Aug 10 2018
Over the past few years, I’ve given almost 100 free talks to skeptics in the pub groups, humanists, students, conferences, degree courses and comedy festivals – including my talks: Adventures in pseudoscience – a fun journey through almost a decade of my skeptical activism and investigations Diluting NHS Homeopathy until it’s just a memory – a …
Aug 07 2018
Today, CCGs in the Bristol area became the latest and final NHS England CCGs to end the commissioning of homeopathic remedies, marking a significant victory in our long-running campaign to challenge NHS spending on the pseudoscientific treatment. Michael Marshall, Project Director of the Good Thinking Society, said: “We are very pleased to see the Bristol …
Aug 04 2018
Health campaigners have criticised Facebook after a Sunday Telegraph investigation found that the social network has been promoting dangerous homemade cancer “cures” more prominently than information from charities including Cancer Research UK. Vulnerable people desperately searching on Facebook for information about cancer treatments are shown a series of groups which included adverts and discussion about …
Jul 21 2018
British universities have funded anti-vaccination videos through adverts on YouTube channels linked to the discredited former doctor Andrew Wakefield. King’s College London, the University of East Anglia and De Montfort University are among advertisers on videos such as Legally blind from the MMR vaccine. They appear on the Vaxxed TV channel, a spin-off from a film …
Jul 20 2018
Cancer patients who turn to complementary medicine are more likely to die, according to new research. Therapies such as homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and specialised diets should only be used alongside conventional treatments, but experts warned some patients saw them as replacements.
Jul 03 2018
Last March, the Spanish Organisation of Medical Colleges created what they called “an observatory against pseudosciences, pseudotherapies, intrusion (the practice of a profession by an unauthorised person) and health sects”. On the observatory website, they describe a number of alternative therapies and elaborate on the lack of scientific evidence showing any efficacy for them in …
Jun 25 2018
Winter may be over but things are still far from rosy. Overstretched staff are still battling to deliver the level of care they wish to while battling the effect of austerity and government spending cuts. Why is it then, against this background of overstretched Bristol hospitals and desperately overworked doctors and nurses, that Bristol NHS bosses continue …
Jun 19 2018
Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain have downloaded apps through Google and Apple that market themselves with unproven claims to treat cancer and other diseases. Among the most popular examples are those that promote “ketogenic diets” with the suggestion that they are effective in fighting cancer, even though there have been no clinical trials …
Jun 11 2018
June 2018 Newsletter: Homeopaths’ legal challenge to NHS England fails, Flat Earth conference reports, and Marsh to speak at NECSS in New York
Jun 11 2018
Lawyer Mary McGowan was horrified when she was first referred to the Centre for Integrative Care (formerly known as Glasgow Homeopathic Hospital); she had been ill for several years with conventional medicine doing little to alleviate her symptoms or even provide a diagnosis, but she was still wary of the alternative treatments on offer.
