bogus claims
Four speakers have been announced for next year’s conference (25-26 April 2020) of the UK ‘Society of Homeopaths’ (SoH). It has the theme ‘All About Men’ (which is surprising considering the majority of homeopathy fans are women). The meeting will aim to provide a better understanding of men’s lives and illnesses in order for practitioners to help them seek homeopathic treatments with confidence.
One of the 4 speakers will be California-based chiropractor, homeopath and health coach Joel Kriesberg. The SoH’s announcement proudly states that “Joel Kreisberg is going to bring the very interesting tool, the Enneagram, which was originally devised by the famous philosopher, George Gurdjieff. This is the first time Joel has lectured in the UK and he is well respected and highly thought of by the likes of Karen Allen and Dana Ullman.”
(A note to the SoH: Gurdjieff did not devise the Enneagram, he popularised it; perhaps you want to correct this statement?)
But, what is the ENNEAGRAM?
According to Wikipedia, the Enneagram (from the Greek words ἐννέα [ennéa, meaning “nine”] and γράμμα [grámma, meaning something “written” or “drawn”[1]]), is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. Although the origins and history of many of the ideas and theories associated with the Enneagram of Personality are a matter of dispute, contemporary Enneagram claims are principally derived from the teachings of Oscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo. Naranjo’s theories were partly influenced by some earlier teachings of George Gurdjieff. As a typology the Enneagram defines nine personality types (sometimes called “enneatypes”), which are represented by the points of a geometric figure called an enneagram,[2] which indicate connections between the types. There are different schools of thought among Enneagram teachers, therefore their ideas are not always in agreement.
The Enneagram of Personality has been widely promoted in both business management and spirituality contexts through seminars, conferences, books, magazines, and DVDs.[3][4] In business contexts it is generally used as a typology to gain insights into workplace interpersonal-dynamics; in spirituality it is more commonly presented as a path to higher states of being, essence, and enlightenment. Both contexts say it can aid in self-awareness, self-understanding and self-development.[3]
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In a nutshell, the Enneagram is an obsolete personality test that has never been properly validated and is today used mostly by quacks and other dubious characters and institutions. Yet, this is what Kriesberg has to say on his website about the use of the Enneagram in homeopathy:
The Enneagram’s application to homeopathy and health coaching makes a dramatic difference as it allows practitioner to identify the client’s learning style quickly. As we engage the Enneagram, we are able to provide specific developmental paths and activities based on their Enneagram style. Healing is faster, deeper, and has longer-lasting results.
To teach all this, Kriesberg is offering classes that are grounded in Tinus Smits’ method for studying universal healing with homeopathy, in which direct experience of the Enneagram types is enhanced by the use of homeopathic remedies.
Tinus Smits! … where have I heard this name before?
Ah yes, this is the homeopath who invented CEASE!
Smits became convinced that autism is caused by a child’s exposure to an accumulation of toxic substances and published several books about his theory. In his experience (as far as I can see, Smits never published a single scientific paper in the peer-reviewed literature) autism is caused by an accumulation of different toxins. About 70% is due to vaccines, 25% to toxic medication and other toxic substances, 5% to some diseases. According to the ‘like cures like’ principle of homeopathy, Smits claimed that autism must be cured by applying homeopathic doses of the substances which caused autism. Step by step all assumed causative factors (vaccines, regular medication, environmental toxic exposures, effects of illness, etc.) are detoxified with the homeopathically prepared substances that has been administered prior to the onset of autism. Smits and his followers believe that this procedure clears out the energetic field of the patient from the imprint of toxic substances or diseases.
I herewith congratulate the SoH on their forthcoming conference – an event that must not be missed! They have managed to pack an unprecedented amount of unethical nonsense into just one lecture!
A systematic review of the evidence for effectiveness and harms of specific spinal manipulation therapy (SMT) techniques for infants, children and adolescents has been published by Dutch researchers. I find it important to stress from the outset that the authors are not affiliated with chiropractic institutions and thus free from such conflicts of interest.
They searched electronic databases up to December 2017. Controlled studies, describing primary SMT treatment in infants (<1 year) and children/adolescents (1–18 years), were included to determine effectiveness. Controlled and observational studies and case reports were included to examine harms. One author screened titles and abstracts and two authors independently screened the full text of potentially eligible studies for inclusion. Two authors assessed risk of bias of included studies and quality of the body of evidence using the GRADE methodology. Data were described according to PRISMA guidelines and CONSORT and TIDieR checklists. If appropriate, random-effects meta-analysis was performed.
Of the 1,236 identified studies, 26 studies were eligible. In all but 3 studies, the therapists were chiropractors. Infants and children/adolescents were treated for various (non-)musculoskeletal indications, hypothesized to be related to spinal joint dysfunction. Studies examining the same population, indication and treatment comparison were scarce. Due to very low quality evidence, it is uncertain whether gentle, low-velocity mobilizations reduce complaints in infants with colic or torticollis, and whether high-velocity, low-amplitude manipulations reduce complaints in children/adolescents with autism, asthma, nocturnal enuresis, headache or idiopathic scoliosis. Five case reports described severe harms after HVLA manipulations in 4 infants and one child. Mild, transient harms were reported after gentle spinal mobilizations in infants and children, and could be interpreted as side effect of treatment.
The authors concluded that, based on GRADE methodology, we found the evidence was of very low quality; this prevented us from drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of specific SMT techniques in infants, children and adolescents. Outcomes in the included studies were mostly parent or patient-reported; studies did not report on intermediate outcomes to assess the effectiveness of SMT techniques in relation to the hypothesized spinal dysfunction. Severe harms were relatively scarce, poorly described and likely to be associated with underlying missed pathology. Gentle, low-velocity spinal mobilizations seem to be a safe treatment technique in infants, children and adolescents. We encourage future research to describe effectiveness and safety of specific SMT techniques instead of SMT as a general treatment approach.
We have often noted that, in chiropractic trials, harms are often not mentioned (a fact that constitutes a violation of research ethics). This was again confirmed in the present review; only 4 of the controlled clinical trials reported such information. This means harms cannot be evaluated by reviewing such studies. One important strength of this review is that the authors realised this problem and thus included other research papers for assessing the risks of SMT. Consequently, they found considerable potential for harm and stress that under-reporting remains a serious issue.
Another problem with SMT papers is their often very poor methodological quality. The authors of the new review make this point very clearly and call for more rigorous research. On this blog, I have repeatedly shown that research by chiropractors resembles more a promotional exercise than science. If this field wants to ever go anywhere, if needs to adopt rigorous science and forget about its determination to advance the business of chiropractors.
I feel it is important to point out that all of this has been known for at least one decade (even though it has never been documented so scholarly as in this new review). In fact, when in 2008, my friend and co-author Simon Singh, published that chiropractors ‘happily promote bogus treatments’ for children, he was sued for libel. Since then, I have been legally challenged twice by chiropractors for my continued critical stance on chiropractic. So, essentially nothing has changed; I certainly do not see the will of leading chiropractic bodies to bring their house in order.
May I therefore once again suggest that chiropractors (and other spinal manipulators) across the world, instead of aggressing their critics, finally get their act together. Until we have conclusive data showing that SMT does more good than harm to kids, the right thing to do is this: BEHAVE LIKE ETHICAL HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS: BE HONEST ABOUT THE EVIDENCE, STOP MISLEADING PARENTS AND STOP TREATING THEIR CHILDREN!
I have met many acupuncturists who think that homeopathy is bunk. Similarly, I have met many homeopaths who are convinced that acupuncture is a placebo therapy. And, I have met some (not many) practitioners of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) who think so highly of both SCAMs that they combine the two into one handy treatment: HOMEOPUNCTURE.
I had almost forgotten (or is supressed the correct verb?) but, to be entirely truthful, a long time ago (in the mid 1970s), I even experimented with this odd therapy myself. When I worked as a junior doctor in a homeopathic hospital, several of my collegues practised homeopuncture and taught me how to do it. Essentially, you inject homeopathic remedies into acupuncture points. My colleagues told me that this approach is more powerful than each method alone. I tried it several times but remained unconvinced.
Recently, a German Heilpraktiker (Andreas Maier), reminded me of all this. Here is what he states on his website about homeopuncture:
In traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture in addition to the herb medicine as well as certain movement therapies (eg. B. Gong Qi) constituting an important element in the treatment of diseases.
By stimulating energy points with the help of fine needles will then attempts to harmonize the flow of vital energy. a disruption of vital energy because (also called Qi), is considered in Chinese medicine as a cause of any disease.
Only when the energy flows freely through all the tissues and organs of the body, the organism can develop normally and is healthy. A similar approach is also the Homeopathy, which originated at the other end of the world, namely in Germany.
Samuel Hahnemann (1755 – 1843), the discoverer of this method of healing, also saw a failure of the life force as a pathogenic factor.
By smallest stimuli the homeopath tries to eliminate these disease-causing disorder and bring about healing. Unlike in the acupuncture reduced drug doses to be used strictly in accordance with the principle of similarity are selected.
Mid-19th century was the German physician Dr. August consecration firmly (1840- 1896) that disease with painful spots may accompany the body.
These pain points are often far from the actual disease process. The phenomenon was known to the Chinese for thousands of years in Europe, however, no one had yet busy. Dr. Weihe, himself a keen homeopath, was in the treatment of his patients finally see that by the suitably chosen homeopathic healed not only the disease, but also disappeared the painfulness of the points.
It was surprising that certain homeopathic remedies appear to be well-defined points had a direct bearing on the body.
A few years later, the Chinese medicine and acupuncture also reached the European continent, they took Weihe discoveries closer look. A comparison of the so-called consecration points with acupuncture points showed significant matches.
The more than 300 known Weihe points are also used therapeutically since both diagnosis. Because they can provide information on the pathological processes in the body and on the displayed homeopathic. thus the Homöopunktur brings together the findings from Chinese medicine and homeopathy. The treatment can be done differently.
On the one hand the consecration points can be traditionally stimulated with fine needles, concomitant administration of homeopathic medicine. With the help of injection preparations, means may also be injected directly to the point.
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(sorry about my friend’s poor English; I hope you could make sense of it)
I don’t think I need to tell you what the evidence tells us about homeopuncture. Yes, you guessed it: nothing! But the idea of combining SCAMs is fascinating nevertheless. So, let me suggest a few further SCAM combinations that might be attractive:
- acupuncture + massage (sorry, that already exists under the name of shiatsu)
- colonic irrigation + coffea (that to is already taken by the Gerson guys)
- art therapy + homeopathy (too late: this one too already exists; painting homeopathy on the body surface)
- detox + meditation (no, the health retreat/wellness entrepreneurs might get upset)
I am clearly not very successful at finding viable SCAM combinations. Let’s look for something innovative, something that nobody has yet thought of. How about:
- homeo-laugh (homeopathy followed by an explanation what homeopathy is resulting in laughter; not sure that this would sell all that well)
- kinesiology colour taping (instead of using random colours for kinesiology tape, this approach uses the wisdom of coulourtherapists to match the patient’s individual colour requirements; this means the therapists needs dual qualifications and can thus charge double – I think that might be attractive!)
- autologous slapping therapy (this combination of slapping and autologous blood therapy (ABT) means the therapist has to hit so hard that the patient develops sizable haematomas which are the ABT part of the intervention; perhaps a bit risky, as some patients might call the police)
- effective reverse energy transfer counselling, ERETC (the patients is counselled that his money can, with the help of the therapist, be converted into pure healing energy; to make it work, the patient needs to transfer it to the account of the therapist – the more the better)
I think I like ERECT best; in fact, I will start work on it straight away. It still needs to be perfected, but once it’s up and running, it will be just great and, as the name already makes clear, effective – not for the patient, but for the therapist!
I live (most of my time) in the UK, a country where the media interest in so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) is considerable. Years ago, the UK press used to be very much in favour of SCAM. In 2000, we showed that the level of interest was huge and the reporting was biased. Here is our short BMJ paper on the subject:
The media strongly influences the public’s view of medical matters.1 Thus, we sought to determine the frequency and tone of reporting on medical topics in daily newspapers in the United Kingdom and Germany. The following eight newspapers were scanned for medical articles on eight randomly chosen working days in the summer of 1999: the Times, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the Guardian in the United Kingdom, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, and Die Welt in Germany. All articles relating to medical topics were extracted and categorised according to subject, length, and tone of article (critical, positive, or neutral).
A total of 256 newspaper articles were evaluated. The results of our analysis are summarised in the table. We identified 80 articles in the German newspapers and 176 in the British; thus, British newspapers seem to report on medical topics more than twice as often as German broadsheets. Articles in German papers are on average considerably longer and take a positive attitude more often than British ones. Drug treatment was the medical topic most frequently discussed in both countries (51 articles (64%) in German newspapers and 97 (55%) in British). Surgery was the second most commonly discussed medical topic in the UK newspapers (32 articles; 18%). In Germany professional politics was the second most commonly discussed topic (11 articles; 14%); this category included articles about the standing of the medical profession, health care, and social and economic systems—that is, issues not strictly about treating patients.
Because our particular interest is in complementary medicine, we also calculated the number of articles on this subject. We identified four articles in the German newspapers and 26 in the UK newspapers. In the United Kingdom the tone of these articles was unanimously positive (100%) whereas most (3; 75%) of the German articles on complementary medicine were critical.
This analysis is, of course, limited by its small sample size, the short observation period, and the subjectivity of some of the end points. Yet it does suggest that, compared with German newspapers, British newspapers report more frequently on medical matters and generally have a more critical attitude (table). German newspapers frequently discuss medical professional politics, a subject that is almost totally absent from newspapers in the United Kingdom.
The proportion of articles about complementary medicine seems to be considerably larger in the United Kingdom (15% v 5%), and, in contrast to articles on medical matters in general, reporting on complementary medicine in the United Kingdom is overwhelmingly positive. In view of the fact that both healthcare professionals and the general public gain their knowledge of complementary medicine predominantly from the media, these findings may be important.2,3
Table
Reporting on medical topics by daily newspapers in the United Kingdom and Germany, 1999
|
Country |
||
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (n=176) | Germany (n=80) | |
| Mean No articles/day | 5.5 | 2.5 |
| Mean (SD) No words/article | 130 (26) | 325 (41) |
| Ratio of positive articles to critical articles* | 1.0 | 3.2 |
Even though I have no new data on this, my impression is that things have since changed. It seems that the UK press has become more objective and are now reporting more critical comments on SCAM. While this is most welcome, of course, one feature is still deplorable, in my view: journalists’ obsession with ‘balance’.
A recent example might explain this best. The ‘i’ newspaper published an article about homeopathy which was well-written and thoroughly researched. It explained the current best evidence on the subject and made it quite clear why homeopathy is not a reasonable therapy for any condition. But then, towards the end of the article, the journalist added this section:
Dr Lise Hansen, a veterinary homeopath based in London and author of a forthcoming book, The Complete Book of Cat and Dog Health, argues that scientists have shown how homeopathy works. She cites a paper by Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for his role in discovering HIV. The following year, he published evidence of his discovery of “electromagnet signals that are produced by nanostructures derived from bacterial DNA at high aqueous dilutions”. “Mainstream medicine is about chemistry, homeopathy is physics and scientists have only recently begun to study these nanostructures,” Hansen says.
Basically, the reader is left with the impression that homeopathy might be fine after all, and that science will soon be able to catch up with it. In the interest of balance, the journalist thus confused her readers and misled the public.
Why?
Journalists are obviously taught to always cover ‘both sides’ of their stories, and they adhere to this dogma no matter what. In most instances, this works out well, because in most cases there are two sides.
But not always!
When there is a strong consensus supported by facts, science and reproducible findings, the other side ceases to have a reasonable point. There simply is no reasonable ‘other side’ when we consider global warming, evolution, the Holocaust, and many other subjects. Of course, one can always find some loon who claims the earth is flat, or that cancer is a Jewish plot against public health. But these arguments lack reason and integrity – to dish them out without anything remotely resembling a ‘fact check’ is not just annoying but harmful.
Journalists should, in my view, be more responsible, check the facts, and avoid false balance. I know this will often entail much more work, but they owe it to their readers and to the reputation of their profession.
The World Federation of Chiropractic (WFC) claim to have been at the forefront of the global development of chiropractic. Representing the interests of the profession in over 90 countries worldwide, the WFC has advocated, defended and promoted the profession across its 7 world regions. Now, the WFC have formulated 20 principles setting out who they are, what they stand for, and how chiropractic as a global health profession can, in their view, impact on nations so that populations can thrive and reach their full potential. Here are the 20 principles (in italics followed by some brief comments by me in normal print):
1. We envision a world where people of all ages, in all countries, can access the benefits of chiropractic.
That means babies and infants! What about the evidence?
2. We are driven by our mission to advance awareness, utilization and integration of chiropractic internationally.
One could almost suspect that the drive is motivated by misleading the public about the risks and benefits of spinal manipulation for financial gain.
3. We believe that science and research should inform care and policy decisions and support calls for wider access to chiropractic.
If science and research truly did inform care, it would soon be chiropractic-free.
4. We maintain that chiropractic extends beyond the care of patients to the promotion of better health and the wellbeing of our communities.
The best example to show that this statement is a politically correct platitude is the fact that so many chiropractors are (educated to become) convinced that vaccinations are undesirable or harmful.
5. We champion the rights of chiropractors to practice according to their training and expertise.
I am not sure what this means. Could it mean that they must practice according to their training and expertise, even if both fly in the face of the evidence?
6. We promote evidence-based practice: integrating individual clinical expertise, the best available evidence from clinical research, and the values and preferences of patients.
So far, I have seen little to convince me that chiropractors care a hoot about the best available evidence and plenty to fear that they supress it, if it does not enhance their business.
7. We are committed to supporting our member national associations through advocacy and sharing best practices for the benefit of patients and society.
Much more likely for the benefit of chiropractors, I suspect.
8. We acknowledge the role of chiropractic care, including the chiropractic adjustment, to enhance function, improve mobility, relieve pain and optimize wellbeing.
Of course, you have to pretend that chiropractic adjustments (of subluxations) are useful. However, evidence would be better than pretence.
9. We support research that investigates the methods, mechanisms, and outcomes of chiropractic care for the benefit of patients, and the translation of research outcomes into clinical practice.
And if it turns out to be to the detriment of the patient? It seems to me that you seem to know the result of the research before you started it. That does not bode well for its reliability.
10. We believe that chiropractors are important members of a patient’s healthcare team and that interprofessional approaches best facilitate optimum outcomes.
Of course you do believe that. Why don’t you show us some evidence that your belief is true?
11. We believe that chiropractors should be responsible public health advocates to improve the wellbeing of the communities they serve.
Of course you do believe that. But, in fact, many chiropractors are actively undermining the most important public health measure, vaccination.
12. We celebrate individual and professional diversity and equality of opportunity and represent these values throughout our Board and committees.
What you should be celebrating is critical assessment of all chiropractic concepts. This is the only way to make progress and safeguard the interests of the patient.
13. We believe that patients have a fundamental right to ethical, professional care and the protection of enforceable regulation in upholding good conduct and practice.
The truth is that many chiropractors violate medical ethics on a daily basis, for instance, by not obtaining fully informed consent.
14. We serve the global profession by promoting collaboration between and amongst organizations and individuals who support the vision, mission, values and objectives of the WFC.
Yes, those who support your vision, mission, values and objectives are your friends; those who dare criticising them are your enemies. It seems far from you to realise that criticism generates progress, perhaps not for the WFC, but for the patient.
15. We support high standards of chiropractic education that empower graduates to serve their patients and communities as high value, trusted health professionals.
For instance, by educating students to become anti-vaxxers or by teaching them obsolete concepts such as adjustment of subluxation?
16. We believe in nurturing, supporting, mentoring and empowering students and early career chiropractors.
You are surpassing yourself in the formulation of platitudes.
17. We are committed to the delivery of congresses and events that inspire, challenge, educate, inform and grow the profession through respectful discourse and positive professional development.
You are surpassing yourself in the formulation of platitudes.
18. We believe in continuously improving our understanding of the biomechanical, neurophysiological, psychosocial and general health effects of chiropractic care.
Even if there are no health effects?!?
19. We advocate for public statements and claims of effectiveness for chiropractic care that are honest, legal, decent and truthful.
Advocating claims of effectiveness in the absence of proof of effectiveness is neither honest, legal, decent or truthful, in my view.
20. We commit to an EPIC future for chiropractic: evidence-based, people-centered, interprofessional and collaborative.
And what do you propose to do with the increasing mountain of evidence suggesting that your spinal adjustments are not evidence-based as well as harmful to the health and wallets of your patients?
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What do I take out of all this? Not a lot!
Perhaps mainly this: the WFC is correct when stating that, in the interests of the profession in over 90 countries worldwide, the WFC has advocated, defended and promoted the profession across its 7 world regions. What is missing here is a small but important addition to the sentence: in the interests of the profession and against the interest of patients, consumers or public health in over 90 countries worldwide, the WFC has advocated, defended and promoted the profession across its 7 world regions.
I have often discussed the fact that many proponents of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) have in recent years adopted the following argument: even if our SCAM were just a placebo, it would still be useful. After all, placebo effects are real and increasingly backed by sound science. The argument is deeply flawed, yet it convinces many lay people.
A recent article by Fabrizio Benedetti, the leading researcher in the area of placebo, is addressing exactly this issue. I feel that it is sufficiently important to quote it extensively here:
… a number of biochemical pathways, such as endogenous opioids and cannabinoids,5,6 and brain regions, like the prefrontal cortex, have been found to be involved in placebo analgesia. Likewise, dopamine and the basal ganglia circuitry have been found to mediate placebo responses in Parkinson’s disease. Although this is wonderful news for science, this may not be the case for society. The number of nonmedical organizations and healers that rely on this hard science, and actually justify their odd and bizarre procedures, has increased over the past few years. The main claim is that any procedure boosting patients’ expectations, which represent the main mediator of placebo effects, is acceptable because it can activate the same biochemical pathways and neural networks that have been made credible by hard science…
The crucial point here is that when hard science started investigating placebo effects, it unconsciously produced a shift in quackery thinking. In fact, charlatans are becoming more and more aware that their bizarre interventions could work through a placebo effect. Indeed, whereas hard science has so far denied any scientific basis for nonconventional therapies, now the very same hard science certifies that the placebo effect has scientific grounds. Therefore, quacks are no longer interested in showing that their pseudo-interventions work; rather, they justify their use on the basis of the possibility that these bizarre interventions may induce strong placebo effects…
… A first point that should be emphasized is that placebos do not cure, but rather, they may sometimes improve quality of life. There is plenty of confusion on this point, and unfortunately, many claim that they can cure virtually all illnesses with placebos. Hard science tells us that placebos can reduce symptoms such as pain and muscle rigidity in Parkinson’s disease, yet the progression of the disease is not affected; for example, in Parkinson’s disease, neurons keep degenerating even though some symptoms can be reduced for a short time.4 The second point is related to the first. The type of disease is crucial, and we need to make people understand that pain is different from cancer and that anxiety differs from infectious diseases. The psychological component of some illnesses can indeed be modulated by placebos, but placebos cannot stop cancer growth, nor can they kill the bacteria of pneumonia. The third point is related to the difference between real placebo effects and spontaneous remissions. So far, hard science has studied the placebo effect within a time span of hours/days, thereby limiting our knowledge to short-lasting effects. Consequently, long-lasting effects can be often attributed to spontaneous remissions.
In addition to these three important points, we should also make patients understand that a diagnosis is required before any sort of therapy. An apparently trivial pain may conceal a danger; thus, it must never be treated unless a diagnosis has been made before, and this can be made only by physicians. Moreover, not only should we discuss and consider the positive effects of placebos and the impact they may have in clinical trials and medical practice, but we should also pay much of our attention to the negative counterpart, that is, the misuse and abuse by quacks, charlatans, shamans, and nonmedical organizations. Thus, we need to inform the whole society that the benefits following a nonconventional healing procedure are attributable to a placebo effect in most of the cases. Last but not least, we need to be more honest on the real efficacy of many pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments, acknowledging that some of them are useful whereas some others are not: This will boost patients’ trust and confidence in medicine further, which I believe are the best foes of quackery…
…Unfortunately, quackery has today one more weapon on its side, which is paradoxically represented by the hard science–supported placebo mechanisms. This new “scientific quackery” can do a lot of damage; thus, we must be very cautious and vigilant as to how the findings of hard science are exploited. The study of the biology of these vulnerable aspects of mankind may unravel new mechanisms of how our brain works, but it may have a profound negative impact on our society as well. We cannot accept a world where expectations can be enhanced with any means and by anybody. This is a perspective that would surely be worrisome and dangerous. I believe that some reflections are necessary in order to avoid a regression of medicine to past times, in which quackery and shamanism were dominant. Unfortunately, the new knowledge about placebos by hard science is now backfiring on it. What we need to do is to stop for a while and reflect on what we are doing and how we want to move forward. A crucial question to answer is, Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?
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I am immensely thankful to Prof Benedetti to make such clear and long-overdue statements. They will be most helpful in refuting the myth that homeopathy, para-normal healing, reflexology, acupuncture, chiropractic, etc., etc. are legitimate and uselful therapies, even if they are not better than a placebo. Using placebo therapies in routine care is not in the best interest of either the patient or progress.
Some of you might have followed my recent discussion with a homeopath. It followed a typical path, and I decided therefore to try and analyse this exchange here. Perhaps others can learn from this example when debating with homeopaths or other providers of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM).
THE START
These conversations often start ‘out of the blue’ by some falsehood being trumpeted on social media. In the present case, the encounter commenced by someone tweeting this message to me: “…remember that asthma trial whose results you faked?” As I did not even remember having ever met the man, I was perplexed. And as I have not faked the study in question nor any other results, I did not think his remark was credible or funny. My mention of the fact that the aggressor was being libellous seemed to bring an end to this unhappy dialogue.
But not for very long. When the man insulted me again – this time very publicly in a UK newspaper – I decided to look into it a bit closer. The aggressor turned out to be in charge of the well-known UK homeopathic pharmacy, Ainsworth, and thus had an overt conflict of interest in defaming my often critical stance on homeopathy. Intriguingly, he had also published his own study of homeopathy. When I assessed this research, it turned out to be both incompetent and unethical. I had hoped that he would defend his work and discuss its limitations with me in a rational fashion. Yet, at this stage, he remained silent.
I then decided to write a further post in the hope of getting some sort of response from him. Alas, my hope was disappointed again. Even when I challenged him and his ROYAL WARRANT directly, he remained silent.
THE BUILD-UP
It needed a seemingly unrelated post of mine for him to find his voice:
Dear Ezard
We can all go round in endless circles arguing whether the Earth is Flat, but eventually someone has to venture out in a boat to the horizon to determine the fact. A cursory reading of Hahnemann encourages every student of homoeopathy to gain their own experience empirically. We all know you and your friends on this blog are standing on the shore proclaiming the Earth to be flat, but when are you going to pedal out,to bravely cite actual cases you have treated with homoeopathy as evidence of your position? What the audience reading this wants to know is what experience and knowledge any of you actually have of the subject you spend so much time criticising?
At this stage a had grown a little weary of Mr Pinkus and his innuendos. My response was thus a little impatient:
Dear Tony
I don’t think highly of people who
1) are too daft to spell my name correctly,
2) imply I have no experience in homeopathy,
3) pretend that I make a secret of it, while, in fact, I published this multiple times (i.e. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientist-Wonderland-Searching-Finding-Trouble/dp/1845407776),
4) accuse others of being flat earthers, while evidently being one themselves,
5) do all this without declaring their massive conflict of interest.
Best regards
Edzard
What followed was Pinkus’ increasingly irrational attempts to defame me by revealing to the world that I (and other critics of homeopathy) lacked sufficient clinical experience with homeopathy and therefore were not competent to discuss the subject. Explanations by myself and others that,
- firstly I did have knowledge and experience of homeopathy,
- and secondly no experience is required for a critical evaluation of any treatment,
all fell on deaf ears.
THE END
The conclusion of this odd discussion was Pinkus’ triumphant declaration of victory:
I came to this blog to see if anyone in the discussion had any serious intention to discuss the subject of homoeopathy. In order to do this there are certain prerequisites for a sensible debate and one of these is actual knowledge and experience of the subject matter under discussion. To this end I asked if anyone has case they treated in order to discuss the merits and demerits of the experience. No one offered one. I repeated the request and the silence changed to attacks on me even asking.
Any scientist worthy of the challenge, and certainly someone who proudly styles himself as a Professor of CAM with experience and knowledge, would be only too glad to share this with others. Sadly though I have met with rebuke and insult but no evidence to support the opposition to homoeopathy saving some incoherent rant about the needlessness of empirical experience. The cornerstone of Hahnemann’s work on homoeopathy and the one thing he advocated to other doctors. “Don’t take my word for it, prove it to yourself”
When you find the need to attack me to defend your incessant argument that homoeopathy is implausible I really cannot take you seriously.
Here we have a blog hosted by a chap who claims to be an expert on the subject but now claims he hasn’t practiced it for over 40 years. Won’t say what he did when he practised, what he learned and when asked to give at least once case he treated, refuses and creates some diversion to cover his ignorance of the question. Now that’s what I call a charlatan.
I understand you have made a living out of this but it must be a miserable existence old chap
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I find this exchange rather typical for an argument with SCAM-fanatics. It follows a fairly standard strategy:
- aggression form a complete stranger,
- attempt of a rational defence,
- more aggression and insults
- attempts to debate the published evidence,
- silence from the aggressor who seems unable to defend his evidence,
- more aggression at an unexpected opportunity,
- further attempts to rationalise and discuss the facts,
- the aggressor questions his opponent’s competence,
- more attempts to rationalise and provide valid explanations,
- conclusion of the discussion with aggressor trying to occupy the moral high ground.
Of course, this is eerily similar to playing chess with a pigeon.
So, what, if anything, can we learn from this?
Mainly three things, I think:
- Either you don’t argue with fanatics at all,
- or you realise from the beginning what is about to happen; in this case, have fun exposing irrationality in the hope that others might profit from your experience.
- In any case, do not expect that your aggressor will be able to learn anything.
These days, I am often not sure what puzzles me more, Boris Johnson or homeopathy. Come to think of it, our PM seems, in fact, to have a lot in common with homeopathy/homeopaths. With my tongue lodged firmly in my cheek, I can see some communalities:
- They are both popular in the UK but have their origins elsewhere.
- They were both laughed at by people who are serious.
- They have both been around for far too long.
- They both are useless.
- They both have plenty of charisma.
- They both, however, have little more than that.
- They have a long history of misleading the public.
- They have both been taken to court.
- They both failed to accept the judgement when it went against them.
- They are both particularly successful with the female section of the population.
- They both thrive on personal attacks.
- They both make far-reaching claims which turn out to be false.
- They both claim to want only the best for the public.
- They both consider themselves as progressive.
- In truth, however, they are both deeply regressive.
- They both do not to think that ethics are all that important.
- They both irritate people who are rational thinkers.
- They both negate the evidence and act in overt contradiction to the evidence.
- They both tend to think that popularity is a measure of efficacy.
- They both managed to mislead even the Queen.
- Nevertheless, they both enjoy royal support (at least for the time being).
- They both seem to think that the laws (of the land/of nature) do not apply to them.
- They are both only bearable when highly diluted.
- They are both a complete waste of money.
- They are both dangerous when the public follow their advice.
Have I forgotten anything?
Do tell me, please.
It is hard to deny that many practitioners of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) advise their patients to avoid ‘dangerous chemicals’. By this they usually mean prescription drugs. If you doubt how strong this sentiment often is, you have not followed the recent posts and the comments that regularly followed. Frequently, SCAM practitioners will suggest to their patients to not take this or that drug and predict that patients would then see for themselves how much better they feel (usually, they also administer their SCAM at this point).
Lo and behold, many patients do indeed feel better after discontinuing their ‘chemical’ medicines. Of course, this experience is subsequently interpreted as a proof that the drugs were dangerous: “I told you so, you are much better off not taking synthetic medicines; best to use the natural treatments I am offering.”
But is this always interpretation correct?
I seriously doubt it.
Let’s look at a common scenario: a middle-aged man on several medications for reducing his cardiovascular risk (no, it’s not me). He has been diagnosed to have multiple cardiovascular risk factors. Initially, his GP told him to change his life-style, nutrition and physical activity – to which he was only moderately compliant. Despite the patient feeling perfectly healthy, his blood pressure and lipids remained elevated. His doctor now strongly recommends drug treatment and our chap soon finds himself on statins, beta-blockers plus ACE-inhibitors.
Our previously healthy man has thus been turned into a patient with all sorts of symptoms. His persistent cough prompts his GP to change the ACE-inhibitor to a Ca-channel blocker. Now the patients cough is gone, but he notices ankle oedema and does not feel in top form. His GP said that this is nothing to worry about and asks him to grin and bear it. But the fact is that a previously healthy man has been turned into a patient with reduced quality of life (QoL).
This fact takes our man to a homeopath in the hope to restore his QoL (you see, it certainly isn’t me). The homeopath proceeds as outlined above: he explains that drugs are dangerous chemicals and should therefore best be dropped. The homeopath also prescribes homeopathics and is confident that they will control the blood pressure adequately. Our man complies. After just a few days, he feels miles better, his QoL is back, and even his sex-life improves. The homeopath is triumphant: “I told you so, homeopathy works and those drugs were really nasty stuff.”
When I was a junior doctor working in a homeopathic hospital, my boss explained to me that much of the often considerable success of our treatments was to get rid of most, if not all prescription drugs that our patients were taking (the full story can be found here). At the time, and for many years to come, this made a profound impression on me and my clinical practice. As a scientist, however, I have to critically evaluate this strategy and ask: is it the correct one?
The answer is YES and NO.
YES, many (bad) doctors over-prescribe. And there is not a shadow of a doubt that unnecessary drugs must be scrapped. But what is unnecessary? Is it every drug that makes a patient less well than he was before?
NO, treatments that are needed should not be scrapped, even if this would make the patient feel better. Where possible, they might be altered such that side-effects disappear or become minimal. Patients’ QoL is important, but it is not the only factor of importance. I am sure this must sound ridiculous to lay people who, at this stage of the discussion, would often quote the ethical imperative of FIRST DO NO HARM.
So, let me use an extreme example to explain this a bit better. Imagine a cancer patient on chemo. She is quite ill with it and QoL is a thing of the past. Her homeopath tells her to scrap the chemo and promises she will almost instantly feel fine again. With some side-effect-free homeopathy see will beat the cancer just as well (please, don’t tell me they don’t do that, because they do!). She follows the advice, feels much improved for several months. Alas, her condition then deteriorates, and a year later she is dead.
I know, this is an extreme example; therefore, let’s return to our cardiovascular patient from above. He too followed the advice of his homeopath and is happy like a lark for several years … until, 5 years after discontinuing the ‘nasty chemicals’, he drops dead with a massive myocardial infarction at the age of 62.
I hope I made my message clear: those SCAM providers who advise discontinuing prescribed drugs are often impressively successful in improving QoL and their patients love them for it. But many of these practitioners haven’t got a clue about real medicine, and are merely playing dirty tricks on their patients. The advise to stop a prescribed drug can be a very wise move. But frequently, it improves the quality, while reducing the quantity of life!
The lesson is simple: find a rational doctor who knows the difference between over-prescribing and evidence-based medicine. And make sure you start running when a SCAM provider tries to meddle with necessary prescribed drugs.
The ‘OFFICIAL HOMEOPATHY RESOURCE‘ is an odd publication which, until very recently, I did not know about. They inform us about homeopathy as follows:
Homeopathy is a non-corporate 200-year-old system of medicine used successfully by tens of millions worldwide, and the second most utilized complementary health discipline in the world (according to the World Health Organization 2005). It has a laudable 200-year clinical record. There are literally hundreds of high quality basic science, pre-clinical and clinical studies showing it works.
This is the online web site for accurate information on homeopathy, homeopaths and homeopathic organizations. Its hard to get accurate information on this popular and traditional healing modality as a result of Drug Company Sponsored Blogs, Web Sites and their sponsored “Science Writers”.
Finally, there is a positive and comprehensive resource and you have found it. We hope you enjoy this site’s information and decide on or continue homeopathic treatment to experience it’s benefits.
THIS IS AN INDEPENDENT MEDIA SOURCE
About Comments on this Web Site:
We welcome POSITIVE comments about your experience with homeopathy or positive feedback about a particular topic.
Thank you for your positive support of homeopathy and getting the word out there.
The articles and posts contained herein are educational and informational and should not be considered medical advise. We recommend that you see a licensed medical practitioner.
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So far so good; well not SO good actually: this short text opens a lot of questions. But this is not what I want to address today. The ‘OFFICIAL HOMEOPATHY RESOURCE’ appeared on my screen only for one reason; they just published a whole, albeit short article about me! It is entitled ‘Pharmaceutical Company Found Guilty of Fuelling Opioid Epidemic But Sponsored Skeptics Continue Attacks on Safe Alternatives‘. Here it is in its full and unabbreviated beauty:
Even though the pharmaceutical industry has paid billions in fines over the years for failures and deceptions that have caused serious injuries and death, the pharmaceutical sponsored skeptic organizations and skeptics like Edzard Ernst spread outright lies about the false dangers of alternatives. They try to take the heat off the failures and dangers of drugs by smearing safe alternatives like homeopathy. They even go to the point of going to government organizations and falsely claiming alternatives are dangerous. They say nothing or a minimum about their sponsors.
One such skeptic Edzard Ernst attempts to present himself as an expert which most skeptics do. As a means of puffing himself up and making it seemed like he knows something about homeopathy, he claimed he was a homeopath and switched to allopathic medicine when homeopathy did not work. This has been proven to be an outright lie. He has had no training in homeopathy.
Unfortunately skeptics, like lemmings, support only pharmaceutical company generated science as if it was the holy grail.
Homeopathy has been proven to be very effective in pain relief and is non-addictive.
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I am afraid they must have missed what I disclosed repeatedly about my sponsors. Let me therefore repeat it especially for them (I tried to find out who exactly ‘THEY’ are, but they are not disclosing this information, as far as I can see):
- I am sponsored to the tune of zero £.
- There is not a single commercial company that backs me.
- This blog receives no funding from anywhere.
- Its running costs are paid by me.
- I live off my pension and savings and receive no other income.
I will not bother to correct the other falsehoods in the text above. I think, they are too obvious to bother. To those of my readers who find them not obvious, I recommend reading my memoir and my book entitled ‘Homeopathy, the Undiluted Facts‘ and considering ‘Ernst’s law‘.
