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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Jayne Donegan - GP and homeopath talk on vaccination in Galway, 25 March 2020

Dr Jayne Donegan (a GP and homeopath) has been in the news recently (in November 2019 and again in February 2020) after undercover reporting by Times journalists found that she was giving harmful advice about vaccination to parents at her public talks. She has advised parents not to vaccinate their children, and also how to falsify their child's vaccination records.

She is due to give another talk in Galway on 25th March and I've contacted the venue and Eventbrite ticketing to ask them to consider cancelling it.

November 2019
Antivax GP shows parents how to avoid jabs The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
Parents pay £15 for antivax talk on health ‘propaganda’ The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
The Times view on Jayne Donegan: Dangerous Talk The Times - Saturday 16 November 2019
No British doctor should be advising parents on how to avoid the MMR vaccine

Because of her antivaccination pronouncements and reckless advice she is currently under investigation by the GMC (General Medical Council) which placed her GP-registration under interim conditions in early January 2020, reported in The Times (see below). She is not allowed to offer advice on vaccinations (condition 4: "She must not prescribe, administer, advise upon or have primary responsibility for childhood vaccinations").

January 2020
Antivax GP at risk of being struck off The Times - Wednesday 8 January 2020
(I couldn't find a copy available online but the relevant quote is "Last night the General Medical Council said it had begun an investigation into Dr Donegan, a freelance GP in London, and placed her under interim conditions to limit her practice. If the GMC finds against her, she could be struck off the medical register. The GMC would not comment while the investigation was under way.")

In February 2020 she gave another talk about vaccination to parents in Wexford and this too was attended by an undercover reporter who found that she was continuing to give confusing information.

February 2020
Anti-vaccine doctor Jayne Donegan says World Health Organisation uses ‘Nazi techniques’ The Times - Friday 21 February 2020
I don’t give advice at talks, claims anti-vax doctor The Times - Saturday 22 February 2020
Jayne Donegan told Irish parent to give her child ‘fresh air’

March 2020
Dr Donegan has another event due to take place in Galway on 25th March 2020. The ticket page (Eventbrite) had the address as the Loughrea Hotel & Spa and on 26 Feb I wrote to them with an outline of this blog post outlining the contentious nature of her talks and asking if it was definitely going ahead. I didn't hear back but spotted a day later that the Eventbrite page no longer named the hotel but instead said 'TBC' for the venue. Apparently the post code is the same though, and the text of the information highlights that material will be on sale for cash only and that "The closest ATM is in Supervalue a 5 minute walk from the hotel". So nnperhaps the venue is unchanged and it's just that the public nature of that information has been withdrawn.

I also wrote to Eventbrite (27 Feb) with the information in this post and asked them to consider removing the listing but have not heard back and the Eventbrite page is still up and listing ticket buying options.

Above: screenshot taken on 27 Feb showing a different event organiser and name of venue compared with the screenshot taken on 28 Feb (below).

The reasons I think the event shouldn't go ahead
It's concerning that anyone is promoting an anti-vaccination stance to parents, or suggesting that homeopathy (aka 'homeoprophylaxis') could be used as an alternative (leaving children unprotected), or giving advice on how to tweak a child's vaccination records so that it looks as if they've been vaccinated.

It's additionally concerning that a GP is offering this information and while her views are her own (even if I disagree with them) her promotion of them is surely incompatible with GMC registration. It's bad enough that homeopaths are coming out with this nonsense but being a GP may lend legitimacy.

Although I don't have a great deal of sympathy for her (as she persistently repeats the same actions that have got her noticed by newspapers and the GMC) I think the event organisers are also putting her (and her continued GMC registration) at risk by giving her another opportunity to say these things publicly, again.

It's fairly likely that the event will go ahead and despite the event organiser's precautions* I'd be amazed if at least one person attending wasn't there to report on it critically.


*requiring the names of everyone attending presumably to weed out known scientists, doctors, skeptic activists and journalists ;)

WDDTY, homeopathy, cancer and vaccines - well it's an odd way of going about things

It's always a bit mean, in an argument, to bring up things like "well you said..." but in the case of What Doctors Don't Tell You I am going to do precisely that. I'm a bit miffed with them at the moment, partly because they have a poor selection process for the adverts in their magazine (many have been sanctioned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being misleading), partly because some of their health advice is poor (not all of it I hasten to add) and partly because they persist in accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being in the pay of 'big pharma' and part of some cabal of people whose only joy in life is spoiling their fun.

Their recent difficulties arose when someone spotted that the teaser in the current issue (October) was going to be talking about cancer and homeopathy in the following November issue (out in a few weeks). Homeopathy is straight-up nonsense and no responsible health magazine should be talking about it, other than to recommend people avoid spending (wasting) money on it. The other problem is that the magazine is going to be talking about alternative (or complementary, if you prefer) treatments for cancer. Because of the Cancer Act of 1939 you have to be a bit careful what you imply in terms of treatments, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

If I could be convinced that the magazine's intention is to suggest things like homeopathy alongside conventional treatment I'd probably not bleat very much. Still a waste of money but as long as someone's getting real medicine then the extra chat they get with a homeopath or the placebo effect from the pills is OK with me.

Sadly WDDTY have a tendency to frame everything that comes from regular medicine as being a bit suspect, providing information about alternatives to real treatments. The magazine's name implies that doctors keep information from their patients, or don't have the latest information.

Even the Daily Mail, which can occasionally be fairly horrendous in its health information, doesn't treat doctors as self-interested employees of pharmaceutical companies so while I'd not lose sleep if they ran out of ink I can put up with their paper being sold everywhere.

A brief timeline
1. The Times recently ran a story (1 October) suggesting that WDDTY had implied that "homeopathy could treat cancer" and that "the cervical cancer vaccine has killed hundreds of girls". Here is the full quote taken from The Times' site (most of the article is behind a paywall):

"Experts are calling on high street shops to stop selling a magazine that claims that vitamin C cures HIV, suggests homeopathy could treat cancer and implies that the cervical cancer vaccine has killed hundreds of girls."

2. WDDTY was annoyed by this, feeling that The Times had wrongly attributed statements to the magazine which hadn't bee made and that, in addition, the author of the article (Tom Whipple) had failed to get in touch with magazine staff for their comment on the story (Tom Whipple makes it pretty clear that he did and eventually WDDTY conceded that he had tried).

It is now 7 October and I think WDDTY have published at least four separate press releases within three days complaining about The Times and the campaign to have the magazine removed from high street shops and supermarkets.

• Subscribe before we are banned (1 October 2013)
• What the Times didn't tell you (1 October 2013) 
• Our Word (1 October 2013)
• The WDDTY wars (3 October 2013)  

3. WDDTY also produced a video with Positive TV in which someone asks them if they said that homeopathy could treat cancer or that the HPV vaccine killed girls - to which they respond forcefully that they did not, and that they were merely reporting on others' research.

Thrill as the #WDDTY duo are gently bowled soft, pillowy questions in this hard-hitting interview http://t.co/pjzCpDLHnJ
— Rob (@PencilBloke) October 7, 2013

They also addressed the accusations on Facebook and threw a few insults towards Sense About Science, the Nightingale Collaboration and skeptic bloggers. 

They have been at great pains to state on Twitter, Facebook, on YouTube videos and in press releases / emails to their subscribers that they have never said that homeopathy might cure cancer or that the HPV vaccine might kill people who have it.

I disagree!! I think they've said precisely that.

Here they are saying, in the headline, that the HPV vaccine has killed hundreds of girls (to be fair the article is a bit vaguer but why go and say it in the headline?!).

‘Safe’ HPV vaccine kills up to 1,700 young girls

Here's a screenshot...

and here they are saying that homeopathy can be used to 'treat' or 'reverse' cancer - I concede that they have not used the word cure, but nor have they been sufficiently careful to ensure that anyone reading (particularly someone vulnerable) couldn't draw that conclusion. Harrumph!

.@The_Angry_Nurse @COMAGazines @_JosephineJones @_wddty pic.twitter.com/jSZRiEMtjD
— Alan Henness (@zeno001) October 5, 2013

the headline "Much more than placebo: Homeopathy reverses cancer" rather suggests that homeopathy is a solution for cancer and other text within the body of the article (published September 2013 October 2012) implies the same:

"Several homeopathic remedies are as effective as powerful chemotherapy, according to clinical trials, and thousands of cancer cases are being reversed by homeopathy alone." - this specifically implies that homeopathy is equally effective as chemotherapy, and that it might be used as a standalone treatment.

So this discussion on the use of homeopathy is not about its use as a complementary (and therefore harmless when running alongside real medicine) treatment, it is being suggested as an alternative.

I don't think anyone's died or been injured yet from reading or following the advice in this magazine but I hope you'd agree that it's not very good and the way they've framed it is a bit worrying. We know, from an amazing collection at What's the Harm?, that plenty of people do die or are injured from bad advice though - http://whatstheharm.net/