of stubborness and stupidity to show that there is not a jot of evidence for the claims of chiropractic, an obvious quackery, is an obvious reason to sign Libel Reform Campaign Petition, so if you have not done so, do it.

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) have been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons.  £300,000 has apparently gone missing from their accounts, the police are now investigating, and it is claimed their 2006 Smallwood report was funded by shamed politician, Dame Shirley Porter.  They have now appointed a former writer for an AIDS denialist publication as their new Chief Executive.

According to the Daily Mail report linked to above, the disappearance of £300,000 from the charities accounts is the explanation as to why their most recent financial report has not been filed with the charities commission.  While officially no members of the FIH staff have been suspended there has been a shakeup in the upper echelons of the organisation, with the most notable changes being that former Finance Director and acting Chief Executive, George Gray, is no longer with the charity, having been replaced by a new Chief Executive, Boo Armstrong.  Ms Armstrong used to write articles extolling the virtues of alternative approaches to health in Continuum, a magazine with an editorial position denying the link between HIV and AIDS as described by science.  The FIH have been aware of these articles since at least  the summer of 2009.

Ms Armstrong’s appointment is reflective of how wider society has treated alternative medicine in the past, with minimal scrutiny and an assumption of benefit.  She has been awarded money from UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, for pushing alternative medicine and has long been funded by the FIH before she was officially placed on their payroll.  She has also had a position on the National Clinical Audit Advisory Group (NCAAG) for some time, where her profile lauds her charity work.  She was also behind a market research, rather than scientific, project measuring the impact of alternative health in Northern Ireland.  This was instigated by former Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, who believes that homeopathy and a restrictive diet* cured his son’s eczema and felt that this justified spending £200,000 of taxpayers money on a weak report.  At not point did any of the above investigate her articles for Continuum or even her personal views on various forms of quackery, for example she thinks that osteopaths should be considered equivalent to doctors.

However, more recently, Ms Armstrong and the FIH are becoming unstuck, quite apart from any police investigation.  Thanks to the tenacious David Colquhoun, the recent attempts by an FIH backed organisation to set up an Integrated Medicine course with the University of Buckingham has failed. In particular Ms Armstrong was rejected as a teacher because she was “not qualified to do so academically”.  The FIH have also been reported to the Charities Commission by Republic, a pro-republican pressure group, due to alleged political interference by the Charity and Prince Charles in the appointment of Professor Ernst.

Appointing a supporter of an AIDS denialist magazine as Chief Executive of a charity advocating alternative medicine is not a wise move given the long track record of denialism, unconventional treatment and unethical trials with respect to AIDS in the alternative health movement.  It is especially unwise given that the FIH are no longer operating with minimal scrutiny, both the police and skeptical bloggers, journalists and campaigning organisations taking a close look at them.

The FIH and Ms Armstrong were asked to reply to questions regarding their investigations of the content of Ms Armstrong’s articles and whether Ms Armstrong has retracted her views.  They did not respond.

*specifically a gluten and dairy restricted diet, (there is no indication that Peter Hain’s son was tested by a registered medical practitioner for gluten or dairy allergies).

The attempted regulation of herbalism looks doomed to failure with a clear difference of opinion between government and practitioners, the latter prefer statutory regulation which has been rejected as an option by government.

Last week the Department of Health (DoH) recommended that the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC/Ofquack)  regulate herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and acupuncture.  Minister for Health, Andy Burnham, said:

“Emerging evidence clearly demonstrates that the public needs better protection, but in a way that is measured and does not place unreasonable extra burdens on practitioners.

“I am therefore minded to legislate to ensure that all practitioners supplying unlicensed herbal medicines to members of the public in England must be registered with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC).

The CNHC have expressed their pleasure at this announcement:

CNHC is pleased to be asked by The Secretary of State for Health to register practitioners supplying herbal medicines to members of the public in England.

The Council already registers a significant range of practitioners in complementary healthcare who meet its standards and is well positioned to expand its public protection role in this way. Since 2008 CNHC has established its reputation as a regulatory body with robust and effective standards for registration and fitness to practise. It has positive and collaborative links with the statutory healthcare regulators.

This is probably regarded as good news by the CNHC, they have had a well documented struggle for funding and have trouble attracting some of the more popular forms of quackery.   Regardless of this, the CNHC are not fit for purpose, they have recently told sceptical blogger Simon Perry that they will not consider his complaints for the next 6 months:

I began making complaints to the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council about reflexologist members who happily promote their bogus treatments despite the fact that there was not a jot of evidence to support them.

The CNHC has now informed me that for the next six months, they will no longer be processing any complaints that are similar to the ones I’ve submitted. By similar, I take this to mean complaints regarding practitioners who mislead their clients by making unjustifiable or false statements, including practitioners who have already been cautioned by the CNHC for doing it before.

The CNHC was set up under the aegis of Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) to be a self-regulatory body for alternative health, now it is one that is not prepared to regulate.  However this is not unexpected.  Organisations purporting to regulate quackery rarely do so beyond upholding the doctrines and articles of faith of the respective field of quackery, managing risks to consumer health are generally not a priority.

It would be a concern for those with an interest in exposing the practices of alternative medicine if the CNHC were to regulate herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture.  This, despite the recommendations of Andy Burnham, is unlikely to happen for two reasons.

1) The government is unlikely to exist in its current form within a month or two.  A general election is expected early in May and the Labour party are unlikely to win, if they are to remain in power it will be in a coalition but it is more likely that the next government will be formed from the Conservative party.  None of the major parties have a clearly stated policy on the regulation of alternative medicine, nor is it likely to be a major election issue, so the Department of Health’s current proposals are likely to be mothballed for some considerable time.

2) Herbalists  and TCM practitioners do not want CNHC regulation.

This latter point is the most important.  The European Herbal & Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association (EHTMPA), the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine (RCHM), the Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ATCM), and the National Institute of Medical Herbalists (NIMH) amongst others in the alphabetical smorgasbord that represents the various denominations of herbalism, have all campaigned for statutory regulation.  Their intent was to be regulated by the Health Professionals Council (HPC), a more serious organisation than the CNHC, that regulates practitioners in proven fields of health.  This statutory regulation would confer protected status on their profession, restricting the title of Herbalist to those regulated by its rules.

By and large these organisations are disappointed with the DoH’s announcement:

the CNHC (the proposed regulator) was formed to regulate complementary health practitioners on a voluntary basis, and as currently constituted, is not equipped for statutory regulation.

the government seems to have failed to deliver its promise, and has changed its mind from HPC as our regulatory body to CNHC. We would like to demand an explanation from the government on what ground it has changed its mind, as CNHC is only a voluntary body with no statutory power. From the rather short DH press release which lacks details, we doubt whether the government still wants to introduce statutory regulation, or decides to go for an alternative.

Herbalists should be regulated like other statutory regulated healthcare practitioner or, the public will lose access to properly regulated herbalists and a wide range of herbal medicines. The Government must give detailed assurances that the legal and structural basis of statutory regulation is fit for purpose or it will betray the millions of people who regularly consult herbal practitioners. So far the Government has singularly failed to provide these guarantees.

As the CNHC is voluntary these organisations have no need to insist that their members sign up, in fact as they are holding out for statutory regulation it is unlikely that they will be willing to express any support for the CNHC, to do so would undermine their campaign.  This will damage the CNHC’s longterm viability, no new members means no new funding sources, and with the homeopaths mired in infighting the herbalists represent their last decent chance of acquiring new members in the medium term.

This is good news for those that are concerned about poor practice in alternative medicine.  The collapse of the CNHC will further damage the reputation of alternative medicine.  Hopefully a new government will take stock of the intransigence of the herbalists, the infighting of the homeopaths and the inability of the CNHC to regulate and instead apply a more robust external form of regulation for quackery.

This blog has been updated with a response from the Democracy Movement to the original post and my subsequent reply (see end).

The Democracy Movement is an anti-EU lobbying group which arose from the ashes of James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party with the help of funds from his wife, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and businessman Paul Sykes. The Democracy Movement declares itself “a non-party campaign to defend liberal democracy in Britain and across Europe. “and is opposed to the single currency, the Lisbon Treaty and the EU Constitution.  The Democracy Movement see their role as working

[...] alongside groups similarly committed to challenging the current structure of the EU. In the eventuality of there being a referendum on the EU Constitution or the euro, the DM will give its support to the official umbrella campaign that will be appointed by the Electoral Commission. A broad popular alliance including democrats from the left, centre and centre-right will be needed to safeguard liberal democracy and prevent the creation of an authoritarian Brussels-based government.

So far, so mainstream UK anti-Europe thinking.  Another anti-EU organisation is the European Referendum Initiative (ERI).  This was founded by Matthias Rath, the vitamin salesman who conducted illegal AIDS trials in South Africa and supports AIDS denialism which is estimated to have contributed to over 300,000 deaths in South Africa alone.  The ERI regards attempts by the EU to regulate the sale of health products as a conspiracy by large pharmaceutical companies to facilitate medical experiments on the population similar to those inflicted on Jews by Nazis during the Holocaust. The Democracy Movement are now supporting the European Referendum Initiative.

Last week I wrote to the Democracy Movement expressing my concerns about this support, at the time I believed that perhaps the Democracy Movement has been careless in their choice of partner and failed to provide an appropriate degree of circumspection to collaborations with anti-EU organisations prone to attracting views outwith the norm.  After all, the ERI had previously managed to fool several MEPs into supporting it, albeit indirectly. So I wrote this email:

I notice that the European Referendum Initiative (ERI), an organisation purportedly campaigning on the Lisbon Treaty and access to alternative medicine, has cited the Democracy Movement as one of its supporters [1].

The ERI are funded and controlled by the Dr Rath Foundation, an organisation headed by Matthias Rath, a particularly odious individual who is partly responsible for the AIDS catastrophe in South Africa [2].  The ERI for a number of years have been trying to inveigle their way into EU politics through anti-EU rhetoric focussing on alternative health [3].

I have some questions regarding the Democracy Movement’s cited support for the ERI
1) Are the Democracy Movement correctly cited as supporters of the ERI?
2)If so, do the Democracy Movement endorse the ERI and thus the Dr Rath Foundation?
3) If not, will the Democracy Movement publicly dissociate themselves from the ERI?

and this is the response I received.

1. Yes – because it is an initiative against the Lisbon Treaty and in support of peoples across Europe being given a say on it. We also support the campaign against the EU outlawing perfectly healthy and acceptable alternative medicines and herbal remedies, as they are being lobbied to do by the expensive lobbying teams of the major pharmaceutical corporations.
2. Yes, we endorse the ERI but (contrary to the weak ‘thus’ in your question) no, we are not affiliated to the Dr Rath Foundation and cannot necessarily be taken as supporting its outlook or actions in the many other areas in which it is active. We are affiliated to the ERI, which as you saw has clearly defined aims and which has a range of other supporting groups and organisations. Many of these operate in markedly different fields to us, but the ERI is about what supportive groups have in common; on the Lisbon Treaty and against EU action to outlaw herbal remedies. As a eurosceptic pressure group, we certainly wouldn’t claim to have all the answers about the right course to combat a complex and troubling problem like AIDS in Africa, or indeed many answers in the field of public health more generally, but I’m quite sure these are issues that are hotly debated by groups active in the field. Likewise, we wouldn’t expect any ERI-supporting groups to share our view on, say, the EU’s authoritarian activities in the field of criminal justice, such as the EU Arrest Warrant, email and internet monitoring laws or the immunity from prosecution of officers in its ‘operational’ police force, Europol.

3. No – because of the points made in No.1.

The ERI website is registered by Matthias Rath and run by the Dr Rath Foundation, an affiliation with the ERI is an affiliation with Matthias Rath and the Dr Rath Foundation.  No amount of weasel words can break this link.  It looks like the Democratic Movement’s hatred of the EU has blinded them to the character of some of their affiliates.  Not only that they seem spectacularly ignorant of the science and politics of HIV and AIDS denialism as well as that surrounding the regulation of vitamin supplements and herbal remedies.

The Democracy Movement’s involvement with Matthias Rath would be only a minor cause for concern were it not for the background of their members and supporters.  Lady Goldsmith’s son, Robin Birley, a former chairman of the Democracy Movement, funded David Davis’ unsuccessful campaign to become the leader of the Conservative Party.  Paul Sykes has demonstrated he will throw his considerable wealth behind a party that shares his views, and withdraw it when they do not. He is now a supporter of the Conservative Party.  These are rich and powerful people with rich and powerful friends.  As well as this they also have some influence in anti-EU politics.  Members of the Democracy Movement have spoken at the respectable anti-EU thinktank The Bruges Group, where they shared a platform with then shadow minister Oliver Letwin.  More recently the eurosceptic MEP Dan Hannan and representatives from the Tax Payers Alliance, popular amongst the Libertarian Right, have spoken at their events. Democracy Movement member, Marc Henri Glendening, a former chair of the Federation of Conservative Students (then the youth wing of the Conservative Party) is a contributor to the Conservative Home website, which is considered reflective of the views of many members of the Conservative Party.  Nor are the Democracy Movement politically neutral despite their claims, Stuart Coster, who wrote the reply above, runs an anti Liberal Democrat website , presumably because he feels it is unacceptable for a party to be pro Europe, and the Democracy Movement host anti Liberal Democrat literature.

None of this is to say that any of the above support the actions of Matthias Rath in South Africa nor endorse AIDS denialism (although some sections of the Right do).  I think this is merely an example of people assuming that an individual who shares their views on one issue is worth supporting, even under a shadow cast by the corpses of 300,000 South Africans.  This amoral pursuit of political objectives is undesirable.  Especially so when the impact of these objectives has not been considered.  Take the regulation of the sale of vitamin supplements and herbs for example, claims of efficacy are generally only permitted with robust evidence and doses of pharmacologically active compounds kept within safe limits.  Proposed EU legislation is designed to improve this to protect the consumer.  What Matthias Rath and his alternative health supporters want is for these restrictions to be loosened so they may be free to ply their evidence free trade with little intervention from the law.  Indeed Rath has already taken his vile pursuits to Russia, where the rule of law in commerce and public health is often weak.

The Democracy Movement do not understand that although Matthias Rath may oppose the Lisbon Treaty he also wants to peddle his miracle cures to the desperately ill, he is not a friend to the respectable.  If purportedly respectable anti-EU organisations succumb to the advances of murderous quacks such as Matthias Rath then it discredits their movement and those they share a platform with. If there are eurosceptic Tories reading this then they need to make sure their party does not fall prey to the folly of assuming their enemies enemy is their friend and accept conspiracy theories over the EU as peddled by the alternative health movement.  It would be a disaster if political objectives were put before the health of voters.

Update

The following email was recieved from the Democracy Movement, I have published the text below unedited and included my reply beneath.

I appreciate you clearly have an issue with Dr Rath and his activities in what you call ‘AIDS denialism’ (though, from what little I know of the problem, isn’t the debate more about best treatment rather than denial of the existence of the disease?). So I sense misrepresentation there already on your part, before even looking more deeply into the issue.

But I’m afraid expecting a eurosceptic pressure group that has simply signed up to aclearly EU-focussed initiative to take a view on who is right or wrong over such complex unrelated questions being addressed by other participants in the initiative is, I have to say, not a reasonable line of attack.

It’s where you later go throwing together selected snippets about our supporters and activities to try to portray us inaccurately as Tories that you really undermine any faith I may have been open-minded to having about your judgement of Dr Rath. I’m afraid the technique of association you have sought to employ can work both ways, and you’ve rather shot yourself in the foot if you were hoping to persuade us to take your views about Dr Rath seriously.

For example, Robin Birley had long stepped down from the DM before (if indeed he was) being involved in David Davis’s leadership campaign. As had Paul Sykes before he supported any political party. I’m sure no reasonable person would think that they both must abstain from all political activity in perpetuity, for having once been involved in the DM. Which is presumably why you neglected to detail the timeline.

Plus our supporters speak on all sorts of platforms, not just Tory ones. For example, Marc was last weekend speaking at the trade union-based Campaign Against Euro-Federalism AGM in Birmingham. Neither, obviously, do you have to be a Tory supporter to contribute to ConservativeHome, and who could criticise a pressure group for seeking to influence a party that may well become our next government?

More fundamentally, being non-party clearly doesn’t mean we can’t criticise any party. That would be absurd. We criticise them all. You similarly neglected to mention our current Cameron-critical postcard campaign and recent series of blog posts. It’s true the Lib Dems have more recently come in for a special focus from us, for arguably behaving the worst of all over the promised Lisbon Treaty referendum. At least Labour’s position, as much as we disagreed with it, was consistent. Whereas the Lib Dems abstained in the Commons and voted against a referendum in the Lords – basically, voting whichever way it took at each stage of the process to prevent people being given the promised consultation on transfers of more decision-making to remote EU institutions.

What you’ve done by omitting such ‘details’ from these and other similarly cheap jibes about us is shown me that you’re not so interested in reality as manipulating information to serve whatever agenda it is you are pursuing. Which makes it particularly rich that you talk of “weasel words”.

Are you interested in restoring your credibility by publishing these clarifications and portraying us accurately? Or should I continue to assume that all your portrayals are similarly misrepresentative?

My reply:

With respect to your comments about Conservative Party funding, ConservativeHome and your allegation that I tried to portray you as Tories. My intention was not to suggest that the Democracy Movement was a Tory led organisation, but rather that the individuals behind it have some influence in mainstream politics, both in their funding of political parties and the credibility of the platforms they use. The intent of this was to portray the DM as a credible organisation by virtue of having access to the ears of those in politics and to make explicit the observation that they express views considered acceptable in mainstream political discourse. However, this, and any arguments over the precise nature of your opposition to the Liberal Democrats, are irrelevant to the main point I made. Your association with Matthias Rath risks discrediting your arguments and those that share them.

Matthias Rath is truly an odious individual. I would strongly urge you to read Ben Goldacre’s article on Matthias Rath [1] or at the very least his wikipedia page [2]. If you have more time then I recommend that you look through the Treatment Action Campaign’s documents on Rath [3]. These should provide you with more information on the character of the man, quite apart from my own opinions.

The Democracy Movement is an anti-EU lobbying group which arose from the ashes of James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party with the help of funds from his wife, Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and businessman Paul Sykes. The Democracy Movement declares itself “a non-party campaign to defend liberal democracy in Britain and across Europe. “and is opposed to the single currency, the Lisbon Treaty and the EU Constitution.  The Democracy Movement see their role as working

[...] alongside groups similarly committed to challenging the current structure of the EU. In the eventuality of there being a referendum on the EU Constitution or the euro, the DM will give its support to the official umbrella campaign that will be appointed by the Electoral Commission. A broad popular alliance including democrats from the left, centre and centre-right will be needed to safeguard liberal democracy and prevent the creation of an authoritarian Brussels-based government.

So far, so mainstream UK anti-Europe thinking.  Another anti-EU organisation is the European Referendum Initiative (ERI).  This was founded by Matthias Rath, the vitamin salesman who conducted illegal AIDS trials in South Africa and supports AIDS denialism which is estimated to have contributed to over 300,000 deaths in South Africa alone.  The ERI regards attempts by the EU to regulate the sale of health products as a conspiracy by large pharmaceutical companies to facilitate medical experiments on the population similar to those inflicted on Jews by Nazis during the Holocaust. The Democracy Movement are now supporting the European Referendum Initiative.

Last week I wrote to the Democracy Movement expressing my concerns about this support, at the time I believed that perhaps the Democracy Movement has been careless in their choice of partner and failed to provide an appropriate degree of circumspection to collaborations with anti-EU organisations prone to attracting views outwith the norm.  After all, the ERI had previously managed to fool several MEPs into supporting it, albeit indirectly. So I wrote this email:

I notice that the European Referendum Initiative (ERI), an organisation purportedly campaigning on the Lisbon Treaty and access to alternative medicine, has cited the Democracy Movement as one of its supporters [1].

The ERI are funded and controlled by the Dr Rath Foundation, an organisation headed by Matthias Rath, a particularly odious individual who is partly responsible for the AIDS catastrophe in South Africa [2].  The ERI for a number of years have been trying to inveigle their way into EU politics through anti-EU rhetoric focussing on alternative health [3].

I have some questions regarding the Democracy Movement’s cited support for the ERI
1) Are the Democracy Movement correctly cited as supporters of the ERI?
2)If so, do the Democracy Movement endorse the ERI and thus the Dr Rath Foundation?
3) If not, will the Democracy Movement publicly dissociate themselves from the ERI?

and this is the response I received.

1. Yes – because it is an initiative against the Lisbon Treaty and in support of peoples across Europe being given a say on it. We also support the campaign against the EU outlawing perfectly healthy and acceptable alternative medicines and herbal remedies, as they are being lobbied to do by the expensive lobbying teams of the major pharmaceutical corporations.
2. Yes, we endorse the ERI but (contrary to the weak ‘thus’ in your question) no, we are not affiliated to the Dr Rath Foundation and cannot necessarily be taken as supporting its outlook or actions in the many other areas in which it is active. We are affiliated to the ERI, which as you saw has clearly defined aims and which has a range of other supporting groups and organisations. Many of these operate in markedly different fields to us, but the ERI is about what supportive groups have in common; on the Lisbon Treaty and against EU action to outlaw herbal remedies. As a eurosceptic pressure group, we certainly wouldn’t claim to have all the answers about the right course to combat a complex and troubling problem like AIDS in Africa, or indeed many answers in the field of public health more generally, but I’m quite sure these are issues that are hotly debated by groups active in the field. Likewise, we wouldn’t expect any ERI-supporting groups to share our view on, say, the EU’s authoritarian activities in the field of criminal justice, such as the EU Arrest Warrant, email and internet monitoring laws or the immunity from prosecution of officers in its ‘operational’ police force, Europol.

3. No – because of the points made in No.1.

The ERI website is registered by Matthias Rath and run by the Dr Rath Foundation, an affiliation with the ERI is an affiliation with Matthias Rath and the Dr Rath Foundation.  No amount of weasel words can break this link.  It looks like the Democratic Movement’s hatred of the EU has blinded them to the character of some of their affiliates.  Not only that they seem spectacularly ignorant of the science and politics of HIV and AIDS denialism as well as that surrounding the regulation of vitamin supplements and herbal remedies.

The Democracy Movement’s involvement with Matthias Rath would be only a minor cause for concern were it not for the background of their members and supporters.  Lady Goldsmith’s son, Robin Birley, a former chairman of the Democracy Movement, funded David Davis’ unsuccessful campaign to become the leader of the Conservative Party.  Paul Sykes has demonstrated he will throw his considerable wealth behind a party that shares his views, and withdraw it when they do not. He is now a supporter of the Conservative Party.  These are rich and powerful people with rich and powerful friends.  As well as this they also have some influence in anti-EU politics.  Members of the Democracy Movement have spoken at the respectable anti-EU thinktank The Bruges Group, where they shared a platform with then shadow minister Oliver Letwin.  More recently the eurosceptic MEP Dan Hannan and representatives from the Tax Payers Alliance, popular amongst the Libertarian Right, have spoken at their events. Democracy Movement member, Marc Henri Glendening, a former chair of the Federation of Conservative Students (then the youth wing of the Conservative Party) is a contributor to the Conservative Home website, which is considered reflective of the views of many members of the Conservative Party.  Nor are the Democracy Movement politically neutral despite their claims, Stuart Coster, who wrote the reply above, runs an anti Liberal Democrat website , presumably because he feels it is unacceptable for a party to be pro Europe, and the Democracy Movement host anti Liberal Democrat literature.

None of this is to say that any of the above support the actions of Matthias Rath in South Africa nor endorse AIDS denialism (although some sections of the Right do).  I think this is merely an example of people assuming that an individual who shares their views on one issue is worth supporting, even under a shadow cast by the corpses of 300,000 South Africans.  This amoral pursuit of political objectives is undesirable.  Especially so when the impact of these objectives has not been considered.  Take the regulation of the sale of vitamin supplements and herbs for example, claims of efficacy are generally only permitted with robust evidence and doses of pharmacologically active compounds kept within safe limits.  Proposed EU legislation is designed to improve this to protect the consumer.  What Matthias Rath and his alternative health supporters want is for these restrictions to be loosened so they may be free to ply their evidence free trade with little intervention from the law.  Indeed Rath has already taken his vile pursuits to Russia, where the rule of law in commerce and public health is often weak.

The Democracy Movement do not understand that although Matthias Rath may oppose the Lisbon Treaty he also wants to peddle his miracle cures to the desperately ill, he is not a friend to the respectable.  If purportedly respectable anti-EU organisations succumb to the advances of murderous quacks such as Matthias Rath then it discredits their movement and those they share a platform with. If there are eurosceptic Tories reading this then they need to make sure their party does not fall prey to the folly of assuming their enemies enemy is their friend and accept conspiracy theories over the EU as peddled by the alternative health movement.  It would be a disaster if political objectives were put before the health of voters.

Early last year I blogged about the misleading statements made by some MEPs in trying to water down EU proposals for the regulation of the vitamin pill industry.  It appeared that these MEPs had been influenced by the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), then collaborating with the vitamin pill salesman and notorious AIDS denialist Matthias Rath whose activities in South Africa implicated him in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.  One of these MEPs was Marian Harkin, an Irish independent MEP, who I wrote to at the time expressing my concerns over the ANH and her position on supplementation (see letter below the fold).  Ms Harkin, in contrast to most other MEPs contacted, did not respond.  Now it seems Ms Harkin is supporting homeopathy and has fallen for the big pharma conspiracy line as peddled by homeopaths and the ANH (who incidentally have forbidden their staff from replying to my emails).

In a report written for the EU Observer it is claimed that the homeopathic lobby are trying to influence the EU on the regulation of alternative medicine.

Representatives of the industry, practitioners and patients that use homeopathic products are to hold an EU Homeopathy Day in the European Parliament on 23 March as the kick-off for a new effort to win EU-level alternative-medicine-friendly legislation.

EU Homeopathy day is an event organised by the European Coalition on Homeopathic and Anthroposophic Medicinal Products (Echamp), a lobby group composed of manufacturers of homeopathic products and their supporters.

The report also carries statements from Andy Lewis of the Quackometer and Ms Harkin.

Andy Lewis, the proprietor of the Quackometer website, which debunks quack medicine on the internet, said that the new campaign of European homeopathy lobby was at odds with the British parliament’s enquiry.

“The MPs concluded, after a very detailed review of the evidence, that homeopathy was scientifically implausible and could not be shown to be effective,” said Mr Lewis, who was also one of the organisers of a series of ‘homeopathy overdose’ demonstrations outside pharmacists across the UK in January in which sceptics swallowed entire bottles of homeopathy sugar pills. “The recommendation was that homeopathy should not be publicly funded and that medicines labeling regulations should not allow it to make unfounded claims. “

“The EU would be failing its citizens, and pandering to business interests, if it allowed homeopathy sugar pill manufacturers to make misleading claims about this discredited 18th Century quackery,” he added.

Ms Harkin, for her part, is familiar with such criticism, but dismisses it as in the service of Big Pharma: “There are those that believe that only those medicines prescribed by doctors and manufactured by Pfizer will make you well, but a lot of ordinary people do not subscribe to that view.”

“[The sceptics] are saying medicines must be judged by one critierion [sic] only, that it satisfies a scientific equation. Whereas there are many standards by which medicines should be judged,” she said.

“The agenda is to say that science has the answer to everything. Well, they should have learnt by now that it hasn’t.”

It appears that Ms Harkin did not heed my warnings and has now fallen for the conspiracy theories of the more obsessive supporters of homeopathy and clearly does not see the irony of condemning Big Pharma, who for the most part rely on scientific evidence, while shilling for Big Quacka, who don’t.  This is unfortunate for the voters of Ireland North and West as well as those that care for the proper scrutiny of alternative therapies.  Ms Harkin is supposedly representing the interests of the former and acting against those of the latter in the European Parliament.  Ms Harkin would be well advised to read the recent Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy (pdf) which as good a discussion of the scientific evidence and policy implications of homeopathy as she’s ever likely to read.

I will be contacting Ms Harkin to remind her that while science does not have an answer to everything it is pretty good at evaluating the claims of alternative medicine, and these have been found wanting.  I will also send her a copy of the  report.

Dear Ms Harkin,

I run a blog dedicated to alternative health issues [1].  It has come to my attention that you are working with the Irish Association of Health Stores (IAHS) and the Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) on issues relating to the supplement industry [2].  I have recently blogged on some issues concerning the MEP Kathy Sinnott, the IAHS, the ANH and others including the Dr Rath Foundation that may be of interest to you[3,4].

Matthias Rath, the individual behind the Dr Rath Foundation, is a notorious and controversial individual who has contributed substantially to the misery of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.  It is disappointing to see legitimate campaigning groups choosing to associate with such individuals.  I am continuing to investigate this matter for my blog and would be grateful if you could tell me if you were aware of the relationship between the IAHS, the ANH and the Dr Rath Foundation as well as their role in the anti Lisbon treaty campaign.  I should point out that both Kathy Sinnott and the IAHS have been aware of my concerns regarding Matthias Rath for several months and have declined to repudiate their association with Dr Rath Foundation funded organisations.

You will find more information on Dr Rath below:

The Treatment Action Campaign, a South African HIV advocacy group, have been involved in several long running court cases against Matthias Rath (and the SA government).

http://www.tac.org.za/community/rath

The Guardian and their Badscience columnist Ben Goldacre were sued for libel by Matthias Rath after challenging his claims over AIDS/HIV.  The case was dropped after a year of harassment on the part of Rath.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.aids1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.aids2

http://www.badscience.net/2008/09/matthias-rath-pulls-out-forced-to-pay-the-guardians-costs-i-think-this-means-i-win/

He attempted to sue the humanitarian organisation Medicins Sans Frontieres as detailed in some of the links above.

His wikipedia page has a lot more information, although the usual caveats about the reliability of wikipedia apply.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Rath

By way of context this was the ANH response to the outcome of the court case against The Guardian and Dr Goldacre [5].

I should also point out that the ANH, IAHS, Matthias Rath and others in their group are utterly opposed to evidence based public health matters such as vaccination, fluoridation, and the regulation of pharmaceutically active supplements promoted under the ‘natural’ label.  It is this opposition which concerns me more than the personal ethics of those named, the nutritional supplements and alt-healthcare industry is rapidly growing in both market share and influence and has a deep rooted distaste for science and evidence in healthcare.  They seek to undermine trust in science and medicine by promoting demonstrably wrong ideas regarding the safety of vaccines, mobile phone masts, GMOs and others as well as false claims regarding the efficacy of alternative medicine and high dose nutritional supplements.  It is bad enough that these people are able to profit from such dishonesty, it is worse that they are apparently capable of acquiring political influence to shape legislative outcomes.

[1] gimpyblog.wordpress.com
[2] http://www.anhcampaign.org/news/anh-press-release-european-commission-recognises-need-for-amending-herbals-directive
[3] http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/matthias-rath-the-alternative-health-eurosceptics-and-the-mep/
[4] http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/kathy-sinnott-mep-and-alternative-health-eurosceptics-still-associating-with-matthias-rath/
[5] http://www.anhcampaign.org/news/dr-rath-under-fire%E2%80%94-there-silver-lining

Autistic people are dangerous weirdoes, just like Gordon Brown.  Or that is what you could think if you read the musings of political journalists.

This blog has often bemoaned the state of modern day journalism with respect to the obvious quackeries of homeopathy, nutritionism and chiropractic where sensational claims are treated with all the skepticism of the Catholic Church on the miracles of Padre Pio.  But this is nothing compared to political journalism, where quackery is not so much proselytised as practiced.  Every political journalist considers themselves an expert on the character of politicians and for some it seems this expertise is coupled with that on the pathology of mental health.

Here’s Minette Marin in The Sunday Times:

Recently a story emerged that Brown was being prescribed powerful antidepressants; the allegation was never substantiated so it was dropped. But what struck me was the widespread view at the time that a prime minister should not be asked about his mental health. That is nonsense. Significant depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, personality disorders and autism-spectrum disorders all can and do profoundly affect a person’s judgment and behaviour in disastrous ways. All are difficult, and some impossible, to treat. It is clearly in the public interest to know whether our prime minister is suffering from any of these disabilities.

The First Post, via Simon Heffer

There have been rumours about Brown’s health and mental state for several years, of course. In 2004, Simon Heffer wrote in the Spectator that the PM displayed many signs of Asperger’s Syndrome, including obsessional behaviour patterns and humourlessness.

And Janet Daley in The Telegraph

Once again I am compelled to ask the question, “Is Gordon Brown quite mad?” This is not vulgar abuse. We must consider the possibility at this point that the Prime Minister is technically delusional.

All this without submerging one’s head in the Great Stink of the political blogosphere, where the noxious stench of bile and verbal diarrhoea surely cries out for a modern day Bazalgette to channel this vile effluence away from the seats of power.

Political journalism and political blogging have now reduced the Government and the Houses of Parliament to little more than a modern day Bedlam where sneering critics can flaunt their ignorance and display their amorality by diagnosing, without recourse to expertise or professionalism, the mental state of its wretched inhabitants.

Can we talk about policies instead?

When I blogged on Dynevor Ltds, owner of the Dore Programme, successful application to become a CIC I criticised them on several grounds, in particular they submitted statements of the programmes efficacy not borne out by the published data. In these statements they made claims that the Advertising Standards Authority have specifically forbidden Dynevor CIC (then Ltd) from making in advertising material.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 50.1 (Health and beauty products and therapies).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.

At the time I stated that:

Although this ruling was published on the 16th December 2009 and Dyenvor’s application was dated 12th December 2009 the ASA were corresponding with Dore for some considerable time prior to the ruling so that it can be assumed they were aware of the ASA view on the limitations of their evidence.

I have now had confirmation from the ASA that Dynevor were aware of the ruling before their application to become a CIC was signed, dated and submitted.  Therefore Scott Quinnell and Glen Allgood, the companies directors, have knowingly submitted the claim that

our programme is able to give a long-lasting intervention by tackling the root cause of the issue.

despite knowing there is not sufficient evidence to substantiate this claim.  This is plain dishonest.  Scott Quinnell and Glen Allgood have knowingly submitted a claim they cannot support to the CIC regulator.  I wonder if Dynevor’s application would have been successful if they had admitted that the ASA would not permit them to make claims that the programme works?

The long awaited Science & Technology committee report on homeopathy has now been released and it is devastating for homeopathy and homeopaths.

In a report published today, the Science and Technology Committee concludes that the NHS should cease funding homeopathy. It also concludes that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) should not allow homeopathic product labels to make medical claims without evidence of efficacy. As they are not medicines, homeopathic products should no longer be licensed by the MHRA.

The report is a series of merciless punches to the vitalist organs of homeopathy.

The report is damning of the theory behind homeopathy

54.
We conclude that the principle of like-cures-like is theoretically weak. It fails to provide a credible physiological mode of action for homeopathic products. We note that this is the settled view of medical science

61.
We consider the notion that ultra-dilutions can maintain an imprint of substances previously dissolved in them to be scientifically implausible.

the honesty and accuracy of the homeopaths submissions to the committee

73.
We regret that advocates of homeopathy, including in their submissions to our inquiry, choose to rely on, and promulgate, selective approaches to the treatment of the evidence base as this risks confusing or misleading the public, the media and policy-makers.

and the evidence that it works

82.
We do not doubt that homeopathy makes some patients feel better. However, patient satisfaction can occur through a placebo effect alone and therefore does not prove the efficacy of homeopathic interventions..

It strongly makes the case that there is no role of homeoapthy in the NHS, at all, not even if patients want it.

111.
We conclude that placebos should not be routinely prescribed on the NHS. The funding of homeopathic hospitals—hospitals that specialise in the administration of placebos—should not continue, and NHS doctors should not refer patients to homeopaths.

The Committee is also damning of the MHRA’s role in endorsing homeopathy.

152.
The MHRA, with commendable frankness, told our inquiry that it does not consider that homeopathic medicines have efficacy beyond placebo. The evidence we received during this inquiry supports that conclusion. On that basis, the tests that the MHRA uses to assess non-homeopathic medical products would mean that no homeopathic products would be licensed by the MHRA. Instead of introducing a blanket requirement for evidence of efficacy, the MHRA operates three licensing regimes for homeopathic products, in part, for historical reasons and, in part, it appears, to support the homeopathic industry. It is unacceptable for the MHRA to license placebo products—in this case sugar pills—conferring upon them some of the status of medicines. Even if medical claims on labels are prohibited, the MHRA’s licensing itself lends direct credibility to a product. Licensing paves the way for retail in pharmacies and consequently the patient’s view of the credibility of homeopathy may be further enhanced. We conclude that it is time to break this chain and, as the licensing regimes operated by the MHRA fail the Evidence Check, the MHRA should withdraw its discrete licensing schemes for homeopathic products.

as well as strongly critical of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain’s (RPSGBs) failure to appropriately investigate complaints about pharmacists

Although it goes wider than the scope of this Evidence Check inquiry we must put on record our concern about the length of time the RPSGB appears to be taking to investigate and reach conclusions on cases where it has been alleged that its guidelines on the sale of homeopathic products have been breached. We recommend that the Government enquires into whether the RPSGB, and from the 2010 handover, the General Pharmaceutical Council, is doing an adequate job in respect of the time taken to pursue complaints. (Paragraph 151)

In summary this report justifies and endorses almost every charge made by opponents of homeopathy against the profession with respect to NHS funding and MHRA endorsement.  It is a massive victory.

However, there are some interesting observations to be made regarding the committee’s vote on the report.  The formal minutes reveal that Ian Stewart, MP voted against the rest of the committee as he attempted to water down the report, such as

Amendment proposed, to leave out from “That” to the end of the question and add “this Committee declines to read the report a second time because it contains an evaluation of homeopathy which is outside the terms of reference of the inquiry as published by the Committee on 20 October 2009 and instead decides to write to the Government to call on it to fund a rigorous research programme into homeopathy.” instead thereof.—

Ian Stewart was lobbied hard by Carol Boyce, a homeopath who believes it can cure autism, to oppose the report.  She claims that “Mr Stewart made a valiant attempt to to bring balance to the proceedings but was hopelessly outnumbered.” as well as claims that he circulated a letter accusing the committee of bias.

Before the Committee meetings I sent a letter to Mr Stewart advising him of this inherent bias and he circulated the letter to all members of the Committee. A similar letter was sent directly to the Committee members, put into ‘background information’ and I imagine was never read.

The Committee have confirmed that this letter was received and circulated as described although they deny Mr Stewart accused the committee of bias. Neither Mr Stewart nor Ms Boyce responded to requests for a public statement.

It is clear that the homeopaths have an ally in Mr Stewart who was prepared to attempt to water down the report, possibly because he is standing down at the election.

It is now clear that the homeopaths have tried everything from smear campaigns against Evan Harris to soliciting the support of a member of the committee to spread accusations of bias.  What they have utterly failed to do is deal with the concerns about evidence that the report has identified and highlighted.  If this report is acted on it will mean the end of homeopathy in the UK, and the homeopaths will only have themselves to blame.  They have stuck to their ridiculous assertions of efficacy rather than engage with the substance of their critics views.   I doubt will we see much recognition of this from the homeopaths, just more lies, deceit and smears. The end cannot come soon enough for this sorry trade.

The House of Commons Evidence Check report on homeopathy is due to be published tomorrow.  The Telegraph are reporting that it will call for an end to the funding of homeopathy on the NHS as well as suggesting that that claims to ‘treat’ disease should not be used and I’ve just received a new email from H:MC21, a pro homeopathy lobby group, on their planned mass lobby of parliament (previously covered here and here).  H:MC21 are also calling for the mass spamming of form letters to MPs and the mass spamming of form press releases to local media as part of their strategy.  

The letter to MPs (at the foot of this post), written by William Alderson of H:MC21, plugs his rather odd diatribe against Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh, Halloween Science, suggests that evidence based medicine is a flawed method of assessing homeopathy, presumably because it shows it is no better than placebo, and attempts to smear Ernst, Ben Goldacre and Tracey Brown.  It doesn’t offer a model of homeopathy that would allow it to survive despite the expected criticism in the evidence check.

The press release (at the foot of this post), also written by William Alderson, is even worse.  Not only does it repeat the claims in the MPs letter but it also refers to a Cuban homeopathic study that has yet to be published despite being touted on the web for some time, presumably it’s so bad even Homeopathy journals won’t touch it, but it makes the following claim that shows us exactly why most homeopaths simply cannot be trusted to be sensible:

Homeopaths argue that in the current financial crisis we need homeopathy because it is cheap, effective and has no side effects

The Shang et al meta analysis, the most rigorous literature review published, found that homeopathy functions no better than placebo. It is cheap because it is just sugar pills and water and it has no side effects for the same reason.  Homeopaths are delusional in thinking that it works.  For them it is not an adjunct to conventional treatment, it is a replacement.  It is this belief that drives homeopaths to conduct clinical trials on terminally ill Africans, to claim that it can prevent malaria, and that any evidence to the contrary is a conspiracy funded by global pharmaceutical companies.

Whatever the conclusions of the evidence check, any subsequent debate should not involve homeopaths who endorse these views, that is the following list of H:MC21 supporters, including the Society of Homeopaths and the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths, representing the bulk of the lay profession, and the Friends of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH), a charity supporting the medical homeopaths at the RLHH.

Allen College of Homeopathy

Alliance for Natural Health

Alliance of Registered Homeopaths

College of Practical Homeopathy

Contemporary College of Homeopathy

Dr. Reckeweg (UK) Ltd

Fiends of the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital

Hahnemann College of Homeopathy

Helios Pharmacy

Hemmt Health Care Laboratories

Homeopathy Action Trust

Homeopathy College (Birmingham)

Homeopathic College of East Anglia

Homeopathic Medical Association

Homeopathy Heals

Kent Homeopathic Associates

Lakeland College

School of Homeopathy

Society of Homeopaths

South Downs School of Homoeopathy

South West Homeopathic Group

South West London Homeopaths (Swelhoms)

West London Homeopaths

Yorkshire Centre of Classical Homeopathy

They are fanatics who are not prepared to consider anything that contradicts their beliefs.  They have nothing constructive to offer, only lies and harrasment. It is time for anyone who wants homeopathy in the UK to survive to cast out any affiliation with the above and reflect long and hard about the place for homeopathy in the 21st century.

Letter and press release below the fold

Read the rest of this entry »

The House of Commons Evidence Check report on homeopathy is due to be published on Monday 22nd February.  In the lead up to this the lay homeopaths have launched their campaigns of hate and conspiracy against the committee and in particular Evan Harris.  This is not surprising.  Nor was it unexpected that professional organisations, including representatives of medical homeopaths such as the British Homeopathic Association (BHA), misrepresented evidence to parliament. However, the relationship between the lay and the medical homeopathic community has always been a little wary, medical homeopaths, such as Peter Fisher of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (RLHH), have strongly criticised the lay homeopaths claims on malaria and many other issues while the lay community fear that any member of the medical profession, homeopath or not, is a stooge of big pharma.  This looks like it is changing.

Next week H:MC21, a pro homeopathy lobby group, will present a petition to Downing Street (which may contain signatures of dubious authenticity).  This petition is now being supported by a number of groups including the following:

Allen College
Alliance for Natural Health
Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH)
College of Practical Homeopathy
Contemporary College of Homeopathy
Dr. Reckeweg (UK) Ltd
Helios Pharmacy
Hahnemann College of Homeopathy
Homeopathic College of East Anglia
Homeopathic Medical Association
Homeopathy Heals
Lakeland College
School of Homeopathy
Society of Homeopaths (SoH)
South Downs School of Homoeopathy
South West London Homeopaths (Swelhoms)
West London Homeopaths (WLH)
Yorkshire Centre of Classical Homeopathy

Jenny Seagrove (actor)

You do not have to look hard to find unconventional and dangerous views attributed to these organisations.  For example the Alliance for Natural Health collaborated with Matthias Rath, the ARH registrar believes homeoapthy can treat malaria, the SoH have held conferences on AIDS and refused to sanction members who promote homeopathic vaccines and WLH have given a platform to AIDS denialists.

Now it seems that supporters of the medical homeopaths are throwing their lot in with the lay homeopaths.  The Leauge of Friends of the RLHH, a charity supporting the RLHH describes itself as follows

The League of Friends of the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital – Supporting the Hospital, homeopathy and other complementary therapies within the NHS

Founded in 1975, it is a registered charity (No.269289) and voluntary organisation run by its members for the benefit of the patients and staff of the hospital.

The Friends of the RLHH sent out the following email yesterday (the font and colour are theirs):

Homeopaths and patients to lobby parliament
As you know, there are groups of people who are trying get homeopathy removed from the NHS – thereby denying access to this form of medicine to the many people who derive benefit from it. Effectively, they wish to deny us our right to choice in the treatment options we receive. Over the past 4 years, this movement has gained in strength, influence and determination.

On Wednesday 24 February homeopaths and patients from across the UK will be lobbying Parliament in support of homeopathy.

The event has been organised by H:MC21 (Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century) as part of its campaign to defend people’s right to homeopathy, and particularly to homeopathy in the NHS. They will also deliver to No. 10 Downing Street a letter and 25,000 signatures to the declaration: ‘Homeopathy worked for me’. If you haven’t signed this yet, you can do so on their website – http://www.hmc21.org/

The declaration is being handed in at this time because the Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report on evidence for the use of homeopathy in the NHS is being published on Monday. It is thought that this report is likely to call for homeopathy to be removed from the NHS.

We appreciate that many people may live too far away, or will be at work, while others may be unable to participate due to ill health or other commitments. We still thought you should know about the event.

For those of you who are able to attend, on your own or with friends or family – Wrap up warm and we look forward to joining you there!

I wonder how the RLHH and NHS feel about this?  Not only do H:MC21 have dodgy supporters but they are not a particularly resepctable organisation themselves. They have published scurrilous and inaccurate allegations against Professor Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh and count Jeremy Sherr, the homeopath who helped inspire the succesful campaign to get the World Health Organisation to condemn homeopathy, among their patrons.  I would have thought this would risk undermining the position of medical homeopaths.  The medical homeopaths, by virtue of being registered medical practitioners, operate within a framework that limits their conduct and claims with threat of severe sanction. This does give them a firmer foundation on which to argue that even if you don’t believe homeopathy works, and even if the evidence suggests it doesn’t despite the belief of practitioners, they should be able to ply their trade because belief based treatment can aid a patients state of mind while suffering from painful or incurable conditions and they are not undermining or ignoring conventional medication or procedures.

The League Friends of the RLHH did not respond to requests for comment.

A closer alliance between the medical and lay homeopaths risks disaster for the profession but looks like it has been happening for some time.  The Quackometer has previously reported that the Faculty of Homeopaths, representing the medical homeopaths, have supported some uses of homeopathy in the developing world and the BHA has proposed collaboration on research projects with the SoH.

It will be interesting to see if this relationship persists or even grows following the publication of the Evidence Check.  If it does then all homeopaths, even the once vaguely palatable medical homeopaths, will find themselves labelled as dangerous quacks.  This will make the fight for homeopathy’s survival even more difficult.  Something practitioners and supporters should seriously consider.

Dynevor, owners of the Dore Programme, a treatment for dyslexia lacking an evidence base, whose original owners, DDAT (UK), collapsed into administration before resurrectng via Dynevor Ltd , have converted from a Limited into a Community Interest Company (CIC), as announced on their website.

Community Interest Companies are defined by the CIC regulator as being

a new type of limited company designed specifically for those wishing to operate for the benefit of the community rather than for the benefit of the owners of the company. This means that a CIC cannot be formed or used solely for the personal gain of a particular person, or group of people.

CICs can be limited by shares, or by guarantee, and will have a statutory “Asset Lock” to prevent the assets and profits being distributed, except as permitted by legislation. This ensures the assets and profits are retained within the CIC for community purposes, or transferred to another asset-locked organisation, such as another CIC or charity.

While Dynevor and their predecessor DDAT (UK) are genuinely not motivated by profit alone so the move to become a CIC is uncontroversial regarding this, there are several concerns with Dynevor’s successful application to become a CIC.

1) The evidence base for the programme has been strongly criticised

2) The application to become a CIC contains statements known to be questionable by Dynevor and ruled against by the ASA

3) They have submitted no accounts

4) Being a CIC may lead parents, schools and local authorities to have more confidence in the programme than the evidence permits

1) The evidence base for the programme has been strongly criticised

An article published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health by Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University, covered by Holfordwatch, contains many firm criticisms of the programme:

The publication of two papers in peer-reviewed scientific journal (Dyslexia) has been presented as giving further credibility to the treatment. However, the research community in this area has been dismayed that work of such poor standard has been published.

The gaping hole in the rationale for the Dore Programme is a lack of evidence that training on motor-coordination can have any influence on higher-level skills mediated by the cerebellum. If training eye–hand co-ordination, motor skill and balance caused generalised cerebellar development, then one should find a low rate of dyslexia and ADHD in children who are good at skateboarding, gymnastics or juggling. Yet several of the celebrity endorsements of the Dore programme come from professional sports people.

1 The treatment offered by Dore Achievement Centres is being promoted as a “drug free” alternative to conventional treatment for ADHD, and as a ‘miracle cure’ for dyslexia. It is presented as having a neurological rationale and gains credibility by appearing to be medical treatment.
2 The publication of two papers in peer-reviewed scientific journal (Dyslexia) has been presented as giving further credibility to the treatment. However, the research community in this area has been dismayed that work of such poor standard has been published.
3 The research purporting to show efficacy of the treatment does not show sustained gains in literacy scores in treated vs. control children. Furthermore, the intervention has not been evaluated on the clinical groups for which it is recommended.

and concludes

family doctors and paediatricians need to be aware that the published evidence does not support the claims of a ‘Miracle Cure’: on the contrary, the data from comparisons of treated and control groups lead to considerable scepticism that the intervention improves anything other than those skills that are trained in the exercises.

Since the date of publication of this article Dynevor or Dore have not published any further peer reviewed research supporting the use of their treatment for any of the conditions for which it is claimed they work.  Indeed since then they no longer refer to the studies criticised above but present irrelevant data in support of their programme instead.

2) The application to become a CIC contains statements known to be questionable by Dynevor and ruled against by the ASA

The application to become a CIC states the following individuals will benefit from the programme:

Individuals from the age of seven that experience difficulties with learning; including poor literacy; numeracy, concentration; co-ordination and social skills which are often associated with Dyslexia; Dyspraxia; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); and Autism/Asperger’s syndrome.

and that the community will benefit because:

Neuropsychological research indicates a link between the efficiency of the cerebellum and learning difficulties.  if the cerebellum is not working as will as it should , people struggle with tasks that most find relatively simple or automatic. further research and our own evidence from real case studies indicate that tailored physical exercises can stimulation and improve the efficiency of the cerebellum. our programme is able to give a long-lasting intervention by tackling the root cause of the issue.

With reference to the Bishop paper above, Dynevor know that these claims are not consistent with the published literature.  Not only that the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) recently ruled on a challenge to an advertising statement by Dynevor that it could help with Dyslexia, ADHD, Dyspraxia or Asperger’s.

We noted that the two studies provided by Dynevor assessed the effect of the exercise-based DORE programme on children with reading difficulties and children and adults with ADHD respectively.

We noted that the first study, consisting of an initial study and follow-up study, concluded that there was a long-lasting performance improvement in the children. However, only a minority of those children had a formal diagnosis of dyslexia and non-diagnosed children were included. We were concerned that the improvements cited may have resulted from the non-diagnosed children. We noted that a control group was used in the initial study, with children receiving no treatment, but also that there were differences in the initial levels of skill between the two groups, which could have accounted for the improvement. We further noted that the follow-up study lacked a control group, as the original control group of children had also been given treatment in the intervening period between the two studies.

Given that neither the initial study nor the follow-up study was controlled for a placebo effect, we considered that it was not possible to determine whether any reported improvements resulted from the DORE programme itself, or were a consequence of other factors, such as the development of the children over time or the results of other support they may have been receiving at school and at home.

We noted that the second, unpublished study also showed an improvement, although the study concluded that the findings were preliminary and further work was needed. Again, this study was not controlled for a placebo effect and we therefore had the same concerns about this study as mentioned above.

As neither the first nor second study referred to Asperger’s syndrome and only two participants in the first study had dyspraxia, we considered that the evidence was inadequate to support claims to treat those conditions. With regards to dyslexia and ADHD, we did not consider that the studies were sufficiently robust to support the treatment claims for those conditions, and we therefore concluded that the claim was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 50.1 (Health and beauty products and therapies).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.

Although this ruling was published on the 16th December 2009 and Dyenvor’s application was dated 12th December 2009 the ASA were corresponding with Dore for some considerable time prior to the ruling so that it can be assumed they were aware of the ASA view on the limitations of their evidence.  Dynevor have knowingly submitted a statement, asserted as fact, to the CIC regulator that they knew to be questionable, and possibly false.  Also the ASA ruling prevents the claims made by Dynevor in their application the CIC regulator from being used in subsequent advertising material.

3) They have submitted no accounts

The previous iteration of the Dore programme, run by DDAT (UK), collapsed into insolvency due to a business plan that depended on the willingness of Wynford Dore, the companies founder, to cover the companies mounting debts.  Eventually Mr Dore stopped providing such support and the company went into administration.

The new version of the programme, run by Dynevor CIC, is based on a similar business model and has not yet filed its accounts, a legal requirement.  It has successfully sought a deferment for the due date of the accounts but that new date has now passed (31/12/09) with no sign that the accounts have been submitted.  There is a legitimate worry that the company may not be viable.  In fact the CIC Regulator Test specifically states that a companies financial situation, with respect to the Current Ratio or Acid Test Ratio (markers of solvency), should be considered.  ‘No accounts filed’ is written next to this section of Dynevor’s application.

4) Being a CIC may lead parents, schools and local authorities to have more confidence in the programme than the evidence permits

Dynevor state the benefits of being a CIC as:

The company believes that third parties are more likely to engage if the can be confident that the company is operating primarilly for the benefit of those with learning difficulties.  it is also hoped that the company will be able to set a price for the programme which is lower than it would otherwise be to maximise the personal gain of the company and its shareholders in addition the company believes that acting as a community interest company will be motivational for staff.

The company currently charges around £2000 for a course of treatement.  This price is sufficient to pay for an educational psychologist assessment, a lap top computer and appropriate software for a child.  None of these are offered as part of the Dore Programme.

Also Dore state that

the company will collaborateively engage parents, schools and local communities so that they are bettter informerd about learning difficulties and better equipped to seek assistance at the earliest opportunity.

This is worrying.  The economic situation in Britain is not good at the moment and local authorities are likely to find it difficult to support learning support programmes in the short to medium term future.  If what little funds they have are directed towards Dynevor, at the expense of established methods of support, children with disabilities face the prospect of no effective intervention.

Are Dynevor unfit to become a CIC?

It is worrying that the CIC Regulator, a ‘light touch regulator’, do not seem to investigate companies apply to become CICs beyond a very basic scrutiny.  Perhaps if they had they would be aware of Dorothy Bishops criticisms, the ASA ruling and the previous collapse of the business model.  Perhaps they would be aware of criticism of the programme in The Sun, The Mirror, The Guardian, and more.  Perhaps they would also have found highly critical parliamentary Early Day Motion from Paul Flynn, MP.

That this House is appalled at the gullible uncritical promotion by the media of Dore, a claimed miracle cure for dyslexia, in the absence of scientific proof of its value; notes that there were five resignations from the editorial board of the journal Dyslexia in protest at false claims published in that journal on the efficacy of Dore; welcomes Ofcom’s finding that Dore’s television advertisement was in breach of its rules on evidence; calls on the Jeremy Vine Show, Channel Five News, Radio Five Live, BBC London, ITV Central, ITV Yorkshire, the Daily Mail, the Daily Record, Scotland on Sunday, Tonight with Trevor McDonald and You and Yours to correct the false impressions they broadcast on an unproven treatment; and congratulates the bloggers and journalist Ben Goldacre for exposing this bad science and other exploitative snake oil salespeople.

The CIC Regulator also state that as part of a successful application a CICs purposes

could be regarded by a reasonable person as being in the community or wider public interest.

It is hard to see how an organisation that has been severely criticised in the academic literature for a lack of an evidence base and made claims on its application that the ASA state it can not make in advertising can be in the community or public interest.  As Dynevor have been unwilling to answer questions about their evidence base and success rates from Holfordwatch it suggests that they recognise there are problems with this aspect of their programme.  In addition to this the lack of submitted accounts is worrying given the previous financially problematic business model as well as the considerable negative coverage of the programme.

Would a reasonable person really regard Dynevor as fit to become a CIC?

The situation in Haiti following the 13th January earthquake is desperate.  Official estimates suggest that 230,000 people have died, around 300,000 injured and up to a million are left homeless, this in a country with approximately 9 million inhabitants.  Red Cross workers in Haiti are posting blogs describing the difficulties of working in Haiti, with particular emphasis on the serious issues regarding the provision of healthcare and effective sanitation in order to prevent disease outbreaks claiming more lives. What Haiti and aid workers need are financial and medical support.  They are getting this thanks to the generosity of individuals, organisations and governments.  But this generosity also has a dark side.  While the Red Cross make clear that an operation of the scale needed in Haiti relies on the established logistics and organisation of international aid agencies, this is why donations of cash are more useful than well meaning gifts of food, clothing or medicine, there are individuals and organisations with strong ideological convictions prepared to ignore the well reasoned arguments of others and favour their own prejudices.  This includes Scientologists, church groups accused of kidnapping children, and now homeopaths.

These include Harry van der Zee of the AHRF:

At College Ste. Pierre we treated hundreds of people from the tent city and instructed 40 priests and 10 deacons how to treat the people in the areas they represent. Diane is following up on this to realise the goal of treating all those connected to this church, so we hope that many thousands will receive the few drops that can get their internal clock into motion again, relieve them from the past and bring them back in the here and now.

Similar to treating epidemics in Africa I’ve used the simplest approach possible so others can easily, safely and effectively disperse the remedy. 555 stands for banging the bottle 5 times, giving 5 drops in the mouth that should be kept there for 5 seconds. As this is not a chronic conditions but trauma from an acute event giving one dose is usually enough.

By epidemics in Africa van der Zee means treating and claiming to cure AIDS.

The Homeopathy World Community who helpfully tell their members:

Dear Friends. To assist the HWC Group to reach their destination we are providing this donation button to PayPal. Please use the words “HWC Travel & Supply Support.” Due to the numerous people trying to use Haiti as a scam, do not use the word “Haiti” in your payment.

and Homeopaths Without Borders – North America:

In the initial phase of its mission in Haiti, Homeopaths Without Borders-North America (HWB-NA) overcame many obstacles to send a team to Haiti. With the airport closed in Port au Prince, six volunteers, led by Sushila Lalsingh, executive director of HWB-NA, flew to the Dominican Republic and made the arduous travel overland to lend their healing skills to the stricken people of that city. They returned to the U.S. on February 10 after having treated more than 2000 people.

While these groups are likely to have limited impact in Haiti and are a minor distraction to the efforts of legitimate relief efforts it is worth reminding ourselves that this is further proof that homeopaths have no concept of the limit of their abilities.  Professional societies are prepared to countenance theories that homeopathy can treat and cure AIDS, cure autism, and provide protection against malaria, yellow fever and more via homeoprophylaxis, their attempts to provide relief to Haiti is just another example of this critical failure.  While the debate over the evidence base for homeopathy has been at the forefront of criticism of homeopathy of late, in part thanks to the House of Commons Science and Technology Evidence Check on Homeopathy, it is perhaps time to agree to disagree with homeopaths regarding their evidence base but demand that they rein in the excesses of the profession.  We need to see the professional societies confront their members and tell them in no uncertain terms that homeopathy is not an alternative to mainstream medical practice and appropriate standards of ethics and behaviour must be upheld.  We also need to see the medical homeopaths, as exemplified by the Faculty of Homeopathy, put pressure on lay homeopaths to quash the behaviours above.  A failure to do this will be disastrous for homeopathy and those it treats.

You can donate to the Red Cross here.

Yesterday I blogged on a hate campaign by homeopaths against the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris in which they called for complaints to MPs about his position in the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee because of his opinions of homeopathy, a subject which the Committee has investigated.  In that blogpost I provided examples of previous campaigns of homeopaths and their supporters against critics of homeopathy including that of Lionel Milgrom, who wrote to David Colquhoun’s employers with scurrilous and inaccurate allegations.  Now it seems Milgrom is doing the same to Evan Harris.

In a letter posted to a pro-homeopathy blog then removed (cached version saved here), he complains to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, and claims that Dr Harris is in breach of GMC guidelines and should be sanctioned.  The full text of the letter is below:

Subject: Science and Technology Second Evidence Check on Homeopathy
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 14:30:14 +0000

Dear Mr Clegg,

I have been a supporter of the Liberal Democrats since 1997 by voting for the party in all major elections since then. I am also a scientist and a homeopath. As such I have to tell you that I am so concerned by the activities of Dr Evan Harris MP, the LibDem spokesperson on science that I doubt whether I will be casting my vote for the party come this May. Here are my reasons, which I know are shared by many other homeopaths, practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine, and their supporters.

As you know, Dr Harris was instrumental in bringing about and being a principal investigator in the Science and Technology Committee’s Second Evidence Check on homeopathy. I have provided written evidence to the Committee which is on its website (see HO 4 in Written Submissions on the S&TC website below)

One would imagine that a major function of such a committee would be the careful and polite gathering of evidence from the expert witnesses asked to come before it, and the sober reflection on and considered weighing of that evidence to arrive at a set of balanced recommendations. Dr Harris’s scandalous antics as a principal investigator at the hearings suggest that, in his case, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Science & Technology Committee

Evidence Check on Homeopathy

WATCH HERE:

Wednesday 25th November 2009

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5221

Monday 30th November 2009

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5257

Written Submissions:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/memo/homeopathy/contents.htm

Dr Harris treated the hearings as a ribald piece of cheap theatre for the sole expression of his own biased views, effectively diverting the Science and Technology Committee from its original purpose (the examination of the Government’s reasons for maintaining homeopathy on the NHS). The enclosed transcript of a recent impromptu speech made by Dr Harris to a publicity stunt gathering of so-called ’sceptics’ in Red Lion Square (for their ridiculous mass ‘overdose’ of homeopathic remedies), exemplifies this perfectly.

He entertained the crowd by quoting from the 25th November session of the S&TC hearings and his questioning of Dr Peter Fisher of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital (an institution which you supported by signing EDM 1240 in 2007). This demonstrates his total lack of impartiality, sobriety, and respect not only for Dr Fisher as a witness and a colleague, but by implication, he has also impugned the integrity of the approximately 400 other qualified medical practitioners in the UK who practice homeopathy. Dr Harris therefore is clearly in breach of Articles 46 and 47 of the GMC’s Guidelines for Good Medical Practice, and deserves censure by the GMC.

Article 46. You must treat your colleagues fairly and with respect. You must not bully or harass them, or unfairly discriminate against them by allowing your personal views to affect adversely your professional relationship with them. You should challenge colleagues if their behaviour does not comply with this guidance.
Article 47. You must not make malicious and unfounded criticisms of colleagues that may undermine patients’ trust in the care or treatment they receive, or in the judgement of those treating them.

In addition, Dr Harris’s ignorance of the growing clinical and scientific evidence in support of homeopathy, coupled with his enormous bias makes one wonder why a) he was ever allowed to serve on such a committee, and b) why he is the LibDem spokesperson on science. Given the viciousness of Dr Harris’s continued attacks on homeopathy, the apparent silence of you and your colleagues in the face of them, and his continuance as LibDem spokesperson on science, one can only assume he has the tacit support of your party.

We hear much these days about ‘freedom of speech’ and Dr Harris might be considered free to do and say what he likes – as am I – as long is it does not break the law or breach the peace. Indeed, many including Dr Harris will no doubt interpret my writing to you as an attempt to stifle free speech. But in serving as LibDem spokesperson on science and as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, one would imagine, perhaps naively, that personal opinions are sacrificed in order to maintain the highest standards of objectivity, probity, and impartiality. From his current actions and statements which are now a matter of public record, Dr Harris has behaved unethically and is clearly failing in his public duty. At the very least, he ought to be censured and this matter referred to the GMC.

If Dr Harris wishes to continue airing his biased views, then surely honour and common decency demand he resign or be expelled from the Committee (while apologising to Dr Fisher for publicly ridiculing him on the morning of 30th January in Red Lion Square, and his outrageously rude and biased questioning of him during the Committee’s hearings),’ and be removed from his position as LibDem spokesperson on science?

Unfortunately, as the continuing scandal over MPs’ expenses makes clear, we no longer live in such an ‘ideal’ world. However I can still register a protest against Dr Harris. Around 10% of the UK population have taken a homeopathic remedy in the last 12 months (that is about 6 million people making use of homeopathy, which has been part of the NHS since its inception in 1948), and they cherish this freedom of therapeutic choice within the NHS. Consequently, not only will I exercise my right not to vote for my constituency LibDem candidate (the otherwise excellent Ed Fordham) during the next General Election, but in the coming months will use my not inconsiderable influence within the homeopathic community to advise my many homeopathic colleagues and their networks of alternative medicine practitioners and patients to do the same.

Yours Sincerely

Dr Lionel R Milgrom BSc, MSc, PhD, CChem, FRSC, LCH, MARH, MRHom.

This is how homeopaths behave.  Rather than honestly debating the limits of the evidence they seek to undermine their critics by smear, innuendo and sneaky letters.  I hope that Nick Clegg will not listen to such poisonous attempts to suppress the views of one of parliaments most able MPs.

(I will expand on this post tomorrow)

Homeopathy has found it itself in difficulties of late, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee held an evidence check on homeopathy that has provoked strong reactions.  Also, on Saturday 30th January hundreds of skpetics took part in the 10:23 homeopathic overdose event designed to show that there is, quite literally, nothing in homeopathy.  The London event was filmed by several homeopaths including Lousie Mclean, who is an agent for a quack cancer centre run by disgraced doctors, sex pests and a gun toting, ex-rock star, porn producer and Helen Kimball-Brooke, who may be in breach of the cancer act.  These fine ambassadors for homeopathy have posted their account of the event on the homeopathyheals campaign site which they run.

Evan Harris had managed to alert a number of the Press to attend to make sure there would be good coverage of the Event and was seen to be energetically giving his point of view.  At the last minute a couple of other homeopaths turned up and Lyndsey Booth was filmed speaking to the press, whilst Helen and I spoke to Hadley Freeman from the Guardian (normally a fashion journalist!) and we did our best to put our side.

We were so overwhelmed by the opposition that in the end we did not unfurl our banner, there being only Helen and I to hold it up but Helen brought her camcorder and managed to film a lot of it, including Evan Harris’s address to the crowd.

This was a depressing scene to witness, attended by people involved with Sense about Science, an organisation which is funded by vested interests.  One wonders why there is such a media frenzy to try to destroy something that apparently doesn’t work and is apparently harmless and it seems to be driven by those working for Pharma behind the scenes, most likely coming from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which is in charge of Science in the UK run by Peter Mandelson and Lord Drayson.

The big pharma conspiracy theory is not atypical of homeopaths. Another feature of homeopaths and their supporters is their tendency to launch hate campaigns with the aim of getting people sacked or silenced.  There are many examples including:

• Lionel Milgrom, the homeopathic expert on quantum mechanics, launched a letter writing campaign against David Colquhoun, telling his employers that he was dishonest and in thrall to big pharma.
• The Society of Homeopaths using legal threats to silence The Quackometer.
• The notorious supporter of homeopathy, His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Great Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Order of Australia, Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Honorary Member of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, Chief Grand Commander of the Order of Logohu, Member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Canadian Forces Decoration, Aide-de-Camp to Her Majesty, trying to get Edzard Ernst sacked for criticising a report commissioned by him.

Now the homeopaths have a new target, Dr Evan Harris MP, who sits on the Science and Technology Committee.  A video, filmed by Kelen Kimball-Brooke, of the 10:23 event has been placed on youtube.  This video claims that Dr Harris is in breach of GMC regulations and urges viewers to write to their MPs demanding that Dr Harris be removed from the Science and Technology Committee because he is biased against homeopathy. Pro homeopathy blogs are already linking to this video and repeating its demands.

It is a shame that homeopaths are unwilling to address the concerns of their critics, such as the lack of an evidence base and failures of ethics, preferring instead to seek refuge in conspiracy theories and smear campaigns.  These are not nice, sympathetic, if misguided, individuals as people often perceive complementary therapists.  These are vicious and hate filled conspiracy theorists.  This is the true face of homeopathy.