The usual tedious stuff in this 1000 word pro-CAM piece in the Guardian today: “CAM is good because medicine is bad”, “CAM is not researched because it doesn’t have big money” (in fact there are plenty of incompetent CAM trials, a bad trial costs as much to perform as a good one), “some authority figures say CAM is good”, and no attempt to address any criticisms except to complain that they are persecutory.

The whining and rhetoric I can cope with; an ignorance about evidence based medicine, so profound that she can’t even get the most basic terminology correct, is fine too (she refers to “random controlled trials” which means nothing, I presume she means “randomised controlled trials”); but she seems to allude to a trial that does not exist, and that is the thing, as usual, that Read the rest of this entry »

With the changes to homeopathy regulations you can look forward to more products like this, for “influenza and influenza-like colds”:

Coldenza is a homeopathic remedy specifically designed to bring fast, effective relief for the symptoms of cold and flu. For best results take Read the rest of this entry »

Sense About Science have very kindly given me the transcripts from their excellent Malaria and homeopathy sting from last month, and have let me stick it up here as a public archive for anyone who’s interested. Some amusing video from Read the rest of this entry »

Some of you may remember this story, about MHRA plans to change regulation of homeopathic remedies, and allow them to make medical claims with no evidence, which I wrote about on the last day of 2005, and which becomes law today.

www.badscience.net/?p=200

Below is the press release from the MHRA. There’s quite a lot about this that raises eyebrows for me. Firstly, the statutory instrument got slipped in to parliament a couple of days before the recess, so nobody could scrutinise it. Secondly, this press release is a bit of an advert for homeopathy, a treatment which, frankly, has had its day: there are meta-analyses examining vast numbers of papers which show it is no better than placebo (the very existence of these papers is still denied by various people in the homeopathy community, incl Read the rest of this entry »

Just very briefly, I wouldn’t want you to miss Melanie Oxley, spokesperson from the Society of Homeopaths, making her deeply worrying noises about the benefits of homeopathy for malaria at Read the rest of this entry »