British Homeopathic Association: ‘Homeopathy Awareness Week’
Every year between 14–21 June* we encourage people to raise awareness about homeopathy.
Fair enough. For the uninitiated, homeopathy is a bogus medical treatment based on impossible, unscientific premises. Its medicinal benefits, such as they are, are indistinguishable from those derived from far cheaper placebo treatments. Homeopathic medicine is, quite literally, sugar pills.
In 2010, the UK parliament's Science and Technology Select Committee ruled that homeopathy is useless and unethical. When used in place of genuine medicine, it can also be extremely dangerous.
If you are feeling poorly, go and see a proper doctor.
For more on this specious medical practice, please see my numerous earlier posts on homeopathy.
I trust you are all now suitably aware.
[* Postscript added 10-Apr-2014: Since this article was written, ‘Homeopathy Awareness Week’ has been moved to 10–16 April—and, the great news is, sceptics have blagged the domain name!]
Does snake oil come into this anywhere?
Snake oil is more likely to be of use than homeopathic medicine: snake oil is likely to have active ingredients.
...and is of course also the name of a Steve Earle song. So that's two things in its favour, bringing the score to snake oil 2, homeopathy nil.
There is actually also a Chinese herbal remedy known as "snake oil" (I assume generally in Chinese) which comes in a a lovely yellow box adorned with snakes and smells very strongly of menthol and similar ingredients with an obvious physiological effect. I'm not sure whether it's actually any good for anything but there's no question that it stands more chance of doing something than a sugar pill or a teaspoon of water.
Scorpion oil smells of citronella, incidentally and I often wonder why these products that are supposed to do you good are named after animals that can kill you.
I wondered what they would put on the bottles by way of 'ingredients'. Searching on Google I found this...
Drugs are chosen primarily for their active ingredients. Because homeopathic products no longer have any biologically active ingredients, their list of ingredients refers to the original ingredients used in their preparation and the finished product no longer contains any active ingredients.
So, that would make the ingredient(s) just water then.
A homeopathic economist recently proposed a solution for the global financial meltdown. He suggested that the G8 nations club together and inject 1p into the economy.
I found this article intriguing about zoos using hoemopathy. Wonder if you may speak in future posts about homeopathy with pets?
Zoos Increasingly Turning To Alternative Healing Methods
http://petslady.com/articles/zoos_increasingly_turning_alternative_healing_methods_56790
Homeopathy works on pets in the same way that it works on people. That is, it doesn't. But the placebo effect can still be involved. Obviously, we cannot ask the pets if the treatment has worked, but we can ask their owners. If their owners are stupid enough to take their pets to a homeopath in the first place, they are likely to believe that the treatment will (and has) worked. That is the placebo effect by proxy.
Saw this and thought of you!