I'm convert to homeopathy, says minister

[Mojo]

Peter Hain, Secretary of State for Wales, says he has become a "true convert" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1590879,00.html) to homeopathy. Various creams were prescribed and a steroidal spray. But they didn't work, so instead we turned to the complementary medicine. And with the help of homeopathy and tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, both ailments went away. This was obviously tightly controlled to eliminate any cause apart from the homeopathy. :rolleyes:

Translation: "And with the help of Mummy kissing it better and tight restrictions on the sort of food our son could eat, both ailments went away."

And then there's post hoc... of course.

But then rational thought doesn't seem to be valued much in New Labour.

[MRC_Hans]

Absolutely the standard homeopathic anecdote:

Patient presents with .......

Case is taken and patient is given counsel on diet, exercise, overmedication, whatever.

Plus patient is given shaken water on sugar tablets.

Patient gets better.

A new victory for shaken water on sugar tablets is rcorded :rolleyes:.

Hans

[Lothian]

Coming from new labour I am very surprised that the statement was not

“And with the help of homeopathy, tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, and the miraculous intervention from God both ailments went away”

[Zep]

Worth a stinging letter of rebuke in one of the London dailies?

[Asolepius]

What particularly caught my attention was HRH's tongue in cheek self-deprecation by using the word `quacks'. Perhaps we sceptics should use more direct language in future - for example `homeopathy is fraud'. Those 120 GPs should think carefully about their GMC registrations in view of the recent Lancet paper (Shang et al). Sorry HRH, but this just is not funny.

[edthedoc]

Mojo, most excellent points. Peter Hain is considered to be a bit of a twat over here so his opinion doesn't carry much weight.

[CurtC]

Does "twat" mean the same thing in the UK that it means over here?

A friend's mother got cancer a few years ago - I think it was stomach cancer - and took the doctor's advice, plus went in for something called the Hallelujah Diet, which some Malkmus guy claims cures cancer. It involves eating only raw vegetables and drinking lots of this powdered supplement called Barley Green. The scientific logic is that Adam and Eve ate raw vegetables, so it must be the ideal diet.

So his mom got both traditional cancer treatment and the Hallelujah Diet, and her cancer was cured, or whatever happens to cancer when there's a successful outcome. But guess which of those two treatments she (and her son) credits with healing her? Would you think

a) the thousands and thousands of doctors who have spent their lives, observing, measuring, sharing data, and thinking up new ideas, or,

b) some kook who gets his science from a book thousands of years old?

If you guessed "b", you're a winner!

[Mojo]

Peter Hain is considered to be a bit of a twat over here so his opinion doesn't carry much weight.The trouble is that this sort of thing gets into the papers, and will eventually return as "evidence" used in support of homeopathy. There's more detail of his speech here (http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Health&F=1&id=8144), although oddly it doesn't include the bit about his son's "cure."

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I wrote to Hain a year ago after his last round of positive comments on alt med. I was specifically complaining about the waste of tax money on university courses in homeopathy. All I got back from his office was an acknowledgement card.

The revelation that he is an alt. med. pod-person explains a lot about the government's private thoughts on this subject. Depressing.

[Bronze Dog]

Does "twat" mean the same thing in the UK that it means over here?

A friend's mother got cancer a few years ago - I think it was stomach cancer - and took the doctor's advice, plus went in for something called the Hallelujah Diet, which some Malkmus guy claims cures cancer. It involves eating only raw vegetables and drinking lots of this powdered supplement called Barley Green. The scientific logic is that Adam and Eve ate raw vegetables, so it must be the ideal diet.

So his mom got both traditional cancer treatment and the Hallelujah Diet, and her cancer was cured, or whatever happens to cancer when there's a successful outcome. But guess which of those two treatments she (and her son) credits with healing her? Would you think

a) the thousands and thousands of doctors who have spent their lives, observing, measuring, sharing data, and thinking up new ideas, or,

b) some kook who gets his science from a book thousands of years old?

If you guessed "b", you're a winner!
I hit the winning home run, thanks to my lucky underwear. My hours of training, natural talent, and dogged persistence have nothing to do with it.

[Darat]

Coming from new labour I am very surprised that the statement was not

“And with the help of homeopathy, tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, and the miraculous intervention from God both ailments went away”

You are the cynical one aren't you? Anyway you got it worng:

"And with the help of private sector homeopathy, tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, and the miraculous intervention from God both ailments went away"

:D

[Lothian]

You are the cynical one aren't you? Anyway you got it worng:

"And with the help of private sector homeopathy, tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, and the miraculous intervention from God both ailments went away"

:DHow I really wish your amendment was true. Unfortunately I have this nagging fear that we paid for it. The NHS funds this rubbish as well.

[Darat]

Hadn't thought of that - I wonder if you are right? Anyone know?

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

This will be on its way to Hain tomorrow;

Rt Hon Peter Hain MP
House of Commons,
London,
SW1A 0AA
13th October 2005



Dear Mr Hain


Your comments reported today in The Guardian shed a rather depressing light on the intellectual weakness currently informing government policy on alternative medicine.

Allowing that you have brought this topic into the public realm and unless you wish to deny it, I shall assume that the following is an accurate quotation of your words;

“So instead we turned to the complementary medicine. And with the help of homeopathy and tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, both ailments went away.”

Strictly speaking that was a display of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy , which plagues most reports of alt. med. “successes”, but worse, a willingness to credit to homeopathy instead of the dietary advice and other factors is simply irrational. Any reasonable medical professional would regard dietary advice as sensible but to give credit to a homeopathic remedy given at the same time shows credulousness.

It has long been suspected that influential voices within the government are speaking with the false tongue of the alternative medicine community and we should not be surprised that this has now been confirmed.

It is hard to resist the forces of unreason in medicine when this magical superstitious nonsense is being embraced at the highest levels of politics, but there are good reasons why the British Veterinary Association has recently described homeopathy as giving "offence to animal welfare". Homeopathy is one of the most idiotic and discredited alternative therapies and one would have hoped that “It worked for me” would not have become the basis of government thinking.



Yours sincerely




BSM MA VetMB PhD MRCVS

[Mojo]

You are the cynical one aren't you? Anyway you got it worng:

"And with the help of private sector homeopathy, tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, and the miraculous intervention from God both ailments went away" Surely that should read: "...the miraculous intervention from Tony..."

[brodski]

This will be on its way to Hain tomorrow;

Rt Hon Peter Hain MP
House of Commons,
London,
SW1A 0AA
13th October 2005



Dear Mr Hain


Your comments reported today in The Guardian shed a rather depressing light on the intellectual weakness currently informing government policy on alternative medicine.

Allowing that you have brought this topic into the public realm and unless you wish to deny it, I shall assume that the following is an accurate quotation of your words;

“So instead we turned to the complementary medicine. And with the help of homeopathy and tight restrictions on the sort of food that our son could eat, both ailments went away.”

Strictly speaking that was a display of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy , which plagues most reports of alt. med. “successes”, but worse, a willingness to credit to homeopathy instead of the dietary advice and other factors is simply irrational. Any reasonable medical professional would regard dietary advice as sensible but to give credit to a homeopathic remedy given at the same time shows credulousness.

It has long been suspected that influential voices within the government are speaking with the false tongue of the alternative medicine community and we should not be surprised that this has now been confirmed.

It is hard to resist the forces of unreason in medicine when this magical superstitious nonsense is being embraced at the highest levels of politics, but there are good reasons why the British Veterinary Association has recently described homeopathy as giving "offence to animal welfare". Homeopathy is one of the most idiotic and discredited alternative therapies and one would have hoped that “It worked for me” would not have become the basis of government thinking.



Yours sincerely




BSM MA VetMB PhD MRCVS
great letter BSM, howeaver if youw ant a responce, don't write to the Minster directly, repharse your letter lisghtly, send it to your MP and ask him to forward it to PH, that way you are guranteed a responce.The public writing to ministers get teh brush off. Letters from MPs are taken much more seriously. Almsot all mps are hapy to pass on corrispondance to ministers.

[Lothian]

Also ask a question ! They don’t like ignoring (reasonable) questions. You are not asking for a response and therefore you wont get one.

I would ask if he is aware of any (proper) evidence that homeopathy works and whether he agrees that there should be no NHS funding for homeopathy until it is proved effective, or similar.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Also ask a question ! They don’t like ignoring (reasonable) questions. You are not asking for a response and therefore you wont get one.

I would ask if he is aware of any (proper) evidence that homeopathy works and whether he agrees that there should be no NHS funding for homeopathy until it is proved effective, or similar.

Good idea.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

Also ask a question ! They don’t like ignoring (reasonable) questions. You are not asking for a response and therefore you wont get one.

I would ask if he is aware of any (proper) evidence that homeopathy works and whether he agrees that there should be no NHS funding for homeopathy until it is proved effective, or similar.

"Please give some assurance that you might revise your views based on a more sober assessment of their basis and offer some guarantee that you will not permit government policy to be influenced by your erroneous judgement. "

[Ducky]

I've said it before, and I will say it again:

Let the homeopathic twats develop cancer. Nothing will have them converted to rationality faster, and if they don't then so be it, the herd thins.

[Bronze Dog]

I've said it before, and I will say it again:

Let the homeopathic twats develop cancer. Nothing will have them converted to rationality faster, and if they don't then so be it, the herd thins.
My inner eugenicist agrees with you. Unfortunately, the (subtle) violence these sorts of people inflict on children won't let me ignore them until they go away.

Oh. Apparent flaw: Don't people usually get cancer after they've reproduced and contaminated the gene pool?

[Acleron]

BSM, did you ever get a reply from Hain?

[MarkCorrigan]

Oh god, HAIN?

I liked Hain. I still kinda like some of his politics of course, but really? Alt-Med? My MP is into that as well, but HE is just a moron.

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

BSM, did you ever get a reply from Hain?

No, just a postcard from his office acknowledging receipt of my letter.

I'm afraid the term permatanned idiot now comes unaccountably to my mind whenever he appears on the box, whereas my opinion had been neutral to positive previously.

[Acleron]

Perhaps, now his powers have been infinitely diluted, he can see the problem. :D

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Perhaps, now his powers have been infinitely diluted, he can see the problem. :D

Nah. All he needs is a good shaking! :D

[Scazon]

It's not the only woo embraced by the British Government: they want to "reduce fraudulent benefit claims" using magic on claimants' phonecalls: http://news.google.co.uk/news/url?sa=t&ct=/0-0&fp=482254db6870f1bd&ei=aKwiSMOyNpHqwQHX0uHkAQ&url=http%3A//www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html%3Fin_article_id%3D564500%26in_page_id%3D 1770&cid=0&usg=AFrqEzeYrVlFQ04oNFTFYZEErtZdZRTCLQ.

The technology is so unproven that it was even rejected by a spokesman for the Polygraph Association, who pointed out that micro- tremors in the voice could be caused by many things beside attempts to hide lies, and that tests had shown the results no better than chance.

It isn't that New Labour is anti- science. It's just that the lawyers, economists, money grubbers and control freaks of the party have no idea what the word means.

[Soapy Sam]

It isn't that New Labour is anti- science. It's just that the lawyers, economists, money grubbers and control freaks of the party have no idea what the word means.

I fear it goes deeper. Nobody in the party understands what "truth" means.
They honestly believe that a fact may be modulated by spin without losing its essential veracity. Post-modern relativist bunk.

Robert Burns once wrote "Facts are Chiels that winna ding." You need no grasp of old Scots to understand what that means, but apparently it is a view scorned as naive, in Whitehall.

[Gambrinus]

On a, sort of, related note, I received the following today from the RPSGB (Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) when I asked them what their justification for homeopathy being allowed to be advertised in pharmacies was.

Edit: Bugger, no links yet.

[Darat]

Post the link with spaces in it and I'll edit your post so it displays OK.

[Gambrinus]

http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/scifactsheethomoeo.pdf

[Gambrinus]

Just stick a www in at the start, and take the gaps out. It should work. I hope.

[Deetee]

No luck I'm afraid - it takes me to the society page but no document.
Ah - here it is (http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/scifactsheethomoeo.pdf#xml=http://www.rpsgb.org/search/pdfhi.php?all=1&filepath=../pdfs/scifactsheethomoeo.pdf&search=homoeopathy).

ETA - have had a quick look.
Seems full of opinion, not evidence. I guess a pharmacist has to pay lip service to people who come in asking about their homeopathy remedies, and give a helpful response.
The fact sheet is old, referring only to discredited, old studies (Linde) and not to more recent evidence demonstrating homeopathy performs no better than placebo (Shang).
There are also frank lies - here is one section:

Advice to the patient on administration

Keep the medicine in its original container

Do not handle the medicine. Shake tablets, powders, pillules or granules into cap of
container and transfer directly to the mouth


Take medicines half an hour before or after food, sucking or chewing solid
preparations before swallowing


If a Mother tincture is to be taken orally, dilute it in a mouthful of water, gargle and
swallow


Avoid ingesting pungent or aromatic flavouring such as highly flavoured foods and
mint-flavoured sweets


Avoid inhaling aromatic products containing menthol, eucalyptus or camphor and
smoking tobacco products. Coffee and tea may also reduce the effectiveness


Stop taking the remedy when the condition improves

Is there any evidence behind this "advice"? - No.
Why are they so shy about being honest?

ETA again - I found this fact sheet on Homoepathy (http://www.rpsgb.org/pdfs/mussheet17.pdf) from the society's museum section.