Slashdot Mirror
UK Labour Party's Support For Homeopathy Grows
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Labour Party is currently led by Jeremy Corbyn, who has shown support for homeopathy in the past. So has Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. (So-called 'shadow' posts in the UK government essentially comprise an alternative Cabinet with positions held by party members in opposition to the party in power.) Now, homeopathy seems to have additional support from the newly-appointed shadow health minister, Heidi Alexander. "I know lots of people who know about benefits of homeopathy. Whether it's the right use of public money is another thing altogether. I'm open to hearing the argument as to why people may think it appropriate."
This is an interesting development. Senior Conservatives (in government) have expressed similar views, including Jeremy Hunt I think. Corbyn's not necessary anti science - here was his pitch on science to scientists who support Labour http://www.scientistsforlabour... homeopathy is still a controversial issue in the UK, with many politicians keen to show support for it because their constituents probably come to them with compelling stories of its success in their cases...
I was reading the Metro (a 'free' paper that's given away at a lot of UK train stations), and it was filled with wall-to-wall criticisms of Corbyn's shadow cabinet choices. In the run up to the leadership campaign, there was nothing but smoke blown in Jeremy's direction. And now this post on Slashdot of all places.
Makes you wonder what the establishment is afraid of.
Is that the official position of the party or of individual members? What the "anonymous reader" forgets to point out is that the letter signed by members of the labour party was also signed by conservative party members as well as liberal democrats and a bunch of others.
As for Heidi Alexander, here's a quote from the linked buzfeed article
“I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it. I know my own parents are great believers in homeopathy. It’s not something that I would immediately support but I’m going to have to look at a whole range of issues. It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
Oh yeah, definitely a *huge* backer.
How nice of slashdot to become a place for anonymous political shills. In this case I guess it's a Tory sympathizer.
This smacks a lot of the continuing media smear against the new labour leadership - which is getting tiresome for pretty much everyone (whatever their political views).
From the second paragraph of TFA : ... It’s not something that I have given hours of consideration to.”
She added: “I must admit I’m not totally convinced at the moment but I’ll have to look at it.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
I for one am a strong supporter of an alternative to alternative medicine: sociopathy. The practitioner of this method, called a sociopath, can treat sufferers more effectively than homeopathy ever could, and would suggest that people who believe in homeopathy should try seeing a sociopath too for increased effectiveness. Although unaware, when they go to a homeopath they might be seeing a sociopath too, at the same time, and think it's really homeopathy that helped them.
Few medical treatments are as effective as placebos, and homeopathy seems to be a particularly powerful form of placebo for some people.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Corbyn also blames the Ukraine crisis on the west and ticked off Poland by saying that they never should have been allowed into NATO and instead "should have gone down the road Ukraine went in 1990". He thinks Britain should leave NATO, but recently backtracked, saying that there's no "appetite" among the public to do so at the moment and he'll respect that. Russia basically endorsed him today.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
So now even Slashdot lazily swallows and unquestioningly regurgitates a smear against Labour? Whoever you are, Samzenpus, you've just lost Slashdot a reader.
As opposed to not going to a doctor or hospital at all because they would face financial ruin for doing so?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The Ukraine crisis IS as much a fault of the west as that of Russia. NATO is also an organization that was created to oppose an enemy that no longer exists, and provides very good ammo for Putin to point out how the west would like to corner them..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
You know nothing about the NHS, or indeed state healthcare. Keep swallowing the misinformation and lies fed to you by the commercial interests in US healthcare and you get the health system you deserve.
Homeopathy (or other placebos) are an excellent cure for GPs or other front line doctors to offer for cvommon viral infections like the common cold, instead of antibiotics (which many patients insist on).
I don't support homeopathy (except as a placebo), but it's a damn useful tool for first world hypochondriacs..
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
The ridiculousness is not limited to the Labour party; the Conservatives actually put a deluded believer into an *actual*, not shadow, ministerial position and to top it all it was minister for health.
The UK press has been full of negative comments about Corbyn, more so since he became leader this weekend, so why is Slashdot joining in? Why don't you run articles on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Sun, etc. for today and yesterday? During the leadership campaign it wasn't just the right-wing press either since many Labourites didn't want him since they think that they can only regain government by being more like the Conservatives to the point that they are now frequently referred to as the "Red Tories".
Personally, I didn't care about the Labour leadership election because I think that the sooner Scotland can get away from the rest of the UK the better.
Yeah, it's almost as if there were no history of Russian expansionism going back to Peter the Great and stuff.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
He is one of those rare creatures, an honest man with no motivation other than to make the world a better place. I would venture that he has very little dirt to leak, and is probably the most selfless politician in a generation.
This all makes him incredibly dangerous.
Someone asked her about homeopathy, she ducked the question. She was far from enthusiastic about it, but said she would be open to hearing arguments about it - which is what politicians say when they have no clue what their policy is and don't want to answer the question. She should have been decisive and said that the NHS should not ever fund anything that does not outperform a placebo and has no plausible theory of action, but she didn't, yet. This failure to respond to the question is now being spun, and slashdot is getting in on the action too. Maybe if she ever actually takes a position on homeopathy then there will be a story to report, but right now, @heidi_mp has not really done anything other than duck a question.
This is the most stupid thing I have read, even more stupid than the article itself, today. Congrats.
Protip, the NHS is one of the best healthcare systems in the world, in the top 5. (I think it was 3rd, the other 2 countries ahead of it spending more money per person)
Whereas private healthcare-driven countries are some of the worst in the modern world.
The US for example, the "king" of private healthcare, is the worst and most expensive of all modern countries. Shocking! Call the presses!
State-sponsored healthcare protects people from the bullshit that big pharma like to pull for a quick buck.
Now it is being perverted by those Conservative twats in power now, who have destroyed the NHS in England and then have the CHEEK to complain about it not working 24/7, even though it does! FUCK Tory Scum.
But now that Labour has this moron heading their party, there is no real competition to Conservatives.
SNP is pretty much Scottish only, Lib Dems are still hilarious, Green party too, UKIP are too "racist" for a large number of people.
BRB, literally leaving the UK, it is all shit from here on out. Nothing good will come of the UK now.
A lot of the time, people will get better on their own. But placebos do actually help here. Homeopathy is cheap, and it means that people get the feeling that something is being done, resulting in less hassling of doctors.
So, you think there was no western influence in the decision of the Ukraine to attempt to join the EU?
As for hanging on to old territories, let's not forget that much of eastern Europe was Russian in our lifetime, I don't see western Europe renouncing a lot of territory either.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Ronald Reagan believed in astrology and thought aliens were going to attack the world. Even more ridiculous, he believed in the pseudo-science of supply-side economics.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05...
You are welcome on my lawn.
We should dilute the sun with 10,000 parts water and see if that fixes global warming.
Nobody was talking about letting Ukraine join the EU. They're way far away from meeting the standards, and as it stands, a lot of people think that even letting states like Hungary in was a mistake. What was being offered was a trade pact.
Here's a quite detailed history of the negotiations and where things went awry, from both sides. Basically, the EU handed Yanukovych a set of economics calculations showing the huge amount of money that would flow into Ukraine, and the conditions they had to meet to get it. They were never really open to negotiation, convinced that the amount of windfall was all that mattered, and they'd fall in line on the conditions. "Vast amounts of money flowing into the country" certainly appealed to ostrich wrangler Yanukovych, but the main sticking point early on was his political prosecution of former prime minister (and Princess Leia impersonator) Yulia Tymoshenko. The EU was quite confident that he'd fall in line in order to get the windfall from the trade membership, and they also didn't see how it was any matter of Russia's what Ukraine, a sovereign state, decided to do on its own, and thus how they even were relevant to the negotiations. It was a pretty haughty position, but if was a quite passive position. Everything Yanukovych tried to change about the deal was rebuffed - it was a "take it or leave it" situation, with the EU fully convinced that the "take it" answer would arrive any day. Russia first tried imposing counterpressure on Ukraine with an economic carrot and stick approach, but this approved not enough to derail the negotiations - although left the Ukrainian side increasingly rebuffed trying to get further concessions from the EU to compensate it. However, the sudden and unexpected reversal came after a relatively brief meeting between Yanukovych and Putin. What was said at that meeting is anyone's guess - although how far Russia was willing to go to keep Ukraine from drawing closer to the EU has been made abundantly clear since then.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Most of the benefits seen are actually attributed to medical staff taking the time to listen to the patient for an hour or more at a time. It's not even placebo, it's just psychological therapy.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Islet cell neuroendocrine tumor has very long average survival time if caught early (like Jobs' was) and treated properly (which Jobs' wasn't). Not just a couple years - over a decade. And that's for regular folk, not for people who count among the wealthiest individuals on Earth and can afford the best care on the planet. These tumors are so passive that 10% of autopsied patients in the general public are found to have had a gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumor without ever knowing, and 30% of the tumors are so good at maintaining their original function that there's debate over whether to even call them "cancer". Insulinomas are anything but a virulent form - but they can spread if left to fester. Jobs' cancer was caught very early on, and by all standards he should have had a very long life expectancy had he actually gone with actual medical treatment advised by his doctors (as well as his friends and family). Instead, he committed "suicide by woo", letting it fester until it become something actually bad and hard to remove completely. Something that he deeply regretted later.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
Banning woo from the NHS is an incredibly easy way to save money. Don't sit on the fence, don't endorse it, just get rid of it. If people are dumb enough to believe that nonsense then they can pay for it from their own pockets.
I don't like the idea of tax money being spent on something that is scientifically verfiable as completely wrong. And I also don't want people with serious illnesses not getting proper medical treatment.
However, people have the freedom to do stupid things, and homeopathy is relatively harmless. I mean, it's just expensive tap water. Also, it's a placebo, and placebos have been shown to have some limited effectiveness.
Remember diamond water? I should start selling silicon water. It's special water that's been infused with computer antivirus software by having had it in a water-cooled rig. The imprint of the antivirus software on the water has great antiviral effects in humans. :)
Note the frauds who sold him, and a million others, known ineffectual treatment in place of real treatment, are not rotting in jail.
That is the problem.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The current labour leadership are a total joke who will never be elected, ...
Perhaps - if so, then I suggest you grab some popcorn and enjoy the show. Personally, I'm not sot so sure; nobody expected that Corbyn would be anything more than a loser in the leadership election, yet he won. A part of the reason is probably that the well-established elite in Labour have become too polished and woolly-mouthed; too clever at not actually expressing any views that can't later be revamped as something else - and they have been good at keeping the "less desirable elements" away from any chance at running for anything. And then they became too sure of their positions. As far as I can see, Corbyn was elected because Labour's leadership has lost contact with their grassroots.
Whatever the outcome in the long run, I think it will be good for Labour and for British politics that things are shaken up a bit, because the establishment has become far too smug. And I think it is too early to dismiss Corbyn; he may yet prove himself worthy. Stranger things happen at sea, as they say.
No, you draw the wrong conclusion. What we do when we find out that work that should be scientific did not follow sound scientific methods (here for instance by being heavily influenced by economic incentive) is not to LOOSEN the requirements and say "whatever, if some scientific studies were bogus, let's just give up and believe what ever the next guy is trying to sell", instead, what we do, and what I assume Dr Angell was aiming for, is to rat out the phony work and require a HIGHER standard for what we consider as scientific.
The goal of the scientific project is the pursuit of truths. The methods we use and the statements we believe on the way are not necessarily optimal or correct. Therefor we try to learn from mistakes, use the most updated methods and best-practices for instance when performing measurements (e.g. use the best known equipment) and drawing conclusions (e.g. use the best known statistical methods) and always keep our eyes on the goal: the truth.
As opposed to the US system where she wouldn't have been able to afford to pay and the insurance company would've found an excuse to void the policy she'd been paying into for a decade and so she couldn't even get on a list in the first place?
Great. That's much better.
Sacrificing an individual to keep costs down is exactly how the US healthcare system works, that's exactly what happens when you throw capitalism and profit into the mix - you have to grow profits by maximising the amount of people who pay and how much they pay and minimising the amount of people you actually treat in practice.
Oh sorry, that's "fighting terrorism" and the occurrence of valuable natural resources in those areas is just a massive coincidence.
Considering that all that was needed in order to buy the oil from Saddam was to relieve the sanctions we had on him, I can't imagine why you think going to war was easier.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Homeopathy began in the 1720s upon the accidental discovery that milkmaids who get cowpox on their hands never get smallpox. The Homeopathic school assumed this met their criteria for "like protects against like" and from the homeopathic school we got immunization technology in 1720.
That's utter bollocks.
So vaccines are homeopathic for one thing
No, that's utter bollocks.
Your entire argument appears to be based on stating utter bollocks then using flawed logic to extrapolate some fantasy fucked up argument that is in fact utter bollocks. Please stop.
Nice that you're pointing out how the right wing gutting the NHS means that cancer patients can't get expensive, mostly pointless drugs.
Let's ignore the fact that they're just life extenders ("Kadcyla, currently prescribed to around 800 women a year, which has been shown to extend life by an average of six months"), and that the US healthcare system (insurance) probably wouldn't pay for them either.
They'd probably be better off spending the money to send these people and their family on a nice 2 week vacation, instead of extending their lives so they can feel shitty for a bit longer, and still die...
He tried to kill me with a forklift!