Latest letter campaign - to Unichem

Yeah I'd put those cases down to sloppy standards due to fuck all regulation more than anything. The only way you'd get poisoned from true homeopathy is if you drowned in it.

There is a well defined market for illegal drugs, but we don't see them on pharmacy shelves...

They actually do something when you take them though....


well the ones i used to sell did anyways, not sure about what's out there these days.

the stupid! it burns!

\

Who cares?

The real question is do they "do something" to a greater degree than placebo, and they don't.

p.s. personal stories don't count as evidence in this debate (for obvious reasons)

yak, if you want to get your point across and persuade your listener you need to change the tone of your message. you nearly always sound condescending. that doesn't always allow you to achieve your aims, unless your aim is to somehow feel 'superior'.

She was rather abrupt in her last letter I think its pretty safe to say that she hates you

ps is 'hope' something which can and should be able to be purchased? and since doctors often prescribe placebos will you be making a complaint to the medical council about that practice yak?

I thought he was talking about illegal drugs... though that would also mean he just implicated himself...

Yak seems to be pretty successful with his letters though.

Funny you should mention "hope", some cosmetics manufacturer (I forget who, but I think it was someone that makes anti-aging and moisturising bullshit) has as their mission statement "we sell hope".

Anyway, doctors prescribing placebos is so different that I cbf arguing it except to say it's different.

i've never sold homeopathic remedies that's for sure... ffs Gummi, wake up son.

You should really get it sorted out then.

Giving it one more go with Jenny

I agree completely, and made deliberate efforts in my first one to sound less condescending - even pointing out explicitly that I was trying not to Diplomacy isn't my forté though, so still learning I guess :>

jenny's gettin Yakked

is the council open to OIA requests - ie legally bound to comply

if so you should be filing some seeking such things as what advice has the council had on homepathic medicine, please supply all correspondence relating to this etc etc

you want to know their position - find out how they came to it and who influenced it, who made it, what are their connections with the industry in question, what research was used in forming the guildeines, how are they implimented and enforced etc etc

I reckon you're seeking answers in a manner they can and will not take seriously

dude read your post again and then hit yourself in the forehead, several times

nice!

I do wonder if you could run into a very complicated argument something as follows:

The main issue seems to be that their code of ethics demands "credible evidence of efficacy." To be precise, scientific studies that do not find evidence of efficacy dont quite fit within the terms of how that statement specifies the issue in question. Simply, they can turn around and say "we have been informed by homeopaths and homeopathic associations that their treatments do work." You might counter that this is not scientific evidence, but if they come back and say "we think these people are credible" (for whatever reason) then you have a problem.

You see they have specified "credible evidence" not "scientific evidence." And they are asking for positive evidence, not refutation.

And, there is another complication here that could really throw a spanner in the works, which is the inherent uncertainties of medicine. Scientific trials of medical treatments may well indicate that they work, but (and there is a huge amount of variation here is just how much medical treatments do an do not work depending on what the treatment is) that effectiveness is stated in probabilistic terms. Medical treatments work some of the time, for some people.

The great problem in medicine is application. Doctors are thoroughly aware when they treat you with something that is recommended by scientific evidence, that it might not work for you becasue everyone is different and everyone responds to treatment differently. There are very few guarantees in medicine. Much is uncertain.

If you could put medicine as a form of treatment that certainly will fix you up against homeopathy as one that is questionable, the debate is a lot simpler. But medicine has so much uncertaintly that the entire debate is in danger of getting dragged into this massive grey area.

And by the way doctors are a very powerful lobby group so if they could have possibly knocked homeopaths of this perch they probably would have done so by now

doctors love a free trip.....

Interesting article in the Sydney morning herald..

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-question/should--universities--teach--alternative--medicine-20120203-1qxb3.html

Yak - when this campaign starts to bore you, could you turn your attention to Fonterra and the brewing milk war?

Not sure exactly what he can attack them on though - globalisation is a pretty big issue.

New response from Pharmacy Council:



sweet..

My brother's also recommended I could go at it from the Consumer Guarantees / Fair Trading acts angle. not fit for sale / misleading advertising or whatever.. Gunna start looking into that this week.

Nice work dude...actually getting somewhere, that's awesome!

I'd take a look at the Councils guidelines, their responsibilities and their powers etc.

as you've just received a brush off I'd suggest

<3

Right - letters now sent to the Health & Disability Commissioner, Commerce Commission.

Found these guys too: medsafe.govt.nz. According to their NZ regulatory guidelines:



Which is interesting.. so I've been trawling through the Medicines Act 1981 ( http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1981/0118/latest/DLM53790.html?search=ts_act_medicines_resel&p=1&sr=1 ) which has a few nuggets of potential ammo :> I need to find out some more about the specific claims the products' labels are making though. Is anyone (in Auckland) possibly able to do some brief in-store research for me?

Ya, hit me up on facebook

ta

are homeopathic remedies 'medicines' under the medicines act 1981? that might be a stumbling block for you...(I haven't looked at the act)

yeh I had already talked to the pharmacist at a Radius Pharmacy on Queen when I was gettin some steroids lol for the cat actually. He said it was the franchise policy (to have homeopathy) but that lots of pharmacists didnt like that, and that they would never recommend it. They had a relatively small selection but it was present.

I missed this thread, but I just wanted to give you a round of applause Pech, because I think it's brilliant. Also, I'm sad now, because there a bunch of people in this thread who apparently are complete idiots, and I used to respect them.

Homeopathy is a sham that milks people of money and has absolutely no basis in reality. Homeopathists at best prescribe treatments so diluted they contain nothing, at worse advise AGAINST science-based medicine leading to further morbidity and sometimes mortality. I'll admit that there is a lot wrong with big pharma, but the whole homeopathic 'treatment' system is corrupt.


Two very good blogs to read are the science based medicine blog, or whats the harm.

People spouting the 'Don't be so closed-minded' rhetoric - don't be stupid. I think resist has a nice video reply for you.

well both my parents are pharmacists (not unichem) and i don't think they believe that homeopathy works...



i have used crampstop in races - which is homeopathic - and for some reason it does actually seem to stop cramp for just a lil bit, i guess it could just be the placebo effect.

does homeopathy purport to be able to help serious illnesses etc? or is it promoted more as an aid for 'ailments'?

what about how vaccinations work? (don't get vaccinated whilst sick! i found this out the hard way prior to a bali trip)

If they don't make any specific theraputic claims, or contain any indications for use on the packaging, then no. Otherwise yes. I suspect that at least some of them will be.. Pending results this weekend

Great to see so much effort being made to champion such important issues ...

I think campaigning to save lives is admirable.

How many deaths are attributed to homeopathy? Or is it more about the vested concern about what may happen in the future if it is left unchecked?

I'm actually pretty sure these things have been raised in pharmacy circles before. I can ask my parents if you like...

Did I need to add ?

On the flipside, how many lives have been lost through fatal reactions to medication? Most medication has side effects, for some these are more severe...

It's just utterly bizarre that you think the issue of companies scamming sick people isn't an important issue... (response it itchy)

http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html

368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages

the first search result in google.

looks at the deaths from HIV/AIDS in RSA and you'll see that people believing bullshit instead of taking real medicines is killing people by the truckload (this is no specific to homeopathy, but general bullshit treatments as a whole, which are all peddled on the basis of lies). In fact, so many people have died, there is a movement in RSA to get the people that peddle this bullshit tried for crimes against humanity.

So, yup, in short, you're a fucking moron itchy.

Thank fucking christ Itchy disagrees with me on this :>

Yup would appreciate that Do your parents' pharmacies sell homeopathic products btw?

What about it? Are you asking about biological mechanisms for how vaccines work? It seems a strange thing to bring up in a conversation about homeopathy, but if it's an actual question, I might know some answers.

Again, what has this got to do with homeopathy?

OMG is Itchy back sweeeet! NEEDS MORE CROSS FIT!

I think your supposed to pitch a tent on some grass patch somewhere in the general vicinity of the shop in question and camp there for several weeks. That will be pretty effective at getting the message to Unichem I think.

Thanks btw! This side of the table in the debate just got a whole lot more awesome/credible with you here

haha!

yes they do I think - at least they have in the past. I think pretty much most pharmacies do.

like sleeping with a virgin?

well...I'm really just being a devil's advocate but don't vaccinations work through immunity being obtained through exposure to a small amount of the "bacteria/illness/whatever you want to call it"....and is this completely dissimilar to using like to cure like in homeopathy? I guess vaccinations are for prevention not 'cure' however (I had hep a vaccine whilst slightly sick and got sick as a dog), so there are some fundamental differences there.

I'm not advocating any views here, just throwing it out there.

"...and is this completely dissimilar to using like to cure like in homeopathy?"

holy fuck you're dim...

Well, the argument has been raised that one of the main problems with homeopathy is that lives are lost because of it. Lives are also lost because of regular medication/treatments etc as well, with those medications saving lives also - I wouldn't be alive if not for insulin.

I guess it comes down to a case of utility. With 'regular' medication, there is evidence backing up their efficacy, whereas with homeopathy, the only thing you might be buying is hope or a placebo effect (I use my example of crampstop as an example of this).

I had injury problems with my IT band for around 1.5-2 years, which meant I couldn't really run. Nothing a physio had done had helped. Out of desperation, I went to this guy who is an orthobionomist (or something), and his treatment ideas were truly whacky. Talked about all of this holistic bullshit, saying I had to drink 1.5 litres of warm water when I first got up, and just touching my bones through my pants. Also saw a sports medicine specialist who thought I might have illiac artery issues (never ended up investigating it further). In the end my leg ended up getting better - well at least the IT band issue resolved itself, but I went to the orthobionomist out of desepration and the hope that his treatment 'may' just help me. I think in that kinda situation, if all other avenues seem to have been exhausted, then being able to purchase hope is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as you perhaps don't stop taking 'regular' treatments. So long as the purchase of that hope is not too expensive! (I only went to the orthobionomist once, he was full of crap and spouting off a load of rubbish about my diabetes).

If someone were to be terminally ill, with all other avenues having been exhausted, would it be a bad thing to try homeopathy?

Holy fuck! Did you read the rest of what I wrote? (ie prevention vs cure)

I haven't googled (the source of most people's knowledge of these kinds of things on here it often seems) or studied up on any of these things, so just throwing some ideas out there.

Leeches a cure all for all your problems

just add water for sea monkeys

fun for all the family

Why? because a homeopathic treatment is going to stop them from dying, or give them a better quality of life? Fuck no, its going to do fuck all. They are going to die.

Some dialogue with Alison of PBL (Pharmacy Brands Ltd) - Unichem's parent company to follow.
Mostly a rehash, but seems this issue has found a place in the next Pharmacy Council meeting which is good

Please come to Amsterdam Yak, so that I can buy you drink! I think that what you're doing in awesome (and I find it a bit embarrassing that nobody has done it before)

Replace 'homeopathy' in this sentence with 'tapping your head three times while saying 'pathogens be gone!'" or "shining a blue light on your ankle" or "making sure your bed faces due-east" or any other random combination of words you can think of, and see if you can answer that question for yourself :p

What are the chances this Pharmacy Council meeting is the blow-off?

Pharmacists have been exposed to scientific-medical type training. Presumably they would jealously guard the status this provides, and it would institutionalise certain norms into their ways of thinking (as evidenced by the comment from someone that Pharmacists in shop will not recommend homeopathic products).

Presumably also, when the Pharmacists Council saw the advent of homeopathic remedies coming into their shops, this would have been like a red rag to a bull. It would have raised obvious concerns and debates. No doubt the Council have thrashed these issues out, and some kind of defensible policy has already been arrived at - as has been summaried by their BDM.

A significant aspect of Pharmacists motivation is monetary - I agree. Clearly they have seen the rise of complimentary forms of treatment and have realised that if they don't find a way to grab that market someone else will steal the opportunity. But I think you can guarantee that they have already found a way to reason themselves around the kinds of objections you are raising. They no doubt have had those same kinds of objections themselves, but for reasons of profit it has been essential to find a way around them.

made a question on facebook would be interesting to see the results

If they have a defensible policy, then I'll leave it be. But I'm not just going to take their word for it, given that I don't believe one can exist :p There'll have to be a pretty compelling reason overcoming the threat to public health to remotely classify such a policy as 'defensible'...

Yeah I'm gunna make a proper facebook page about it if I don't get anywhere with these government/regulatory agencies. I could do it now, but want to give them a decent chance to address it properly before I start getting overtly public with it

Ok, only thing I can think that they could respond with that I'd not immediately spurn is the idea that they are getting people into their stores who might not otherwise go anywhere near the white man's medicine and would instead seek treatment from far less credible health providers.

Sifty excuse, and just happens to have positive monetary bonuses for them, but makes some sense...

Having good intentions while being unethical is still unethical though T..

It won't be defensible as in "watertight" but it will be defensible as in "arguable." They are going to come back at you and say this: Homeopaths are a recognised profession with certified training and accreditation processes; they can provide evidence of success - no its not controlled blind experimental trials, it's some other type and we accept their expertise on this matter; the public accept the value of these products and want us to provide them.

So you are going to have to have an argument about evidence and they simply will not agree with you no matter how strong a case you can make because at the end of the day people accept different criteria for what constitutes evidence.

Dialogue with Alex of the HDC (Health & Disability Commissioner):





Awaiting reply..

If the idea is to attempt to provide proven treatments to those customers at the counter, though, I'd argue that it isn't perfectly ethically but is still justifiable, if rather underhanded

I definitely share your concern here, but what are my options? Keep trying or just give up right. To be honest if I can get a regulating agency to actually tell me that they accept homeopaths' expertise and level of scientific credibility, that'll be just another piece of ammo. It'd surely be problematic for an industry so fundamentally scientific, to be shown as the opposite in their policies..

Possibly, but you're applying isolated morality to a heavily regulated industry.. Even if you could morally defend it by way of a 'greater good' type argument, it still wouldn't be legal, and the moment you let someone walk out the door having paid for a product you know is ineffective, it's still unethical.

What he means is this:

Your concerns relate to the general availability of these products.

This is not a situation in which a customer has been given demonstrably poor or negligent advice in terms of how the particular product they purchased is intended to be used, and nor have they been offered a product that is not recommended by a credible authority for their particular complaint.

Yup, that's fair. Hmm...

What is illegal about it?

Under the Medicines act and its regulations, homeopathic products are not classified as 'pharmacy only' medication. Which means they can sold outside of Pharmacies also. Obviously, homeopathic remedies did therefore enter the legislator's minds when considering the Medicines Act and its regulations. In fact in my view, it is perhaps better for homeopathic remedies to be sold in pharmacies than elsewhere, given that the pharmacist would be able to recommend 'traditional' medication instead of the homeopathic remedies, whereas if the homeopathic remedies were not able to be sold in pharmacies, there wouldn't be the same expert guidance towards traditional medicine in the places in which it was being sold. Hence the level of any 'risk' is much lower if the homeopathic product is being sold in a pharmacy as opposed to somewhere else.

Reg 3 Medicines Regulations 1984:

Classification of medicines
(1) All medicines and classes of medicines specified in Part 1 of Schedule 1 are hereby declared to be prescription medicines.
(1A) [Revoked]
(1B) [Revoked]
(2) All medicines and classes of medicines specified in Part 2 of Schedule 1 are hereby declared to be restricted medicines.
(3) Subject to subclause (4), all medicines and classes of medicines specified in Part 3 of Schedule 1 are hereby declared to be pharmacy-only medicines.
(4) Nothing in subclause (3) shall apply to a remedy that is, and is described as, homoeopathic.

Umm, it's illegal for pharmacies to follow their own 'greater good' morality rather than the regulation that's already in place? This shouldn't really be contentious



That's only one factor. I'd say the credibility being lent to the industry by the pharmacies selling them would far outweigh that. Some people will speak directly to the pharmacist about it, some of those people will understand what the pharmacist is saying, and some of those people will take it on board. The majority of people (who don't already know that it's a scam) are going to see the products there in the store and intuitively view them as a viable purchase. It will affect their views on homeopathy in general toward legitimacy.. which isn't cool.

NOTE - just returned from bottom of post, turned huge, so summary: vaccination works by activating a cell process that ends up with a memory response to a pathogen. Nobody has been able to explain how homeopathy might work.



Okay, so I think this is a good question, and if more people actually wondered about this stuff and searched for answers then homeopathists would have much more difficulty taking money off people.

There are a few different types of vaccines, that work in slightly different ways, but you've summed up the general principle - by introducing a tiny 'sample' of the disease to the body, you kick start a process where your cells encounter the antigen, and produce new cells in response which are able to recognise the same antigen if it is ever introduced again, and can produce a whole heap of molecules which will either neutralise or greatly reduce the pathogen causing that disease in the future. It's a wickedly elegant but complicated procedure, and I'm not great at explaining it, but it's been studied for decades. For kids, I explain vaccines by saying it's kind of like showing a picture of a bad guy to a security guy, then that security guy shows it to his friends, tells them to remember the face, and tells them exactly how they can stop him if they ever see him again.

So how does homeopathy work? The twee (and correct) answer is 'It doesn't.' If you try and go deeper, you start coming across explanations such as 'the memory of water' and 'the law of similars.' Nothing even close to the mechanisms for vaccination are implicated. I've read a lot of stuff - (I can't say scientific articles, because proper studies on homeopathy are difficult to find) and I still can't quite understand it. Basically, one school of thought is that if you can invoke symptoms in a patient using a preparation that is NOT derived from the bacteria or virus, you can protect against a disease that gives the same symptoms. Like giving somebody a running nose and red eyes by making them sniff a big onion, and then telling them 'Brilliant. Now you can't get a cold.' Then, using the 'memory of water' which has been shown to be absolute bollocks time and time again by many independent and robust scientific studies, homeopathists will dilute down that onion essence to 30C - that's 1 followed by 60 zeros.

It's worth mentioning here that not a single homeopathic remedy has ever been proven effective in a double blind, placebo controlled study. As more evidence emerges that the law of similars and the memory of water just do not work, homeopathists are now trying to go even smaller to explain why it must work. They call on 'Quantum Science!' And then they kind of stop, because 'Quantum Science' is impossible to explain.

Okay, so this turned massive, and I apologise. Hopefully it shows how important it is not to mix up vaccination and homeopathy. I spend a lot of spare time reading into this kind of work, as I think it's criminal that people take money off sick people for treatments that contain and do nothing.

How is what they are doing ' illegal'?

How the fuck do they reconcile 'the memory of water' with water treatment plants and sewage treatment?

Thanks. I wasn't mixing them up at all, just wondering if the way homeopathists claim it works is at all similar to how vaccination works. (I don't really have time or the energy to google this stuff).

I have to say when I met that orthobionomist guy about my leg and he began offering me advice on my diabetes (indeed he claimed he knew how I got it!) I thought he was full of shit - both about my leg and my diabetes. I didn't go back because I thought he was full of shit.

Do you think though that hope is something worth purchasing?

You're a scientist working in this kinda area from memory huh ruther4d?

they're not selling hope. they're selling lies.

They cannot.

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/01/why-is-homeopathy-successful.html

Interesting read.

heh, I like this line: You do not make coffee stronger by diluting it. You do not get drunk on shandy.

Wow Pech! Great work so far! I'm impressed, keep it up. I've been mad busy in the last few weeks so only just catching up on this. Hopefully something comes out of the Pharmacy Council.

And yeah, the fact Itchy doesn't agree is pretty much a green light that you're doing something right.

Yes and in light of some of comments of Dr Kate, which have relevance here, with regards to US free trade negs and our Pharmac, can we look forward to Dr Pech tilting at big Pharma as well as big Homo?

if 300,000 organic farmers can take on Monsanto (in the US) Pech can take on big Pharma

viva the revolution motherfuckers

I didn't bother reading her whole comment because she opened with 'I'm an MD and now run a successful wellness coaching site,' then continued with typical homeopathic blather about an ' inability and reluctance to even consider the other side.' Going back, I don't think she says anything remotely interesting. She spouts the usual anti big pharma rhetoric, but hasn't quite got her facts right.

You work up to the double blind placebo tests by showing positive results in preliminary trials. Homeopathy usually falls over before the double blind phase, because as soon as you add some level of control to a study the treatments show no effect. However, some homeopathic treatments do undergo double blinds (or partially blind) : ( eg http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14651731, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21954883, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21784327, ) and ALL so far have come up with squat.

Though she contradicts herself in point five where she talks about pharmaceutical piracy, she states that big pharma rarely studies plants or herbs, which again, is only partially true. Small research groups begin research on plants and herbs. When they hit on something that works, such as the resveratrols, big pharma comes in and carries on the work on the big pharma scale.

She's got nothing to say, but she says it in a pretty way.


(Side bar: I hadn't done a homeopathy pubmed search for a while. I thought this paper was particularly interesting because they demonstrated that it was the consultation process but not the actual treatment that had a positive effect on patients. More reason to tear down the homeopathic stands, and just promote talking about your problems to someone who has time to listen as an alternative.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076131
Rheumatology (Oxford). 2011 Jun;50(6):1070-82. Epub 2010 Nov 13.
Homeopathy has clinical benefits in rheumatoid arthritis patients that are attributable to the consultation process but not the homeopathic remedy: a randomized controlled clinical trial.)

ruther4d: btw if you get your hands on anything interesting in your own research you think I'd be interested in (re homeopathy), feel free to share to yaksha at gmail dot com Particularly stuff that I wouldn't have subscriptions to heh

Sounds sort of like giving a creationist a voice. Arguing on some whole different level of stupid and not realising it.

She describes herself as an M.D. This in America means Dr., the title that she uses. Assuming that this is correct I think that she is in a good position to comment on some of American big pharma's more dubious practices.

Yeah, I realise what the MD means. She should be informed, but she clearly isn't. There are many rubbish yet qualified doctors out there, scamming people with nonsense.

So did NPH for a while there, NH, and I don't know that I'd trust him either

Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor, and he's a fucking nutjob.

There's no way "big pharma" could reasonably be painted as even remotely lilly white