The concept of homeopathic ‘medicine,’ dating from 1796, involves mixing a small amount of a thought-to-be-active ingredient in a water or alcohol solvent and then repeatedly diluting the mixture with more and more solvent until no molecules of the ‘active’ ingredient remain in the solvent. There is no chemical difference between the pure solvent and a homeopathic preparation. Patients are sold the idea that somehow, the ‘spirit’ of the ‘active’ substance is transferred into the solvent.

In double-blind testing, homeopathic treatments have never been demonstrated to perform any better than a placebo. Homeopathy’s only saving grace is that given there’s no difference between a homeopathic preparation and the plain water or alcohol solvent, they’re generally recognised as ‘safe.’ However, they are not recognised as effective. As such, homeopathy is outright quackery.

The ABC reports:

‘Cruel’ parents jailed over baby’s death

By Liv Casben

A couple who relied on homeopathic treatments for their eczema-stricken baby daughter have been jailed over her death.

Thomas Sam, 42, and his wife Manju, 37, were found guilty of the most serious case of manslaughter by criminal negligence.

The judge said their nine-month-old daughter Gloria had suffered helplessly and unnecessarily from a treatable condition and sentenced the pair to a total of 10 years behind bars.

Thomas Sam got the longer sentence of at least six years because, as a homeopath, he had a double duty of care.

Minutes after he was handcuffed, his wife Manju was taken into custody for the first time.

She was jailed for four years.

Their daughter Gloria was so sick with eczema that she constantly cried in pain, her skin broken and oozing fluid, the court heard.

Both parents were well educated and the judge found they should have known better.

They repeatedly rejected conventional medical treatment and instead opted for homeopathic remedies.

Then, against doctors’ orders, they took the baby girl to India where her condition deteriorated.

Judge Peter Johnson concluded it was the “most serious case of manslaughter by criminal negligence”.

The couple wept as Justice Johnson detailed the pain their daughter would have experienced.

He said they should have known just how sick she was.

Instead they delayed her treatment at hospital because Manju said they were tired and jetlagged.

She died three days after being admitted to hospital.

“She was very a very sick infant with eroding skin, her distress would have been apparent to her parents,” Justice Johnson said.

Dejected supporters left court still reeling from the judgment.

For Thomas Sam, his legal fight is not over as he faces separate charges, accused of threatening his lawyers.

There’s a number of terms to describe people who favour homeopathy over science and evidence based medicine; fools, deluded, cranks- and many more.

Now there’s another one: inmates.

-weez

From MoveOn.org:

-weez

Hoping I’m wrong, but I’m anticipating Rudd is going to implement his unworkable ISP level internet filtering scheme. mgk been offline for a couple of days while moving from an Australian-based host which operates servers in Aus & the USA to a US-based host and server. This server will also run my VPN to circumvent ISP level filtering.

-weez

Go Anonymous. 🙂

-weez

I’ve enjoyed single-payer universal healthcare coverage since I was granted permanent residency in Australia in 1997. If I visit a ‘bulk-billing’ GP or an emergency room, I plunk down my Medicare card and it’s all done & dusted.

The last time I used healthcare services in the USA, they demanded either health insurance information, a cash bond or a credit card before they even wanted to hear why I was seeking treatment. That’s reprehensible. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege affordable only by the wealthy.

Everyone uses electricity and roads and everybody uses healthcare services. We don’t build a separate power grid for every electricity subscriber nor a private road for every road user- why have a private insurer or healthcare provider for every healthcare user?

Yes, you can get private health insurance or be treated in a private hospital in Australia… but why? A parallel private healthcare system simply undermines the public system by diverting participants out of it. The short answer as to why private healthcare even exists in Australia is that right-wing, pro-business politicians and their health industry supporters have wanted to undermine Australia’s public system since its inception- because it doesn’t generate profit for the private healthcare providers and insurers.

Capitalism may work in certain business arenas but it’s got no place in the provision of essential community services which are necessarily used by all citizens.

The completely off-the-rails opposition to single-payer universal healthcare in the USA clearly indicates the threat level to the profitability of private healthcare insurers and providers. Providers and insurers will fight to protect their profits with a million times the effort they’ll put in to providing competent healthcare. This opposition has now devolved into truly batshit-crazy rumourmongering PR campaigns, including ‘astroturfing,’ the formation of industry-funded fake grassroots groups which push the industry’s agenda.
(more…)

Dana McCaffery: died from whooping cough
(image: ABC 7:30 Report)

Another child has died from a common communicable disease which could have been prevented in 10 seconds with a simple injection. Why?

Selfish dummy mummies need consciences pricked

Adele Horin
February 21, 2009

Living in a suburb with lots of white, middle-class, educated mothers may be putting your child’s health at risk. In such salubrious surroundings can be found dangerous concentrations of vaccine-resisters. These are women who spend too many hours on wacky internet health sites and become convinced immunisation is a giant conspiracy.

The educated mother who thinks she knows better than the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists and doctors partly explains why some of Sydney’s richest suburbs have the state’s lowest child immunisation rates.

Parents are being willfully misled by anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists and loads of their crap posted on the ‘net.

Preponderance does not constitute proof. Just because some vaccination conspiracy believing idiot posts a rumour up on an internet website (or hundreds of them, as is the case) DOES NOT give that information more validity than years of independently replicatable, peer-reviewed medical science.

Quoth Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network:

“I think most doctors really believe in vaccinations. They’ve been taught to believe in vaccinations and they haven’t done a whole lot of research on their own.”

Vaccination isn’t something you must ‘believe in’ as though it were Jesus, the Tooth Faerie or Santa Claus. There’s solid, independently replicatable, peer-reviewed scientific proof that vaccination prevents communicable disease and protects the rest of the community from the same. Evidence is different than belief.

If you were only killing your own children by denying them proven medical care, that’s horrific and violates your own child’s right to life, but when you don’t vaccinate, you’re not just victimising your own helpless children. You’re subjecting others’ children, some too young to be vaccinated, as was Dana McCaffery, to the same avoidable fates to which you’re condemning your own.

If you don’t want to vaccinate your children or think you can successfully treat them with little drinks of plain water (aka ‘homeopathy’), you’re simply irresponsible. You should go live in a cave- far, far away from anyone you and your biohazardous children can harm. Better yet, your children should be taken into foster care and given the treatment you refuse them. You’re entitled to refuse proper medical care for yourself- but you’re not entitled to deny it to children whom you’re charged with protecting nor to inflict disease on the community at large.

Consider the source; should you put your trust in a physician with 10 years of education in medical science or some schmoe like Meryl Dorey with no more qualification than having a website on the internet ? If you opt for the latter, you’re a child abuser and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near children at all.

-weez