CTV, homeopathy and H1N1
I understand - and laud - the news media’s desire for ‘fair and balanced’ reporting, presenting both sides of an issue. However, sometimes there really is only one valid side to present, and when the media has to reach into the fringe to present a ‘second side’ a great disservice to the public can be the result.
Case in point: I’m already displeased with the media for blowing the H1N1 influenza pandemic out of proportion. While almost all cases of influenza are currently due to the H1N1 strain, worldwide the number of deaths for which this strain is responsible for is around 5,000. This is of course, not a good number and steps need to be taken to protect the public. But why is the focus almost completely on H1N1 when historically endemic flu results in the deaths of 250,000-500,000 every year? Every year the seasonal flu is nearly ignored, but the current state of the H1N1 pandemic is front-and-center every evening on the news, it seems. It is difficult for the public to at all get a sense of scale when the reporting itself is out of proportion to reality.
But that’s being relatively pedantic compared to what occurred on CTV Calgary News the other evening (October 26) in which a half-hour special in which ‘the facts’ about H1N1 influenza vaccination were purported to be presented H1N1 – The Facts. Imagine my surprise (about midway through H1N1 – The Facts Part II video) when appearing next to Glen Armstrong (head of the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Calgary) was Linda Miller, a – wait for it! – a homeopath!
Let me be perfectly clear about where the medical and scientific community stands: homeopathy is pseudoscience. There is no other way in which to put it. Any sugar coating would diminish this fact. Homeopathy is not based on any valid science, and whenever science has been applied to the claims of homeopathy, none have demonstrated any validity whatsoever. I was simply stunned that in the interests of ‘fair and balanced’ reporting CTV Calgary News invited a homeopath to sit beside an infectious disease researcher as if her opinion could possibly be of the same. What possible ‘facts’ could a homeopath, already demonstrating a lack of critical thinking skills and credulity by accepting a belief based on pseudoscience, bring to the table? What could the producers at CTV Calgary News have possibly been thinking?
On the one hand, I was gratified that in their zeal to ‘present the other side’ it was necessary for CTV Calgary News to reach across the rationality spectrum way into the woo fringe to find Miller. Why not a crystal healer while we’re at it? Yeesh. But I also realize that the lay public will simply not see it that way. What they see is a homeopath being given equal standing with someone who is intimately knowledgeable with pathogens and active in the scientific research community. To a public for which woo is not necessarily seen as being woo, this situation can only be construed as ‘double-plus ungood’.
We know from literally dozens of studies that vaccines are safe (and certainly far safer than the diseases they are designed to protect the individual from) and are effective, the H1N1 vaccine currently being distributed no exception1. In countries where immunization for a particular disease decreases, rates of incidence increase and decrease when immunization goes up. As if we needed reminders of this, fear of immunization in Britain (mainly due to the phantom MMR vaccine-autism scare) has directly resulted in a recent resurgence of measles, a disease which was under control only a few years ago. A resurgence of polio has also recently occurred in some African countries when people there stopped immunizing their children because of a fictitious rumor that the US was attempting to infect them with AIDS via vaccines.
Contrast this with Miller’s suggestion that we should be using ‘nosodes’ instead of vaccines. A ‘nosode’ is a homeopathic remedy prepared from pathological tissue or directly from the pathogen with the philosophy (totally unsupported) that a little bit of a bad thing is actually good for you.
No study on the efficacy of ‘nosodes’ that Miller suggested using in place of vaccines has ever been performed. Not one study. My first question to Miller would be, “How do you know ‘nosodes’ even work?” I suspect the answer would involve anecdotes, but we all know that the plural of ‘anecdote’ is most certainly not ‘data’. Or we should. So we might want to answer this question before anyone advocates their use, particularly if it is being presented as a viable substitute for immunization.
There was one thing this homeopath was correct about. There are no preservatives, etc. in ‘nosodes’. In fact, there is nothing contained within any homeopathic remedy which can be demonstrated to be anything other than water! They are prepared using successive dilutions and ‘potentized’ at each step (read: ‘abracadabra’) to the point where it would require a container larger than the Earth to find one biologically-active molecule. There is absolutely no measureable biochemical activity in homeopathic preparations, which means it can have no effect (aside from possibly producing a thirst-quenching effect) on the person receiving it. Advocating the use of ‘nosodes’ is in effect advocating the public to be completely unprotected from the H1N1 virus, which is utterly irresponsible from a public health perspective. Shame on Miller!
To place a homeopath beside an infectious disease expert is neither fair nor balanced reporting. The consensus of the medical community with regard to the efficacy and safety of vaccines is based on years of carefully controlled and monitored testing at various levels, from the Petri dish to clinical trials. It is a robust and rigorous system that has evolved over time to become exceedingly good at weeding out unsafe medications. What CTV Calgary News has done is to further erode the public’s trust in a system designed with its safety and health - and only its safety and health! - in mind by suggesting that there is some controversy, some valid dissenting opinion which claims that vaccines aren’t safe. But there is no controversy other than the one which CTV Calgary News manufactured, and new seeds of doubt have been planted in people’s minds already biased towards anti-intellectualism and uncertain about safety and efficacy issues of the H1N1 vaccine.
Don’t get me wrong - doubt is good. But not for the wrong reasons!
What CTV News has done by giving a homeopath equal time with Glen Armstrong, someone who spends his entire career studying pathogens in the laboratory, is elevate a fringe opinion to the same level as that of evidence-based medicine. This is not balanced reporting. In fact, this is completely <em>lopsided</em> reporting. All CTV Calgary News has done is muddy waters which were already turbid rather than accomplish the stated goal of clearing up questions which the public has about the H1N1 vaccine. I fail utterly to see the point of having anyone other than a medical expert appear and be interviewed to answer questions the public has about the H1N1 vaccine. The medical community is of a consensus that immunization is the most important weapon in our in fighting influenza.
I am deeply disappointed.
1. Foxhall K. New NIH Studies Support Effectiveness for Single-Dose H1N1 Vaccine. MedScape online. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/708794?src=rss. Retrieved Oct. 18, 2009
Tags: CTV Calgary, H1N1, Homeopathy
November 12th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Well, lots of words about discrediting the worthiness of homeopathy.
I come from a science background. I encounter parents, adults and children who have attained incredible healing with homeopathy.
Children cannot manufacture the responses noted by family and caregivers, nor can animals. How to explain this? For me, my personal knowledge gained by my personal experience gathered with the experiences of others leads me to the acknowledgement that homeopathy works - and profoundly. You won’t find cautionary labels on a remedy(as long as your arm) warning about serious “side-effects” otherwise known as drug induced disease.
While the author of this diatribe against homeopathy notes that there is no proof that homeopathy works, I offer that nor can he prove it doesn’t. For that I say first hand knowledge is always best. Your belief is not required and skeptisism is both healthy and necessary.
Appropriately chosen remedies simply work. Ask a mom whose toddler is screaming with an earache that is relieved within minutes of the remedy being given. There are numerous examples. All that is required is an open mind which this gentleman does not posess.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Karen, I will not sugar coat this. To do so would be a grave disservice. You are a representative of those credulous people who are gravely lacking in critical thinking skills, which explains your ad hominem accusing me of having a closed mind.
I do not care one wit for your anecdotes. As I said in the blog, the plural of ‘anecdote’ is NOT ‘data’. If you really have a science background, you would understand this.
You are right when you say that I can not prove that homeopathic remedies do not work. And it is totally IRRELEVANT, since the burden of proof lies with those claiming that homeopathy works! If the healing power of homeopathy is as incredibe as you describe, it should be a very simple matter to demonstrate that it works. Have homeopaths done the requisite studies demonstrating efficacy? No. They have not done any of the work that would be required of any new therapeutic technique. Instead, supporters of homeopathy rely on anecdote and can’t be bothered to properly show efficacy. If you really have a science background, you would understand this.
Medicine is not just about what works. It is about what can be SHOWN to work, not about what we believe works. It is not up to the medical community to disprove homeopathy. Homeopathy does that all by itself by refusing to do any proper study on the matter. We maintain the null hypothesis (that is, that homeopathy has no effect) until there is good reason to accept the claim that homeopathy works. And homeopathy is spectaculary lacking in this regard. But, if you really have a science background, you would understand this.
All of the examples you give can be explained by placebo effect or happenstance where the problem goes away on its own but there is an unsubstantiated connection made with a homeopathic remedy. Who’s to say that the toddler stopped screaming simply because she told the child that the unproven remedy she gave it would make the pain go away? The placebo effect is very powerful. To show efficacy, properly blinded and controlled studies are necessary showing dose response must be performed. If you really have a science background, you would understand this. And I’ll say it again: the plural of ‘anecdote’ is NOT ‘data’.
When discussing public health care policy, we do not implement programs which do not have science to back them up. Homeopathy has no science to back it up. Consider the disaster that would occur if instead of immunization (the success of which is unarguable), health care programs were implemented with claims having nothing better than anecdote in support, yet turn out to be no better than placebo. This is the height of irresponsibility and is probably criminal. Yet this is what homeopaths endorse. Homeopathy is an uncontrolled industry with unsubstantiated claims. If you really have a science background, you would understand this.
Despite your ad hominem to the contrary, if the claims can be shown through tried-and-true scientific study - that is, multiple double-blinded, properly-controlled experimentation demonstrating a statistically-significant effect - I would accept them. So would the medical community. But when the best that supporters of homeopathy can muster is unverifiable success stories, such people set the bar for what is and is not good evidence far, FAR too low, particulary considering the consequences to public health. It is up to the homeopathy community to provide this evidence, not its detractors to provide evidence that it does not work. This is simply where the burden of proof lies. But if you really have a science background, you would understand this.
I am indeed skeptical of homeopathic remedies. The anecdotes and outrageous claims (none of which are substantiated and many have been falsified already) do nothing to remove my skepticism. Some of the claims of homeopathy, such as water retaining some kind of ‘memory’ of the active ingredient, violate unbelievably well-substantiated rules of physics and chemistry. This doesn’t dampen my skepticism either. But to accept homeopathy without good quality evidence and fall back on the old ‘but you can’t disprove my claim’ logic fallacy shows that people such as you are so open-minded that their brains have spilt.
But if you really have a science background, you would understand this.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Thank you, Randy, for your very well constructed blog post, and the above response. Well done, keep it up.