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The NHS should stop funding homeopathy, MPs say.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee said using public money on the highly-diluted remedies could not be justified.

The cross-party group said there was no evidence beyond a placebo effect, when a patient gets better because of their belief that the treatment works.

But manufacturers and supporters of homeopathy disputed the report, saying the MPs had ignored important evidence.

It is thought about £4m a year is spent on homeopathy by the NHS, helping to fund four homeopathic hospitals in London, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow and numerous prescriptions.

Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of treatment that uses highly diluted substances – sometimes so none of the original product is left – that are given orally in the belief that it will stimulate the body’s self-healing mechanism.

Read More At: NHS money ‘wasted’ on homeopathy (BBC)

In January 1951, Mrs. Lacks was found to have cervical cancer. She agreed to treatment with radium at Johns Hopkins.  There was no stopping her cancer.  Her doctor had never seen anything like it. Within months, her  body was full of tumors. She died in excruciating pain that October.  She was 31 and the devoted mother to her five children, the youngest just a year old. Without their mother the children suffered terribly.

Neither Mrs. Lacks nor any of her relatives knew that doctors had given a sample of her tumor to Dr. George Gey, a Hopkins researcher who was trying to find cells that would live indefinitely in culture so researchers could experiment on them.  Before she came along, his efforts had failed.  Her cells changed everything: they multiplied like crazy and never died.

A cell line called HeLa (for Henrietta Lacks) was born.  Those immortal cells soon became the workhorse of laboratories everywhere.  HeLa cells were used to develop the first polio vaccine, they were launched into space for experiments in zero gravity and they helped produce drugs for numerous diseases, including Parkinson’s, leukemia and the flu. By now, literally tons of them have been produced.

Dr. Gey did not make money from the cells, but they were commercialized. Now they are bought and sold every day the world over, and they have generated millions in profits.

A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift (NY Times)

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” at Amazon.com

The British Homeopathic Association has been accused of misrepresenting scientific evidence on alternative medicine in documents it gave to a parliamentary inquiry.

The organisation claimed several scientific reviews offered support for homeopathy in material submitted to the cross-party science and technology select committee, which is holding an investigation into the products. Robert Mathie, a researcher at the BHA, said the reviews found evidence for a difference between homeopathic remedies and sugar pills, which contain no active ingredients.

But the claim has dismayed some of the scientists who wrote the reviews and angered MPs on the committee who are in the final stages of writing their report.

One review cited was written by Edzard Ernst, a scientist who investigates complementary medicine at the Penisula Medical School in Exeter. He said the BHA’s interpretation of his study was “grossly misleading” because they failed to mention important caveats published in the study. Another review, by Jean-Pierre Boissel at the Hospitals of Lyon and University Claude Bernard in France, was quoted as evidence that homeopathic treatments differ to placebos. Boissel said his conclusion was that homeopathy tended to fare worse in the best-designed studies.

Read more at: Homeopathic society ‘misled’ MPs in inquiry (Guardian UK)

James Randi Makes Homeopathy Harder to Swallow

Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents’ consent.

In many states, such as Florida, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely.

Most parents don’t realize their baby’s DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents’ concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it’s appropriate for a baby’s genetic blueprint to be in the government’s possession.

The government has your baby’s DNA (CNN)

Diana Waletzko at the Citizens’ Council on Health Care Press Conference on Protecting Baby DNA.

*UPDATE Suit possible over baby DNA sent to military lab for national database (Austin Statesman)

The Indian government has produced a number of ads that are now running on TV in the worlds second most populous nation. I guess it is cheaper to convince citizens that placebos are effective than it is to provide healthcare for the people. Watch as Indian tax payers money goes out the window!

Killing of Infants by Government? (Scientific Indians)

Dara O’Briain on Homeopathy (and other nonsense)

Because homeopathic treatments are sold along side aspirin and Tylenol at the druggist, people assume these “remedies” are tested and effective.  A simple look at the mathematics of homeopathy should do a lot to set one straight.

In his recent article, Homeopathy by the (mind-boggling) numbers (Times Online), Matt Parker does a great job breaking down the astronomical numbers involved in processing homeopathic treatments.

The arnica is diluted so much that there is only one molecule of it per 7 million billion billion billion billion pills.

It’s hard to comprehend numbers that large. If you were to buy that many pills from Boots, it would cost more than the gross domestic product of the UK. It’s more than the gross domestic product of the entire world. Since the dawn of civilisation. If every human being since the beginning of time had saved every last penny, denarius and sea-shell, we would still have not saved-up enough to purchase a single arnica molecule from Boots.

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A & E

“At 10:23am on January 30th, more than three hundred homeopathy sceptics nationwide will be taking part in a mass homeopathic ‘overdose’ in protest at Boots’ continued endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies, and to raise public awareness about the fact that homeopathic remedies have nothing in them.

Homeopathy is an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience, yet it persists today as an accepted complementary medicine.

Ask many people what they think homeopathy is, and you’ll be told “it’s herbal medicine” or “it’s all-natural”. Few realise that it’s been proven not to work; even fewer know it involves substances so dilute that there’s nothing left in them. Homeopathy takes advantage of this uncertainty to sit alongside real, proven medicines on the shelves of our major pharmacies.

Sceptics and consumer rights activists will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic ‘pillules’ to demonstrate that these ‘remedies’, prepared according to a long-discredited 18th century ritual, are nothing but sugar pills.

The protest will raise public awareness about the reality of homeopathy, and put further pressure on Boots to live up to its responsibilites as the ’scientist on the high street’ and stop selling treatments which do not work.”

Read more at 1023.org.uk

The Ugandan government claimed human sacrifice was on the increase.

According to officials trying to tackle it, the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity – and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.

One man said he had clients who had captured children and taken their blood and body parts to his shrine, while another confessed to killing at least 70 people including his own son.

Human sacrifices ‘on the rise in Uganda’ as witch doctors admit to rituals (Telegraph UK)

Plans are unfolding in the state of Maine and in the City of San Francisco to mandate cancer warnings on cellular phones.  It is alleged that the use of the omnipresent communication devices causes cancerous growths in the brain.

Maine to Consider Cell Phone Warning (Associated Press)
San Francisco considering cellphone warnings ( LA Times)

Cell phone radiation doesn’t cause cancer.

Cancer causing agents break chemical bonds, creating mutant strands of DNA.  Microwave photons are not capable of breaking  chemical bonds.

In 1989, Paul Brodeur, a staff writer for the New Yorker, claimed in a series of sensational articles that electromagnetic fields from power lines cause childhood leukemia.  Brodeur, however, did not understand this and when virtually every scientist agreed that it was impossible, Brodeur took their unanimity as proof of a massive cover-up.  Other anti-science fear mongers followed Brodeur’s lead, shifting their attack to cell phone radiation.  Cell phones have since spread to almost the entire population, but with no corresponding increase in brain cancer.  Case closed.

Study: No cellphone cancer link found (UPI.com)

American Cancer Society on the lack of cell phone/cancer connections.

National Cancer Institute on the lack of cell phone/cancer connection.

Mobile phone emissions reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s (The Tech Herald)

Alexa Ray Joel Out Of Hospital After Homeopathic Overdose (MTV)

Homeopathy is a form of “alternative medicine”  first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. In Homeopathy patients are treated with heavily diluted preparations which are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented.  Homeopathic remedies are prepared by shaking minute quantities of substances into large amounts of water.

It is supposed that the greater the dilution the greater its intended effect. Homeopaths call this process “potentization”.  Dilution often continues until statistically, none of the original substance remains.

Richard Dawkins takes a look at Homeopathy.

James Randi explains Homeopathy

More Videos at 1023.org