The fight continues
Anyone stumbling across this blog, (I'm enough of a realist to acknowledge the chance of people reading on a regular basis is remote) may note that it has been months since my last post. Between trying to rear a child single handed, settling into a new full time job and keeping a local welfare organisation running in my local community, I have had little time to write material. In fact, this weekend I was seriously contemplating giving up both this blog and my involvement in the Healthfraud discussion newsgroup.Two posts from the discussion group prompted me not only to stay involved, but to make this post and put aside at least 1 hour each week to make more posts. Last weekend, I heard of another 3 innocent children that have lost their lives due to the scourge that is alternative medicine.
9 year old Rachel Bundy died of what is believed to be viral meningitis after being ill for about a month. Her parents did not get real medical help, but relied upon S.C.A.M. to treat their child. The news article does not state exactly what S.C.A.M. treatment was used, but does mention a logbook of treatments and that the police are investigating homeopathy. It looks like this may be yet another case of death by water.
For those who are not familiar with homeopathy, I recommend you read some of the articles listed on Paul Lee's Homeolinks site. For a harder edged and less tactful view, read Peter Bowditch's article titled "All the idiocy that fits". For those who wants the short answer, it's water (shaken, not stirred) or if in tablet form, it's sugar.
Many people have told me that there is nothing wrong with natural medicine, that homeopathy can't do any damage. 9 year old Rachel Bundy appears to be another example of how wrong these people are. While technically, the homeopathic treatment may not kill, withholding real medical treatment from a child for a month, while expecting mere water to cure certainly can.
Homeopathy kills by preventing or delaying the administering of real medical care.
The other post was a story about 2 children, aged 2 and 4 who were shot by their mother, Charlene Dorcy. Charlene suffers from paranoid Schizophrenia and had been on medication for the condition. Unfortunately, she decided to swap her scientifically proven medication for unproven herbal remedies, that are rumoured to have fewer side effects. The end result is that her condition worsened and she killed her two children.
We will never know if the deaths would have been avoided if the correct medication had been used, but we must question why an untested herbal treatment was substituted for a proven medical treatment. Are these two more children that could have been saved if not for the intervention by S.C.A.M.?
Both of these incidents occurred outside Australia's door, but it makes you wonder why in Australia, our government allows unlicensed, unqualified, untrained people to make recommednations such as taking a homeopathic treatment or stop taking medicine in exchange for an untested herbal remedy.
I downloaded a copy of the report into the Australian S.C.A.M. industry that was released recently after the Pan Pharmacueticals debacle. The laws in Australia require no evidence of efficacy, just label the ingredients correctly. Pan failed to even get that right.
For reigniting the fire within I would like to thank fellow Australian and oncologist Peter Moran for posting the Rachel Bundy information, Dr Terry Polevoy for posting the Charlene Dorcy case and Peter Bowditch & Paul Lee for allowing me to link their web-sites.
Why do we bother? "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
The following comment was posted, but I can't get it to come up on the comments section, so have added the comment to the original article.
Peter Bowditch said...
For some reason, Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group chooses to attempt to be anonymous. He fails. For more about Mr O'Neill you can go here, and you can see him in Gutless Anonymous Liar mode here.This comment was posted by Peter Bowditch, who is not afraid to use his own name when challenging people who lie and commit fraud.
posted by Kevin Paine @ 7:27 pm
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