{"id":567385,"date":"2010-05-17T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=15708"},"modified":"2010-05-17T09:00:54","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T13:00:54","slug":"british-medical-association-homeopathy-is-witchcraft-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/567385","title":{"rendered":"British Medical Association: homeopathy is witchcraft | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Oh, how I loves me an alt-med smackdown<\/a>: at a meeting of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors, Dr. Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman, said:<\/p>\n

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Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street [in London] there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid for by the NHS [National Health Service].<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ha! I couldn’t have said it better myself. Despite what homeopaths say, homeopathy has been shown<\/a> beyond any reasonable doubt to have no effect above that of a placebo<\/a>. That won’t stop homeopaths from still claiming it works; they’ll use anecdotes, they’ll use evidence distorted and twisted into a Möbius strip, or they’ll simply make stuff up.
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\nAt best, belief in provably false things like homeopathy is a colossal waste of money<\/a>, and at worst belief in homeopathy can kill you<\/a>. That’s why skeptics are fighting the practice of homeopathy all over the world, from the UK<\/a> to Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And before you say, “Well, it’s just water so it does no harm, right?” I’ll remind you that people are then drinking plain old water instead of taking real medicine.<\/em> That’s the real danger of homeopathy (and other alt-med nonsense). So unless the health problem you’re having is dehydration, taking homeopathic “remedies” does in fact do quite a bit of harm. <\/p>\n

And that’s why I’m so happy that doctors and the government in the UK are being vocal about this nonsense. Sure, caveat emptor<\/em> and all that, but when people — especially people with the veneer of a medical imprimatur — are pushing something we know<\/em> doesn’t work to people who are sick or worried over a sick loved one, then it’s time to step in and do something. <\/p>\n

Tip o’ the vial of plain old water to Digg<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Waterglass image from albertopveiga’s Flickr photostream<\/a>, used under the Creative Commons license.<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, how I loves me an alt-med smackdown: at a meeting of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors, Dr. Tom Dolphin, deputy chairman, said: Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street [in London] there is a National Hospital for Homeopathy which is paid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}