Pharmaceutical Industry Funding of Anti-homeopathy Skeptic Groups Uncovered

Sense about Science, a well funded anti-homeopathy skeptic organization in the United Kingdom complained about a consumer’s group’s assertion that they represent and are funded by the pharmaceutical industry.  After further investigation, even more funding than previously revealed has been uncovered. “In investigating their complaints we looked more closely at the sources of funding of Sense About Science, and have found that our original figures for the charity’s support by the pharmaceutical industry were too conservative.”

The consumer group, H:MC21 also wrote in response to Sense about Science complaining:

You quote us as saying that Sense About Science “received over 35% of its donation funding from the pharmaceutical industry between 2004 and 2009”, but then refer only to funding “from pharmaceutical companies”. As a result of the investigation following your email, we have found that our original claim about Sense About Science’s funding was too conservative. In fact Sense About Science appears to have received an average of 42.3% of its total income between 2004 and 2010 from pharmaceutical companies or organisations clearly linked to the pharmaceutical industry. In 2006, the year [the anti-homeopathy] ‘Sense About Homeopathy’ was published, there was a huge leap in such funding, from £37,300 (36.9% of total income) to £102,165 (51.2% of total income). Full details are included in Appendix 1.

The Canadian skeptic organization called Centre for Inquiry, which is another anti-homeopathy skeptic group, is almost entirely funded by a director of a pharmaceutical company. They have initiated a law suit against a homeopathic manufacturer and retail pharmacy selling homeopathic remedies.

Both groups are attempting to stop consumers’ choice of alternative health modalities and stop the sale of homeopathic remedies.

New Research From Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart Scientifically Proves Water Memory and Homeopathy

A simple experiment by researchers and professors at the prestigious Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany is confirming Dr. Jacques Benveniste’s 1988 assertion that water has an imprint of energies to which it has been exposed. In spite of Jacques Benveniste’s experiment to show that homeopathy works being replicated many many times at various research labs and universities around the world, skeptics have continued to attempt to debunk it albeit unsuccessfully.

This new experiment and support from professors here offer another intriguing view and explanation of how homeopathy works since it proves water has a “memory”.

The Oasis HD Channel in Canada describes the fascinating results of this new experiment-

Prince Charles Congratulates Homeopathy School’s Success

The School of Homeopathy in England held an historic event in Stroud to celebrate their 30th Anniversary. Many of the world’s leading homeopaths came to show support and give presentations and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales sent his warmest congratulations:

“I did just want to send my warmest possible congratulations in celebration of the Stroud School of Homeopathy’s 30th Anniversary. It seems to me this most noteworthy of events takes on an even greater resonance, coming as it does at a time when, sadly, we have been witnessing the relative decline of some homeopathic services in different parts of the United Kingdom.

It makes the achievements of the School even more significant – from being one of the first in this country to offer an on-site, four year programme, to developing an extensive clinical supervision process and, in addition, creating a home-study programme which reaches students in over sixty countries.

It seems remarkable all this has happened in spite of the apparently ceaseless attacks on homeopathy, and on the individuals attempting to build credibility around its patient outcomes, and I can only wish you every possible success in the years to come.”

Mani Norland, the School of Homeopathy’s Principal says, “This incredible event was our way of celebrating the School’s achievement of 30 years at the forefront of UK homeopathic education. This is one of the largest most exciting events ever held in homeopathy. Never before have so many influential homeopaths come together to present at one free online event – it is truly world class! We are honoured and proud to be given the added endorsement from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. We feel it was a great gift to give the profession and a fitting way to mark the year for us.”

The School (which is the longest running in the UK) was founded in 1981 and quickly developed to be one of the first to offer an on-site four year programme. It has worked closely with the Society of Homeopaths during a long development towards an accreditation process.

Chair of Mayo Clinic Internal Medicine Department Praises Alternative Medicine

In a recent article in The Atlantic, many main stream medical doctors such as Dr. Gertz have come out in favour of homeopathy in spite of venomous attacks by skeptics. The author of the article writes:

 Morie Gertz, a hematologist, who chairs the Mayo Clinic’s internal-medicine department: “Most of the doctors here were top of their medical-school class, top of their residency, blah, blah, blah,” he told me. “That’s technical mastery. That doesn’t make them effective healers. Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen hundreds of patients who clearly feel they’ve benefited from alternative therapies. It’s not my job to tell them they shouldn’t feel better. And I wouldn’t tell patients they shouldn’t try alternative medicine if they want to—we need to follow the clues patients give us about what might help them. If a patient chooses to walk away from the therapy I’ve prescribed and go to an alternative therapist instead, that’s not the fault of alternative medicine; it’s because I’ve failed as a doctor to do a good job of making my case in terms that are important to the patient.”

Gertz is among the many physicians who dismiss the lack of supportive randomized-trial data as a reason to write off alternative medicine. “The randomized trial is a very high bar,” he says. “Eighty percent of what I do here isn’t based on randomized-trial data.”

Physicians routinely write “off-label” prescriptions, Gertz says—that is, prescriptions that call for drugs to treat conditions for which those drugs have not been officially approved. It’s a perfectly legal and ethical practice, and even one that physicians consider essential, accounting for about a fifth of all U.S. prescriptions. “It’s off-label not because it doesn’t work, but because there’s no good randomized-trial data on it. In the same way, we may not have great evidence that alternative medicine works, but that’s very different from saying it doesn’t work.”

Dr. Oz: “Alternative Medicine Empowers Us”

In a show on Alternative Medicine Dr. Oz on the The Dr. Oz Show came out dramatically in favour of consumers using alternative medicine. He had a Scripp’s clinic cardiologist on who recommends and discusses alternative health therapies with her patients.

He also discussed why “your doctor is afraid of alternative medicine” and mainstream America is using alternative health. On the show he asserts that 40 per cent of Americans use alternative health.

After a doctor on the show who represented the skeptic movement was rebuked for using research over 10 years old to come to the conclusion that alternative health modalities including acupuncture doesn’t work, the skeptics are attempting to attack and immolate Dr. Oz. In the end, Dr. Oz said that alternative health is a grassroots movement and empowering to consumers of health care.

The Dr. Oz show is the most watched health show in the world.

You can watch the show here.

Interviews with A Top Research Scientist in Homeopathy- Dr. Iris Bell

The National Center for Homeopathy features new interviews with Dr. Iris Bell MD, Phd who comes with top credentials in research science.

“Dr. Bell graduated with an AB degree in biology from Harvard University, magna cum laude. She then received her PhD in Neuro- and Biobehavioral Sciences and her MD from Stanford University. After completing her psychiatry residency at the University of California – San Francisco, Dr. Bell served as a faculty member at the University of California – San Francisco and, later, at Harvard Medical School. She is board-certified in psychiatry, with added qualification in geriatric psychiatry.

She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, as well as over a dozen book chapters, and a monograph on environmental chemical sensitivity. She has received grant funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and numerous private foundations on topics ranging from nutrition in dementia and depression to the neurobiology of environmental illness to individual difference predictors of excellent outcomes during classical homeopathic treatment.

Dr. Bell is currently Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology, Medicine, Family & Community Medicine, and Public Health as well as Director of Research for the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. She also directs an NIH-funded T32 Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Training Grant for predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows.

In this interview, research scientist and Professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Dr. Bell continues to discuss research in homeopathy.  Dr. Bell answers the key questions “Is there evidence that homeopathy works?” and “Is homeopathy biologically active?”.

Dr. Bell also highlights the key differences between the “properties” of homeopathic medicine and conventional medicine. She says, “The evidence coming from multiple laboratories, multiple technologies and multiple investigators overwhelming demonstrates that homeopathy demonstrates biological activity.  Further, plausibility is addressed by ground breaking research in material science.”

Click here to listen to the interviews.

Another Nobel Prize Winner Speaks Out For Homeopathy

Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson PhD, an emeritus professor at Cambridge University, England has joined Luc Montagnier in making strong statements in favour of homeopathy. In the New Scientist he writes:

Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy: criticisms centered around the vanishingly small number of solute molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water’s structure.
Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account.

A related topic is the phenomenon, claimed by Jacques Benveniste’s colleague Yolène Thomas and by others to be well established experimentally, known as “memory of water.” If valid, this would be of greater significance than homeopathy itself, and it attests to the limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss them out of hand. (21)

See the full article on Huffington Post

Anecdotal Information Is Essential to Your Health

Editorial:

Skeptic organizations are decrying the use of anecdotal information as a means of validating a therapy or invalidating certain conventional drugs and vaccines. Yet anecdotal information is the most important consumer and clinician tool for knowing what works, does not work and what is harmful in a real time not academic or laboratory setting.

And more importantly the body of information on side effects from drugs  is for the most part based on anecdotes from patients and consumers- not laboratory evidence.

The MILLIONS every day who use homeopathy have depended on its profound clinical results. Seeing family, children, pets and even herds of animals respond so well to homeopathic remedies have made it one of the most rapidly growing health modalities in the world.

Homeopaths have built an important body of knowledge in the treatment of chronic disease by listening carefully to their patients. This includes honestly evaluating their results- what works and what does not work- and, over time, seeing the best approaches. It also has included the importance of referring patients to conventional medical doctors and working in combination with them.  Clinically, the safety and effectiveness of homeopathic remedies have been proven in a 200- year old record with both scientific studies and clinical results.  And yes, for the most part homeopathic treatment works on an individual basis, but there are times when it does not.

But now, there comes along a group of fundamentalist   “skeptic” organizations funded by pharmaceutical companies recruiting academics who have no medical clinical experience to say that anecdotal information is not relevant to medicine and is, in fact, detrimental to it. They are saying, “Give me the evidence” only through scientific laboratory data and the double blind test. They also want you to believe that this narrow drug company sponsored view is science. Many scientists and medical clinicians would disagree with them and their approach. For instance, most surgical techniques have been developed over years of feedback from clinical information and, of course, not from double blind studies.

This is a drug company dream made into reality! Why is that?

Well, the body of information on side effects from drugs is, for the most part, based on anecdote and not on laboratory evidence.

It has been shown again and again that both the safety and efficacy of drugs has not been determined by double blind studies- the only “evidence” that skeptics want you to believe is important. Many drugs that have successfully undergone double blind studies have been many years later determined to be harmful by clinical results and patient reports, (anecdotes!).

It is rather strange that the organization that is the most opposed to validating anecdotal evidence and is fighting homeopathy the most is  “Sense about Science” (and similar organizations that have now opened around the world). “Sense about Science” is almost entirely funded by the conventional pharmaceutical and medical industry- to the tune of 250,000 GBP and counting.

Luckily, authorities responsible for drug safety don’t listen to the denials of drug companies themselves, or these drug-company sponsored skeptics, but rather to the public and their suffering as a result of taking a particular conventional drug. They have also seen the effectiveness and safety of homeopathic remedies validated through scientific testing, clinical results and demand.

It was for this reason that in England, the “Evidence Check Report” on homeopathy, which was primarily based on recommendations from two well known pharmaceutical company- sponsored skeptics, was not accepted by Parliament and strongly opposed by many members of Parliament who saw through the canard. The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) is now linking to that report as if it was passed without further investigation, which gives you an idea of their bias.

Eventually, a conventional drug is proved to be harmful by a body of anecdotal information. Skeptics and drug companies would like you to believe that this is primarily “in your head”, or in the head of the victim, or caused by the “placebo effect”.  This is why for many years drugs that are harmful are kept on the market. The FDA estimates that Vioxx killed or injured over 55,000 people in the United States by the time it was finally pulled from the market.  The leading cause of liver failure in children in the United States is Tylenol, but we have yet to hear a peep out of skeptic groups about these problematic situations. Why? Because of their unquestioning support of the pharmaceutical industry and the very large research industry, including University researchers that get all their funding from pharmaceutical companies.

Homeopathy will continue to be strong in spite of some mainstream press outlets who have decided to pick up the battle cry of pharmaceutical company advertisers and skeptics- “evidence only and forget what happens in the clinic”.

There are many good laboratory studies showing it works, validating its clinical value and intelligent approach to the human condition and suffering- making it a number one choice for the millions who use it daily.

But if you value the positive results both in yourself, friends, family and colleagues, homeopathy at this time needs to your support to protect it from the substantial interests working against it.

And if you have had some positive effects from homeopathy, it is important for you to get involved and be a voice of reason in all the shouting going on against it. Make your voice heard.

A special thank you to the number of homeopathic clinicians, medical doctors, including medical specialists, who contributed to this editorial.

Shocked Canadian Homeopaths and Homeopathy Supporters Ask, “Is the CBC Marketplace Show Infiltrated by Pharmaceutical Company Sponsored Skeptics?”

Canadian homeopaths and homeopathic professional organizations are reeling from a one sided and unfair piece on homeopathy by the CBC television network. Not only that, they are questioning the unscrupulous methodology of producers of the show.

As the sales of homeopathic and aruvedic remedies increase faster than pharmaceutical drugs in strong economies like Brazil and India, conventional pharmaceutical companies have created and funded skeptic organizations like “Sense about Science” in western countries to discredit them. There are over hundreds of thousands of registered homeopaths in India with 13,000 new ones registering each year and tens of thousands in Brazil.

Now a number of organizations directly funded by pharmaceutical companies have developed aggressive and hostile tactics to fight homeopathy and discredit its practitioners. Infiltrating conventional media sources is one method just as the head of one of the largest pharmaceutically sponsored skeptic organizations “Sense about Science” is a former public relations consultant for pharmaceutical companies.

In Canada, homeopathic practitioners are now being regulated in the province of Ontario by an act of provincial parliament. They are also being targeted by skeptic organizations. Producers at CBC Marketplace decided to do a show on it and took the skeptical premise that homeopathy was simply belief and unscientific, questioning the regulation and even what is in a homeopathic remedy.

Experienced Canadian homeopaths are complaining that these producers at this Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television show comprimised journalistic integrity by taking such a strong one sided point of view right from the beginning and to the very end.

There were some blatant untruths in the show particularly around the show stating that they tried to get comments from various organizations.  As word of the show spread to the homeopathic community some organizations and homeopathic supporters actually contacted the producers and continued to discuss the show with them. The producers did not wish to have any experienced homeopaths on the show, (not asking the most experienced Canadian practitioners at all) but rather sought new and poorly trained homeopaths to be able to highlight their negative premise and create an aura of flakiness and danger. The actual registrar of homeopaths in Ontario, an experienced and sensible homeopath  was not asked to be interviewed.

Pro-homeopathy scientists, experienced practitioners and other journalists were frustrated in their attempt to give the producers positive information and emphasize its safety. The producers even ignored the body of scientific information and papers that demonstrate and scientifically prove homeopathic remedies are more than “sugar and water” or placebo. They sought opinions and gave final say from individuals who were well known skeptics and know little if nothing about homeopathy.

In a recent interview with noble prize winning Dr. Luc Montagnier he actually gives homeopathy some credit within his body of work yet the show decided to take a quote from him from many years ago.

Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine used successfully by tens of millions daily worldwide, and the second most utilized complementary health discipline in the world.  It has a laudable 200-year clinical record.  There are literally hundreds of high quality basic science, pre-clinical and clinical studies showing it works.

New Study at Dutch University: Homeopathy Works for E-Coli Diarrhoea

A research study at the Wageningen University in Holland suggests that homeopathy may be an alternative to antibiotics in neonatal diarrhoea of piglets. This is a randomised, observer blind and placebo-controlled trial done on piglets, not prone to placebo effect. It is another remarkable example of a study showing that homeopathy works and that there is scientific verification for it. You can find the results in pubmed.

The Biological Farming Systems Group at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands recently conducted a research study to investigate if homeopathy might be an alternative to antibiotics in one of the most common illnesses in swine which is neonatal diarrhoea of piglets. This disease leads to weight loss and increased piglet mortality, which has substantial economic consequences. Conventional treatments of Escherichia coli (E. coli) diarrhoea is administration of antibiotics to affected piglets, or preventive vaccination of the sows.

To investigate if E. coli diarrhoea in neonatal piglets could be prevented by homeopathy, the researchers set up a randomised, observer blind and placebo-controlled trial. On a commercial pig farm 52 sows of different parities, in their last month of gestation, were treated twice a week with either the homeopathic agent Coli 30K or placebo. The 525 piglets born from these sows were scored for occurrence and duration of diarrhoea.

Piglets of the homeopathic treated group had significantly less E. coli diarrhoea than piglets in the placebo group (P < .0001). Especially piglets from first parity sows gave a good response to treatment with Coli 30K. The diarrhoea seemed to be less severe in the homeopathically treated litters, there was less transmission and duration appeared shorter.

Advantages at farm level are application of the treatment by the farmer and cost reduction. These advantages and the positive results from this study make the homeopathic agent Coli 30K an attractive potential alternative in the prevention of E. coli diarrhoea. This study also suggests that homeopathic treatment in livestock may help the European citizen be protected from pharmacological residues in animal products and thus reduce the problem of antibiotic resistance.

Reference
Camerlink I, Ellinger L, Bakker EJ, Lantinga EA (2010). Homeopathy as replacement to antibiotics in the case of Escherichia coli diarrhoea in neonatal piglets. Homeopathy, 99; 57–62.

-From homeopathyeurope.org