British homeopathy sceptics group aims for sugar high (with Dawkins video)

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYqQ_n2vOOI

Their website includes an open letter to Boots, that among other things points out the contradiction of on one hand admitting to the Commons Science and Technology Committee that they did “not believe homeopathy to be efficacious” (source) and on the other selling the product in their pharmacies (some apparently bearing their brand name).

Simon Singh, now perhaps best known as the target of a current case libel by the British Chiropractic Association, chips in with a short explanation of where the harm in homeopathy lies.

Simon Singh is a former scientist, turned science writer, and the author of four books: Trick or Treatment (about alternative medicine) and The Big Bang and The Code Book (cryptography) and Fermat’s Last Theorem.

HT: BoingBoing and David Winter

Other lesson learnt while writing this: never let a hyperactive kitten in a room with stacks of research papers… Sigh.

Addendum: Orac has a post just up about claims of treating AIDs via homeopathy. Aside from the AIDs angle, it includes a little more background on homeopathy. I hope I’m not alone in being disturbed at the idea of someone trying to treat AIDs patients with homeopathic remedies. Orac does a good job, as he usually does, of taking this apart.

Other medicine/health-related posts on Code for life:

Time for disclaimers on remedies?, “alternative” or not

Deleting a gene can turn an ovary into a testis in adult mammals

Monday potpourri: maps, malaria in the USA, cholera in Dunedin and vaccines

The End of Chiropractic?

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Genetic tests and personalised medicine

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Book excerpt — Losing the faces of your wife and children

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Metagenomics-finding organisms from their genomes