Posts Tagged natural health remedies

Simon Singh, leaving job to deal with chiropractic legal case Grant Jacobs Mar 13

3 Comments

Science writer and journalist Simon Singh, who faces a libel suit from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for writing that a number of chiropractic claims of treatment of disorders unrelated to the spinal cord such as asthma were “bogus” has written in his column that it will be the last. He is resigning his job in order to give the libel suit the BCA has served on him full attention.

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

I recently pointed out an extensive review of the evidence for and against chiropractic treatment that showed that the claims that Singh objected as unsupported, are unsupported.

Another survey of the research literature for chiropractic treatments, that of Ernst (available free from the British Medical Journal), has an extensive collection of follow-on letters. The author, replying to the early letters, points out that neither his article nor the libel case are about safety; in moving onto safety in his reply, he concludes: “Applying the precautionary principle, one should therefore not recommend chiropractic but warn patients not to use this form of therapy.”

Surely any sincere business would respond by simply pointing to evidence backing their original claims. Not so the BCA. The BCA was offered an opportunity to write a rebuttal in the Guardian (the newspaper that published Singh’s original article), but declined, seemingly preferring to legally bludgeon the writer, rather than reaffirm readers of the accuracy of their claims and the validity of the particular chiropractic practices referred to. (Or withdraw them.)

Read the rest of this entry »

An horrific case of natural health treatment of cancer Grant Jacobs Mar 08

2 Comments

Some of my local readers will have seen last night Lorelei Mason of TVNZ (Television New Zealand) present an horrific case of an iridiologist treating a skin cancer on the scalp which went on to invade the patient’s skull, eventually requiring major surgery.

(Source: wikipedia.)

(Source: wikipedia.)

You can read a text account of this news presentation, with comments from readers, or view the TV presentation on-line. (If you are viewing the video, you will need to wait for the advertisement to complete. Those squeamish about viewing exposed brains, may wish to avoid the appropriate parts of the video.)

Dr. Swee Tan, interviewed in the presentation, says that natural health practitioners ought to be registered. Some commenters offer that registration will not solve the problem.

My own thoughts, as a non-medical person-on-the-street, are that in one sense registration might legitimise the more moderate use of “remedies” like iridology, which grates given that many, if not most, of these remedies are nonsense under any use, but on the other hand registration offers some control over the worst extremes of misuse by obligating practitioners to adhere to guidelines.

Despite my unease at giving practices that lack evidential support credibility, my initial thoughts are that Swee Tan’s suggestion makes some sense: clients approaching someone offering medical remedies—of any kind—should have some assurance that the practitioner is being held to at least some basic responsibilities and at least some basic level of education in medicine. Ideally I would like to see unsound ‘natural remedy’ practices gone, but realistically this is unlikely to happen any time soon. Registration might be a good compromise in the meantime. Personally, I would like to see these guidelines also include some level of control over use of remedies that are not backed by evidence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Advertising campaigns: homeopathy or a sceptical series? Grant Jacobs Feb 26

3 Comments

The atheist bus campaign has me thinking… what if there were a similar campaign against homeopathic remedies? Or an on-going series of advertisements questioning dubious practices of all kinds? Fridays are good for day-dreaming, right?

uk-bus-2NZ Bus seems to have had an attack of tremulous timidity in the face of “some” complaints and have withdrawn their initial approval, the advertising campaign is getting plenty of attention as a consequence of their withdrawing approval. (Articles I’ve read don’t have them saying how many complaints were received from, nor from who.)

It strikes me this is strategy where the advertisers more-or-less can’t completely lose. If the advertising company pulls out, the withdrawal only attracts more attention!

Imagine a series of sceptical advertisements, perhaps run along the lines of the Tui beer advertisements? (For those from overseas, this local beer company is famous for it’s marketing campaign featuring a two part advertisement with a short statement on the left-hand side and “Yeah, right” on the right-hand side. They’re typically to the point and unsubtle. Think: “Homeopathic remedies work. Yeah right.”)

Read the rest of this entry »

Has Andrew Wakefield resigned from Thoughtful House? (Updated) Grant Jacobs Feb 18

No Comments

Andrew Wakefield, whose work has been at the heart of a MMR vaccine “scare”, has been in the news of late owing to the UK General Medical Council ruling on his 1998 Lancet paper, the retraction of this research paper and more recently the withdrawal of another research paper.

Orac has a blog post tonight querying if this news of his resignation is true. If it’s true, and I want to stress that “if”, it’s a bit of a bolt out of the blue. At the moment there is no formal announcement on the Thoughtful House website.

Thoughtful House’s response to the GMC ruling was very much to support Wakefield, so this would be a considerable shift in position. [This web page has now been removed, see update below.]

While still awaiting confirmation Brian Deer, the investigative journalist behind bringing this story to the public eye, has just commented:

Yes, I heard this was coming some days ago.

With this in hand, I would say we should be looking forward to a formal confirmation of this news in the near future. (I trust no-one is silly enough to be posing as Brian Deer!)

Update: [7:30am 19-Feb-2010] While no formal statement of Wakefield resignation has been posted, Thoughtful House has removed their statement responding to the GMC ruling and have removed Wakefield from the list of staff on their website.


Other posts on Wakefield and autism on Code for life:

Another Wakefield paper pulled?

Lancet formally retracts Wakesfield paper

Autistic children and blood mercury levels

Homeopathic remedies in NZ pharmacies Grant Jacobs Jan 25

44 Comments

Why?

Why should pharmacies, which generally promote themselves as sellers of tested and reliable treatments, offer homeopathic remedies?

pharmacy-ancientRecently I wrote about a protest against Boots selling homeopathic remedies in England. A quick inspection of several pharmacies here in Dunedin, New Zealand show they do the same.

One of the products even stated it was a “homeopathic product without approved therapeutic implications (”Sleep Well”, Martin & Pleasance; my emboldening). They’re basically saying their product has no support to be used as therapeutic remedy. So then why is a pharmacy carrying it?

Are pharmacies here guilty of the line of reasoning that if the public is willing to pay for it, give it to them, regardless of if it does them any good or not?

Shouldn’t we expect pharmacies to at least make some effort to limit themselves to goods that have been shown to work?

Perhaps it is time that we insisted that claims made of a remedy can be backed with evidence? (See Time for disclaimers on remedies?, “alternative” or not.)

These products are implausible several ways: the amounts of the ingredients, what the treatments claim to do and the way the remedy is taken.

Read the rest of this entry »

British homeopathy sceptics group aims for sugar high (with Dawkins video) Grant Jacobs Jan 20

4 Comments

At 10:23 am, January 30th, 45 1023, whose byline is “Homeopathy: there’s nothing in it”, will stage a protest against long-established pharmacy company Boots “continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them”.

Actually they have something in them, obviously. Apparently, it’s often sugar.

Brits should be on the alert for hyper-active twitchy skeptics in public places…

Their website includes short description of what homeopathy is, including videos like the excellent video hosted by Richard Dawkins I’ve shown below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Time for disclaimers on remedies?, “alternative” or not Grant Jacobs Jan 12

10 Comments

Two key areas in particular demand consumer protection in particular: when large sums of money are involved and medicines.

When people’s lives or livelihoods are at risk the naïve need protection to save themselves from themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ginkgo biloba does not stem loss of brain function in elderly Grant Jacobs Jan 04

2 Comments

Source: wikipedia

Source: wikipedia

Steven Novella at Science-based Medicine (and others elsewhere) report the publication of a paper concluding that Ginkgo biloba does not stem the loss of brain function in the elderly, nor is it an effective treatment for Alzheimers disease or other dementia.

The new study is the largest to date, with over 3000 participants.

Steven Novella explains the implications of the study well, so you’re best to head over there and read it for yourself.

(Most of the discussion in the comments section so far relates to the use of echninacea as a cold treatment, a claim that is looking pretty much the same as the claims for Ginkgo biloba. If echninacea doesn’t interest you, you might want to skip the comments. The main article is excellent, however.)

The key claim of Ginkgo biloba is (was) as a mild blood thinning agent, arguing that this would improve blood circulation in the brain. As Steven Novella points out, this would only work if the effect of Ginkgo biloba was dominant over the brain’s own control of it’s blood flow, which, according to him, was always unlikely.

Read the rest of this entry »

potpourri: homeopathy, journalism masterclasses & open access Grant Jacobs Dec 17

3 Comments

A potpourri of links to blogs worth checking out. I’m too busy today to write an original post for you, some blog articles worth checking out…

Read the rest of this entry »

The End of Chiropractic? Grant Jacobs Dec 12

7 Comments

Science-based Medicine reviews a research paper in a chiropractic journal showing that a key chiropractic claim—treatment of subluxation—has no merit. What’s new is this includes chiropractors rejecting this central claim of chiropractic treatment. Progress, perhaps?

Some of you will know that I have previously written about a local chiropractor’s claims in advertisements.

In these I have avoided dealing with bone manipulation itself, as I feel that this is best addressed by a spinal specialist, which I am not. (In my previous articles I wrote about the logic of the claims made, in particular claims outside of spinal treatment. Chiropractic claims (good background in this link) include that treatment of the spine will address a excessively wide range of conditions and illness far removed from spinal origins. The breadth of the claims, their lack of connection with the spine and lack of evidence supporting them, to be very polite, make the claims suspect.)

This paper in a chiropractic journal rejects a core claim of chiropractic treatment, treatment of subluxation as a treatment for (supposed) secondary conditions.

Read the rest of this entry »