A bad take from Alan Freestone though not his first - undercover reporting and Trading Standards on homeopathy and autism claims

Summary: in addition to writing nonsense on Twitter about incels Alan Freestone has been investigated by Trading Standards for claiming to cure autism with homeopathy and CEASE therapy. The post below includes links to articles in The Times and The Telegraph about his claims, and to his listing on a page of people referred for their persistent misleading claims to Trading Standards by the Advertising Standards Authority.

I've added a bit at the end about homeopathy societies in the UK. Two have since publicly distanced themselves from his statements.

Update: his awful tweet was taken down on 14 August between 22:56 and 23:14pm. I can be that accurate as I sent a tweet when I got home bemoaning that it was still up then it disappeared, so I sent another. I've added a copy below.

See also, this thread
https://twitter.com/robertsproggit/status/1426501423718617089

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This post is for the benefit of people following up on Alan Freestone's particularly bad tweet from Friday 13 August 2021, in response to the horrendous incident in Plymouth. He muted me (and presumably others) several years ago after I / we challenged him on his claims to treat / cure autism using CEASE therapy and homeopathy. 

Pic 1. Tweet from Alan Freestone sent on 7 June 2018 (still live at time of writing) which says "Jo, your endless attempts to try & stifle positive homeopathy stories are very telling. You attempt to use social media to suppress views you disagree with. That's not an ethical past time. You should reflect on that. P.S. I have cured autism. I'll continue to cure autism."

 

This tweet is still up. Quite surprised. He's added a few more in similar vein, some bleating about how badly received his intended nuance-ing was. pic.twitter.com/Gk67lBLGzt

— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) August 14, 2021

Pic 2., Pic 3. w are screenshots which were taken 11 hours apart, Pic 4. (embedded Tweet) was taken at 23:56 on 14 August. These are all copies of the same tweet (sent on 13 August 2021 and still live at time of writing) which says said "I hope the women of Plymouth collectively take some responsibility for this. Misandry & the anti-man rhetoric from teachers causes incels. Young men without hope, without a path, without anything meaninfgul to strive for become dangerous to the societies around them." The earlier screenshot shows 1.5k replies, 890 retweets ( and 15 likes, the later one has 3.1k replies, 1.8, retweets and 49 likes. At time of writing his tweet has 28 retweets and 1,865 quote tweets.

Not surprisingly he's received a remarkable amount of pushback in the replies to the tweet which you can find indirectly here (until he wisely deletes it, but screenshots will remain).

In early 2019 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) took compliance action on at least three homeopaths claiming to treat autism with homeopathy / CEASE therapy and referred them to Trading Standards (TS) in November, one (Paula Lattimer) has now made their marketing material compliant but Alan Freestone and Carolyn Stevens are still on the list. The ASA wrote a post in March 2019 outlining their position on CEASE "Why so-called CEASE Therapy claims to 'cure' autism really have to stop".

Here is the list of Trading Standards Referrals (you'll need to scroll down and click 'see more' to see everyone that the ASA has referred to TS). I don't know if Trading Standards are still investigating him or if the pandemic has made that harder.

Pic 5. shows the list of homeopaths who've been referred to Trading Standards, two are still making misleading claims.

In April 2019 Alan Freestone was the sole subject of an article in The Times about his wild claims to treat autistic children with homeopathy "Homeopaths ‘treat’ autistic children with rabid dog saliva". 

"...claims to have treated 1,185 autistic patients with remedies such as carcinosinum, made from cancerous breast tissue; lyssin, made with rabid dog saliva; and medorrhinum, made from the discharge of a man with gonorrhoea." Note that you can buy these products (which are HEAVILY diluted you'll be relieved to hear!) from Helios UK, see the links.

In November that year he, along with another homeopath, were caught by an undercover reporter for The Telegraph (see video below) offering advice to a parent (reporter) about how to evade vaccination and what to do about schools requiring children to be vaccinated (fib, basically): "Homeopaths warning mothers not to have children vaccinated, investigation reveals". The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) expressed concern that consumers were buying dangerous unauthorised treatments from him but I don't know if any further investigation was made.

Additional info on homeopathic societies in the UK
Several people on the thread created from Alan's tweet have CCed in the Society of Homeopaths (SoH) or asked if he's a member. Alan is not a member of the SoH and to the best of my knowledge I don't think he has ever been. I also don't think he's a member of Homeopathy UK (formerly known as the British Homeopathic Association, BHA) but I think he used to be a member of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH) but I don't think he is now. 'Homeopath' is not a protected term in the UK so anyone can call themselves that and can "practise" without being registered. There is a fourth society, the Faculty of Homeopathy, which is reserved for qualified healthcare professionals (hcp) who have also trained in homeopathy. As he's not a doctor or allied hcp he wouldn't be able to join that one anyway. 

But this isn't the Society of Homeopaths' fault. Since I'm often the first to criticise them, and celebrated their accreditation with the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) being withdrawn* earlier this year, I think it's only fair to point out that they have nothing to do with the nonsensical pronouncements by Alan Freestone, being more than capable of emitting their own nonsensical pronouncements.

Update 1: The Society of Homeopaths (he's not a member) have distanced themselves from Freestone's statements, the same also appears on their Facebook page.

Update 2: Freestone is a member of Homeopathy International (HINT) and they have distanced themselves more vaguely (website statement).

Update 3: (Fri 24 Sep 2021) - I've just noticed that HINT's Steering Committee met to discuss the matter on 17 August and decided that as the tweet was made in a 'personal capacity' that was the end of the matter. 

HINT previously published (April 2019) a guide for its members advising them not to worry to much about letters from the ASA (May 2018, made public March 2019) which told them to "make no direct or implied efficacy claims for CEASE therapy".

Further reading
* The Society of Homeopaths, and the issues with regulating healthcare in the UK (6 August 2021) By Michael Marshall (project director of The Good Thinking Society, writing in The Skeptic - the PSA suspended the SoH's accreditation in January 2021 and, presumably unable to address the problems (and citing cost), the SoH later withdrew from the accredited register scheme in July 2021.