Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSMass homeopathy 'overdose' protest outside Boots
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Dave Gorman: Homeopathic remedies: mass “overdose” protest
Members of the public who doubt the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies have held a mass “overdose” protest outside boots stores to make their point.
Supporters of Merseyside Skeptics Society (MSS) have urged high-street chemist Boots to stop stocking the remedies, claiming they are “scientifically absurd”.
They gathered outside branches of the store in Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Leicester and Birmingham to swallow bottles of tablets.
Homeopathy tries to help the body heal itself, using very highly diluted substances.
Michael Marshall, from the MSS, said: “We believe that they shouldn’t be selling sugar pills to people who are sick. Homeopathy never works any better than a placebo. The remedies are diluted so much that there is nothing in them.”
He took a remedy said to contain arsenic but explained that the chances of finding one molecule of the substance in the tablets were incredibly small.
Mr Marshall said that consumers trust the company and it should not sell the remedies alongside mainstream medicines.
Similar demonstrations were planned in Canada, Spain, the US and Australia, he added.
The chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, Paula Ross, said: “This is an ill advised publicity stunt in very poor taste, which does nothing to advance the scientific debate about how homeopathy actually works.”
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Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 1-Feb-2010 5:47 pm
Hope they took Lycopodium!!!
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Anonymous | 2-Feb-2010 6:36 am
They didn't take anything but sugar.
After all "there's nothing in it"
:)
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Alex Preston | 2-Feb-2010 7:25 pm
In my role as a student mental health nurse we had the pleasure a as class of watching a video today concerning a young gentleman in the final stages of cancer. As he was, and indeed anyone with rational thought would be, quite aprehensive about his untimely demise he had turned away from the medical regime and invested at least some of his hope in a 'Nutrionist', her 'diet' and the homeopathic equivalent of morphine that she claimed to be able to provide. She bled him (metaphorically, she was just evil not dark ages) of his money and jastised his family for their diet which consisted of that which we all know to be truly terrible, I am speaking of course, about honey! That awful supply of simple sugars that mankind has been eating for thousands of years which must be bad because it contains SUGAR!! (According to the Vulture). When, as a group of professionals, do we start regulating these Nutritionists that prey on the weak and the dross that they expound with flawed argument such as homeopathy. It makes me sad to be human sometimes that people believe this rubbish. Water with memory, why don't our last nights whiskey glasses that we rinse out and drink water from the next day cause inebriation as I'm sure they still contain traces. Boulderdash of the highest order.
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Anonymous | 3-Feb-2010 7:53 pm
Homeopathy is one of the biggest cons ever. Almost all alternative medicine is just a way of seperating money from the masses (I would recommend "suckers", can't actually recall the author, hang on, Rose Shapiro) surprisingly even acupuncture is a fake although, scientifically, you can show that the placebo effect works. Homeopathy is worse than a placebo though. And yet high street shops can sell the cures (snake oil?) and people are allowed to call themselves homeopathic doctors?!
Gah!!
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bob | 1-Mar-2010 7:02 pm
I'm sick of listening to the kind of drivel again spouted in the responses to the sham above. Grow up. Sniding from the sidelines is not scientific or intelligent and demonstrates more of your characters than you might be aware of or intend. It is your responses that sound like something from the dark ages and the medievil churches, don't confuse what you think is rational comment with your own projected character flaws.
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