Can this hurt the homeopathy industry? It seems the sceptics are more likely to demonstrate the safety of the remedies, and a double blind study would be more apt to show effectiveness/ineffectiveness? Now, if someone gets sick and dies, well, that’s going to be bad. – Ilene
Homeopathy: Overdosing on nothing
By Martin Robbins writing in The New Scientist
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…
The aim of the "10:23" campaign…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),…
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.
