Mass overdose, of water

Here's an interesting approach to the whole "homoeopathy" debate, on Saturday 30 January, over 500 British sceptics will put the efficacy of homoeopathic medicine to the test by taking a mass overdose of the diluted "remedies". It's being organised by Merseyside Skeptics as a protest against Boots and their continuing insistence on stocking homoeopathic "medicine". Although, thinking about it, when homoeopaths claim that the more dilute something is the more efficacy it has then presumably taking nothing would be the ultimate overdose? anyway it should raise awareness in any case.

One of the arguments that we hear from the government and others about homoeopathy is that if there are no side effects and placebo occasionally does some good then where's the harm?

This is a fair point and addressed in this recent article by Simon Singh, the basic argument is that it's not the "water" that's the problem here it's the people, i.e. consulting a homoeopath is not a substitute for consulting a proper doctor. Like it or not, there are all kinds of wild claims being made for H2O "memory" remedies that are downright misleading and dangerous, the following extract is from the article and tells of some research done by a hypothetical student regarding travel precautions when visiting countries where malaria is common.

Perhaps the greatest danger occurs when homeopathy replaces a conventional treatment. I first encountered this problem in 2006 when I tried to find out what homeopaths would offer to a young traveller seeking protection against malaria. Working with Alice Tuff and the charity Sense About Science, we developed a storyline in which Tuff would be making a ten week overland trip through West Africa, where there is a high prevalence of the most dangerous strain of malaria, which can result in death within three days. Tuff, a young graduate, would explain to homeopaths that she had previously suffered side-effects from conventional malaria tablets and wondered if there was a homeopathic alternative.

Before approaching homeopaths, however, Tuff visited a conventional travel clinic with exactly the same storyline, which resulted in a lengthy consultation. The health expert explained that side-effects were not unusual for malaria tablets, but that there was a range of options, so a different type of tablet might be advisable. At the same time, the health expert asked detailed questions about Tuff's medical history and offered extensive advice, such as how to prevent insect bites.

Next Tuff found a variety of homeopaths by searching on the internet, just as any young student might do. She then visited or phoned ten of them, mainly based in and around London. In each case, Tuff secretly recorded the conversations in order to document the consultation. The results were shocking. Seven out of the ten homeopaths failed to ask about the patient's medical background and also failed to offer any general advice about bite prevention. Worse still, ten out of ten homeopaths were willing to advise homeopathic protection against malaria instead of conventional treatment, which would have put our pretend traveller's life at risk.

The homeopaths offered anecdotes to show that homeopathy is effective. According to one practitioner, 'Once somebody told me she went to Africa to work and she said the people who took malaria tablets got malaria, although it was probably a different subversive type not the full blown, but the people who took homeopathics didn't. They didn't get ill at all.' She also advised that homeopathy could protect against yellow fever, dysentery and typhoid. Another homeopath tried to explain the mechanism behind the remedies: 'The remedies should lower your susceptibility; because what they do is they make it so your energy – your living energy – doesn't have a kind of malaria-shaped hole in it. The malarial mosquitoes won't come along and fill that in. The remedies sort it out.' 

In one case reported by the British Medical Journal, a British woman who relied on homoeopathy instead of medicine, travelled to Togo and caught malaria, she had to endure months of intensive treatment for multiple organ failure. In this case, the placebo effect offered no protection. That's the harm.