BBCi Removes All References To Complementary Therapies

You may not be aware that last week the controllers of BBCHealth (www.bbc.co.uk/health) , the health section on one of the most accessed websites in the world, decided to remove all coverage of complementary medicine!

They used to have substantial coverage with over 40 pages on this subject covering all the major therapies, their pros and cons, evidence for their effectiveness, how to find a qualified practitioner, etc.

However the site has in recent months been targeted by the self-appointed 'Quackbusters', (scientists and medics vehemently opposed to complementary therapies such as Prof David Colquhon et al) who sent a deluge of letters and emails claiming that complementary therapies such as homeopathy and cranial osteopathy were 'unscientific' and should be removed. As a result large chunks of this part of the site were simply removed overnight and now, following recent cutbacks, it was decided that, rather than update this part of the site, it should simply be removed altogether!

It may seem incredible that a public service site this prominent can deem complementary medicine so insignificant that it no longer warrants any coverage other than the odd news story. This is despite the fact that complementary medicine is used favourably by a significant proportion of the population (recent surveys have estimated that around 1 in 5 Britons use it at some point or other) and that increasing numbers of people are now seeking to train in these therapies.

However, as the 'quack busters' become more organised and active, evidence of the backlash against complementary medicine is appearing all over the place - such as the removal of NHS Trust funding for homeopathy, the threatened closure of the homeopathic hospitals, many negative news stories in the press and so on. Rather than taking a reasoned view and considering the evidence from good research studies on complementary medicine these individuals seem simply hell bent on trying to 'stamp out' complementary medicine in any way possible. The BBCi removal of complementary medicine coverage (which has been in place for almost 15 years!) is one example.

If you care about complementary medicine and believe information pages on it should be returned to BBCi, please, please take just a minute to express your views using their online comment form at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/

to make your view known. As a public service company they have to listen to your views so your email will make a difference. Apparently for all the many letters and emails that they received that were against complementary medicine they only received a handful in support. Therefore if you are in support please let them know so they may revise their thinking on this subject.

Please act as soon as possible and pass on these details to anyone else you know who may also be willing to write in support of complementary medicine.

If you have found homoeopathy beneficial you can support a campaign to promote homoeopathy by visiting http://www.homeopathyworkedforme.org/ .

Thank you!

Martin Miles Obituary

Martin Miles, homoeopath and the founder of The Society Of Homeopaths died recently. You can read his book of condolences at this address.

http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-the-society-/founder.aspx

Martin Miles FSHom 29/08/1947 – 27/09/2007

Martin Miles taught that homeopathy can create shining spirits. He was a man of modesty, a man who helped countless people with severe pathology, a man who inspired a love of homeopathy, a man with many friends and no enemies.

He started in practice in 1976, and with others in 1978 set up the College of Homeopathy and the Society of Homeopaths of which he was the first chair. Martin was a quiet yet humorous man - deep thinking, generous, a little mysterious, almost as if steeped in another time. It seems as if this was born out of his extraordinary introduction to homoeopathy through Thomas Maughan who regarded Martin as his amanuensis. Thomas had more or less saved his life by giving him not just remedial treatment but also a discipline and a focus. Their relationship was very much one of master and apprentice and this is how Martin saw homoeopathy being carried forward into the future. He always adhered to the belief that homeopathy should not only be taught, but had to be absorbed through witnessing others at work.

Martin originated from the East End of London where his father had been a travel agent, which was Martin’s occupation when he became involved in homeopathy. Maughan had studied homeopathy probably in the tradition of Clarke, Burnett, Cooper, and later Wheeler and Kenyon. Maughan taught a homeopathy class in South East London which Martin attended, and which Martin then taught for many years after Maughan’s death.

Martin took his Jewish roots very seriously, yet he was remarkably eclectic in his choice of philosophies to plunder for inspiration. He was fascinated by and very knowledgeable about ancient Egypt. He was one of the first to strongly advocate understanding of the chakras as a means to forming a prescribing strategy. His idiosyncratic methodology was, despite apparent complexity, remarkably simple: always support the patient where he is weakest or most vulnerable even while prescribing the indicated remedy. Thus and by dint of his great knowledge of remedy relationships, he developed multi-aspect prescriptions by which his patients received what Martin always regarded as the minimum: the indicated remedy, chakra support and drainage. He is also to be credited with consistently preaching and practising the frequent prescribing of the nosodes to support constitutional treatment, a legacy of Maughan’s.

In the early 1990s, he formed the Guild of Homeopaths with Janice Micaleff and Colin Griffiths. For a period of ten years, from 1992, the Guild engaged in a systematic programme of provings of new remedies directed toward supporting existing remedies, the endocrine system, and subtle anatomy. Martin was a leader of the Guild graduate course.

To have known Martin as a friend was good, but to have known him as a homeopathic colleague was special. His working life was unique; he turned the work of prescribing homeopathically into an art. He so obviously found homeopathy creative and fulfilling. How he practised homeopathy was unlike anybody else, and those of us who have learnt from him and think of ourselves as erstwhile apprentices, are aware of his achievement of stretching the boundaries of homeopathy a little further in order to cater for all the vastly increased ills that we are asked to consider nowadays. He was fearless in the clinic, unbridled in his contempt for the worst excesses of conventional science, prepared to take responsibility for prescribing in any situation. Yet he always insisted that the great prescribers of the past should be revered as truth-seekers: Hahnemann, Hering, Compton-Burnett, Cooper, Clarke and others, not least Thomas Maughan.
He continued in his thriving practice in the Blackheath and Bexley areas of south east London and teaching in the UK and overseas right until he became ill. He had been married twice and is survived by his three children, Alistair, James and Sarah.

Publications:
1994 Homeopathy and Human Evolution Winter Press.
1998 Interview with Martin Miles, The American Homeopath

This obituary was composed by Francis Treuherz FSHom with the help of Colin Griffiths RSHom and Jerome Whitney.

Websites Supporting Homoeopathy / वेबसाइट्स सुप्पोर्तिंग होमेओप्ति

After you've had a look at H:MC21 website you can look at these others which also support homoeopathy.

http://woowooscienc e.com/

http://freetochoose health.wordpress .com/

http://laughingmyso cksoff.wordpress .com/

Has Homoeopathy Worked For You? / हस होमोएओपथ्य् वोर्केद फॉर यू ?

Has homoeopathy worked for you?

Maybe you're familiar with the controversial research article in Lancet that found homoeopathy to have no effect in clinical trials. Whether the article was biased or not, there's enough people (and animals) in the world who have benefitted from homoeopathic treatment. If you are one of them you can add your voice to a campaign which promotes homoeopathy at the H:MC21 website.

Please note that H:MC21 is a non-profit-making organisation in the process of applying for charity status.

H:MC21 – Homeopathy: Medicine of the 21st Century
For details see www.hmc21.org


With as little as £5 you can help us make the
‘Homeopathy worked for me’ campaign successful

Dear Colleagues and Friends

Thank you for signing our declaration, and for your interest in our work. At the time of writing this message – and after five weeks of mainly word-of-mouth campaigning - we have already collected over 3,500 signatures.

But we need over 1,000 a day in order achieve our target of 250,000. We have some exciting projects planned to do this, but at the moment we have no money to fund them.

So, we are now turning to you all to donate whatever you can afford. This is our all chance to make history and put homeopathy back on the medical map where it truly belongs.

Please donate whatever you can: £5, £10, £100 or even more.

We do not yet have an online donation facility, but are working on it. In the meantime, please send cheques, made payable to H:MC21, to

The Treasurer
H:MC21
The Old Farmhouse
37 Filgrave, Bucks MK16 9ET

Or make a bank transfer to

H:MC21
at Abbey, Account No. 43159698, Sort Code 09-06-66

बेन गोल्दाक्रे, बुस्तेद ! / Ben Goldacre, Busted !

In a November posting you can read part of a response by Jeanette Winterson to an article in The Guardian by Ben Goldacre. Niow you can find out a little more about who Ben Goldacre is and who he works for.

AGANST DR BEN GOLDACRE

Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism is Martin Walker’s fourth book charting the development of the corporate science lobby that has grown rapidly since New Labour came to power in 1997. One of the most recent exponents of the Lobby is Dr Ben Goldacre who has regurgitated a bad ‘Science’ column in the Guardian newspaper since 2003. Like other quackbusters Goldacre claims to write factually based and scientifically accurate articles about health, medicine and science either supporting scientists and doctors or criticising individuals involved in alternative or nutritional health care. Goldacre’s writing, however, actually reflects the ideology of powerful industrial, technological and political vested interests.Goldacre who it is claimed is a Junior doctor working in a London NHS hospital is actually a clinical researcher working at the centre of New Labour’s Orwellian spin operation that puts a sympathetic gloss on anything shown to create adverse reactions from MMR to Wi-Fi, while at the same time undermining cost-effective and long tried alternative therapies such as acupuncture and homoeopathy.

Goldacre is involved with public health researchers well known for trying to prove that those who claim to be adversely affected by pollutants in our modern high-technology society, suffer from ‘false illness beliefs’.Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism, investigates Goldacre’s role in industry lobby groups and puts another point of view in defense of some of the people whom he has attacked, belittled, satirized, castigated, vilified, maligned and opined against in his junk journalism.

* * *Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, quackbusters and corporate science, is available from the Slingshot Publications web site as a free download, from mid-day on Wednesday January 2nd. To be effective as a campaigning document, it is important that this book is distributed far and wide as quickly as possible. Please forward this publication information together with the Slingshot Publications web site address. Another thing that will help with the book’s distribution is the writing of even very short reviews for different web sites, this helps get the book onto Google listings.

This book is free and can be downloaded from the Slingshot Publications site: www.slingshotpublications.com. Please distribute it as widely as possible and if you think that the work is worth it, consider making a small donation. Also on the Slingshot site, is Martin Walker’s last book, The Fate of a Good Man. The book tells the story of Jim Wright, the investigation into him, his prosecution and trial by the Big Pharma regulatory agency, the MHRA. A good read at £5.00

Childhood Immunisations

Threatened support group needs more help / थ्रेअतेनेद सुप्पोर्ट ग्रुप नीड्स मोरे हेल्प

As homeopathic practitioners you are very likely to be asked on numerous occasions about your views on the subject of vaccination. I know some of you do encourage your patients to contact the Informed Parent, which is greatly appreciated, but after fifteen years of existence we are in danger of folding due to a lack of subscribers. So I’m appealing for support to help boost numbers which will not only keep the Informed Parent flourishing but also create an opportunity to widen its services.

It all began back in 1988. As a first time mum, it didn't even cross my mind to look into the issue of vaccination. Instead I diligently reported to my surgery with my new baby daughter for all of the vaccinations that were due. I don't think any parent likes to take their baby to be vaccinated because there is an instinctive feeling that you are betraying your baby's trust by handing them over to a stranger, who then proceeds to stick a needle into their thigh, unexpectedly - and most babies do cry at that moment! However it seems reasonable 'that a few moments of pain will mean a lifetime of protection.

It wasn't until my second daughter was coming up to 12 months old that I started to investigate this subject, which was triggered by a two-page article featured in the September 1991 issue of the London Evening Standard magazine entitled: Vaccination-The Hidden Facts. After reading it I began to wade through a great deal of literature, attend lectures, discuss the subject with various medical and scientific researchers and other concerned and well-informed parents. This led me to being one of the founder members of The Informed Parent which was initially set up in September 1992. The other three founder members, Janet Smith, Kim Harrington and Melany Still, were all mothers who had researched the subject prior to giving birth and all had chosen not to have their babies vaccinated. Our main aim was to encourage the public to inform and educate themselves on the vaccination issue before making their decision. However, by late 1994, the other founder members were unable to offer further involvement due to their family commitments and so I found myself in the position of either going it alone or 'shutting up shop' on the project!

Well, I decided that I had to continue spreading the word, as my passion for the subject was strong and I would have found it very difficult to walk away from it. During the 1990s, the Informed Parent had some publicity through the media and a few opportunities to be involved in TV and radio coverage, but in recent years it has become very rare indeed. Political correctness seems to have eradicated almost all debate or challenge on the subject leading to a growing number of parents completely unaware of any alternative avenues to investigate. Also, I believe that the vast amount of information now available on the internet has also had an impact on the falling

I am presently looking at ways to not only help save the Informed Parent but to expand and develop what is offered.

I would welcome any feedback or suggestions that may improve the service offered. The annual subscription is only £15 which entitles you to three newsletters; a 12-page resource pamphlet listing book titles, websites and useful contacts relating to vaccination; and other useful information leaflets. Homeopaths subscribing up until the end of February 2008 will be sent two extra back issues in the first mail out.

The established view on vaccination is very well protected, and it is hailed as one of modern orthodox medicine's greatest achievements. And yet there is much research which casts doubt on some of the claims made and I strongly believe parents should be made aware of this before making a decision on whether to vaccinate their children. It is about information and choice.


To subscribe please send your contact details along with payment to: The Informed Parent (Hom Special Offer), P O Box 4481 , Worthing, West Sussex , BN11 2WH. Or for more information phone 01903 212969 or check out the website at: www.informedparent.co.uk