by VorJack
I really don’t want to be the one to rain on Custador’s “UK, F%@# Yeah!” parade, but … well, OK, yes I do.
Yesterday, Martin Robbins had an editorial on The Guardian, the title of which challenges the notion that the Brits are always more subtle than us yanks:
‘Choice’ fetish spawns mind-meltingly stupid homeopathy policy
The editorial is about the response by the Secretary of State for Health (pdf) to a report from the Science and Technology Committee that completely panned homeopathy and the government’s support of homeopaths.
The Secretary for Health defended the government’s position, and Robbins takes serious issue with the common refrain the the government is protecting consumer choice:
What I find so frustrating is this dedication to a form of “consumer choice” that is absolutely anything but. If I walk into a pharmacist looking for a packet of condoms, and I’m given the choice between a packet of Durex and a sock, it isn’t a choice, it’s just a pointless piece of confusion that’s going to lead to lots of people having really uncomfortable sex, and a localised population explosion.
I will give the government a half-point for one of their arguments, though it doesn’t seem to appeal to Robbins. The Secretary states that a ban on homeopathic medicine would “risk the introduction of unregulated, poor quality and potentially unsafe products on the market to satisfy consumer demand.”
Jokes about poor quality water aside, I think it’s wise to acknowledge that there will be loopholes in whatever anti-homeopathic legislation that comes down, and that homeopathic medicine will still be sold. This will probably mean that much of it will be produced in someone’s basement, and be based on whatever cockamamie theory is currently in vogue. (“Trace amounts of arsenic are good for you!”)
The Secretary is saying that it would be better to permit the sale of homeopathic medicine and regulate it for things like accurate labeling than to permit a grey market with unregulated products. But, as Robbins points out, this leaves the government in the schizophrenic position of accepting homeopathic medicine, while acknowledging that it doesn’t work. In fact, they go on to endorse an educational campaign that would inform the public that this officially accepted product does not, in fact, do anything. Let’s give Robbins the final say:
So the government is planning to launch a public information campaign against homeopathic treatments at the same time as it continues to fund those treatments through the NHS. In this glorious mess of a policy the government has come up with something so brain-meltingly stupid that even the satirical brain of Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, In the Loop) would struggle to match it.
While in the UK secularism and atheism run high, a staggering number of people still buy into other irrational B.S. such as ghosts, dreams, homeopathy, astrology, and whatever -pathy or -ology ‘crystals’ come under. Newageology, perhaps.
What I find so unfathomably strange about the whole thing is that if you ask any of these people if they really believe that the position of Jupiter in the sky has any influence over whether or not they should go for that new job they heard about, they’ll say “No, of course not”. Yet they still turn with gleeful suspense to their horoscope in the daily paper, or say things like “Oh yes, I’m not surprised they broke up, he was a Leo after all”…
It’s just so damned inconsistent. It seems that the majority of us humans have a built-in desire, despite the best education, to believe in something supernatural, particularly if it is somehow controlling our lives. There’s this propensity to believe that “everything is not as it seems”.
I have a very “what you see is what you get” attitude towards life. Some things really are just random, and don’t happen “for a reason”.
In the UK, there are people who are outrageously stupid about religion – it’s just that as a percentage they are far less significant than the religious right in the USA. In all other aspects of stupid behaviour, we are just as egregiously guilty as anywhere else.
It’s actually somewhat of a bug-bear of mine that there is a multi-million pound NHS “hospital” outside of Bristol which only offers “complementary therapy”. Okay, some of it does work (acupuncture for pain relief, for example, is well backed up by research) – but so much of it is such absolute and glaringly obvious horse-shit that it leaves me staring in disbelief.
Homeopathy is an intelligence test.
You are really sick…You take homeopathic meds…you are really dead..end of problem.
I really feel sorry for the idiots kids, hopefully others will help prevent their health.
Sorry no paying attention….
Hopefully someone will help take care of the kids health.
Do NOT choose the sock unless you are a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I don’t think it should be banned, but I think it’s shameful and a travesty that they are cutting back on NHS funding, but still paying for Homeopathy even after the Parliament’s “Evidence Check” recommend they stop funding it.
I always keep a bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills around. When I encounter someone who thinks homeopathy works, I eat the whole bottle of pills. It’s a compelling counter-proof, though it takes an hour for the point to be made. (I picked up this stunt from James Randi at TED.)
As much as I hate homeopathy, I’m not really interested in banning it. I am outraged, however, that it and other bullshit remedies are available on the NHS. This is simply incomprehensible. Also enraging is the attitude of trusted highstreet UK shops such as Boots.
Boots is a pharmacist/drug store with an outlet on every highstreet. It is regarded almost as a national institution and is widely trusted as a dispenser of medicine. In fact, until quite recently its slogan was “Trust Boots”. And yet it peddles homeopathy and other crank cures alongside proper remedies and drugs with nothing to distinguish the two. I’ve hassled Boots about this for years and have rarely got further than the standard response: our customers choose these products, so we sell them. Boots has more recently admitted that homeopathy doesn’t work, but continues to sell it anyway on the dubious grounds of this ‘choice’ argument.
The problem is that Boots is so highly respected and influential that it has a responsibility to not pass off useless products as medicine. They are aware of their responsibility. And they just don’t care.
If Boots took a principled stand on this issue and stopped selling woo, I suspect it might have more impact than banning homeopathy altogether. It legitimises homeopathy and puts it effortlessly into the hands of the public.
To give the UK population its due, there have been quite a few protests against Boots’ stance. Some people went around changing the shelf labels for cards clearly spelling out how homeopathy is supposed to work. I thought this was genius. There was also a country-wide event in which people ‘overdosed’ on homeopathic sleeping pills outside Boots shops.
My feeling is that lobbying companies like Boots might be more effective than banning the practice of homeopathy.
Althought currently available on the NHS, this may soon change. One of our new government’s first big changes is to bring in all NHS care being commissioned by family doctors. The money will be tight and it is hard to imagine cash strapped family doctors buying treatments that are proven to be useless such as homeopathy. If I was working in a homeopathic hospital I think I’d be looking for a new job pretty quickly!