Fake medicine and AIDS denial are ‘charitable’

[BPSDB] Richard Wilson wrote this about a registered charity that is actively promoting AIDS denial.
This reminded me that, last year, I wrote to the same Charity Commission to complain about Frontline Homeopathy, which collects funds to promote homeopathy as “as an effective, low cost primary health care system” in developing countries. I got this [...]

Beware the spinal trap

Image via Wikipedia

[BPSDB] Along with many other blogs and magazines, I am reproducing, below, Simon Singh’s article on chiropractic, which led to his being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. The full story can be found here. The point of the publication is to show support for Singh in his fighting the libel [...]

Homeopathy Awareness Week: The facts of life

[BPSDB] Here’s a description of the process for producing a homeopathic remedy, as described on Wikipedia:
…homeopaths use a process called “dynamisation” or “potentisation” whereby the remedy is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body in a process called “succussion”. … During the process of [...]

Homeopathy Awareness Week: Spinning homeopathy, not arguing for it

[BPSDB] Some – what I consider outrageous – spinning of homeopathy in the Guardian,  by three committed homeopathy-friendly physicians (Professor George Lewith, Professor of health research at the University of Southampton, Dr Michael Dixon, Medical director at the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health and Dr Peter Fisher, the Clinical director, Royal London Homoeopathic [...]

I want to do something really dangerous

[BPSDB]There is this piece of flimflam on the web site of Neal’s Yard (the unethical selling company):
In more severe, acute situations the 200th potency (200C) may be administered once – this should not be repeated. Unless you have some knowledge and experience of Homoeopathy it is best to leave administration of 200th potency remedies to [...]

You ask, they don’t answer: Neal’s Yard Remedies

[BPSDB]The Guardian invited online readers to ask questions of Neal’s Yard, the self-described “ethical” skin and body care products firm. You can imagine the sort of questions people would want to ask. The comments thread is funny (and not at all insulting, unless you think that questioning someone’s assertions is in itself offensive). I expect [...]

Analysing the chiropractors’ statements

[BPSDB]There seems not to have been much comment on the press statement by the British Chiropractic Association on 7 May about the libel case against Simon Singh. This appears to be highly misleading. It reads in part:
In April 2008 Simon Singh published an article in the Guardian newspaper and on Guardian Online in the course [...]

A Carnival of B**** Chiropractic

[BPSDB]At the Quackometer, Andy Lewis is organising a Carnival of B**** Chiropractic (insert your own B-word there). This is an opportunity, I think, not only to do some serious investigation and make some serious points about the validity of chiropractic and the claims that are made for it, but  also to make fun of the [...]

Cold weather freezes columnists’ brains

We’ve been having a colder winter this year in the UK than we’ve had for some years (about thirteen, or eighteen or twenty years, depending who you’re reading). Some people seem to think this is evidence that global warming has stopped, or even that the world is getting colder (see Melanie Phillips, Gerald Warner, Richard [...]

‘How can you deny my experience?’

[BPSDB] A few months ago someone commenting on a blog post (I think it was on Gimpy’s blog) described how some of his family were allegedly cured of illness by homeopathy, and asked ‘How can people deny my experience of this’?
I did not have time to reply on that occasion, but I thought that the [...]