Homoeopathy explained
Perhaps I was mistaken. Everything I had read and heard of homoeopathy led me to believe it was just a pile of rotten excrement passing itself off as a “science”. I’ve even blogged about it in disparaging tones (here, here, here and here).
But I’ve had the scales pulled from my eyes. The truth of the matter has finally been revealed. Dr Charlene Werner has skillfully pulled all the strands of modern physics together, the bits that us mere mortals cannot hope to fully understand (like General Relativity and String Theory) and shown how this advanced physics underpins the great science of homoeopathy. It’s also fascinating to hear that there’s so little mass in the universe that one can, for all practical homoeopathic purposes, simply ignore the M in E = MC2. One lives and learns.
What’s more, did you know that 70% of how you physically function is through “the vision system”? It must be true. Dr Werner has a whole website dedicated to this.
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Marietta Theunissen exploits the vulnerable
The last time I heard of clairvoyant Marietta Theunissen she was assisting the infamous Danie Krügel in the predictably futile hunt for the van Rooyen victims. In the Carte Blanche programme that brought them all together, she stated that she had communicated with the girls in the spirit world. Of course she had.
Marietta Theunissen
Their very public failure of course had no effect on their renown. She popped up on Radio 702 this morning promoting her latest psychic show. She then took a number of calls from listeners. I usually don’t listen to such garbage but I was interested to follow her technique. She pretty much models herself on Sylvia Brown, so beloved by Larry King and other US television talkshow hosts.
It’s classic cold reading – in a flood of words. A caller would ask a question, such as: “I need advice on whether I should move from Cape Town to Johannesburg”. Now it doesn’t take a seasoned pro to come up with a string of intelligent guesses of what her concerns might be. Why would she want to live in Johannesburg? Why would she want to stay in Cape Town? So she delivers a couple of “readings” that are open to confirmation and in no time at all can fairly confidently dish out advice.
The station was flooded with callers (all women, as it turns out), most of whom were clearly in pain and extremely vulnerable. And this is where the problem arises; her act is no longer just amusing entertainment: it moves into the dangerous area of giving uninformed, completely incorrect and possibly dangerous advice to gullible people.
One caller was concerned about the death of a relative. Theunissen immediately went down the suicide track – which is logical – and assured the caller that it wasn’t suicide. She weaselled out the caller’s fear that dead person had been poisoned – even though an autopsy had shown he had had a heart attack. No, declared Theunissen – she “saw” chemicals in the body and he probably had been poisoned.
How can this possibly help this distressed person? She is going to take this pronouncement from a scam artist – that can’t possibly know anything at all about the case – and carry it around with her for the rest of her life. And who knows how she will use it.
She strongly advised another caller to stop taking anti-depressants because they block the ability for spiritual feeling. She is giving serious medical advice to an anonymous voice on the other end of a phone line! This is a very malicious scheme.
But she not only exploits the vulnerable with the baseless nonsense she sprouts: she’s not shy in depleting their bank accounts either. Here are her rates taken from her website:
Half an hour Telephonic Consultations R 1300
Psychic Marathon (Face to Face consultations) R 1000… Special days only!! [Fully booked for 2009]
Want your own Private Group Session for your Family and Friends….? Marietta and Julia will come to your house…
R 750pp includes a Reading for each person and a BIORES treatment! (min 7 people)
Marietta also does special House Cleansing for people who have unwelcome energies…and want to attract luck, happiness and harmony!
R 1000 per house! [Only available in 2010]
15 Minute Face to face appointments R 750 pp for 15 minute sessions [fully booked for 2009]
Cold reading is not a particularly difficult skill to acquire. Just read Michael Shermer’s account of his highly successful novice cold readings. Just learn the basic technique and you’re good to go.
The cold reader’s bible is Ian Rowland’s The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading.
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Jacob’s ladder of lies
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, South African President Jacob Zuma attempted to wash away any culpability for his role in his government’s deliberate extermination of at least 300,000 (mainly ANC-supporting) AIDS sufferers. He attacked ex-president Thabo Mbeki maintaining that his insane idea that there is no link between HIV and AIDS was his own private view and not government policy.
Somehow it was Mbeki’s private affair that let his criminal, alcoholic health minister unleash her bizarre cure of onions, beetroot and garlic (with a side helping of African potatoes) for AIDS on the public health system. It was rigorously enforced; doctors were fired trying to treat their patients with anti-retroviral drugs drugs. Activists had to go to the Constitutional Court to force these murderers to allow the distribution of ARVs. They didn’t take Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang to court in their private capacities: they sued the government – which vigorously defended its position.
So Zuma lied that it wasn’t government policy. But worse than that, Zuma vigorously defended this disgusting policy at the time. In an address to parliament in 2000, calling on members to acquaint themselves with the AIDS-denialist literature. Then he dragged out the old straw man canard, They laughed at Galileo:
In Europe in the Seventeenth Century, the main stream scientific view was that the sun moved around the earth. An Italian scientist Galilei Galileo had a different view and believed that the earth moved around the sun. However his views were considered to be so threatening to the scientific establishment that he was forced to publicly recant. As we all know today, he was right and they were wrong.In the history of science and in particular the history of medical science, there are other examples where solutions were found to difficult challenges as a result of robust scientific debate between conventional and alternative views.
This House, which is based on the fundamental principle of the right to differ and to express a different opinion, ought not to balk at the idea that the President is asking scientists to behave as scientists.
As Carl Sagan said: “They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
In 2000 Padraig O’Malley interviewed then ANC Secretary General and current deputy-President, Kgalema Motlanthe on his views on HIV/AIDS (part 1, part 2). He toed the line that HIV does not cause AIDS, as simply a natural breakdown of the immunity system. As such the “opportunistic” diseases should be treated in their own right. He called AIDS a symbol – perhaps he hadn’t understood Mbeki’s assertion that AIDS was just a syndrome - not a disease. He then went on to blame the drug companies for fabricating the whole thing to make huge profits. And of course he had a swing at whites:
No, they are gullible. You see half of them don’t read but they regard themselves as well informed because they’re white. The reason why when you ask – you ask any of the experts whether they have seen evidence, any piece of document that says scientist so-and-so in such a country has isolated this HIV virus and photographed it and studied it’s modus vivendi under controlled conditions, they will swear at you.They will tell you that question was answered twenty years ago, they will tell you you are giving audience to dissidents. They will not tell you because it’s not there. That’s why they become vicious because it is simply not there. They take it on authority and then it gets passed on like that but there’s no authority, it’s a lie repeated by those who are supposed to know better. The truth of the matter is that if they were to admit that indeed no such thing has happened, I mean it would cause serious reverberations across the scientific world.
Zuma can lie all he wants but we know the truth: the ANC hates its own people and was willing to let them die in their hundreds of thousands rather than confront the source of this disease and the source of the life-saving drugs. As George Annandale writes on this subject:
Perhaps the president can explain how it is possible to recall and redeploy President Mbeki for creating a nuisance and sowing division in the party, yet, when he was the driving force in the thinly veiled extermination of hundreds of thousands of HIV/Aids sufferers, this moral alliance and its moral upstanding leaders, could not stop him.
Yes Jacob, they laughed at Galileo. And we would laugh at you too if the stench of death didn’t hang around you like a vulture.
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WHO slaps homoeopathy
South Africa has emerged out of a particularly shameful period of AIDS denialism. This was led by denialist-in-chief, ex-president Thabo Mbeki and his demented sycophant, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, minister of health (and kleptomaniac alcoholic). This evil duo caused at least 300,000 deaths through the implementation of their criminal pseudo-science.
The anti-science atmosphere created by these monsters opened the door to a panoply of quacks and pedlars of death. The most famous of these was Matthias Rath. This vitamin salesman persuaded Manto to promote his brand of quackery while he attacked ARVs. Read Ben Goldacre’s account of Rath, even if it’s just to see how dangerous pseudo-science is.
This fertile ground was eyed by those water salesmen, homoeopaths. The charge to exploit Africa’s extremely vulnerable AIDS sufferers was led by one Jeremy Sherr. He is apparently well-known among homoeopaths in Britain. As Orac so amusingly notes, “Of course, to me being ‘famous’ in homeopathy circles is much the same as being famous in the con artist circles…”. He claimed to have set up a research programme in South Africa (debunked by South African Skeptics) with homoeopathic “medicine” alone as one of the arms of the trial – knowing full well that using a placebo in an AIDS trial is highly unethical.
As the homoeopaths moved in – such as the Maun Homeopathy Project in Botswana – an alarmed group of early career medics and researchers wrote an open letter to the the World Health Organisation calling for the body to issue a clear international communication about the inappropriate use of homoeopathy for five serious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. As Juliet Stevens, Medical Student, University of Oxford (on placement at Somerset State Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa) said in the letter:
“Despite awareness in Britain of the medical burden in South Africa, little can prepare you for seeing this first hand. On the Paediatric wards infants are diagnosed with stage 3 HIV/AIDS on a daily basis, and TB meningitis is rife. The minimal cost of state healthcare is prohibitive for some, and denial regarding HIV diagnoses is still common, making the population here a vulnerable target for unproven therapies.”
Now the tide is turning. To its credit the new Zuma administration in South Africa has reversed Mbeki’s disastrous policies and ARVs are being vigorously distributed. And the WHO has positively responded to the open letter:
The WHO has responded to the open letter and said that it DOES NOT recommend the use of homeopathy for treating HIV, TB, malaria, influenza and infant diarrhoea. The Director General’s office has confirmed that the responses from WHO departments (below) “clearly express the WHO’s position”. Today the Voice of Young Science network, has written to the health ministers of all countries to publicise the WHO’s position, asking them to combat the promotion of homeopathy for these dangerous diseases.
The message should come out loudly and strongly from Africa: Homoeopaths, take your worthless bottles of water and sugar pills – along with your groundless promises to the desperate and poor – and GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!
Organic food “not healthier”
A recently published study claims that so-called organic food is no healthier than conventionally produced (inorganic?) food.
“A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally-produced crops and livestock, said Dr Alan Dangour, principal author of the study.“But these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance.”
And he added: “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”
Here’s another case where conventional wisdom sees science intervene in traditional knowledge and pronounces it bad. Or evil. Or harmful. But ask for the evidence and the answer is usually an appeal to the natural, as if agriculture is a “natural” activity. Agriculture by its very nature reduces biodiversity. The great fertile plains and richly wooded hills of the Middle East weren’t destroyed by modern scientific agriculture.
Of course harm can be caused by inappropriate use of under-tested chemicals. But that’s true of any human activity and that’s why our societies and scientists should and do insist on evidence from properly conducted tests before unleashing these chemicals in the production of our food. The fact is that there is no evidence to support the assertion that organic food is superior to conventionally produced food.
But I think Penn & Teller do a much better job of rubbishing organic farming than I ever could.
Be sure to watch the other two parts (here and here).
Put Woo Merchants in a sack…
…and hit them all with sticks!
Dara Ó Briain is a very funny man. And he brooks no nonsense from the enemies of reason: homoeopaths, psychics, astrologers, priests, chiropractors and nutritionists. And of course all those who say, “there’s more to life than evidence”.
Chiropractors: Is this what you wanted?
Not wanting to be left out, here is the article that got Simon Singh into so much trouble with the British Chiropractic Association. By posting this, ReasonCheck joins the many blogs and online magazines worldwide who have reposted it over the last few days. As Ben Goldacre says, “We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine”.
Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.
You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.
I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.
Sangomas at university
When I first read that my alma mater, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) has launched a degree for sangomas (in so-called Indigenous Knowledge Systems), I muttered darkly about how a once great academic institution had been reduced to a politically correct joke. Not a very funny joke either. Wits was once the highest rated University for scientific research in Africa, and a top 100 world ranking. Those days are long gone as political pressure and chronic underfunding has resulted in reduced scientific research output and a weakened faculty. Now they want to teach utter mumbo-jumbo.
But then I thought there might actually be some method in their madness. But first the madness:
Sangomas, also known as traditional healers, are African shamans. They worship and are “called” by their ancestral spirits. They deal with a range of issues, from healing illnesses to counteracting witches. They practise strict rituals while doing their interventions, including going into wild trances during which the ancestral spirit is supposed to posses the healer. They throw bones to dish out advice, often pointing a finger at the evil person causing the harm. And they dish out muti, which are medications from animal or plant origin – not for the efficaciousness of the potion, but for its spiritual significance. For instance, very few local soccer players will take to the field without their dose of muti.
This is not science.
So what could the method be? Well the fact is that up to 80% of the indigenous population consult sangomas, either exclusively or before seeing a medical professional. This is a very strong belief system and one can’t just wish it away. So it makes sense that as the primary, trusted health consultants these quacks should be trained to recognise diseases such as AIDS and refer these patients to proper doctors. Why would they do that? After all HIV cures from sangomas are all the rage. Well I suppose that by bringing them into the formal medical community they would feel more collegial and refer patients to their “colleagues”. In other words: we know they’re crazy but so is most of the population that believe in them so let’s make the best of a bad situation and try and co-opt them to do something useful and try and save lives.
Maybe. But then Professor Gundidza Mazuru, of the Wits school of medicine’s pharmacy department says:
“I will be one of the professors who will be teaching them about manufacturing their products, clinical tests, packaging, and the regulations governing manufacturing and distribution before they could think of putting their products on the shelves.”
Products? Clinical tests? WTF?
Sangomas are not benign. They cause many life-threatening problems with their “treatments”, especially through their use of enemas and the psychological trauma they subject on their “patients”. And sometimes it gets truly evil. The rogue ones are involved with harvesting human body parts – usually genitalia, ritual murders, raping of virgins to “cure” AIDS, and baby rape. See F.A.C.T.net for the horrific details.
This sort of thing does not belong in a University.
Examining chiropractors’ claims: first blow to them
The kerfuffle surrounding the British Chiropractic Association’s libel action against science author Simon Singh has resulted in a group of bloggers closely examining the claims made by chiropractors in Britain. And they found them wanting. This has spooked at least one group of chiropractors and judging by the slew of correspondence between blogger Zeno and the General Chiropractic Council (GCC), the entire industry seems to be spooked. The GCC seems to be going as far as to attempt changing the rules of complaint.
Three weeks ago today I wrote the following letter to the BCA:
Dear SirThank you for drawing my attention to the defamatory nature of the word “bogus” through your action against Simon Singh. I had no idea the word meant anything other than “fake” – as in the opposite of genuine. On looking up the word in the dictionary I did indeed notice that there are many pejorative meanings attached to it, including “fraudulent” and “counterfeit”. I was surprised that using such a common word to criticise a set of scientific claims could land one in such trouble. I have always been careful of my facts but it appears it is much more important to be careful of one’s vocabulary.
The publicity around this case has piqued my interest in the claims made by chiropractors, a group of people I had always thought of as back manipulators. I notice that there have been a large number of complaints made against British chiropractors. This has spurred me into investigating if similar claims are made by chiropractors practising in South Africa. My preliminary investigation has shown that indeed the same claims – used as basis for the complaints in Britain – are being made here. I am now going through the various rules and regulations that would apply to South African chiropractors, including advertising standards and healthcare acts, to see if any are being breached.
Please advise me what word/s I could use to describe claims not backed by scientific evidence. Or claims for which scientific evidence is said to exist but not disclosed. Clearly, I will avoid using the word “bogus”.
My interest is not in impugning anyone’s dignity or reputation, nor to convey deliberate attempts to defraud. It is simply in examining if practitioners claims breach any standards or rules, and bringing such breaches to the attention of the authorities. I’m sure this approach would be enthusiastically endorsed by the BCA.
Once again, thank you for drawing my attention to this important matter.
Yours faithfully
Tim Beck.
Strangely, I have had no reply.
I have indeed been examining the claims made by chiropractors in South Africa. In broad summary, most of them make the same claims that are the subject of the complaints in Britain. I will follow up in a later post with more details of these claims.
However, all the chiropractors I investigated call themselves “doctor”. Now this is a “claim” that elicited complaints in Britain. I wanted to find out what the position in South Africa is so I trolled though Health Department sites, the Health Act (as amended, as amended…), various codes of conduct and anything else I could find. Oddly, in all of this I couldn’t find a single reference to who is and who isn’t entitled to call themselves “doctor”.
Chiropractors have to be registered by the Allied Health Professions Council of South Africa (who don’t have a functioning website) so I phoned them and was pleasantly surprised to get an informed answer. Which is this: Both registered chiropractors and homoeopaths are entitled to call themselves to call themselves “doctor”. To register they have to have completed a five or six year masters degree (available at Durban University of Technology and University of Johannesburg), followed by an “internship” year.
So that, at least, is above board. Their medical claims, however, surely can’t be legislated away. Or can they? Watch this space.
I did wonder, what could they possibly be studying for six years? Perhaps, for homoeopaths: 1001 Ways to Administer a Placebo. And for chiropractors: 600 Diseases You Have Never Heard Of Which Are Cured Through Clicking The Back.
Homoeopathy: what’s the harm?
In a recent post I recounted the sad tale of little Gloria Thomas who died from complications arising from untreated eczema. Her only “treatment” had been homoeopathic preparations that had no effect since homoeopathic preparations contain no active ingredients. Unfortunately this sort of neglect of treatable conditions and diseases is very common. Have a look at this list of people, some quite well known, who are victims of non-treatment by homoeopathy.
So taking homoeopathic remedies has to be completely safe then, no? Well in the US, the FDA has disallowed a company called Matrixx from marketing its Zicam products. This follows hundreds of reports of patients losing their sense of smell after using Zicam Cold Remedy Swabs. It appears that this remedy is not benign; it contains actual active ingredients, including zinc which which is suspected of causing the loss-of-smell disbility.
You might have noticed in the what’s the harm list that it included the case where a homoeopath peddled a “homoeopathic” concoction that killed three and blinded seven:
Gundawar was a homeopath who sold a new tonic, recently introduced on the market, that was supposed to reduce fatigue. He himself died, along with several of his patients. Several others were blinded, and other cases occured elsewhere in India.
Clearly this was highly toxic and was most definitely not homoeopathic.
So what’s the confused adherent to alternative medicines to do? There is no protection from independent or controlling bodies, nor any scientific investigation into their toxicity – let alone efficacy. I suppose the best way to be safely duped by a quack is to only consult “reputable” homoeopaths (that is those with a lot of regular patients still living), and with remedies that have been highly diluted, as is the recommended practice. Insist on the best dilutions: a minimum of 1030 going up to a much better 101500 or greater dilution. You will recognise these as 30X or 1500X. Certainly go over 23X, at which point Avogardo’s Number is exceeded and it becomes increasingly unlikely that even a single molecule of the original “active” ingredient is to be found in the dilution. In that way you will know there is absolutely nothing at all in the “remedy” that will harm you. Of course there will be nothing that will help or treat you either, but that’s where faith and the placebo effect kick in.
For a better understanding of how homeopathy works, watch James Randi’s explanation:
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