A homeopath friend here in Canada just posted this to me in response to a petition to keep our public broadcasting agency, the CBC, from being dismantled by our ogre of a Prime minister. I'm not so sure they're going to get my support if this is their current flavour...

"The CBC is about to start what will probably be a five year long anti-homeopathy smear campaign fully funded by pharmaceutical companies, as the BBC was used to do so in the UK. Marketplace this week will be all about how we homeopaths shockingly pose threats to all of humanity by getting folks to choose us instead of "real" medicine, and then trick them with our sugar pills. We lure then away from vaccines, we lure them away from deadly pills, but our sugar pills kill far more. Says the CBC. In the UK Big Pharma's big complaint is that homeopathy is the most popular form of medicine in the UK, and it costs the NHS four million pounds per year to reimburse those patients who take homeopathic treatments. 4M pounds to treat an entire country of 62 million people. They want that 4M back!

Homeopaths all over Europe and in the UK especially know that this is all driven by Big Pharma and it involves all major media in a targeted area, for extended periods of time (and it's happening here now because homeopaths will become accredited this year and self-regulating, finally, in law--which means people will be able to receive insurance coverage for our treatments--maybe even OHIP (*this is our free provincial health coverage plan for neccessary treatments*)--hence the big damage project).
If the CBC is just going to act like every other sleazy, far right media outlet in the country, and its journalists will be just as lazy and uninformed and damaging, then I'm afraid it won't be getting my support at all. At least when Stephen Harper's (*Canada's Prime Minister*) minions publish bullshit, people know it's bullshit, With the CBC, which isn't supposed to be getting pay cheques for what they publish but now clearly are, people don't.

So really, we're not losing anything if the CBC goes, they're proving themselves expendable."

Where are you getting this, coco?

A friend of mine who practices homeopathy here in Ontario. She's right pissed, I can tell you. The homeopathy association is doing their thing but they have Very little support aside from practitioners and patients who swear by their remedies. At this point I am more than a little afraid to see any alternative therapies under attack, that is not a route I want to see this country going down.

No, I mean what minister of the government up there in Ottawa has publicly stated this, or what piece of legislation demands this? I guess I could go to the CBC News website . . .

Let me ask her for some info and get back to you. I am sure the CBC is hardly going to admit this is their agenda though, the liberal public that supports them would certainly sit up and say Whoa There! But an underhanded smear campaign? We'll see.

Here's her note to me.

I think Marketplace airs on Friday nights--their big expose is on homeopathy this week, wherein they will do the first ever test in Canada of the efficacy of homeopathy.

The BBC did a science show with probably exactly the same test, about 5 years ago, just after a similar campaign started there. Here's a transcript to the show and the "test", which claimed to reproduce an actual experiment created by Professor Madeleine Ennis and tested repeatedly in various universities in England--but the "star" of the BBC horizon episode, James Randi, actually altered the experiment so that the results would not support homeopathy's efficacy. That information didn't come out until both Ennis and homeopathy were discredited on Horizon--leaving Ennis to decry that her scientific method had been altered after she'd been discredited, off camera. Damage done.

[www.bbc.co.uk]

I'd be really surprised if the "test" the cbc uses isn't identical to the altered one used by James Randi in the Horizon program. Also, James Randi is a magician who gets paid by Big Pharma to "quackbust", but he loves to pick on homeopathy especially. Hey, you can make more medicine from one drop of a tincture made from one plant to treat all of humanity for millennia, and then easily add more water and dilute and succuss to make more when that looks like it's running out--and even if you patent the plant, you can't get a patent for the tinctures and mixtures we've been making our remedies from for the last 200+ years. So if people start using homeopathy en masse (as they are, actually) then that means no more money for pharmaceutical companies whatsoever. They'll go from being the largest and most powerful corporations in the world to nothing. Spending millions of dollars on discrediting homeopathy now when it's growing more popular all the time would be money well spent.

Here's a link to the big "media sweep" Lancet meta-analysis published 2006, which was the launch of the "take homeopathy off the NHS push" in the UK. For some reason, one "meta-analysis" article published in an issue of the Lancet (which also contained articles disproving the meta-analysis, it is a peer-reviewed medical journal after all) made the news on every media outlet known. Including MSN.com. Since when does a journal you can't even access without a degree and a membership fee get any attention from anyone? Just to prove this point, the Lancet has published many hundreds of articles PROVING homeopathy's efficacy over the last hundred and fifty years, too--everyone's ignored those, though, right?

[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

So we can expect to see a great number of "articles" from similar "medical journals" run by medical schools in Canada that also trade on teaching "integrative medicine". The biggest one, McMaster's medical journal, was discredited in 2005 for publishing false data they were paid to publish by numerous and various pharmaceutical companies, so they were forced to admit to their unethical behaviour and the journal was shamed and closed after more than 100 years of being considered top rank. I doubt they're publishing now, but they certainly made everyone in the country aware of the fact that the bribes were being handed out--and accepted--by medical publications and peer-reviewed journals. So I know we'll be seeing similar bad-mouthing in those journals (like U of T's) soon.

Look also for articles such as these:

[www.guardian.co.uk]

[www.guardian.co.uk]

and if you google homeopathy, the guardian, NHS you'll find tons of articles calling to put an end to NHS funding for homeopathic care, closing of classes teaching homeopathy in the UK's medical schools, and the closings of the homeopathic hospitals throughout the UK--repeatedly the safest and most effective and cheapest hospitals to run in the country.

Very effective program in the UK--it has shut down the Scottish hospital, which was a landmark in the world for teaching and treating patients with homeopathy. The idea is to put homeopaths out of business entirely, and we'll see the same kinds of tactics put to use here now that we're on the verge of being legally self-regulated (a process that has actually been set up to put us at risk of being pushed out of business too--that's why it's taken so long, as no one in the government actually bothered to ask homeopaths about what we do before "self-regulating" our practices.

I feel like I'm ranting, mostly because I don't even charge for what I do anymore, it's so hard to make a living at it unless you've got oodles of cash to spend and I never have any money to spare. But it makes me angry to see so many of our most intimate decisions violated by laws and actions like this. So I rant. Hope you'll excuse that "edge" and take what you will from the information, make up your own mind. While we still can!

[www.bbc.co.uk]

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But it makes me angry to see so many of our most
> intimate decisions violated by laws and actions
> like this.

I totally agree with your statement. Laws, Rules and Regulations are suffocating us.

I just got an email from my local Independent Consumers and Farmers Association:

"We are lobbying to restore our right to sell pickles, canned vegetables and fruits with the pH of 4.6 or less. As you know, freedom isn't free."

When the government is telling us what kind of food we can and can't eat and sell....oh, yeah, they're doing that now.....Tyranny


"Tyranny is the rule by a single authoritative entity, be it an individual or a group, for the good of itself rather than the good of those ruled. Consequently, the concerns of those who are ruled are important to the rulers only insofar as the ruler needs to keep them happy, controlled, or productive. Since providence for the sake of the people oftentimes means sacrifice on the part of the ruler, tyrants are typically oppressive across the board of human rights and dignity."

Read more: [wiki.answers.com]

In Jefferson's words: “When the people fear the government, there is Tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is Liberty.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2011 06:11PM by KidRaw.

KidRaw,

Definition of tyranny is misapplied:

Quote

"Tyranny is the rule by a single authoritative entity, be it an individual or a group, for the good of itself rather than the good of those ruled.

This is an educated guess, but the government does not allow for the sale of acidic solution pickles because acidic solution pickles that have not been pateurized are more likely to be contaminated with active botlinum toxin, which can kill whoever comsumes it. Clearly, the motivation, harder as it may make operations on the pickle producer, is not tyranny{for the good of an oppressor], but the opposite--an attempt to keep a food borne illness crisis from occurring. This isn't China.


I have a culinary arts degree. Oh, also, I almost minored in American History the first time around in college. So analyzing this was fun for me--thanks!



coco,

That episode of Marketplace airs tomorrow night; I've already marked it to watch. They have almost always tended to advocate for the consumer or the public health. I have often said to myself, if only we had a products watchdog show like this here in the States. I used to think that of "Street Cents," I mean, what a great idea! But no. I am hoping that it's just my imagination that Cananda is becoming more like here because of who's running Ottawa these days. Never have I seen so many pharmaceutical and fast food commercials on CBC as lately--it's frightening.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2011 09:52PM by Tamukha.

So, coconuts, they have hit an astonishing low over at "Marketplace." I'm guessing someone from Big Pharma put a flea in the producers' ears and away they went on a trail of supposition, hearsay, appeal to false authority, unscientific follow-through and just a touch of contempt. The overdosing of the skeptics was the sloppiest thing I've ever seen on the show. Nothing else presented as "unscientific" compared to the stupidity of that "experiment." Irony.

Still waiting for a truly unbiased assessment of homeopathics by diligent journalists and nuclear physicists; the only people qualified to discuss homeopathy, as it is subtle to the discipline of biochemistry. But shan't hold me breath for it.

Please write to them, please please please Tam, I implore you.

I can recall my father giving me some homeopathic tabs for an extended boat trip. It was supposed to treat or prevent seasickness. I got as sick as a dog, and after I was finished 'feeing the fishes' he gave me conventional seasickness pills. I felt fine after that.

Actually, how I am I supposed to know if the conventional pills 'worked'? Most people start to feel better after vomiting. I told my father that the first one didn't work, he said 'how do yo know'? He claims that I might have been even sicker if I didn't have them.

The only other time I tried them was a formula for stage frieght. I actually tried taking those before some important interviews. I don't know if they helped. Isn't that difficult sometimes? You can't always duplicate an exact set of conditions to see how something goes with or without 'x'.

coco,

Sent off my strongly worded critique to Marketplace comments; if it passes muster, they'll post it Monday. I basically said that I was expecting a good disinterested analysis of homeopathy, and instead got supposition and unscientific hooey. I mentioned that there were insufficient homeopathy experts featured, that testing measures were missapplied, and that their own analysis was unscientific. I concluded that I doubted what information the viewer was supposed to derive from the show, and that I expect more investigative rigor in the future.

I must admit I feel bad about criticizing things like this because, though I consider myself an honorary Canadian and have still not ruled out moving there, I don't feel I really have the right to criticize anything that isn't getting my tax dollars to exist. My summary of my letter is, I think, harsher, than what I actually posted!