Grace Dasilva-Hill has just published an article entitled “Autism/ADHD and Vaccines – are we walking a tightrope whilst blindfolded?“. Who is Grace Dasilva-Hill, you will ask.
She is a professional registered homeopath, based in Charing – East Kent, UK. She has been in practice since 1997. During this time she has developed a busy practice, alongside teaching, running students’ clinics and tutorials. She was a team member of the Ghana Homeopathy Project soon after it started, and later became their treasurer as well. Grace has published in the Journal Homeopathy in Practice, and HPathy. She also is an ‘Energy EFT Master Practitioner Trainer’ and a ‘qualified CEASE therapist’.
And what is the Ghana Homeopathy Project ? It is an organization whose goal is the establishment of homeopathy as a recognised part of the health care system in Africa and Ghana in particular. Their objective is the relief and prevention of disease. They support the development of homeopathic education and wish to make homeopathy available to deprived communities as a valid and affordable form of treatment.
The lengthy article by Grace Dasilva-Hill re-hashes all the bogus arguments about immunisation that you could ever wish for. I will show you only what she calls her ‘conclusions’:
START OF QUOTE
…at the present time we have only just scratched the surface of the issue of autism and ADHD; my aim in this article is to challenge the reader to pause, reflect and ask: do vaccines do more good than harm, or it is actually the other way round? Just who is considered to be responsible for my health and that of my family – my doctor, my country’s government or myself? Do we need to stand up as a profession, and be more pro-active?
The big question seems to be, are we not only failing our patients but also the greater good of the world’s populations, unless we question and do not just ‘accept’ what science and medicine tells us, especially as ‘vested interests’ seem to have such a strong influence on what we are told?
The health journalist Phillip Day has done just that in his book ‘Health Wars’ – he argues how the multinationals have a vested interest in keeping all of us ill, for this is the only way that they can continue making money. His propositions are supported by Goldman Sacks Bank which recently stated that they would not invest in the alternative health industry because it tends to cure people, so there is little profit to be made from it.
I invite you to become an advocate for those who are unable or who are too young to ask questions, or to stand up for themselves, or whose parents don’t have the knowledge or tenacity to challenge.
Children and young adults suffering with autism, ADHD, ASD, deserve our loyalty, support and action.
In the UK, we recently shared the anguish and pain felt by baby Alfie Evans’ parents and family. It is impossible for anyone who is caring to witness such horror, and not to ask any questions. Hopefully we will learn much from this very sad event. There are questions not only about causative factors (ie. the role that vaccinations may have played), but also the issue of parental rights versus the State’s perceived protectionist rights.
What has been happening in the field of healthcare is fast becoming unsustainable. On the other hand Homeopathy has so much to offer, being a sustainable form of medicine not influenced by market forces.
One could argue that one of the reasons why the denialists want to see the demise of homeopathy and other natural modalities, is that more and more people are choosing these modes of healthcare in place of conventional medicine which is reductionist in approach and only has drugs to offer.
I find myself wondering whether there is a need for something radically different to happen. As a profession, do we need to do something collectively? Do we need to stand up more, do we need to speak up more? How do we go about doing this? I know that I am asking more questions than providing answers, and this is because at the moment I don’t have the answers either. But I have a deep and sincere desire to do my best to make a difference that will be both worthwhile and sustainable.
I would like to believe that others in our community would like to do the same for the bigger benefit of sustainable and effective healthcare for all.
Footnote: I have just carried out an impromptu, unrepresentative survey of homeopathic colleagues on a homeopathic professional group. I asked them if they knew of any health care professionals (doctors, nurses, midwives) who did not vaccinate their children. Most of those who replied, surprisingly said that they do know of at least one doctor, or nurse or midwife who did not vaccinate their children, and they added that these professionals keep this quiet. I certainly know of two medical doctors who do not vaccinate their children, and again they do not talk about it. It was shared with me in confidence.
END OF QUOTE
Of course, these words are not really ‘conclusions’, they are just a continuation of a barmy rant.
And yes, such articles exist in abundance. Many homeopaths are active campaigners against vaccination.
The Society of Homeopaths (SoH), the professional UK organisation for lay homeopaths, has recently stated that … it is unethical for a homeopath to advise a patient against the use of conventional vaccines… This could not be clearer! Yet, I suspect that the homeopaths put out such statements mainly to cover their backs and subsequently they do what they feel like – and they rarely feel like supporting vaccinations.
They obviously try to give the impression that lay homeopaths are not antivaxers. I fear, however, this impression is wrong: as we have discussed repeatedly on this blog, many homeopaths do advise their patients against immunisation. And many claim that homeopathic immunisations are an effective alternative. It takes not long to find even VIP-members of the SoH putting parents off from immunising their kids. And thanks to the Ghana Homeopathy and several similar projects, this is happening not just in the UK but also in Africa and elsewhere.
Is that not irresponsible?
In my view, it is!
Is that not illegal?
Apparently not, because such homeopaths usually add a clever disclaimer; Grace Dasilva-Hill for instance states that Any information obtained here is not to be construed as medical OR legal advice. The decision to vaccinate and how you implement that decision is yours and yours alone.
17 Responses to HOMEOPATHS AGAINST VACCINATION: “The decision to vaccinate and how you implement that decision is yours and yours alone”
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This is so loopy it is hard to know where to start in answering it.
The antivaccination lobby, as far as I can see, have the luxury of never having encountered the diseases that we vaccinate against. However, our parents and grandparents would all have seen childhood friends and neighbours die of diphtheria; indeed, my wife had whooping cough (it made her ill for a long time, but she was not young enough to be at high risk of dying from it), and my uncle was crippled by polio. At the hospital were I worked until I retired recently we would regularly have adults in ITU with chicken-pox pneumonitis. The most striking clinical sign when diagnosing measles is how miserable the sufferer is, but more serious complications such as brain damage from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis aren’t that rare. And measles has killed huge numbers of people worldwide. Even diseases which we have come to accept, such as cervical cancer, and the growing numbers of head-and-neck cancers in young adults, are now known to be caused by infectious agents – in this case human papilloma virus, for which there is an effective vaccine.
Generally in places where these diseases are rife, such as Africa, everybody is very keen to be vaccinated because they are well aware of the alternative. But a homeopathic drive against vaccination in Ghana is very dangerous in a country many of the less educated members of the population are likely to find it hard to make an informed choice between vaccination and homeopathic prophylaxis. I have no doubt that, if she is successful, Ms Dasilva-Hill will be responsible for a great deal of death and misery.
As for the question of personal choice, what about responsibility to the wider community? If you or your child isn’t vaccinated, that reduces the immunity of the herd as a whole and increases the chance that the disease will spread (which requires a critical number of susceptible hosts), putting everybody at risk. In particular, those individuals who are unable to mount an adequate immune response due to other diseases (e.g. cancer) cannot be effectively immunised by vaccination, and herd immunity is their only protection.
Was it Charles Manson whose murder weapon was found to be the people he’d duped into his odious ways?
Okay, so the CAM brigade aren’t recruiting gang members to use them as weaponry, but the effects of bamboozibgling their customers are egregious, it seems to me.
Undermining our NHS and our national health carries costs greater than the magnified agonies of one small child (I infer from the quotes that the “hopes” for Alfie were CAM-fuelled) and extended family.
There’s a “ripple effect” of beds occupied, medical professionals and support staff diverted, onlookers duped and misdirected for the benefit of bank accounts and ill-informed egos, herd immunity undermined, ailments untended and spreading avoidably while other patients are denied treatment- such is the opportunity cost.
Am I wrong to be angered at the thought a child suffered more as a lever for nonsense? Am I wrong to ponder whether such gibberish as CAM is more than just a silly idea, it’s harmful root and branch?
As I’ve said before, I think the greatest unkindness of CAM false promise is the flash flood of grief that follows a life’s end tortured and memories tarnished. The medical professional will say, “we can do no more,” thereby allowing patient and loved ones to come to terms with and prepare – then comes CAM, sickening CAM hijacking choices with misinformation as the weapon.
Disclaimers have very little legal force. A court will always interpret marketing claims on the basis of what the average reader will understand is the message.
The Ghana Homeopathy Project is one of scores of quack charities that I have identified so far. More on my blog:
https://majikthyse.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/the-charity-commission-consultation/
Dasilva-Hill of course gives no references for her claims about “Goldman Sacks (sic)”. Frankly I don’t believe it.
Quote: “Is that not illegal?”
It is certainly justified to ask why it is not, because people like Ms. Dasilva-Hill cause great harm.
Regarding vaccination trials in Africa, let me translate a short paragraph from the book ‘”Gesundheit” written by Natalie Grams:
QUOTE (translated from the German text):
One -fortunately very small- study made in Africa exists, that directly compared a group of non-vaccinated with a group of vaccinated individuals. The result impressively demonstrates why such a trial is not humane and unethical:
Out of 25 children vaccinated according to the current guidelines, only one child got a mild form of the measles. In the non-vaccinated group, two children died before the age of 3 from a measles infection and eleven more got seriously ill from the measles. Furthermore, one child from the non-vaccinated group died from a tetanus infection (Epoke et al. 1990, Tropical and Geographical Medicine 42(2), 182-184).
END OF QUOTE
There are so many examples for vaccination being onne of the greatest success stories of modern medicine (Polio, HPV, Influenca, etc. etc. etc.) that promoting homeopathy instead of vaccination is more than gross negligence – it should be treated as criminal behavior.
Dasilva-Hill’s claim that her advice does not constitute ‘medical advice’ is false, misleading and an attempt at fraud.
Hahnemann devised homeopathy to be based on different principles from and an alternative to the ‘medicine’ of his day (which he styled as ‘allopathy’), but homeopathy is still a system for attending to ailments and diseases – homeopathy is a system of medicine (albeit ineffective). What else?
Any advice as given by D-H is ‘medical advice’. What else is it?
Such quack Miranda disclaimers have no meaning if they are meaningless or fraudulent.
Check out: http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2008/01/14/quack-miranda-warning/
“These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”
This “Quack Miranda Warning” is on every just about every woo-meister’s website. I see dozens of patients every day, and I never Mirandize them, so whats the deal?
There are three ways to look at this: the truthful way, the sinister way, and the bat-shit insane way.
Truth: Anyone who wants to sell you something that’s a load of crap must use this statement to cover themselves legally.
Sinister: Variation of above–someone wants to sell you something that you are supposed to believe is medically useful, but at the same time they tell you in fine print that it is not medically useful. When it doesn’t work, they don’t get sued. I wonder why anyone would buy something with that disclaimer attatched to it? When I treat someone for a medical problem, I pretty much say that I intend to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease. Why would I say otherwise? It would be a lie. Also, who would go to see a doctor that told you that they didn’t intend to diagnose or treat disease. The whole thing is bizarre.
Bat-shit insane: The FDA and Big Pharma are in cahoots with the AMA to keep you from learning all the simple ways to treat diseases. They want your money, and they’ll do anything they can to get it from you, including suppressing the knowledge that anyone can learn to heal cancer.
I can’t really help the people who believe #3, but people who are willing to suspend their paranoia should read #’s 1 and 2 a few times. Unless you’re being arrested, no one should be reading you your rights. The Quack Miranda Statement is the red flag that should send you running.”
Grace Dasila-Hill is a fraud, what else? She will no doubt sue me for saying that. Bring it on (I am a man of straw).
There is no scientific evidence that I know of that homeopathy offers prophylaxis against any of the WHO listed diseases: Wikipedia: 25 diseases for which vaccines are available:[2]
Measles
Rubella
Cholera
Meningococcal disease
Influenza
Diphtheria
Mumps
Tetanus
Hepatitis A
Pertussis
Tuberculosis
Hepatitis B
Pneumoccocal disease
Typhoid fever
Hepatitis E
Poliomyelitis
Tick-borne encephalitis
Haemophilus influenzae type b
Rabies
Varicella and herpes zoster (shingles)
Human papilloma-virus
Rotavirus gastroenteritis
Yellow fever
Japanese encephalitis
Malaria[6]
Dengue fever[7]
As far as I know, evidence of the between ASD and vaccination is conjectural.
I do not know this:
Professor Edzard Ernst: ‘It takes not long to find even VIP-members of the SoH putting parents off from immunising their kids.’
What evidence does Professor Ernst have for this statement?
just google yourself!
or take Mrs Hill as an example.
Google myself? Are you suggesting that I am doing this?
‘Edzard’, I will have to write to Professor Ernst to ask him to block you, if this is what you mean.
I suspected that you might find this too difficult – therefore I added: “or take Mrs Hill as an example.”
I have long ago reached the conclusion that one should listen to what homeopaths say, then take the opposite of their words to find at least a semblance of truth. Or more cynically: how can you tell when homeopaths are not telling the truth? Their mouth is open.
This article by mrs. DaSilva-Hill is no exception. One can easily spot a dozen or more untruths here in a mere ten paragraphs. As an example, let me just point out one sentence, presenting several consecutive whoppers:
Um, no. The opposite is true: homeopathy has nothing to offer. Literally.
I’m not really sure about ‘sustainable’ either, as it requires clean water, and lots of it. And most of it is thrown away during the dilution process. And what’s not sustainable about real medicine?
Nope, homeopathy is a belief system, based on premises for which no scientific evidence has ever been found. It is not a form of medicine.
And this is the most hilarious one. Most homeopaths charge their
victclients more per hour than the average GP makes, while offering nothing but placebos. And look at Boiron: an annual turnover of well over half a billion dollars selling sugar pellets that have been proven not to work, and spending less than 4 million on ‘research’ – just over 0.6% of the annual turnover. Their biggest expense is marketing, i.e. convincing people to buy their useless sugar crumbs. It is nothing but ‘market forces’ in the most capitalist sense thinkable: they make millions by marketing and selling the cheapest thing possible: the illusion of medicine.Then there’s this: real doctors can and do abandon treatments and medicines that have been proven not to work. There are more than enough treatments that do work to keep them busy in a useful manner. In fact, they’re more than happy to abandon ineffective treatments.
Homeopaths, on the other hand, can’t do this, because they’d be out of a job immediately, as 100% of what they do is ineffective. In other words: they have no choice but to keep on deceiving people if they want to eat. (Well, OK, that, or make a radical career change.) Market forces are such that continuing their deceptive trade is by far the easiest way to make a living. That they keep on deceiving themselves in the process is a mitigating factor at best.
I fully agree with RichardR, but in order to give his (?) wise words the status they deserve, please would he identify himself – or if he will not do so, please explain why not.
What has he got to hide?
Anonymity depreciates the value of his postings to homeopathic proportions.
Flattered though I am by your words of appreciation, I find it a bit of an curious request. Many other commenters here also choose to remain anonymous. Why would knowing my full identity add more weight to my words? Is it the fact that I would be more accountable then?
One reason for me to maintain anonymity is that I have a small business in (largely biomedical) electronics R&D, and that I’m not particularly looking forward to receiving unsolicited messages pertaining to my activities on blogs and forums like these, something that I still consider a bit of a hobby. Also, I’m not a well-known person in any sense, and apart from things like this, I prefer to maintain a low profile.
Then again, it is a hobby that is getting somewhat out of hand, and I’m also working on a book about things such as quackery, irrational beliefs and fears, modern hypes, etcetera. If and when that ever gets published, the cat’s out of the bag anyway with regard to my identity.
So let me think about it, and if you can provide some more reasons for revealing my personal details (uninteresting though they are IMHO), I’d appreciate it. I’ll most certainly take it into account.
Dasilva-Hill is a member of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths (ARH) rather than the Society of Homeopaths (SoH). The ARH are even less bothered by what members get up to. ARH members tend to be rather more extreme than SoH members – Steve Scrutton is an obvious example. SoH members should be starting to amend websites regarding claims made for CEASE therapy but do need to be mindful of claims about vaccination as well.
The article pretty standard guff for a lay homeopath and repeats the lie that there is a massive increase in autism – best studies suggest prevalence hasn’t changed. Homeopaths really buy into the vaccines cause autism bit. But they don’t just spread this online. My research has revealed that many are involved with local Arnica https://www.arnica.org.uk/ groups. Indeed, some lead these groups. Arnica is incredibly anti-vaccination and part of its modus operandi is to spread unsubstantiated gossip and rumours about “vaccine damage” within closed Facebook groups. It’s a ready made market for lay homeopaths.
This post http://ukhomeopathyregulation.blogspot.com/2018/06/homeopathic-treatment-of-autism.html is mostly about CEASE therapy but it does demonstrate how bad some lay homeopaths are.
Stupidity cannot be eradicated it is growing always everywhere in any profession…
Smallpox vaccination remained compulsory for everybody without exception and it is compulsory too that any person undergoing medical interventions has to join an elaborate explanatory meeting and must be informed about the risks and this has to be signed by the patient or by the subject’s legally acceptable representative and by the person who conducted the informed consent discussion before it is done.
It would be very easy for politicians to make similar regulations that ALL health care professions must follow the evidence based standards first and are not allowed to work against or without it neither in surgery nor in medication nor in vaccination and that the patients must be informed compulsory about such standards from the very beginning of a consultation.
It was possible to compel ANYBODY to be vaccinated against smallpox. Therefore the same legislative force must be behind evidence based medicine too. ANY health care professional must be forced to inform themselves about the evidence based standard AT ANY TIME (in Germany the AWMF guidelines) AND TO INFORM ANY PATIENT ABOUT THIS STANDARD (e.g. STIKO RECOMMENDED VACCINATION) in an elaborate explanatory meeting and about the risks not following such standards and this has to be signed by the patient or by the subject’s legally acceptable representative and by the person who conducted the informed consent discussion before it is done as soon as a patient is coming with a disease or illness related to such standards!
ONLY A WELL INFORMED PATIENT HAS A CHOICE. Parents must be compelled to accept the evidence based standards for their children without any choice regarding vaccinations as it was in times of smallpox vaccination too. That is much easier to control than to let anybody making his own decisions about officially recommended vaccinations.
Stupidity is growing everywhere don’t leave it open to follow such stupidity:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=IRuS07fn60w
News against HPV vaccination from the private physician and homoeopath and osteopath and naturopath and craniopath Ralf Kron. This journal is spread and sold allover in Switzerland. Why can he still be a physician?
https://www.natuerlich-online.ch/magazin/artikel/hpv-toedliche-impfung/
The best way is, to inform the patients about the functions of their own body. As a German Heilpraktiker/naturopath I am well informed about the arguments and activities of the anti-vaccinists and I had a few phone calls the last months to the authorities of different regional public health departments to inform them about measles parties and other activities of the anti-vaccine movement, so that they can react efficiently right in time.
I always have discussions with patients and it takes time, to help them to overcome their fear and to understand, what vaccination does and why the ingredients like boosters are not harmful.
E.g. responding to anti-vaccinist’s arguments and scares: “Formaldehyde doesn’t belong to human body” some typical scares circulating on social media and in books of alternative medicine:
Formaldehyde is required for cell growth in all living cells. You would be somewhat dead without formaldehyde because of a biochemical pathway called the one-carbon cycle, which uses endogenously produced formaldehyde to make the essential biomolecules amino acids and DNA. Two important sources of endogenous (produced internally) formaldehyde are the amino acid serine, and tetrahydrofolic acid, a form of Vitamin B9.
The one-carbon cycle is a fundamental process which is present in all forms of life, right down to bacteria.
Endogenous turnover of formaldehyde was estimated to be approximately 878–1310 mg/kg bw per day assuming a half-life of 1.5 min.
Let’s compare that 50 grams that human body makes daily to the amount of formaldehyde you might ingest from other sources:
One packet of aspartame is converted to 10 mg of formaldehyde (0.02% of 50 grams)
A pear (16 mg, 0.03%)
One kilogram of coffee (4 mg, 0.0075%)
Do you see how ridiculous are the formaldehyde scares?
How would a homeopath approach the new corona virus pandemic?
Should we abandon our research for a vaccine,to counter this virus?