By by Jesse Galef
Finally, a creative protest! Living in the DC area, I witness a lot of demonstrations. In general, I find them either over the top, toothless, or just plain boring. No so with this demonstration against homeopathy:
In what is being billed as “rationalism’s Kool-Aid moment”, a mass “overdose” is being planned next week in protest at the marketing of homoeopathic medicines.
More than 300 people who style themselves as “homoeopathy sceptics” will each swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic pills in protest at the continued marketing of homoeopathic medicines by Boots, the high street chemist chain.
The organizing group is the British 10.23 group, named after Avagadro’s number. The protest will be on January 30th at 10:23. There’s so much to like about this idea. Working in communications and PR, I’ve found that one of the best ways to get media attention is through creativity and novelty. And this is spot-on. (To be fair, James Randi talks about doing something like this in front of Congress. I’ll find the related video tonight.)
Boots, the chemist (pharmacist, as we call them here in America) chain issued a response: “We know that many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want.”
Right, and trashy tabloids know that many of their customers want outrageous stories of batboys, aliens, and bigfoot, but we trust reputable newspapers to be honest and accurate about their news stories. Respectable newspapers don’t print these false stories just because they’ll sell. And no respectable chemist should advertise homeopathic “medicine” just because they sell. Customers shouldn’t be tricked into thinking they’re buying something they’re not.
In an open letter to Boots last November, the 10.23 Group wrote: “The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homoeopathy. We trust brands such as Boots to check the facts for us, to provide sound medical advice that is in our interest, and supply only those products with a demonstrable medical benefit. We don’t expect to find products on the shelf at our local pharmacy which do not work.”
The letter also warned that the products could be dangerous if they led patients to delay seeking proper medical assistance because they believed homoeopathy could treat their condition.
Exactly. Peddling sugar pills as medicine is worse than publishing false but entertaining stories — people can be hurt.
There’s a place for the placebo effect, and I’m ok with a doctor prescribing sugar pills if he or she deems them a good course of action. But the decision to use fake medicine should be in the hands of a trained professional who knows the situation.
(Image from Flickr under creative commons)
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55 Comments
I’m all for protesting, but they should be careful — they really don’t know what’s in those “medicines”.
yes if you take an entire bottle of the ’strongest’ homeopathic you stand a very real chance of getting a molecule of the supposed medicine.
I’m just saying that some homeopathic “medications” are loaded up with real drugs (such as acetaminophen), so the protesters should be careful. Chances are, they’ll be perfectly safe, but there’s still that chance. I’d rather not see anyone land in hospital over this.
Yes, I know, I’m coming across as a bit of a concern-troll, but I, for one, would not ingest an unknown substance, or a known toxin, however diluted it may be.
Agreed. Zicam bills itself as being homeopathic even though it contains enough zinc to make people lose their sense of smell, for example.
Besides, if you buy into homeopathy, taking an extra-strong dose means that it’ll have less effect, right? They should take a tiny fraction of a pill instead.
Did you hear about the homeopath who commited suicide by taking a massive underdose?
Sorry ;-)
Seeing how hysterical many homeopathic buyers are about toxins I’d be very surprised if there was even a minor dose of toxin in the pills. I’m guessing they simply use sugar coating in most cases.
Which is ironic when you think about it. Homeopaths blather on about the magic properties of water, and yet they sell their pills as a dried and pressed powder.
The people that buy into so called “alternative medicine” are terrified of imaginary toxins in flu vaccines but will blindly buy any crap if you write something like natural or homeopathic on the bottle. I agree that the protesters should be careful since a lot of the stuff marketed under the homeopathic label is not necessarily actual homeopathic drug (ie water) but may have anything in it.
Although I live with and am related to them, I’ve never understood people who would pick alternative medicine rather than use real medicine. My sister-in-law is silly like that – choosing to sniff ‘essential oils’ rather than take cough syrup for a cold. Poor kid was sick for so much longer than she needed to be.
Heh, Actually, cough syrups have no medicinal effect on coughing or illness. It’s a waste of money.
They suppress the symptoms while the underlying problem cures itself. That’s not worthless.
Most cough syrups don’t even do that. Anyway, you’d be just as well off with cough drops or maybe some honey or cocoa, at a fraction of the cost (and less potential side effects).
Agreed – hot tea with honey and lemon does the trick for me.
Hm, to me it shows a profound lack of belief in your homeopathic product if you have to mix it with various other active ingredients.
Since the whole thing is a money scam aimed at people who just want something that contain the most recent new age buzzword then from the point of view of the guy who make it he can get more sales by combining several types of woo. It has nothing to do with belief (on the side of the maker) its just that homeopathic remedy made with the extract of [insert currently popular magic plant],enriched with minerals that enhance your chi is going to sell better.
Dishonest homeopathy. Well, I never!
It’s terrible what the world have come to that you can’t even trust a snake-oil merchant.
Out of curiosity, if a doctor were to prescribe sugar pills as you said, does the patient know they’re sugar pills?
No. Doctors really do prescribe these sometimes, if they are the only (or the most) effective treatment, but of course the patients are of course not made aware of this (the placebo effect could not possibly help patients who are aware they are not being treated; the whole point is that belief you are being treated makes you better). This can be difficult, because there are legal issues with claiming something is medicine when it is not. I’m not sure how these are resolved.
As for the overdose, I think even homeopathic “medicine” needs an ingredients label, so you can check and see whether they are putting in 5 ppm benzene or something horrible (although if it is labeled as inactive, I guess they don’t need to give the actual amount. In that case, just don’t eat anything that has an unspecified amount of a toxin.). I doubt this will often be the case.
“the placebo effect could not possibly help patients who are aware they are not being treated”
Can’t remember the study but even that seems to work i.e. even telling someone that they are taking a sugar pill helps over doing nothing at all.
Yep, and even the color of the pill can increase chances of feeling better! We are weird.
Not to mention the taste. The worse the taste, the larger the placebo effect. The worse it tastes, the more effective it must be, seems to be what our minds say.
I find an indusion of Sucrose and Aqua works very well.
*infusion
Unless it has aloe vera in it it doesn’t work!
Blue pills make better sleep aids than red pills (red or yellow pills are better stimulants), big pills work better than small pills, but two small pills will work better than one large pill… and this all needs to be taken into account in a placebo-controlled trial.
So then The Matrix got it right? Take the red pill to wake up, and the blue pill to keep dreaming?
Ooh! This means Morpheus gave Neo a placebo!
Blue pills are generally blood pressure tablets. Or V1agra. Same thing.
FTA: “There is a long tradition in science of researchers experimenting on themselves to prove a remedy works. But this will be the first time volunteers have swallowed pills to prove they don’t.”
But, as a precedent, the tomato was once thought poisonous – until a british researcher stood outside and ate tomatos until he couldn’t eat any more.
“But, as a precedent, the tomato was once thought poisonous – until a british researcher stood outside and ate tomatos until he couldn’t eat any more.”
Just out of curiousity – when and where did that happen?
First thing I could find googling it:
Robert Gibbon Johnson proves that the fruit of the tomato plant is non-poisonous by eating two tomatoes in front of a large crowd on the steps of the courthouse in Salem; the plant, native to the northern Andes and domesticated by the Incas, was brought to Europe by Spanish monks, where it was called the love apple, or pomme d’amour; French botanists had warned that it and the potato were part of the deadly nightshade family and were poisonous – wild nightshade berries are indeed poisonous, as are green potatoes, and the leaves of both plants contain a neurotoxin.
source : http://northernblue.org/tmach/globalmiles/06jun/timejun28.php
Second source found here ; http://www.tomatoandhealth.com/index.php/en/loveheartfood/history/more/robert_gibbon_johnson/
where they said ‘As the story is told, it was Colonel Johnson who on September 26, 1820 once and for all proved tomatoes non-poisonous and safe for consumption’
It looks like a mix of truth and myth mixed up together. There was definitely a man by the name of Robert Gibbon Johnson, and he defended the beloved fruit known today as Tomato.
And where would the Flying Spaghetti Monster be without tomato paste?
Ramen.
British novelist Arnold Bennett died in 1931 from drinking tap water. He was trying to prove that Paris’ water was safe to drink when he contracted typhoid.
I’d be afraid to down a whole bottle of that garbage; as was said, who knows what’s really in there?
Yeah, and anything that is not prescribed is not regulated. My doctor warned me not to put too much faith in over-the-counter vitamins because no one checks if they actually contain what they say they do, and that there may be contaminants in there too.
My first thought too was that they better be sure it’s just the pure sugar/water pills with nothing added.
Personally I think an even better demonstration would be to dilute their own homeopathic medicine in public 1000 or 2000 times, making it exponentially stronger, and then take that.
Still this is hilarious, even if it doesn’t do anything. Believers will believe.
I’m a bit curious as to what will happen. On one hand, I know that nothing should technically happen, as the poison has supposed to have been diluted to the point where it isn’t in the mixture at all.
On the other what if they seriously do suffer some sort of effect? It’s unlikely to be serious at the level of dosage, no matter how high, but if something does happen, I wonder what sort of implication that would have. Ah well, most likely nothing.
if there is any kind of reaction, then it will be because the pills are not “truly homeopathic.” It is, of course, possible to put active ingredients into so-called homeopathic remedies, in which case they would cease to be homeopathic, by the practitioners own definition.
Brilliant. It really is charitable to prevent people from wasting their money on things that don’t work. Now, let’s have a public testing of “detox” remedies, with a mass spectrometer on hand so it can be established exactly what heavy metals, toxic compounds, etc, were present in the subject’s tissues and wastes both before and after treatment. I rather envision a volunteer with kinoki pads stuck all over him.
Ouch. This kind of hits home, since I work at a drug store that makes good money off homeopathic ‘medicine’. Everytime I see somebody buying those little pills, I want to tell them to stop and donate the money to Haiti or something – anything – instead… but I don’t want to get fired, even though I don’t really need this job for financial reasons. At least when I start uni I’ll have a less offensive reason to quit. I want to take a stand against the BS, but I know I won’t.
This sketch is my favourite on the subject.
“Accidentally” that happenned before:
“Last month, musician Billy Joel’s daughter, Alexa Ray Joel, was rushed to the hospital in an apparent suicide attempt. She had taken an overdose of a medication called Traumeel, which is used to treat joint pain. The younger Joel, who had been distraught over a relationship breakup, called 911 after taking an unknown number of pills and was rushed to the hospital.
She soon made a full recovery, and fortunately was unharmed by the pills she took because Traumeel is a homeopathic medication, which means that it has no active ingredients. It is therefore is not something that one can “overdose” on.”
http://www.livescience.com/health/alexa-ray-joel-suicide-attempt-100118.html
My fiance is going to take part in this in the UK on Saturday. He and I had a long discussion, during which I realized that I thought homeopathy and alternative medicine (such as St. John’s Wort) were synonymous. So when I thought he was taking a whole bottle of medicine made out of weeds, I was concerned. Then when he explained and I read up on it a bit, I realized that as an educated, critical thinker, if *I* don’t know what homeopathy really is, how many other people don’t realize the difference? For the person concerned about what else is in those pills, it’s sugar and lactose, so since he’s tolerant of both, he should live :)
A lot of people confuse homeopathy with natural medicine. Of course the first lacks of any active principle and doesn’t work, while the later has active principles and works (if it has been properly tested and prescribed).
You error is pretty common but you learned from it!
Didn’t Randi do this once? Had a homeopathic sleep aid that had a warning label on the box that said not to take more than the recommended dosage, and not to operate heavy machinery or drive while using. Then took box after box after box of it in front of a live audience. Several hundred times the recommended dosage. Then gave a long seminar on the total ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies.
Yeah, I think I watched that one.
Many people do not understand how homeopathy works, so they are skeptics.
Homeopathy is a very complex medicine, and it works because of quantum physics.
Steps to make a remedy:
1. One drop of the original substance with 100 drops of water
2. Shake
3. One drop of that substance, 100 drops water
4. Shake
5. Steps 1-4 are repeated until there is no amount of the original substance in the tincture
This point is called Avogadro’s number or Avogadro’s constant.
As steps 1-4 are repeated, the remedy becomes stronger.
This is because of quantum leaps and quantum physics.
Hey, just because we didn’t know how bats flew in caves, doesn’t mean they didn’t fly in caves.
Just because we don’t have the technology at this point in time to figure out how homeopathy works, doesn’t mean it doesn’t.
right…and which medical school are you attending?
Doesn’t mean it does either, silly. If you were an actual medical student you would know something about treatments having to be proven to be of use.
Adding the word quantum doesn’t make your drivel more convincing. Since you don’t know what Avogadro number actually is I assume you never took even high school chemistry. If you’re a medical student in a real university (not the unicorn school of magic alternative medicine) then things are worse then I thought.
Actually we don’t need to know how it works.
You just have to show that it works .
Yeah, that sounds incredibly complex. Please link to the research that describes the mechanics by which quantum leaps or any other quantum phenomenon make water attain medical properties.
Well, medical student, as a nursing student with three good science a-levels and a university foudation year in physics, I would just like to…. Call you on your bullshit
Do you even know what quantum physics is? Do you know what a quanta actually is? Would you like me to explain it to you? I will if you ask, seriously. It’s surprisingly easy to grasp – and once you’ve grasped it, it’s stunningly obvious to a particularly stupid potato that homeopathy has got nothing to do with quantum physics.
I’ll go you one further: You’re not a medical student. There’s no way in hell. If you’re a medical student, then email Daniel from your .ac email account with a copy of your course transcript.
Seriously, do you think you’re the first person to post easily falsifiable bullshit to a forum to justify their stupidity?
I laugh in the face of your pathetic qualifications from the corrupt and blinded “system” and raise you a Phd I purchased over the internet!
Is that you, Kent?!
Physics is not equal to Chemistry
I’d say it works the other way around. Chemistry is really the study of how electrons behave – and that’s physics. Similarly, biology is the study of how chemicals and hydrocabons interract – and that’s chemistry. I think that’s why it’s impossible beyond a certain level to learn about genetic mutation, cell theory and natural selection without having some basic knowledge of the physics involved.