This was not written by me, but by a homeopath, in an email that has been circulating recently. It comes from the editor of hpathy.com, not one of the bigger players in the homeopathic fantasy business.
Serious panic seems to be setting in.
One amusing aspect is the description of the “huge and systematic campaign”. Actually it’s just a few dozen people who decided it was time to speak up. After all, anyone can understand “the medicine contains no medicine”. And don’t you just love “Those who are organizing this anti-homeopathy campaign have been SO SUCCESSFUL that most homeopaths in UK have seen a 50% drop in their practice in the last 2 years. In fact most of them get to see only 3-4 patients a week.” I hope that is more reliable than most numbers one gets from homeopaths.
Once again we see the ambivalent attitude to the dangerous malaria scam, the “Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing“. It is that problem that has set the Faculty of Homeopaths and the Society of Homeopaths on opposite sides in internecine warfare.
Here are some excerpts. Download the whole email.
Is Homeopathy Bleeding To Death??
I think yes! And the demise has started in UK…
Do you know that Homeopathy is facing such a huge and systematic campaign in UK and most parts of the western world that even its existence is now threatened?
. . .
In its August 2005 issue, The Lancet published a meta-analysis which contended that homeopathic remedies are no better than placebo. The article and the editorial were nothing but a big piece of crap. But Lancet being one of the mouth pieces of the modern scientific community, the issue got a lot of air and Homeopathy received lot of negative publicity worldwide.
. . .
3. Then a couple of UK scribes setup a sting operation against Homeopaths in London to prove that Homeopaths are looting people of their money by giving them prophylactic remedies for Malaria. And next day Homeopathy was again in the headlines ..for all the wrong reasons!
And what did the homeopathic community do? Everyone made a big round mouth and said ‘Oh! How could those 9 fools do that!‘. NOBODY tried to defend these people by giving forward our own philosophical approach and historical evidence.
. . .
5. Then they started another campaign to close the four homeopathic hospitals being run by the UK Government under the NHS. Their claim was that the tax payer’s money should not go into anything unscientific. They have been nearly successful with this campaign also.
And as usual the homeopathic community has been on the defensive.
Those who are organizing this anti-homeopathy campaign have been SO SUCCESSFUL that most homeopaths in UK have seen a 50% drop in their practice in the last 2 years. In fact most of them get to see only 3-4 patients a week. Most of them are looking to add other things with their practice like massage, acupuncture etc. They can’t earn their bread with their homeopathic practice.
. . .
Yours in Homeopathy,
Dr. Manish Bhatia
Chief-Editor, Homeopathy 4 Everyone
Director, Hpathy.com |
|
Surely Dr B must know about homeopathic remedies for bleeding…but never fear, Cindy Crawford is coming to the rescue:
http://homoeoinfo.com/2007/11/cindy-crawford-tells-oprah-that.html . According to the report, Dana Ullmann has recently published a book on “Why famous people and cultural heroes choose homeopathy”. Sounds fascinating.
So, who did finance us, and when are we going to get our cheques?
Ha ha – what’s the homeopathic remedy for paranoid delusion? Nobody mention the secret anti-homeopathy HQ in area 51, ok? Oh, drat.
I see, LCN, that the original press release about Cindy Crawford/Oprah/Homeopathy repeats the Charles Darwin claim in connection with that book: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,213146.shtml
I feel ever so sorry for Dr B. Maybe he should check out his own site here.
From Manish Bhatia web site. “He is also a member of the Center for Advanced Studies in Homeopathy (C.A.S.H.), an international workgroup of leading homeopaths working to promote homeopathic education and research.”
So it’s just down to money.
The full email is well worth downloading. Hilarious.
“NOBODY tried to defend these people by giving forward our own philosophical approach and historical evidence.”
Maybe because it’s indefensible.
Doesn’t he know that the SoH has done nothing about them, and tries to suppress critics?
The comment that Hoes are having to turn to Acupuncture cracked me up. From one disproved idea to another.
Top quality rant from the gentleman. Gives us another web site to amuse ourselves with I guess.
another ‘famous person’ coming to the defence of homeopathy in today’s Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2209998,00.html . Terrible old grump that I am, I find her ‘web of relatedness’ to be rather a ‘web of incoherence’.
From Bhatia’s comments on the Lancet trails.
“The understanding and the approach to disease is so diametrically opposite in homeopathy and allopathy that trying to measure and compare their effects on the same scale is nothing but foolishness!”
My doctor (a so-called allopath) wants to cure me. A Hoe has the opposite approach. So Hoes are not trying to cure you? I’m now as confused as he is.
I used to get angry when I read articles like JW’s in the Guardian, but now it just makes me weary. The truth is, although she “wants to know more” and, although the pro-Hoe lobby assert their openmindedness, they are not prepared to make the effore, do the bl**dy hard work that is needed to get sufficient scientific understanding to be able to evaluate evidence.
I heard a journalist on R4 the other day (You and Yours probably) ask a medical Profession (re treatment for CFS/ME) to recommend something that would work “even if there is no evidence that it does”.
SIGH!
Well, nash, according to Ms Winterson your allopathic doctor just isn’t thinking properly:
“…This homeophobia is, I think, a genuine terror of what homeopathy is suggesting; which is that we think differently about the relationship between the cure and the disease. It is not enough to say Disease A is caused by B and can be cured by C…”
Perhaps I’m being hypersensitive but I find the coinage ‘homeophobia’ distasteful and also underhand: it seems to me indirectly to suggest that those challenging homeopathy are motivated by irrational prejudice and malice.
“Surely Dr B must know about homeopathic remedies for bleeding…”
Have you been reading SciencePunk? His post on Sunday, ‘A darker breed of homeopath’, referred to homeopaths pimping remedies for “violent wounds from gunshot, stabs and bites”.
Yes that’s good stuff. Read it here.
http://www.sciencepunk.com/v5/2007/11/a-darker-breed-of-homeopath/
Thank you for the sciencepunk link. Now, tell me, do I laugh or cry?
I see SP has dealt with one of the aspects of Jeanette Winterson’s article here: http://www.sciencepunk.com/v5/ – homepathy is not ‘nano’!
homepathy is not ‘nano’!
[father ted] These ones are small, these ones are far away, these ones aren’t there at all [/father ted]
Can you ever have too many Father Ted quotes?
I think I agree with Father Jack – that there tincture isn’t a nanopharmaceutical, it’s:
Father Jack: FECKIN’ WATER!
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Father_Ted#Think_Fast.2C_Father_Ted )
“I see, LCN, that the original press release about Cindy Crawford/Oprah/Homeopathy repeats the Charles Darwin claim in connection with that book”
We had fun with that over at JREF:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=2700512#post2700512
And his claims about Oliver Wendell Holmes, later in the same thread.
The solution for the homeopaths is simple: dilute!
As the potency increases with decreasing concentration, halving the number of homeopaths will increase their power. Then halve their number again, and again, and so on. Finally, when the last remaining homeopath has diluted him/herself away, they will have attained infinite power and influence.
My heart isn’t bleeding for them.
i found this funny
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=295
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