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 »

FOR HOMEOPATHY: A PRACTICING PHYSICIAN’S PERSPECTIVE by Richard Moskowitz, M. D.

I am writing in response to “Against Homeopathy: a Utilitarian Perspective,”¹ by Kevin Smith, Ph. D., whom I commend for the clarity of his writing and the thoroughness of his logic.   I suppose I should also derive some comfort from the fact that, contrary to the advice he gives to his readers, he takes homeopathy at least seriously enough to go to such trouble to denounce it.

Long familiar to every homeopath, his main argument that homeopathic remedies are nothing but placebos was already current in Hahnemann’s time, decades before Oliver Wendell Holmes made it famous 150 years ago,² and has since been incorporated into the conventional wisdom.   When I was in medical school, the term “homeopathic dose” was used almost affectionately to signify an amount of medicine far too small to have any noticeable effect; and even today, as various modalities of alternative and complementary medicine enter the mainstream, and many American physicians aspire to broaden their outlook in order to accommodate them, most would probably still agree with Dr. Smith, at least in private, that homeopathy defies common sense, ordinary logic, and some basic laws of chemistry. Read the rest of this entry »

Homeopathy and the New Fundamentalism: a critique of the critics by Lionel Migrom on http://www.similima.com/2008:

ABSTRACT

Though in use for over 200 years, and still benefiting millions of people world-wide today, homeopathy is currently under continuous attacks for being ‘unscientific’. The reasons for this can be understood in terms of what might be called a ‘New Fundamentalism’, emanating particularly but not exclusively from within biomedicine, and supported in some sections of the media. Possible reasons for this are discussed.

New Fundamentalism’s hallmarks include the denial of evidence for the efficacy of any therapeutic modality that cannot be consistently ‘proven’ using double-blind randomised controlled trials. It excludes explanations of homeopathy’s efficacy; ignores, excoriates, or considers current research data supporting those explanations incomprehensible, particularly from outside biomedicine: it is also not averse to using experimental bias, hear-say, and innuendo in order to discredit homeopathy. Thus, New Fundamentalism is itself unscientific.

This may have consequences in the future for how practitioners, researchers, and patients of homeopathy/CAMs engage and negotiate with primary healthcare systems.  Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to The Huffington Post and Dana Ullman 27.2.2011:

I believe what prevents men from accepting the homeopathic principles is ignorance, but ignorance is criminal when human lives are at stake. No honest man faced with the facts of homeopathy can refuse to accept it. He has no choice. When I had to face it, I had to become a follower. There was no choice if I were to continue to be an honest man. … Truth always demands adherence and offers no alternative.

John Weir, physician to George VI and to four generations of British monarchs. Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks to The Huffington Post and Dana Ullman 30.1.11:

Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, has surprised the scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine.

In a remarkable interview published in Science magazine of December 24, 2010, (1) Professor Luc Montagnier, has expressed support for the often maligned and misunderstood medical specialty of homeopathic medicine. Although homeopathy has persisted for 200+ years throughout the world and has been the leading alternative treatment method used by physicians in Europe, (2) most conventional physicians and scientists have expressed skepticism about its efficacy due to the extremely small doses of medicines used.

Read DNA molecules can ‘teleport’, Nobel Prize winner claims

Read French Nobelist Escapes “Intellectual Terror” to Pursue Radical Ideas in China

Read Nobel Scientist discovers scientific basis of homeopathy

Read Luc Montagnier Foundation proves homeopathy works

Read Professor Madeleine Ennis of Queen’s University Belfast proves Jacques Benveniste’s research is correct

Read more about scientific research on homeopathy Read the rest of this entry »

*A Brave Medical Life, The Founder of Homeopathy, BBC Radio 4, Friday 10 December 2010 by Mark Whitaker, reviewed by  Peter Morrell

Although this recent radio programme was informative, it was also misleading and something of a disappointment.

Though it was generally factually accurate, it said Hahnemann spent ten years after graduation looking for a suitable medical practice. In reality, he only practised medicine on a regular basis as his main income from 1780-1 until soon after his marriage in November 1782 and he did not resume regular medical practice for about nine years when he was commissioned to start treating Herr Klockenbring in 1792.

The programme was a disappointment because it did not convey the best possible slant on his life, choosing to emphasise things of little consequence and failing to explore some things of greater consequence. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Louise Mclean at Homeopathy Heals 1.10.2010:

When the Government recently decided to support patient choice and continue funding homeopathy on the NHS, there were howls of outrage from leading medics and skeptics alike.  Its statement published at the end of July appeared to ignore the Chief Scientific Advisor’s advice, as well as an Evidence Check Report published last February by the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee.

In its response to the conclusions of the Report, the Government decided to continue paying around £4 million a year to keep homeopathy available to NHS patients.  This was great news for those who choose it but the British Medical Association (BMA) were not impressed.  At their annual conference in July they had voted against the funding, despite the fact that the founder of our public health service, Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, had pledged his commitment to homeopathy at the birth of the NHS in 1948. Read the rest of this entry »

Wikipedia is guilty of a nasty bias in many of its articles?

How?

Why?

Read on and despair!

Wikipedia was such a good idea but it turns out to be just another propaganda machine for vested interests, dubious no necks and big business!

Click here to read The Weird World of Wikipedia
By Martin J. Walker

With this in mind, most people dealing with this issue, attempt to mitigate the problem by understanding that all knowledge is `situated‘ knowledge, and that all judgments come from a particular standpoint. This means that it is understood that no one can claim to be 100% ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’, and that there are always power struggles involved when someone claims to be `objective` (especially whilst engaging in partisan behaviour).

Angela Kennedy & Jane Bryant, The One Click Group to Jimmy Wales. 17 November 2005.

http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/ME-CFS_docs/More%20Wikipedia%20On%20Wessely.doc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Simon_Wessely

Through the late Eighties into the early Nineties, Martin J. Walker worked as an investigator for lawyers in criminal and civil cases and with defendants – with and without lawyers. In the late 1980s he co-founded Hackney Community Defense Association (HCDA), a group which worked on the defense of people assaulted, fitted up and wrongfully arrested by the police in north east London .

See earlier blog on Martin J Walker where he exposes Ben Goldacre and Dirty Medicine.

Len Horowitz and Sherri Kane report on secret CIA and FBI counter intelligence operations to disrupt internet websites criticising governments as well as on the role of Wikipedia in these “black ops” – there is no smoke without fire.

Read about the battle over homeopathy on Wikipedia

Avilian reproduces this very interesting post from the Gaia website below without prejudice:

Quackbusters Are Busted!

Though they seem to have more lives than a cat, it seems likely that Quackbusters will be down for the count.

by Heidi Stevenson 25 July 2010 Read the rest of this entry »