Homeopathy related death

Great Debates
1

Bricker started a thread in 2007 about a New South Wales couple whose adherence to homeopathy caused them to avoid conventional medicine resulting in the death of their child. Here is the thread.

It was resurrected as a zombie in dubious circumstances and closed by tomndebb for that reason.

However, the legitimate debate about Randi’s view that the parents should not be prosecuted because homeopathy was “supported” by the authorities was interesting.

I thought it might be of interest (and it might stimulate debate) to know that the parents were convicted of manslaughter. I have not seen a thread about that fact.

The defence case seems to have been that which Randi anticipated.

It obviously failed - the jury took an hour to convict.

Some light is shed on the defendant’s contrition here.

Interestingly, one aspect of the case involved an acceptance of failure by a conventional doctor.

I have not yet seen any sentence which was imposed; it may well have been adjourned.

But there is more than a little irony in the fact that the defendant’s practice is still posted on a web-site advertised as bringing the public “leaders in natural health care”.

So - to frame a legitimate debate.

In light of what was said by Randi and others, is this a good outcome? I suspect Randi’s agenda was to attempt to force the authorities to actively reject homeopathy by trying to make them complicit in the death. Is this a valid interpretation?

Accepting that there is no validity at all in homeopathy, is it a sound policy approach to excuse the proximately guilty parents for the greater goal of purging the community of an atmosphere of toleration of the nonsense inherent in homeopathy?

2

I’m not a debater but there’s another, more recent story about the death of a child because of the failure of the parents to seek proper medical attention. The father in a homeopath.

3

Same case.

A major, if not the major motivation for prosecuting parents in cases like this is to send a message to others that they won’t be let off the hook for putting their kids at risk with unproven/quack remedies.

As I said in the other thread, I don’t have a problem with legally allowing adults to make stupid health care decisions for themselves if they’re not actually deranged. Forcing kids into such a situation is another matter. And I don’t believe there should be a legal right for homeopaths to make money through advising people that their conditions can be helped by homeopathic “drugs” and “treating” them in this way.

The 2007 thread was revived by a woman who’s apparently a practicing homeopath in India. It’d be interesting to hear what rationale she might have for allowing parents to get their kids treated with homeopathy.

4

And Dr Nancy Malik is of course welcome to make any observation she wishes, assuming she hasn’t been banned. I imagine her rationale would be the rather uninteresting one, “It works!”

I think most people would agree that we assume that most parents have their children’s interests at heart and so we speak of their “rights”, within reason, to make sensible decisions about health care. But most people would also agree that the child’s interests are paramount to such parental “rights”.

I support the prosecution of the parents in this and similar cases. But I am curious to hear of views to the contrary, that it is in the larger interest of the community to treat the parents as themselves victims of fraud and excuse them in the interests of pursuing the larger goal of effectively forcing the authorities aggressively to confront the humbug and not pussyfoot around so as not to upset the woo-woo crowd.

5

[unrelated rant]Does Bricker ever link to the relevant article in his OP’s (he was the originator of the original thread)? I think this is the third or fourth time I’ve had to search around for the relavant article rather then just have him provide it in the OP. FWIW, I think the Randi article is here (second one down) [/unrelated rant]

Randi seems to suggest that homepaths should be unable to sell medicines or advertise, which I don’t agree with. However, just from Randi’s blerb, it appears that not only are they allowed to practice but that there isn’t really any mechanism where-by people are warned that they aren’t actual medical professionals. That certainly seems dangerous, I think some sort of standard disclaimer should be required and in the case of children, the homeopath should only be able to provide treatment if the child is also being seen by an actual doctor.

That said, I’m a little confused by the circumstances of the case. The infant apparently saw a doctor for it’s problems three months before its death and was misdiagnosed, and was taken to the hospital several days before it expired. So it’s not like the parents were completely ignoring modern medicine. Obviously as the problem worsened after the first doctors visit, they should’ve taken the child back in, but given that they were told once the weightloss wasn’t likely to be fatal and at somepoint when it became obvious that the kid was in trouble they went to the ER, I’m not sure I see the case for criminal negligence here.

One wonders if the parents hadn’t tried homepathy, but simply not taken their kid to the doctor until it was too late if they would’ve still been found guilty.

6

I’d like to take a moment here to pimp a dear friend’s website.

You ever run into someone that says ‘nobody was ever hurt by…’
Well… here’s the list. Gloria’s on it.

7

I really don’t see the necessity for excusing anyone; I see this as a situation with plenty of blame to go around. The parents for going for quackery like homeopathy, the homeopaths for being frauds and for that matter the government for not long since cracking down on them. But just like faith healing homeopathy seems to have been given an exemption to the rules of civilized behavior.

8

The father himself was a homeopath though (the OP links to his practices website). Can you defraud yourself? Certainly some homeopaths are frauds, but I think in this case it’s pretty clear that the parents thought the treatments would work.

9

This is a tricky case. I’m a skeptic and I know homeopathy is complete bunk.

But if you live in an environment where homeopathy is common, accepted, and even licensed by the government (Great Britain even has NHS-run homeopathy clinics) - it seems not unreasonable to have a certain trust that it’s an effective treatment - after all, the government isn’t going to license complete bunk, right? Well they do.

But if you’re an idiot, and you buy into the naturalistic fallacy, and the homeopath is telling that they can cure the problem, then obviously you aren’t intending harm and may not even be grossly negligent.

Really, the biggest failure here is that the culture is accepting of the idea of homeopathy. It’s regarded by many as effective, and that, combined with poor government, gives it an air of being legally sanctioned and valid. The idea that a government will license homeopaths is ridiculous.

I wouldn’t want homeopathy to be outlawed - I’m all for people having the freedom to do stupid stuff. But I also like having the information available. If you’re licensing homeopaths, you can set guidelines for them, right? You can even make them post a sign in their office that says “Warning: This shit is bunk.”… or you could instruct the homeopaths that in the event that someone has a real, urgent medical condition that they refer them to doctors who will practice actual medicine. If that were the case, then the homeopath in this case could be charged with something, which might be just.

So, yes, it’s stupid that the parents tried a bunk treatment for their daughter’s real condition - but they live in a society where this is reputed to be effective. Would we blame someone who grew up in an insulated, extremely religious group for giving their kid an excorcism when it turns out they had epilepsy and not demons? Yes, they’re stupid, but they’re just following what they know.

As for whether or not they committed a crime, I think it would have to depend on what actually happened. If the kid was a little sick, and they gave a homeopathic remedy, and the kid suddenly died they probably aren’t criminally negligent. But if the kid slowly got worse and was clearly in bad shape and they had time to really think about it and yet didn’t take the kid to an emergency room, I’m more inclined to think they were criminally neglegent.

The real crime here is that this utter bunk is accepted as legitimate medical practice in that society. That can cause nothing but bad.

10

In this case, they had an appointment with a real doctor. Then blew it off to fly her to India for a homeopathic treatment. The real doctor said she (I think it was a female) could have the kid on the way to being cured in twenty four hours. Instead, you get what we have here.

11

There are two kinds of homeopathy, depending on whom you talk to.

More properly there is the belief and treatment system developed by Samuel Hahnemann that includes the Law of Similars and the idea of “tinctures” whose effectiveness becomes stronger as they become more diluted relative to the active ingredient.

But many also use “homeopathy” as a synonym for “alternative medicine” or to refer to supposedly theraputic substances that are not currently recognized as legitimate pharmaceuticals by mainstream medical teachings. All sorts of people believe in the effectiveness of at least some of these substances, including the pharmacist at our local Rite Aid, who calls them “homeopathic” and recommends them to me (not that I asked). For that matter, I actually think some of these things are probably effective, though I don’t think the people recommending them have done the necessary research to really know, and I don’t think the information consumers have available - and therefore the products offered - are of any use, so it’s moot. But I think it’s obvious that among all these herbal compounds there must be some medicinal effects, just as there must be if we go investigate all the plants that grow in Hawaii whose names start with “h”.

So, depending on how carefully you interpret what you hear, it isn’t hard to find medical professionals endorsing homeopathy.

And as far as real, Hahnemann-style homeopathy, it isn’t even so hard to confuse the legitimacy of that. One of the hospitals in Philadelphia, Hahnemann, named for Samuel, was originally called “Homeopathic College of Pennsylvania”. I think they are legitimate. And there is Hahnemann Labs, also named for Samuel, who quotes him saying “The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy — to heal — as it is termed. The highest ideal of therapy is to restore health rapidly, gently, permanently; to remove and destroy the whole disease in the shortest, surest, least harmful way, according to clearly comprehensible principles.” Which sounds pretty good to me. But I think Hahnemann Labs is a quack outfit.

Still, asked to justify my own beliefs, I’m not sure how easy it would be.

12

:eek:

I sure hope so, I had surgery there twice. As far as I know they gave me real, good old fashioned narcotics for pain management. Though now that I think of it, I suspect that the fluid they had going into my IV was mostly water…

13

How common is this?

I recall hearing about a claimed “homeopathic drug” that had an actual active ingredient - I want to say it was called Zicam. Homeopathic drugs are supposed to have… nothing. That’s the point. Only the “memory” of the ingredient should be left after it’s diluted to the point where it’s unlikely that as single molecule of the ingredient remains in the water. Anyway - this stuff I heard about was supposed to be a cold cure or something, and while advertised as homeopathic, actually contained zinc (I think) that was known to possibly have some effect on the symptoms. But because it was a claimed homeopathic drug, and there no FDA-regulated dosage labels or anything, people were hurting themselves overdosing on zinc.

This is dangerous and stupid. Homeopathy, as you know, a very specific method of treatment. It’s bunk and stupid - but at least you know that consuming a proper homeopathic medicine won’t do you any harm - because there’s nothing in there. James Randi demonstrated the silly idea by taking a whole bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills.

But if they call any old natural medicine homeopathy, then you’re taking medications with potential active ingredients and all their effects. That can be quite dangerous, and to advertise them as homeopathy is a lie.

14

Of interest is the fact that the parents are homeopaths themselves. They have clearly swallowed the Kool-Aid. But while one’s subjective belief may sometimes be a matter relieving people of criminality, it is not always so.

I agree with Der Trihs that there is more than enough blame to go around here. And I think the publicity of a conviction in a case like this does more for the anti-homeopathy cause than any amount of quiet government withdrawal from tacit approval. The government is the one bringing the charges, after all.

But I was prepared to be wrong about that. Randi’s view deserves respect, given the amount of time he has spent in the trenches on this and other issues. But there is nothing like a good old-fashioned jury verdict to say pish-tosh to all the nonsense that homeopathy represents.

15

What if they have an MD endorsing that treatment?

16

Then, if applicable in their legal system, he should be prosecuted for some sort of professional misconduct or negligent harm.

17

There are certainly MD chiropractors and MD acupuncturists in Australia as well my non MD acupuntuists who has MD’s as a patients but a homeopathic MD ? I don’t think so.
Randi’s whole argument is homeopathy is an endorsed legitimate medical practice by virtue of not specifically banned by the government, that’s totally flawed reasoning isn’t it.
I don’t have any time for homeopathy myself however practice it if you want as long as it’s in combination with conventional medical treatment.

18

I don’t think I’d be brave enough to swallow a whole bottle of any drug labeled as “homeopathic” - especially something manufactured abroad. You’d have no idea what heavy metals or other contaminants might be in there, including therapeutic/toxic levels of drugs that have been found to be deliberately added to some “natural” supplements to give them efficacy. Zicam, the “homeopathic” cold remedy linked to loss of sense of smell, contains (or contained) significant zinc levels which should have disqualified it from being “homeopathic”.

MDs who endorse or use homeopathy are enabling or practicing quackery, pure and simple.

By the way, Hahnemann University Hospital still exists, but I believe Hahnemann School of Medicine changed its name to something else.

Another question for Dr. Nancy Malik, homeopath (should she decide to participate in this thread) whose previous contributions included the usual tu quoque blather about medical mistakes we should be paying attention to instead of homeopathy: even assuming that mainstream medicine is the creature of Satan, how does that relieve homeopathy of its obligation to demonstrate objectively useful evidence-based care?

19

Hahnemann School of Medicine is now part of Drexel University, Hahnemann Hospital remains so named.

20

Actually, it was worse than that. Zicam used to come in an applicator that was supposed to be used intranasally, and eventually the FDA pulled it from the market after people reported losing their sense of smell!

:eek: