HOMEOPATHY: DEMONSTRATORS IN BELGIUM RESORT TO MASS SUICIDE.

WHAT'S NEW , APS ^ | Friday, 21 May 04 | Robert L. Park

[AdmSmith]

A Special Report in the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer looks into the ultimate protest by a group of skeptics. They objected to a decision by the major health insurance companies in Belgium to begin covering the costs of homeopathy in response to popular demand. Depressed by the willingness of the insurance companies to encourage quackery, the 23 skeptics resigned themselves to committing mass suicide by drinking a cocktail of lethal poisons including arsenic, snake venom and deadly nightshade. To the horror of the homeopathists, they even increased the potency in true homeopathic fashion by preparing a 30C solution of the cocktail. That means the cocktail was diluted one part per hundred and shaken, which was then repeated sequentially, 30 times.

All newspapers and TV stations were invited to watch the death agonies of the 23 deranged suicides, who included a number of prominent citizens and professors of medicine, "and a few normal people armed only with common sense." The media coverage was excellent, but the suicide attempt was a failure.

[AdmSmith]

Saturday night cocktail.

[AdmSmith]

Do not drink sea water.

[Publius6961]

Belgium?
Thank goodness for the spirit of Public Service!

[megatherium]

Very sly protest of quackery that is sold in every "health" food store and is protected by law, unlike other forms of quackery.

[steplock]

"the suicide attempt was a failure"

Like everything else the French (and french derivitives) try to do --- fail.

[EggsAckley]

Click the link to the site. It's some guy from Univ.of Maryland.

[redheadtoo]

"the suicide attempt was a failure"

I think you've missed the point. The suicide was supposed to fail. By taking poison, in homeopathic dosages, the protesters demonstrated that homeopathy is medical quackery.

[nmh]

Quackery? Hardly. It's cheaper than the allopathic approach and typically more effective. Then again people are enslaved to drug companies and high health care costs of course it must be "quackery".

Besides, when "quackery" is effective, imagine how many drug companies would lose money or people out of work. Nah, it's best to ridicule it and vilify it since people are ignorant and wish to remain that way at any cost. Of course since people died for this to be covered, it only makes sense to NOT be specific on what they were looking to have covered. Nah, it's best to broad brush it all as "quackery". It's like saying all Republicans are Nazis. People believe that too!

[traumer]

Agree. This article is a TOTAL BS....
Do not pay attention.

[EggsAckley]

BRAVO!

[bcoffey]

This article is a TOTAL BS....

No, the article is true. The conclusions some people are drawing are BS.

(And each side thinks it's the other side's conclusions that are erroneous.)

[traumer]

OMG !
Don't be so naive - look at the link.
Where is the source of his information ??

[Kozak]

Quackery? Hardly. It's cheaper than the allopathic approach and typically more effective. Then again people are enslaved to drug companies and high health care costs of course it must be "quackery".

It's absolute quackery. Homeopathic "treatments" consist of serial dilutions that result in concentrations so low that not ONE molecule of the original is present in most dosages. To whit:

A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's "law of infinitesimals" is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.

[Physicist]

Where is the source of his information ??

The current issue of the Skeptical Inquirer, per the article.

I think the protest idea is hilarious. It sounds like something the Skeptical Inquirer would do.

[little jeremiah]

I used to think it was quackery too. I also used to think that chiropractic was quackery.*

I found out I was wrong when both methods of treatment helped me substantially - and it was NOT placebo effect, since I had not the least shred of faith in either.

There's more to healing and treatment than the AMA would have us believe.

(*There are good chiropractors and bad chiropractors, as in every medical field.)

[Physicist]

Quackery? Hardly. It's cheaper than the allopathic approach and typically more effective.

Cheaper, I'll grant you. But what, in your words, is the mechanism by which homeopathy works?

[beavus]

People have a right to be ignorant. People who own companies have a right to be ignorant. People also have the right to avoid and not do business with ignorant people. People also have a right to peacefully persuade the ignorant to come to their senses. Ignorance is relatively easy to be tolerant of, considering it is a universal feature of human experience. However...

People do NOT have the right to NOT KILL TERRORISTS KILL TERRORISTS KILL TERRORISTS KILL TERRORISTS KILL TERRORISTS KILL TERRORISTS, etc. What I mean is, kill them, help to kill them, encourange others to kill them, kill them over supper, kill them over breakfast, kill them on the way to work, kill them on vacation, kill them in effigy if not able to kill them in reality, kill them awake, kill them in your dreams.

Make sure people know they have two choices in this regard--be a terrorist, or be alive. Like the Illyrian pirates, like the Corsairs, like the Thugs, like the ants in my kitchen, they will be exterminated.

Frankly, idiocy like homeopathy is irrelevent in the shadow of this war.

[Ohioan]

Very sly protest of quackery that is sold in every "health" food store and is protected by law, unlike other forms of quackery.

It would be a very interesting subject for an academic debate as to which group, here, are the "quacks." Certainly, those performing this exhibitionist farce, have demonstrated a very good right to the title.

It is important to remember that all medicine is an art. With Malpractice suits on the terrible rise, there has been a tendency to lose sight of that fact; but the worst of my own profession (legal) notwithstanding, medicine remains primarily an art, not a science. It uses scientific method, but that does not make it less an art.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[gcruse]

Frankly, idiocy like homeopathy is irrelevent in the shadow of this war.

IOW, since we are fighting a war, we should overlook ignorant superstition, because it's a small thing.  It's okay to dog sh!t if you only eat just a little?

[CzarNicky]

They should talk to the Palis to get a more effective method of suicide.