Water, Water Everywhere…

November 5, 2007 at 3:54 pm (Bad Science, Bloggers, Code of Ethics, Homeopathic Remedies, Homeopathy, NASH, Remedies, Society of Homeopaths, SoH) (Bad Science, badscience, Bloggers, blogs, Coleridge, David Icke, Health Insurance, Homeopathy, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Sovereign Healthcare)

Nor any drop to drink. With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I’m using just a tiny amount of his poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ in the hope that this tiny amount, heavily diluted with my own words (and succussed when I bang my head on the keyboard in frustration, most likely) will prove to be more powerful than the original. Sounds like a load of old cock? It is – but so is homeopathy and still we have ‘water, water everywhere’. The latest example I’ve spotted is…

…the Sovereign Healthcare Benefit Table. Did you know that if you pay into Sovereign Healthcare, you could be subsidising homeopathic treatment? Benefits for Homeopathy/Reflexology start from a maximum payment of £60 to a maximum payout of £240. The Sovereign Healthcare Benefit Table is here as a PDF. They aren’t alone… in the US, there is an Alternative Healthcare Insurance Service, http://www.alternativeinsurance.com/html/presscoverage.htm. BCWA (http://www.bcwa.co.uk/family/personalhealth/benefits.aspx) also provide for homeopathic treatment.

Homeopathy has also insinuated itself into the NHS. Apparently, water has been available on the NHS since 1948. http://www.trusthomeopathy.org/trust/tru_nhs.html.* Although, as David Icke’s blog points out, those Evidence-Based Bastards** have been trying to close the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital – http://www.davidicke.com/content/view/5797/48/. Icke didn’t write this page himself, but gave space on his blog for Carol Boyce, MCH, CCH, RSHom (NA) to hold forth on homeopathy and the conspiracy against it. “We all know the issues, it’s not about saving the NHS money, it’s about politics and multi-national drug companies and the commercialization of medicine etc. etc.”

What can be done about homeopathy insidiously creeping into our lives? If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. So without further ado, I will introduce Face http://shpalman.livejournal.com/tag/homeopathy, Murdoch http://gimpyblog.wordpress.com/, Mr T http://dcscience.net/?cat=13 and Hannibal http://www.badscience.net/?cat=35. Fuck. There’s only four people in the A-Team. It’s not enough. Here’s why it’s not enough: apart from Le Canard Noir on the Quackometer blog http://www.quackometer.net/blog/labels/homeopathy.html, there’s also the young, hip bloggers from the Bad Science forum – http://badscienceblogs.net/. The Bad Science bloggers include Hawk Handsaw, who can be found here: http://hawk-handsaw.blogspot.com/search/label/homeopathy and Ithika (here: http://brokenhut.livejournal.com/tag/homeopathy). Apologies to anyone who has written awesome posts on homeopathy and yet not been listed here. The reason is that I was too damn lazy to go through all the blogs on the badscienceblogs index. Sorry. DC Science has a new post highlighting homeopathy in Boots here: http://dcscience.net/?p=191.

*Re trusthomeopathy.org – anyone who needs to say ‘trust me’ should be automatically viewed as untrustworthy in my opinion. Trust me.

** EBB (Evidence-Based Bastards) is not a quote from Icke. I just thought it was a funny way to describe Scientists Against Homeopathy, that’s all.