Category Archives: Biochemistry

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.