UK farmers are being taught how to treat their livestock with homeopathy “by kind permission of His Royal Highness, The Prince Of Wales”. This website explains:
The Homeopathy at Wellie Level (HAWL) Course has been developed specifically for those who tend livestock by the School of Agricultural Homeopathy, and is taught by homeopathic vets and qualified homeopaths – all with farm experience. This is the ONLY course in the UK to provide qualified teaching aimed at empowering farmers and smallholders to use homeopathy for their animals with both confidence and understanding. We have been operational since 2001 and over the years have gathered literally hundreds of positive feedback comments and course testimonials…
HAWL is funded largely by donations, relies heavily on the generosity of supporters and volunteers, and makes no profit. We subsidise our courses, and our post-course support groups, in order to make them affordable to all; many of our farmers and smallholders run their farms single-handedly or with family members. Our aim is to educate, inform and support those who seek to reduce the burden of antibiotics, chemical wormers, and other drugs in the food chain and on the environment…
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Today, Oliver Kamm, a Times business columnist and leader writer, sates in THE TIMES that part of the blame for the persistence of fake medicine lies with, of all people, the heir to the throne. In a new book titled More Harm than Good?, Professor Edzard Ernst says that, as the most prominent advocate of homeopathy, the Prince of Wales is engaged in “foolish and immoral” support for unproven remedies for serious illness. You can say that again.
Yes, let’s say that again: foolish and immoral!
In our book, Kevin Smith and I develop the argument that the practice of and education in alternative medicine systematically violates medical ethics. We are sure that our argument holds water. It is not possible, we think, to practice or teach fake medicine within the rules and standards of medical ethics. This means that most of alternative medicine is unethical.
We have not drawn such conclusions lightly and feel that our ethical perspective on alternative medicine deserves serious consideration. It would be good, if the Prince of Wales gave it some thought.
12 Responses to Homeopathy for farmers … with the support of Prince Charles … foolish and immoral
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Thinking isn’t a practice habitual in the devotedly blind
Another example of quackery setting up a straw man, implying that ” antibiotics, chemical wormers, and other drugs in the food chain and on the environment…” are inherently bad and sugar pills will provide a better solution. Foolish and immoral indeed.
In seventeen years they have gathered literally hundreds of positive anecdotes! How many negative? Who bothers to report no success? Big on faiths, “Defender of”, Prince Charles aspires to be. Well meaning, kindhearted – is that a sufficient warrant for ethics? He believes homeopathy is environmentally beneficial and thus ethically responsible.
Homeopathy contradicts bedrock science. Homeopathy is watered down water – when it isn’t poison. Watered down water as magic medicine.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Things not seen by basic science? Things contradicting basic science!
Placebos are not medicines. Whoever PC has been listening to on the subject of homeopathy it isn’t scientists. That isn’t ethical.
I agree [perhaps with the exception of ‘kind-hearted’]
It would be a shame if blind faith were ever to compromise kind heart.
The claims of HAWL are ridiculous and far fetched. There isn’t one of their aecdotal so-called cures which couldn’t be explained by everyday, mundane facts – coincidence, regression to the mean, natural resolution. One of their farmers even claims to have calved a cow by means of homeopathic remedies given at 10 minute intervals for nearly an hour. I have seen cows going from ‘can’t be calved’ to ‘calved by themselves’ by just leaving them alone for an hour – no homeopathy involved. HAWL vets are exploiting the lack of basic scientific knowledge of their clients and the organic system is one which makes a virtue out of denying suffering animals real, proven and safe medicines.
The recent statement by the UK veterinary governing body RCVS concerning homeopathy is a first small step to outlawing such pseudomedical practices from our profession. Homeopathic vets are a tiny minority, a laughing stock, but they are very good at whipping up public opinion.
Placebo effect? When I rescued some of my cats from the street, they received conventional medicine and still do. They were also cured swiftly of injuries, bleeding from the eyes and other issues by homeopathy when conventional medicine was slow to act. They have no idea what I’m giving them, so autosuggestion is out of the question. Every so often, after they have their rabies vaccines, some of them develop some gummy kernels under the skin on their backs. All it takes is a single dose of a certain homeopathic remedy to dissolve them in a couple of weeks. As do *most* of us homeopathy users, I believe in the gifts of *both* types of medicine; the trick is to learn when to use which. We are not the dogmatic and fanatical straw men and women Ernst would make us out to be.
I beg your pardon?
I do not make you out to be anything – except perhaps not being able to differential between specific therapeutic effects and non-specific ones such as the natural history of the condition. that is not your fault because for that one needs controlled clinical trials [which incidentally fail to show that homeopathic remedies work in animals]
Well, then, I am very glad to not be pigeon-holed.
I removed the advertising bit
@Katherine
That’s a great effect and unequivocal evidence for homeopathy. I’ve a friend who left his cats untreated and it took 14 days for the gummy kernels to resolve!
Good for your friend’s kitties, then! A few years ago, my vet was out of town and a substitute vet had recommended simply massaging the kernels. After 2 weeks of consistent massge, they were as hard as ever. Then I found the remedy that helped dissolve them. Luckily for me, my regular vet is open-minded and had no objections to my cats taking that remedy when he returned.