Beware: It's World Homeopathy Awareness Week

[swag]

http://sfsbm.org/index.php?option=com_easyblog&view=entry&id=953&Itemid=649

Jann Bellamy

. . .

The latest in a string of bad news is out of the U.K. According to the Nightingale Collaboration, new figures show that homeopathy use in the National Health Service has fallen to a new low. NHS prescriptions for homeopathy in England, filled in community pharmacies, dropped by another 13% in 2015. Prescriptions are down by a whopping 95% from their peak nearly 20 years ago.Still, this was at a cost of £94,313, a waste of taxpayer money.

Homeopathy is dwindling in other ways in the U.K. as well. Another homeopath clinic recently closed and more districts of the NHS are getting rid of it. As the Nightingale Collaboration says,

"Dilution by dilution, succussion by succussion, sugar pill by sugar pill, homeopathy is slowly but surely being removed from the NHS. This will not be welcomed by homeopaths whose businesses rely on the (undeserved and unearned) legitimacy that being provided on the NHS lends to homeopathy, but it's the inevitable result of their own failure to provide robust evidence of its efficacy."

This comes on the heels of the 2010 report from U.K. House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that homeopathy is implausible and there is no evidence that it works. And, more recently, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council assessed the evidence of the effectiveness of homeopathy. The Council concluded that "there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective."

. . . more

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Shouldn't it be National Homeopathy Awareness Moment?

A week is a measurable amount of time. Seems inappropriate.

[petronius]

2. Exactly, and why every year? The 'memory' of the Awareness Attosecond

from, say, 1988 should still be full strength in this year's batch of time, right?

[Thor_MN]

3. It should be even stronger with the dilution of time past...

[jmowreader]

4. They're doing it all wrong

Exposing bullshit that kills people should be worth AT LEAST a week a year...but these numbnuts are acting like it's a good thing.

Let me get this straight: If you go to your homeopath and tell him, "Doc, I feel like week-old dog shit today," your doc can use the Law of Similars to sell you a preparation of homeopathic week-old dog shit (it's called excrementum caninum, and yes it is an Actual Homeopathic Remedy!) and it'll square you right away. How do we not know that the homeopathic dog crap does not also contain other homeopathic drugs that'll counteract the dog shit and leave you feeling worse?

[Chan790]

5. But...I'm already well-aware that homeopathy is bullshit. n/t

[FrodosPet]

6. Homeopathic A&E

[progressoid]

8. Wouldn't mind having a pint or two with those guys.

But real lagers. Not homeopathic ones.

[progressoid]

7. 12 key points about homeopathy:

World Homeopathy Awareness Week takes place from April 10th - 16th and is aimed at raising awareness of homeopathic remedies. Each year, homeopaths from around the world use this week to promote their practice and gain publicity – yet public awareness of the realities of homeopathy remains low.

For example, many people mistakenly believe homeopathic products are a form of herbal product – not realising that homeopathic products typically contain no active ingredients at all. Over two centuries ago, the first homeopaths perversely decided that diluting an active medicinal ingredient makes it more potent, with the vast majority of remedies containing nothing at all! Modern homeopathic tablets are generally 100% sugar, containing no active ingredient whatsoever.

As part of Homeopathy Awareness Week, we would like to raise awareness of twelve key points about homeopathy:

1. In 2010, the UK Government Science and Technology Committee analysed the research into homeopathy and concluded that “homeopathic products perform no better than placebos.” This conclusion was backed up in 2015 in a review by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. With many homeopaths claiming their pills can treat serious illnesses, homeopathy is a dangerous placebo.

2. When Penelope Dingle chose to take the advice of her homeopath husband and treat her rectal cancer with homeopathic remedies, the results were tragic – her death was, according to the coroner, the result of being “influenced by misinformation and bad science.” There are real dangers in using homeopathy in place of real medicine.

3. Homeopathy is big business. The homeopathic industry is highly-profitable for companies like Boiron, Weleda and Nelsonʼs. The UK homeopathic market is estimated at £213m per year – comparable to the US ($300m), France and Germany (£400m each). All this for treatments which, despite hundreds of tests, have failed to show themselves to be any better than a sugar pill.

4...

https://www.homeopathyawarenessweek.org/

[HuckleB]

9. Celebrating homeopathy awareness week – PART 2

http://edzardernst.com/2016/04/celebrating-homeopathy-awareness-week-part-2/

"...

1. A few weeks ago, it was reported that a master’s degree in homeopathic medicine at one of Spain’s top universities has been scrapped. Remarkably, the reason was “lack of scientific basis”. A university spokesman confirmed the course was being discontinued and gave three main reasons: “Firstly, the university’s Faculty of Medicine recommended scrapping the master’s because of the doubt that exists in the scientific community. Secondly, a lot of people within the university – professors and students across different faculties – had shown their opposition to the course. Thirdly, the postgraduate degree in homeopathic medicine is no longer approved by Spain’s Health Ministry.”

2. On January 30, a group of experts from all walks of life met in Freiburg to discuss ways of informing the public responsibly and countering the plethora of misinformation that Germans are regularly exposed to on the subject of homeopathy. They founded the ‘Information Network Homeopathy‘ and decided on a range of actions.

3. Earlier that month, the Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan called homeopathy ‘bogus’. “They (homeopaths) take arsenic compounds and dilute it to such an extent that just a molecule is left. It will not make any effect on you. Your tap water has more arsenic. No one in chemistry believes in homeopathy. It works because of placebo effect,” he was quoted saying.

...

8. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences statement proposing the same scientific standards for homeopathic drug registration as for normal drugs Members of the Section of Medical Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) voted unanimously on 9 November 2015 for supporting the earlier proposal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Swedish statement requested that the homeopathic remedies should go through the same efficacy trials as normal drugs should.

..."

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It appears that time will take care of this nonsense, but why it's taking so long is still bizarre.