Having licences for medicines when they\’re going to be handed out to homeopathic remedies?
Prof Colquhoun said that the claims could contravene consumer protection laws which ban \”falsely claiming that a product is able to cure illnesses\”.
The pills are labelled \”a homoeopathic medicinal product used with the homoeopathic tradition for the symptomatic relief of sprains, muscular aches, and bruising or swelling after contusions.\”
The average consumer is unlikely to know that \”used with the homoeopathic tradition\” is a form of weasel words that actually means \”there isn\’t a jot of evidence that the medicine works,\” Prof Colquhoun wrote in a letter published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
Isn’t A LOT of evidence? Surely there is NO decent evidence as yet, which is the problem. Why do we have these treatments being fobbed off onto us (and now onto the NHS) when the evidence base is basically non-existent?
This is nothing to do with medicine and all to with buying votes. This policy comes straight from one of Labours focus groups.
I think all homeopathic medicines should come with a warning “this is a fake medicine. It doesn’t work” in big letters. Perhaps it could be accompanied by a picture of a pile of bullshit. Because that’s what homeopathy is.
@LFAT,
nono, there isn’t a jot (sic) of evidence – means there is none. Jot comes from the greek letter iota, which is the smallest letter in the alphabet (looks like an i without the dot over it).
I think Kit’s correct, the target audience for this sort of thing is the upper-middle-class ‘worried well’, the type that gulp echinacea by the handful, buy only organic, etc…
Perhaps it could be accompanied by a picture of a pile of bullshit. Because that’s what homeopathy is.
Cabalamat, perhaps more literally than you meant. If this water memory idea is correct, as the homeopaths believe, surely the water molecules will also remember the time they were shaken violently along with various feces when they last went through, for example, a sewerage works or a cow’s digestive tract?
How dumb is this:
“Homeopathic remedies are made by diluting ingredients many thousands of times.
The treatment is based on the idea that extremely small amounts of a substance that would otherwise make people ill can be used to cure them. ”
Medical Correspondent my arse.
Look on the bright side.
Those that treat real medical complaints with homoeopathic mumbo jumbo will die earlier.
Evolution in action.
It’s a feature not a bug
jus’askin:
“Those that treat [dispense] real medical complaints with homoeopathic mumbo jumbo will die earlier.”
In my ideal world, this would be true, because they would be rounded up, herded into cattle trucks, and gassed.
It escapes me why anyone needs to buy homeopathic medicine at all, since there are limitless supplies of every homeopathic remedy available from the cold tap.
Of course, this should be evidence that they don’t work, as we are all getting ill all the time.