Cure or Con?
Posted by Ethan Clow on January 13, 2011
Last year myself along with volunteers from CFI Vancouver participated in an episode of the CBC show Marketplace. It’s a consumer protection program that airs here in Canada and shines a light on scam artists, frauds and questionable businesses. They contacted us because they were doing a show on homeopathy.
And we were thrilled to participate!
We at CFI had been thinking about making a statement about homeopathy for a while and Marketplace happened to contact us just at the right time.
If you have absolutely no idea what homeopathy is and can’t figure out what the fuss is about check this out.
In short, we got together and decided to test the effectiveness of homeopathy by overdosing. Our theory was that if homeopathy works as the claim is, by taking a lot of it we should see some sort of reaction. For the sake of safety, we were outside Vancouver General Hospital.
Fortunately safety wasn’t an issue. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but obviously I’m still here.
However, if you’re interested in seeing Marketplace’s take on it you should tune into your local CBC on Friday, January 14th at 8pm (depending on when Marketplace airs on your local station) Our show is called Cure or Con. If you can’t find it on your TV don’t worry, they’ll put the episodes online on their website after it airs. We’re also hoping to put together a screening party about a week after it airs for those who want to watch it with a bunch of skeptics!
Of course, not everyone is happy that Marketplace is taking a skeptical view to the extraordinary claims of homeopathy. The Official Homeopathy Resource website, I have no idea how “official” it is, has declared that us skeptics are in the pocket of “big pharma”
“conventional pharmaceutical companies have created and funded skeptic organizations like “Sense about Science” in western countries to discredit them.”
Sense About Science, for those that are interested in facts, is a worthy organization that advances public understanding about science and the scientific method out of the UK. If you’d like to learn more about them, we interviewed Alice Tuff from Sense About Science way back in Episode 15 of Radio Freethinker.
The Official Homeopathy Resource went on to suggest that:
“Now a number of organizations directly funded by pharmaceutical companies have developed aggressive and hostile tactics to fight homeopathy and discredit its practitioners”
So just to clarify. Nor I, nor my fellow co-hosts, nor CFI has ever ever received any money from the pharmacological companies. If we did, we’d all drive cooler cars. And secondly, no one is attacking any homeopathic practitioners. We disagree with their claims, many of us are unsatisfied that they’ve produced any worth while evidence for their extraordinary claims. Like any medical claim that’s to be taken seriously, skeptics and scientists expect it to pass through rigorous peer review and be able to stand up to skeptical scrutiny. This is how one determines what is safe and what is woo. Unfortunately, sometimes woo can kill.
CFI Vancouver issued our own response to the claims of shilling for “big pharma.”
And if you’re interested in reading more about the event and how it went, I recommend you check out the Crommunist’s take in his post here and here (where he tried to return his homeopathy)
Radio Freethinker 
Greg Wise said
The “overdose” experiment was doomed to fail because it was wrongly designed. Homoeopathy is an energy, not mass, medicine, and it is impossible to overdose by taking more of it. It works on animals, children, and seniles, and hence, is not possibly placebo. Oh, yes: It’s cheap! Pharma wishes it would just go away. Countless “modern” medicine drugs and procedures have been pulled after only a few years; homoeopathy is still effective and unchanged after over 200 years.
Berny said
I would agree that homeopathy is as effective today as it was 200 years ago. Of course, it wasn’t effective back then either, it simply killed fewer people than conventional medicine. The same is not true today, particularly when it comes to illness like cancer.
eire_rich said
Berny just delivered can of whoop-ass to Greg…and I thought I’d dilute it for extra effect!
Kalyn said
Stands back from the keoyabrd in amazement! Thanks!
Ethan Clow said
What kind of energy? Kinetic or potential? Nuclear? Thermal? To quote my friend over at Key of Atheist “The thing about “energy” is that it’s measurable, and it acts in predictable ways.” If you’re going to invoke energy to explain homeopathy then explain specifically what kind of energy you’re talking about. Don’t just use it as a substitute for the word “magic.”
I’m baffled by anyone who would put a medical product, that’s methodology hasn’t changed in 200 years, in their body. Scientific progress has allowed our civilization to advance to our current state where some illnesses have been eradicated. And yet some people still look at all that “progress” as a detraction.
Shawn said
I agree the “overdose” experiment was bound to fail. It assumes overdose effects similar to conventional medicine overdose effects. Homeopathy proponents suggest homeopathy works in completely different ways. So regardless of whether homeopathy works or not, you would probably expect the same result with an “overdose”. However, my hope is that the experiment gets people to question and think about homeopathy. I’ve found most people don’t understand what it is.
There have been some small or poor quality studies that seem to indicate it is effective in some instances. And there have been some seemingly well designed studies showing a small effect over placebo. But there are no large, high quality, replicable studies that have shown a large effect. You would need all of those attributes to market, say, a cold medication. Studies with those attributes do not exist for homeopathy.
As for medications being pulled, yes, science/medicine makes mistakes. Somebody else’s mistake is not equivalent to you being correct.
Another way of stating what you said above is “Science realizes its mistakes in only a few years. Homeopathy proponents don’t realize they’re making mistakes, even after 200 years.”.
The longevity of a belief doesn’t reflect its veracity (flat Earth, luminiferous aether, demons causing sickness, etc.)
As for it being cheap:
1- if it doesn’t work, any price > 0 means it’s infinitely expensive on a per-results basis.
2- one would expect water or sugar to be cheap (for pharmacy homeopathy)
3- First result from typing “homeopathic prices” (for consultations) into Google:
First Consultation £80
Follow up consultation £55
First Consultation + B&B £120
Follow up consultation + B&B £95
Jaik said
Cite your sources please.
Jaik said
I was referring to this piece:
“There have been some small or poor quality studies that seem to indicate it is effective in some instances. And there have been some seemingly well designed studies showing a small effect over placebo.”
Elizabeth said
When I was in college, my classmates and I tried to get my professor drunk on homeopathic Captain Morgan’s (in liquid form). He was a good sport and kept doing shots, but alas, we only ended up with full bladders.
morgan in austin said
Define “overdose” please? Are the experimenters all guzzling entire bottles of homeopathic preparations? That’s all wrong. A true homeopathic overdose is what I take every day – – i.e. absolutely none at all of the stuff. So far it hasn’t killed me.
Saturday Stub: Updates and Welcome Lethbridge Listeners « Radio Freethinker said
[…] Early in the Year the CBC consumer protection program Marketplace ran an episode on Homeopathy called Cure or Con, I helped organize a skeptical response for Marketplace and number of local skeptics appeared on the show. Here is a post regarding that: Cure or Con? […]