Perhaps
I shouldn't take the bait but when someone is wrong on the internet
(and wrong with such enthusiastic regularity) it's difficult to ignore.
If homeopaths restricted themselves to saying something along the lines
of "
you might feel a bit cheerier after talking to one of us, we're mostly quite nice, but the pills are just a distraction"
I'd probably tolerate* homeopathy on the NHS, as an inert placebo. It's
the fact that homeopaths promote it as a separate system of medicine
that grates, and that some of them promote it as an alternative to real
medicine for real diseases that worries.
The homeopathy
enthusiast BrownBagPantry has posted the above quote numerous times on
her Twitter feed under the #homeopathy hashtag and I thought I'd write
up a quick rebuttal and correction of the points within it.
*It's still lying to patients in a rather paternalistic way, but that's an argument for a different post.
"
Realistically, the anti homeopathy activists have a minuscule sphere of influence worldwide."
-
'Anti homeopathy activists' probably refers only to skeptical bloggers
but it's important to remember that healthcare professionals,
journalists, authors, scientists and all sorts of other people have
taken steps to warn the public about the dangers of relying on
homeopathy and other fake medicines. Many of them wouldn't recognise
themselves as 'anti homeopathy activists' though.
The 'sphere of influence' bit is perfectly true of course. We don't particularly
need to influence everyone who might consider buying or using homeopathy, we only really
need
to influence the decision-makers, that is people who regulate it (allow
it on to the market, or how it can be marketed) and the people who
commission it on the NHS etc. As it happens I'm
also a fan of
encouraging users of homeopathy to be aware of what it is (and it looks
like plenty of people might be mistaken in thinking that it's the same
as 'herbal').
I think of the first part (influencing decision-makers) as the
meat of what skeptic activists might do and the second part (public) as the background
marinade
that also needs to be changed. It feels like public attitudes to
homeopathy are changing - there are more negative articles about it in
tabloid newspapers that, until recently, tended to be more supportive.
There have also been a number of high profile stories. However I don't
know how much this changes the minds of staunch supporters.
Generally
"anti-homeopathy activists" act locally - I don't write to universities
in India asking them to move a homeopathy event on their campus but I
do in the UK (with a recent success in Birmingham). However we know that
people IN Australia tackle local Australian quackery and likewise in
other countries. So the 'worldwide' thing is a bit of a red herring.
We're everywhere, having local effects, so while none of us has
worldwide influence the effect of skeptical activity is felt globally.
"
Since
Hahnmann's time, these activists' opinions have been unable to stop the
manufacture & distribution of homeopathic remedies"
- I don't think we've ever tried to
stop
the manufacture or distribution. Personally I've no objection to
homeopathy products being on sale (this would be like objecting to sugar
being on sale), only to the confusing or misleading advice given about
what the products can do. There have been isolated examples of products
being removed from sale because they no longer have a market license and
I think the FDA sanctioned one manufacturer for poor manufacturing
practices, but this hasn't particularly been a focus.
Recently
homeopathic teething products for babies were withdrawn from sale after
links to serious ill-health problems, combined with the discovery that
the contents of the products were not as described on the label and had
been inconsistently produced. It was the parents of the children harmed
by homeopathy that brought the action - I don't know if they consider
themselves to be anti homeopathy activists, but the manufacture and
distribution of some homeopathic remedies has most certainly happened.
"
the
private practice & licensing of homeopaths; the schools,
universities, organizations and private groups that teach it;"
-
well this just isn't true. A number of universities have stopped
teaching homeopathy, most recently in Spain, and they're also stopping
validating others' courses. Hooray! The evidence base for homeopathy
(poor) is also critiqued in UK pharmacy and medical degree courses, and
there are critical-thinking modules available for schools that use it as
an example.
"
the privately and government funded research studies"
-
goodness me, if people are still wasting money on research into
homeopathy when it's been comprehensively shown that any effects can be
explained by placebo then we need to step up our efforts here ;)
"
surveys; the publication of books, journals and magazines for public and student consumption"
-
I don't think we've tried that much to be honest. A few people have
taken one magazine's advertisers to task for misleading content and to
get it removed from a number of shops, but no attempt's been made to
stop it from publishing. There have been a few examples of looking at
getting books removed from sale (not from being published though)
including a pharmaceutical society in the UK that still makes them
available for pharmacists (!).
"
the social media
sites that educate curious health care consumers about it, and the
cured patients who sing its praises to family members, co-workers,
[casual] and longtime friends."
- particularly for Twitter
those promoting homeopathy will certainly be met with rejoinders from
people who are skeptical of the claims. I've been in work situations
where someone has suggested homeopathy and I've certainly taken the time
to explain why that might be unwise (I often gave talks to colleagues
and members of the public about diabetes research and often talked about
the risks of using either herbal or homeopathic remedies).
"
The
National Center for Homeopathy in the U.S. recently noted that the
interest in their website grew by a "whopping 600%" over the past two
years."
I emailed and asked them about this and they were
unable to confirm, only wanting to know why I wanted to know, which is a
bit odd. 600% seems quite an impressive figure so you might imagine
they'd want to tell a homeopathy skeptic about it. They said it was
something that had been sent in a newsletter to members. I've no idea
then if the 600% figure is true but let's assume that it is. But it
doesn't tell us if they had only 2 visitors two years ago and that this
has just gone up to 14 visitors two years later ;) It also doesn't tell us if they're measuring all visitors (which includes Google indexing 'bots') plus people visiting by accident, or who are skeptics. Nor does it tell us what those visitors think about the information they found there.
Further reading
Skeptic successes in homeopathy (24 August 2015, updated September 2016)
