Blog of New York Producer Handcancel

This Saturday January 30th at 10:23am, more than 300 homeopathy skeptics and consumer advocates will be staging a mass ‘overdose’ to protest UK health & beauty chain store Boots‘ sale of, and England’s National Health Service continued endorsement of homeopathic remedies while raising awareness about the overwhelming inefficacy of such remedies.

So you can't die from it!

The homeopathic argument when they get sued for false advertising, or the products are continually proven to be ineffective goes something like “Since there’s no active ingredients, the remedies certainly can’t harm anyone”. That’s the mantra of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, organizers of the 10:23 event where participators will swallow entire bottles of homeopathic pills to show what millions of folks in the western world may be spending their hard earned cash on doesn’t do anything.

What if what you’re taking helps ?

If you suffer from asthma, restless leg syndrome, migraines, arthritis, depression, IBS , PMS or whatever and you take some all natural remedy that your cousin’s girlfriend told you about or heard of on a late night infomercial and you find that ‘remedy’ helps despite lack of any documented scientific evidence- well that’s great! No one can deny the power of, or be immune from the placebo effect. If someone sneakily replaced all your Hairy Elm Bark* pills with identical looking sugar/sawdust pills without your knowledge, you would continue to reap the benefits of the placebo response as you continued to use them- bet on it. One can only hope you’re not spending income you’d otherwise be using for food, music or actual health care.

What’s the harm of homeopathy ?

The harm is caused by what is sometimes not done by hardcore homeopathy enthusiasts. When effective conventional medical treatment is eschewed in favor of something unfounded and wacky- people needlessly die or experience a worsening of the condition. The whole ‘anti-immunization’ movement comes out of this sort of thinking as well. Know anybody with Polio or Smallpox? Thought so. Know anybody who’s a cancer survivor? They didn’t put it into remission by talking Hairy Elm Bark pills (yeah I know your cousin’s girlfriend’s yoga instructor’s uncle did). Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary proof, and I hope to get in on a piece of the 10:23 action here in New York.

* “Hairy Elm Bark” I just made up, but expect to see on the shelves of GNC and Vitamin Shoppe soon