With thanks to H’Pathy.com Magazine and to Robert Medhurst 17.4.12

Robert Medhurst is a qualified Naturopath & Homoeopath with 27 years of clinical experience. He has written many articles & lectured throughout Australia & the US on homoeopathy. He previously operated several natural therapies practices in Sydney & was involved in teaching & research activities. He now lives in Adelaide and operates the research and development and education departments for a major homoeopathic manufacturer. He is the Expert Advisor on Homeopathy to the Federal Government of Australia, Dept of Health & Ageing.

Visit Robert Medhurst – BNat DHom – at his website : www.adelaidehillsnaturopath.com.au

The author discusses the criticism directed at homeopathy. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to the Union of Concerned Scientists‘s Report Heads They Win,Tails We Lose: How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense February 2012

The following quoted text is from the introduction of the paper Heads They Win,Tails We Lose: How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense:

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scientific_integrity/how-corporations-corrupt-science.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Concerned_Scientists

Access to the best available science allows federal decision makers to craft policies that protect our health and safety and the environment.

Unfortunately, censorship of scientists and the manipulation, distortion, and suppression of scientific information has threatened the federal scientific enterprise in recent years. Read the rest of this entry »

BLOWS AGAINST THE EMPIRE….? By Lionel Milgrom 

3rd April 2012

Introduction

Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and its ‘Grand Inquisitor’, the Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) are some squeaky clean gold standard by which any therapeutic modality can be scientifically judged. Those who believe EBM and RCTs are fit for purpose, demonstrate little or no understanding of the shortcomings embedded in their empirical, rationalist approach to human relationships (particularly the therapeutic relationship). For buried at the heart of the RCT is a fundamental mathematical error: trying to represent with numbers the processes which make up the stages of an RCT.

Consequently, this article sets out to support those who reject EBM and the RCT as the sole arbiters of clinical ‘truth’, and to fire a shot across the bows of those in therapeutic communities who, while accepting EBM and the RCT, purport to lead them. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to Dana Ullman and The Huffington Post 23.3.11:

Dana Ullman, MPH, is America’s leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com . He is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is,The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (the Foreword to this book was written by Dr. Peter Fisher, the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California.

For more by Dana Ullman, click here.

In a story akin to “the mouse that roared,” the Swiss government has determined that the very small doses commonly used in homeopathic medicine are both effective and cost-effective. Despite the impressive technological prowess of conventional medicine today, the Swiss government has determined that homeopathy is considerably more cost effective.

My previous article (http://avilian.co.uk/2012/02/the-swiss-governments-remarkable-report-on-homeopathic-medicine/) highlighted a remarkable report on homeopathic medicine conducted by and for the government of Switzerland. This previous article described the significant body of evidence from multiple sources that verify the efficacy of homeopathic medicines, while this new article focuses on another body of evidence reviewed for the Swiss government that investigated the cost-effectiveness of homeopathic treatment.

Read about more about scientific research on homeopathy

Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to Dana Ullman and The Huffington Post 15.2.11:

Dana Ullman, MPH, is America’s leading spokesperson for homeopathy and is the founder of www.homeopathic.com . He is the author of 10 books, including his bestseller, Everybody’s Guide to Homeopathic Medicines. His most recent book is,The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy (the Foreword to this book was written by Dr. Peter Fisher, the Physician to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II). Dana lives, practices, and writes from Berkeley, California.

For more by Dana Ullman, click here.

The Swiss government has a long and widely-respected history of neutrality, and therefore, reports from this government on controversial subjects need to be taken more seriously than other reports from countries that are more strongly influenced by present economic and political constituencies. When one considers that two of the top five largest drug companies in the world have their headquarters in Switzerland, one might assume that this country would have a heavy interest in and bias toward conventional medicine, but such assumptions would be wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

With thank to Tim Adams and the Observer 5.2.12:

It is not often, in liberal north London, that you come face to face with a heretic, but Rupert Sheldrake has worn that mantle, pretty cheerfully, for 30 years now. Sitting in his book-lined study, overlooking Hampstead Heath, he appears a highly unlikely candidate for apostasy; he seems more like the Cambridge biochemistry don he once was, one of the brightest Darwinians of his generation, winner of the university botany prize, researcher at the Royal Society, Harvard scholar and fellow of Clare College.

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With thanks to The Telegraph and Will Storr 20.11.11:

Over and over again, the doctor told her she was being silly. But Gemma knew there was something wrong. She’d fall asleep on the sofa and couldn’t be woken. She’d see strange shapes and colours. She was having difficulties remembering things in the office. And yet every time she saw the doctor, he would say the same thing: you’re just a young girl, panicking.

Eventually, they found tumours on her brain, and they grew and spread. They tried chemotherapy. She felt sick. She gained four stone in four weeks. Her hair fell out over one weekend. She had to lift her eyelids with her finger to see. She had a wheelchair, a stick. Her bowels stopped moving. Her sight was so bad she couldn’t watch television or read. So she just lay there. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to Ian Sample, science correspondent at guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 October 2011: Nobel Prize in Chemistry for dogged work on ‘impossible’ quasicrystals awarded to Daniel Shechtman.

How cruel and taunting science can be to anyone who breaks the mould of ‘accepted’ wisdom. It is good news to know that despite the vicious attacks on free thinking and true scientific observation, every now and then, the stunning and the unexpected is sometimes heard through the cacophony of dementors and detractors!!

Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and a double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening “crusade” against him. After telling Daniel Shechtman to go back and read a crystallography textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for “bringing disgrace” on the team. His discovery was extremely controversial. In the course of defending his findings, he was asked to leave his research group. However, his battle eventually forced scientists to reconsider their conception of the very nature of matter …

In addition to the kudos of the award, Shechtman receives 10 million Swedish kronor (£934,000). Read the rest of this entry »

My belief in honest science has been restored and my faith in human nature washed in cool waters!! A most heartfelt thank you to all the honest scientists and sceptics with whom I am privileged to share this world!!!

Can these honest people now make the leap to comprehend the way the pharmaceutical companies push out lies and misinformation (*see below) to destroy any perceived threat from the competition posed to them by homeopathy and alternative medicine?

Just how far does their honesty and integrity actually go?

Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies. PLoS Med 2(5): Smith R (2005). 

Richard Smith was an editor for the British Medical Journal for 25 years. For the last 13 of those years, he was the editor and chief executive of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group, responsible for the profits of not only the British Medical Journal but of the whole group, which published some 25 other journals. He stepped down in July 2004. He is now a member of the board of the Public Library of Science, a position for which he is not paid. Richard Smith is Chief Executive of UnitedHealth Europe.

Read the rest of this entry »