Hi readers,
Another baby loses it's life to quack medicine, how can people be so gullible, especially with their own babies.
Regulation of complementary medicine seems to be the only way out of this mess.


Dead baby's parents ignored advice: QC

* Harriet Alexander Court Reporter
* May 5, 2009



Shunned conventional treatment ... Thomas and Manju Sam. Photo: Peter Rae

THE parents of a nine-month-old girl who died from septicemia were responsible for their baby's death because they shunned conventional medical treatment for her eczema in favour of homeopathic remedies, a court heard yesterday.

A homeopath, Thomas Sam, 42, and his wife, Manju Sam, 36, are standing trial in the NSW Supreme Court charged with manslaughter by gross criminal negligence after they allegedly resisted the advice of nurses and a doctor to send her to a skin specialist.

Instead Gloria Thomas, who was born in perfect health in July 2001, allegedly died with malnutrition and eczema so severe that her skin broke every time her parents removed her clothes and nappy.

The court heard that Gloria was above average weight, height and head circumference until she was four months old, but lost 20 per cent of her body weight in the last five months of her life after a nurse first identified her eczema and advised her parents to send her to a skin specialist.

The Crown prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi, QC, told the court they sat on this advice for two months and then saw a general practitioner who was so concerned by her condition that he told them to see a skin specialist immediately. But again, they demurred.

"The Crown case is that from this point on, for the next five months of her life until her death … Gloria's eczema played a devastating role in her overall health and it is asserted by the Crown that both her parents knew this and discussed it with each other," Mr Tedeschi said.

"Over time the eczema caused her skin to become thinner and weaker and the constant breaking of the skin allowed infections to enter her body."

The parents, who each had university degrees and postgraduate qualifications, instead sought help from other homeopaths and natural medicine practitioners, Mr Tedeschi said.

On the few occasions that they did follow conventional medical advice, Gloria would improve, but they would soon revert to homeopathic remedies and she would continue to deteriorate.

"Gloria spent a lot of the last five months of her life crying, irritable, scratching and the only thing that gave her solace was to suck on her mother's breast," Mr Tedeschi said.

"Towards the end she was sleeping an inordinate amount of time, her body desperately trying to overcome these infections."

Thomas Sam's sister allegedly "pleaded" with him to send Gloria to a conventional medical practitioner. He allegedly replied: "I'm not able to do that."

Mr Tedeschi said the parents knew their daughter was suffering from malnutrition, that she was losing weight, and even that it was all due to her eczema.

"Despite their observations … they failed to follow through with any proper serious conventional medicine attention for Gloria from proper doctors, as opposed to homeopaths."



The parents were married in India.

The father was educated in homeopathy in India and in Australia undertook a masters degree in health administration, while his wife had a science degree and a postgraduate diplomat in computers.

For some weird reason belief often over-rides scientific reason and evidence.

The trial continues.

Cheers

Hi Guys,

They are risking death from an overdose, or is it underdose?


Homeopathy: Overdosing on nothing

* 29 January 2010 by Martin Robbins
* Magazine issue 2745. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* For similar stories, visit the Comment and Analysis Topic Guide

AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US will take part in a mass homeopathic "overdose". Sceptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homeopathic pills to demonstrate to the public that homeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century ritual, are simply sugar pills.

Many of the sceptics will swallow 84 pills of arsenicum album, a homeopathic remedy based on arsenic which is used to treat a range of symptoms, including food poisoning and insomnia.

The aim of the "10:23" campaign, led by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, based in Liverpool, UK, is to raise public awareness of just exactly what homeopathy is, and to put pressure on the UK's leading pharmacist, Boots, to remove the remedies from sale.

The campaign is called 10:23 in honour of the Avogadro constant (approximately 6 × 1023, the number of atoms or molecules in one mole of a substance), of which more later.

That such a protest is even necessary in 2010 is remarkable, but somehow the homeopathic industry has not only survived into the 21st century, but prospered. In the UK alone more than £40 million is spent annually on homeopathic treatments, with £4 million of this being sucked from the National Health Service budget. Yet the basis for homeopathy defies the laws of physics, and high-quality clinical trials have never been able to demonstrate that it works beyond the placebo effect.

The discipline is based on three "laws"; the law of similars, the law of infinitesimals and the law of succussion. The law of similars states that something which causes your symptoms will cure your symptoms, so that, for example, as caffeine keeps you awake, it can also be a cure for insomnia. Of course, that makes little sense, since drinking caffeine, well, keeps you awake.

Next is the law of infinitesimals, which claims that diluting a substance makes it more potent. Homeopaths start by diluting one volume of their remedy - arsenic oxide, in the case of arsenicum album - in 99 volumes of distilled water or alcohol to create a "centesimal". They then dilute one volume of the centesimal in 99 volumes of water or alcohol, and so on, up to 30 times. Application of Avogadro's constant tells you that a dose of such a "30C" recipe is vanishingly unlikely to contain even a single molecule of the active ingredient.

The third pillar of homeopathy is the law of succussion. This states - and I'm not making this up - that by tapping the liquid in a special way during the dilution process, a memory of the active ingredient is somehow imprinted on it. This explains how water is able to carry a memory of arsenic oxide, but apparently not of the contents of your local sewer network.

The final preparation is generally dropped onto a sugar pill which the patient swallows.

Homeopaths claim that the application of these three laws results in a remedy that, even though it contains not a single molecule of the original ingredient, somehow carries an "energy signature" of it that nobody can measure or detect.

Unsurprisingly, when tested under rigorous scientific conditions, in randomised, controlled and double-blind trials, homeopathic remedies have consistently been shown to be no better than a placebo. Of course, the placebo effect is quite powerful, but it's a bit like justifying building a car without any wheels on the basis that you can still enjoy the comfy leather seats and play with the gear shift.

Even some retailers who sell the treatments have admitted there is no evidence that they work. In November, Paul Bennett, the superintendent pharmacist at Boots, appeared before the UK parliament's Commons Science and Technology Committee's "evidence check" on homeopathy. He was questioned by Member of Parliament Phil Willis, who asked: "Do they work beyond the placebo effect?"

"I have no evidence before me to suggest that they are efficacious," Bennett replied. He defended Boots's decision to sell homeopathic remedies on the grounds of consumer choice. "A large number of our consumers actually do believe they are efficacious, but they are licensed medicinal products and, therefore, we believe it is right to make them available," he said.

You might agree. You might also argue that homeopathy is harmless: if people want to part with their money for sugar pills and nobody is breaking the law, why not let them? To some extent that's true - there's only so much damage you can do with sugar pills short of feeding them to a diabetic or dropping a large crate of them on someone's head.

However, we believe there is a risk in perpetuating the notion that homeopathy is equivalent to modern medicine. People may delay seeking appropriate treatment for themselves or their children.
We believe there is a risk in perpetuating the idea that homeopathy is equivalent to modern medicine

We accept that we are unlikely to convince the true believers. Homeopathy has many ways to sidestep awkward questions, such as rejecting the validity of randomised controlled trials, or claiming that homeopathic remedies only work if you have symptoms of the malady they purport to cure. Our aim is to reach out to the general public with our simple message: "There is nothing in it".

Boots and other retailers are perfectly entitled to continue selling homeopathic remedies if they so wish, and consumers are perfectly entitled to keep on buying them. But hopefully the 10:23 campaign will ram home our message to the public. In the 21st century, with decades of progress behind us, it is surreal that governments are prepared to spend millions of tax pounds on homeopathy. There really is nothing in it.

Martin Robbins is a spokesperson for the 10:23 campaign (1023.org.uk). He writes at layscience.net

Cheers

Ooohhh this is really sad . How can they just ignore the poor baby like that? Parents normally find every way possible to make sure their kids are healthy and secure.

I agree, it is a horrible story.
I don't think its homeopathy false, it is the ignorance of baby's parents. What a shame, now they will spend the rest of their lifes with this heavy guilt load. I can't even imagine.

It is sad, but I do see that people often lose sense or reality. The more educated they get the less attention they pay to their instincts and hence they fail.

I do take homeopathy seriously, I advocate healthy holistic living, but I don't lose my common sense! Her skin was breaking up each time they change her nappy, GOD, I will never be able to understand people like that.

My prayers for the baby.

Hi There,

I agree, it is a really sad story. But I don't think its homeopathy false in all disease.

Hi Marina/Mikeslo,
You guys both state that you take homoeopathy seriously, I really find it hard to believe that someone would actually believe homoeopathy worked. Homoeopathy has been proven to be only WATER, now if you believe that water has a memory why would you drink it, the memories it contained would be a nightmare?

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/286665

Placebo medicine sometimes offers up to 55% of the cure, and it has recently been suggested that it may even go as high as 90% depending upon your beliefs about the treatment being offered, but would you recommend it for, say Pancreatic Cancer?

Marina you say you believe and recommend a holistic lifestyle, well so do I, but I never recommend quackery, another comment you made " The more educated they get the less attention they pay to their instincts and hence they fail." Education should train you to examine your instincts to see whether or not you should follow them, just following instincts can get you into trouble, remember we commence a mental judgement of people the moment we meet them and we often form an opinion that later turns out to be totally wrong.

Sometimes we get totally confused by the "PLacebo Effect" and it is difficult to understand, an expectation of an effective treatment given by a man/woman in uniform with years of university education, in a clinical setting enhances the placebo effect, and placebo can appear to work as well as a powerful drug.
Cheers

You know I would recommend it at early stages, in combination with other treatment, perhaps with the traditional medicine. I know that many of our illnesses come from our unhealthy living. I would say that the physiological - psychological ratio that affets our health is 80/20. It means that most of our health issues arise because of our ill phychological state. So the treatment should be in accordance with the cause.



I agree with you but not entirely. Education in combination with intelligence gives us the opportunity to examine and analyze. But most people do not know how to combine those two. Furthermore they have beliefs ( habbits, stereotypes, arhetypes) that get on the way of their ability to make correct decisions.
I had a chance to observe many people both educated and high schools drop outs. I came to the conclusion that it takes more than education and knowledge to make corrent actions (and in the example above parent made a wrong decision that led to their baby death.) It takes a good heart and love as silly as it may sound.

So again if those above parents loved their baby more than their beliefs in homeopathy, they would probably turned to traditional medicine and saved their child life.

But who I am to judge, I just observe and make conclusions.

Hi Marina,
From your reply it is obvious that you are an intelligent person, and there isn't much that you have said that I would disagree with so I will just make light comments about a couple of your comments.




I think this part of your argument is spot on and often these extraneous influences do get in the way of sensible decision making, more so with non science graduates, although even with them a lifelong indoctrination into a belief system ( pre- university) can leave them vulnerable to falling back into belief systems, after all life is a lot longer than university studies, even the pre- university component of life, few people spend 19 years in university. I like your comment "It takes a good heart and love as silly as it may sound"

Cheers