With thanks to Carol Boyce, Alan V Schmukler at Hpathy.com 18.2.10:

For reasons that will probably never be clear, at a time when the nation faces so many challenges, the UK government’s parliamentary select Science and Technology committee decided to conduct an Evidence Check into homeopathy at the end of 2009.

The homeopathic community scrambled to make written submissions before the deadline passed and waited for invitations. They never came. Read the rest of this entry »

I am appealing to the British Public on a matter of urgency regarding the Science and Technology committee Evidence Check into homeopathy due to report on 22.2.10.

Why the Evidence Check into homeopathy was considered important at this juncture given all the challenges facing the nation is not clear, that the balance of witnesses called to give evidence was heavily weighted in favour of those against homeopathy there is no doubt, and several of those witnesses had no specialist knowledge of homeopathy at all.

Read about more research on other topics

Read more about Evan Harris’s friends in Sense About Science

Read the rest of this entry »

Evan Harris is the Liberal Democratic MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, and he is also a principal investigator in the Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check on homeopathy. Evan Harris completed his IPT Fellowship with GlaxoSmithKline Ltd.

So why is he leading the sceptic anti homeopathy 10.23 campaign? Evan Harris also has links to Sense About Science, which he  declared to the Science and Technology Committee’s Evidence Check on homeopathy.

Phil Willis is the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrowgate an Knaresborough, and he was a Member of the Science and Technology Commission into homeopathy, and he also has links to Sense About Science,

This is a scandalous conflict of interest!

Read more about Evan Harris and Phil Willis’s friends in Sense About Science,

So let’s get this straight – the Science and Technology Committee report into homeopathy and its recommendations that led to the media snow this week, and the dramatic assertion that the public have been duped since 1948 by NHS placebos masquerading as medicine, is the result of a report ratified by THREE MPs: TWO of whom were NOT EVEN PRESENT AT THE COMMITTEE MEETINGS  – and ONE of the two was NOT EVEN A MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE when the hearings were held, and is due to stand down at the election in May this year.

This Science and Technology Committee investigation into homeopathy was a set up and a sham from its inception to the final meeting and delivery of the report to the UK press.  And there’s no “surely not” about it.

This is simply scandalous!

Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to the Daily Mail 26.1.2010:

Sales of alternative medicines are booming as consumers shake off their cynicism – proving the old adage there is no such thing as bad publicity!

Analysts say the market has grown by 18 per cent in two years and is worth £213million a year. And they predict sales will increase by 33 per cent to £282million over the next four years as more patients reject prescription drugs in favour of natural remedies. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to the Guardian Journalist Zac Goldsmith 5 January 2010:

Every few months, an organisation called Sense About Science (SAS) issues a pamphlet that makes fun of celebrities getting their science wrong. It is full of what it regards to be false assertions by celebrities about the benefits of homeopathy and so on, and ends with an offer by the organisation to act as a fact-checking service.

Newspapers always lap it up. The problem is that they have fallen into a trap again. While they quote Sense About Science with the kind of deference usually reserved for the Royal Society, the organisation is at best suspect. Read the rest of this entry »

Can someone please enlighten me how the supposed ‘placebo effect’ is relevant to the following:

Animal studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2008/08/scientific-research-and-homeopathy-animal-studies/

Plant studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2008/08/scientific-research-and-homeopathy-plant-studies/

Environmental Studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2008/08/scientific-research-and-homeopathy-overview/

In vitro studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2008/08/scientific-research-and-homeopathy-in-vitro-and-related-studies/

Physics and chemistry studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2008/08/scientific-research-and-homeopathy-physics-and-chemistry-studies/

Fungus studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2009/10/maria-curie-sklodowska-university-in-poland-proves-homeopathy/

DNA studies?

http://avilian.co.uk/2009/09/luc-montagnier-foundation-proves-homeopathy-works/

Charles Darwin‘s work with drosera?

http://avilian.co.uk/2009/03/charles-darwin-proved-homeopathic-dilutions/

If you ignore two thirds of the evidence, it’s not surprising lies win!

In fact, the recent Science and Technology Commission into Homeopathy ignored ALL of the evidence!

http://avilian.co.uk/2010/02/homeopathy-british-justice-or-british-bullying/

See the British Homeopathic Association website for the official response to this flawed Commission

http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/media_centre/press_releases/

http://www.britishhomeopathic.org/media_centre/

(For more wonderful Alan V Schmukler cartoons see his web site)

With thanks to David Tredinnick:

…..Another issue that we need to address this evening is homeopathy. Section 5.50 of the report says that therapies should be able to seek statutory regulation, and homeopathy is the one therapy in group 1 in the report—the Minister will remember that there are different classifications—that is not statutorily regulated.

I am informed by the Society of Homeopaths, which is the largest organisation representing non-medical homeopaths, that there is a move towards statutory regulation through the Health Professions Council.

Will the Government look favourably on that application? Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to the Faculty of Homeopathy 29 June 2009

The European Committee for Homeopathy (ECH) and Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis, the European and worldwide organisations representing medical homeopaths, have written to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to outline homeopathy’s role in epidemics and to suggest closer collaboration.

This follows a call by a group of young medics and scientists, the Voice of Young Science (VoYS), for WHO to ban homeopathy in certain illnesses.

Edmund Becket, Lord Grimthorpe was an enthusiastic and ardent devotee of homeopathy, and he wrote to The Times in 1888 to protest against the prejudice of the allopathic physicians in dismissing Kenneth Millican, which resulted in a month long battle of words in The Times, and the whole affair was written up in John Henry Clarke’s Odium medicum and homeopathy. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health 13.5.09:

Complementary healthcare should be offered ‘free, as of right’ on the NHS, a former government minister told the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.

Calling for governments across the UK to act, Peter Hain, the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, praised a pilot scheme in the province that allowed GPs to refer patients for complementary therapies funded by the health service. Read the rest of this entry »