Alternative therapy for evil homeopaths. By Robert Shrimsley

Surely this is a call to action. The news that Radovan Karadzic has been hiding out as some kind of homeopath has confirmed all prejudices about alternative medicine. I have had my doubts about this vicious breed ever since we were gulled into giving the kids valerian and hops to calm them down on an overnight flight and they went absolutely wild. Talk about a crime against humanity.

Incidentally old Rad is not exactly an advert for homeopathy if this week’s photographs are anything to go by. Before he got into all this complementary healing, he was a sprightly, globally-feared warlord and international criminal. Now, after a decade of mixing his own marjoram, he is a strangely bearded hippy, blathering on about the need to nurture your inner self.

Of course with hindsight health shops of the world were an obvious hiding place for genocidal maniacs. Remember all that talk of cleansing impurities? Well, I think we now know what that was all about.

Some of you may be thinking that Karadzic was an aberration in an otherwise harmless community. But I ask you, how likely is it that the butcher of Belgrade could have kept up the pretence for so long without ever giving himself away. Were no suspicions aroused by the publication of his first book Radovan’s Remedies . Did no one notice that his patented treatment for stress prescribed ground echinacea root, essence of basil and the blood of a thousand Bosnians.

Anyway, now that these collected homeopaths, herbologists and healers have finally been exposed as nothing more than a front organisation for the world’s most wanted, we will doubtless see swift action.

How long can it be until the National Security Agency, operating undercover in Greenwich Village, finally pinpoints the precise location of Osama bin Laden’s reiki parlour?

Crack teams of CIA operatives will surely be rounding up reflexologists in their search for Ratko Mladic. We can be confident that even now special rendition flights, crammed full of ayurvedic surgeons are en route to Guantánamo, where skilled interrogators will rearrange their chakras at no extra charge. Homeopaths will be forced to take two Disprins every four hours until they crack. US authorities have, however, pledged not to use the cruel practice of water-boarding – except perhaps on hydrotherapists.

Of course we may snare a few, genuinely innocent aromatherapists on the way but as they say in the trade, you can’t make a poultice without grinding some ginger.