Goldacre again..........Threats - the homeopathic panacea

[Sheri Nakken]

Ben Goldacre on the rampage again...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/ ... homeopathy

Bad science

Threats - the homeopathic panacea

Ben Goldacre
The Guardian

Saturday October 20 2007
Let's imagine that we live in an exotic parallel universe where I am able to
use an amusing but trivial news event to illustrate a wider cultural and
intellectual issue. Dr Andy Lewis runs a website called Quackometer; he
criticised the Society of Homeopaths (Europe's largest professional
organisation of homeopaths) in no uncertain terms. In his opinion, they do
not enforce their own "code of practice" (you're not even allowed to imply
you can cure a named disease!); it is a figleaf; and they fail to censure
their members over dangerous claims.

His chosen example was the Newsnight malaria sting: an undercover
investigator went to see some homeopaths and was given homeopathic pills to
protect against this fatal disease, by quacks who denigrated medical options
and failed to give basic "holistic" advice on things like bite protection. I
agree with Dr Lewis: this was cavalier and dangerous.

Did the SoH engage with these criticisms? Reflect on them? Challenge and
rebut them? No. It sent a threatening legal letter. Did this letter say what
was wrong with Dr Lewis's post? No. It wasn't even sent to him, it was sent
to his hosting company, Netcetera, demanding it take his page down. He
contacted the SoH, very politely, to ask what the problems were with his
comments. No response.

Instead its lawyers sent another angry letter to his hosting company, which
is, strictly speaking, liable and so the page was taken down. Corporate
conspiracy silences the little man: except of course his piece has now been
replicated at least a hundred times across the internet by an army of
smirking bloggers.

How does the SoH's approach - silence and repress - compare with other
medical academic organisations? This week I was invited to be on a judging
panel for a prize run by the Cochrane Collaboration, the international
academic body that produces independent reviews of the literature on all
medical interventions: the prize (a thousand quid) is for the best piece of
work critical of the Cochrane Collaboration.

Is this an isolated example? The British Medical Journal is probably the
most important medical journal in the UK (and certainly the most widely
read). The BMJ recently announced the three most popular research papers
from its archive, according to an audit which assessed their use by readers,
the number of times they were referenced by other academic papers, and so
on. Every single one of these papers was highly critical of either a drug, a
drug company, or a medical activity, as its most central theme.

The top-scoring paper was a case-control study which showed that patients
had a higher risk of heart attack if they were taking the painkillers
rofecoxib (Vioxx), diclofenac or ibuprofen. Vioxx of course was at the heart
of a major scandal.

At number two was a large meta-analysis of drug company data, which showed
no evidence that SSRI antidepressants increase the risk of suicide, but did
find weak evidence for an increased risk of deliberate self-harm, which is
worth keeping an eye on. In third place was a systematic review which showed
an association between suicide attempts and the use of SSRI's, and
highlighted - very critically - some of the inadequacies around the
reporting of suicides in clinical trials.

This is how ideas move forward. Meanwhile, a survey of all the studies
reported in four alternative medicine academic journals found that 1% of
them - one per cent! - reported negative findings.

Of course there is a role for libel laws. If someone says you've bonked a
rentboy and you haven't, of course there is. If someone says you've taken
corrupt money and you haven't, of course. But when someone criticises your
ideas, when someone challenges how well an organisation is running itself,
especially when that organisation has a role in protecting the public from
errant homeopaths who can, in the process of cheerfully playing doctor, at
the very least, sometimes, maybe, you know, in my opinion, make slightly
worrying judgment calls ... you'd think they'd have the dignity to engage
with that criticism, rather than ignoring and suppressing it.

· Full references at badscience.net
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Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath
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