Homeopathic X-Rays? How About Some Allopathic Law Enforcement
Yes, you heard me right. So states the newsletter from Australia’s “Homeopathy Plus” online store, flagrantly exploiting the fear surrounding Japan’s nuclear accident to con people out of money. I feel comfortable using the word “con” because even an honest homeopath (albeit misguided) knows that an X-ray cannot be diluted with water (as it does not consist of matter), so they’re selling something that they know does not exist. Probably, they read an article online that compared microsieverts of radiation with what you’d get from an X-ray, and decided that therefore an X-ray is a scary enough sounding “toxin” that it might as well be tacked onto the list of evil compounds that homeopathy’s “law of similars” says will cure you of its real-world effects. Anyway, here’s the text of the newsletter (the original may be available here for a limited time):
Radiation Sickness and Poisoning
Guidelines for Homeopathic Prevention and Treatment
In the wake of the major earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on Friday, an explosion has just occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
It was reported that radiation had already leaked from the plant prior to the explosion and Japanese officials now fear a meltdown with further contamination has now taken place.
People are being evacuated from surrounding areas as engineers scramble to contain the damage.
Should the situation worsen, radioactive material carried by wind and air currents may spread contaminated material to neighbouring islands and countries.
For all concerned, there are protective steps that can be taken with homeopathy.
Key remedies that have been used either in research or historically to prevent or treat radiation poisoning include the following:
- Cadmium iodide
- Cadmium-sulph
- Phosphorus
- Strontium-carbonicum
- X-ray
If at risk of radiation exposure, any one of the above remedies may be taken as an emergency response, three times a day in a 30C potency. Do not exceed 6 doses without guidance from your homeopath. If radiation sickness has developed, your homeopath can also advise on treatment dosages.
More Information
The following was written for the treatment and prevention of radiotherapy and chemotherapy side-effects but the information and references it contains are just as useful and relevant to accidental radiation exposure.
May be taken as an emergency response. They are actually telling people that hocus-pocus is helpful in the face of an actual medical emergency. I like the “Do not exceed 6 doses without guidance from your homeopath” as if the stupid sugar pills are so powerful that they require professional guidance. And if radiation sickness has developed? If you’ve actually absorbed more than one full sievert of radiation? Take a sugar pill; that’s sure to reverse the extensive chromosomal damage and organ shutdown.
This newsletter is bursting at the seams with claims that are untrue and illegal — and moreover, morally reprehensible in the face of the tens of thousands of Japanese killed in the tsunami that caused the Fukushima Daiichi mess. Australia’s law enforcement does not take kindly to this, and neither should any other decent human being.
If anyone from “Homeopathy Plus” would care to defend any of the illegal and immoral claims in this newsletter, I invite you to do so. I will be glad to address your points. In the meantime, I encourage Australians, Japanese, other hominids, and Australian regulators to send the contents of this newsletter to the Australian HCCC (Health Care Complaints Commission). You can do so here.
Yes, exploiting the deaths of thousands of innocents for financial gain pisses me off.
Update: A reader did contact the HCCC and was referred to the Office of Fair Trading as the appropriate place to report this type of violation. They are at:
NSW Fair Trading
PO Box 972
Parramatta NSW 2124
Phone: 98950111
Fax: 98950222
“I like the ‘Do not exceed 6 doses without guidance from your homeopath’ as if the stupid sugar pills are so powerful that they require professional guidance.”
I hope that’s what they think, because it would make the “homeopathic overdose” stunts effective.
So Brian, speaking of nuclear meltdown, are you still as confident about the safety of nuclear power as you were in your Skeptoid episode on it?
Max, these were old reactors. Not sure but in the range of 20+.
Were they touted as being disaster-proof when they were first built?
“So Brian, speaking of nuclear meltdown, are you still as confident about the safety of nuclear power as you were in your Skeptoid episode on it?”
I know you didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer it. I’m a little less confident about the safety of nuclear power when its plants are built on fault lines that are simultaneously vulnerable to tsunamis. By little less confident, I mean that I’m still pretty confident in its safety.
Found this pretty interesting: hydroelectric power has caused more casualties than nuclear power in the past century.
http://climatesight.org/2011/03/15/nuclear-power-in-context/
Just thought I should point out that article provides no context for time scale or demand. Without some kind of per-capita basis, the total numbers paint an inaccurate picture.
San Clemente isn’t that far from Brian’s house.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704396504576204672681780248.html
California’s 2008 study was also critical of the state’s other nuclear plant, Southern California Edison’s San Onofre plant in San Clemente. New information after the plant was built, the study found, suggested it “could experience larger ground motions from earthquakes than had been anticipated at the time the plant was designed.”
The study also found that the 30-foot sea wall protecting the plant was just three feet higher than the maximum wave height predicted by tsunami models when the plant was built. Those models didn’t consider the possibility of tsunamis caused by underwater landslides, which the state study said could be even bigger.
The hell with that. Fossil fuels kill a lot more than nuclear. (Not defending U.S. nuke plant builders nor the NRC, though.)
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2011/03/planes-cars-nukes-fossil-fuels.html
Funny this is coming up; there was actually a post a week ago on nextbigfuture.com, citing how many deaths there were per terawatt of energy generated per fuel source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html
Nuclear power seems to be far less deadly than, say coal. Or even solar panels.
I can’t speak for Brian, but as far as I’m concerned, I am fairly confident in the safety of nuclear reactors. What happened in Japan was completely unprecedented series of disasters. A really good (and easy to follow) article on the chain of events can be found here:
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-post/
(That same article with pictures for those like me that are visually inclined can be found here: http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/ )
IIRC, the oldest Fukushima reactors are 40 years old. They actually exceeded earthquake engineering specs as they were built “just” to withstand an 8.5 or whatever had been the max recorded quake in Japan before this one. Unfortunately, the seawall wasn’t engineered high enough for tsunami protection in a quake this big.
Forgot to add this link: We had a “Fukushima” back in 1959; until I saw the article that I blogged about, I had never heard of this incident. http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-had-fukushima-in-1959.html
Seawall, levees, oil rig, space shuttle, World Trade Center, Titanic… People sure like to have excessive confidence in engineering.
Does this sound familiar?
“Bungling, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear power”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110317/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_earthquake_nuclear_scandals
“Behind Japan’s escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses.”
Uhhh… Max the World Trade Center is a marvel of engineering not an engineering disaster. Remember the plane got hit by something that was never anticipated for nor could have been. They stood standing far longer than anyone ever expected. So I don’t particularly know why you are using that building as an example of faulty engineering.
Rather than Sagan’s poetic “we are all Star dust”,
I prefer the more prosaic “we are all nuclear waste”
OTOH, to riff on Sagan, I like Camus’ Mersault:
“I opened my arms to the empty starlit sky.”
Yeah,I heard that Ann Coulter prefers that too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0FNFF61E_Dg
It’s things like this that make me half-seriously wonder if Ann Coulter is actually a performance artist, trying to see how far she can push the envelope before everyone catches on.
I would lean more toward ‘cynical opportunist'(and that’s being extremely generous,if you know what I mean). I get this urge to smack my TV or computer,whenever I see her spouting off like this.
what happened in japan is terrible how ever people are missing the major skeptic point here i have never heard a better case for the “whats the harm” debate, the homeopaths involved here are despicable
I don’t know which is more maddening – this or the “homeopathic vaccination” idea. (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=8003)
As for the safety of nuclear power, I think it needs to be seriously investigated and safeguards should be used, but honestly we need to pack up a lot of our dread of this power source and transfer it to global warming. Hell, we all run a much greater risk getting in our cars every morning, and most of us go and purposely get irradiated on a regular basis at the dentist. We need a little less hysteria on this subject, even at a time when there’s very serious danger from a reactor.
The best homeopath to get the Xray treatment from would be a mixer chiro. That way you don’t need a referral; he’s already all too happy to Xray you from neck to sacrum.
Will homeopathic marijuana make me high? How high do I have to be to believe that it will?
No, it’s claimed to treat sexual and urinary disorders.
http://www.spiritindia.com/health-care-news-articles-2282.html
So, while I agree with the radiation and X-ray portion I disagree with your assessment of homeopathy. Have you ever tried it or educated yourself on it? I believe to be skeptical of something, one should have some education about that which they are criticizing. Your piece is simply criticism, not skepticism, which is a healthy questioning of something generally assumed to be true; the likelihood that most of the world’s population believes in homeopathic X-rays is pretty low.
Some of my favorite remedies for basic problems are homeopathic – try calendula for a burn (not 3rd degree, by the way) or arnica for bumps and bruises. I’m an allopathic M.D., by the way.
Since the event of 3/11/2011 in Japan, the death toll due to the nuclear plant problems stands at 0 as in ZERO. The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami is in the 10’s of thousands. The death toll from the 2004 Indonesian tsunami was reportedly 250,000. There appears to be greater risk from living in low lying areas near an ocean than a nuclear power plant problem. This is especially true when hurricanes, such as Katrina in 2005, are considered as a risk factor for living near an ocean.
So, how would homeopathic remedies work to prevent death or injury due to a tsunami?
Your comment seems like somewhat of a non-sequitur. What does it have to do with Brian’s calling out of homeopaths for pushing their nonsense as a treatment for radiation sickness and poisoning?
Thanks for posting – I was irritated beyond compare when I read this newsletter posted on an online autism support group. I am always tired by the claims of homeopaths to cure autism (I am irritated by the implied suggestion that this is necessarily something desirable in the first place – many people with autism dispute the need for themselves to be cured, but that is another debate) – but when I read the ‘curing radiation sickness’ claim, I was really annoyed.