Drink this!!

I have a question that I'd like answered. It may sound a bit sarcastic, but that is honestly not my intention. If it sounds ludicrous, then that is not because I mean to ridicule in an arrogantly mocking way, I'm just using a comparison that I feel is appropriate to where where I'm going with the follow-up to it. Here's the question:

Let's say I claim I can cure the flu (for the purpose of this question I'll use flu as an example, but any disease will do). To do this I take an empty bottle, seal it so that it's airtight, and then place my hands on it while concentrating really hard on that disease going away, out of somebody's body. I then sell this bottle to a person suffering from the flu and tell them to open the bottle and breathe in the air inside it. This, I say, will cure them.
Am I legally allowed to do that?

I'm sure there must be some law against that, but I've done some searching, including The UK Statute Law Database and I'm struggling to find it. Perhaps I've been typing in the wrong keywords. If anybody knows anything about this, I'd appreciate the help.

Why do I ask?

Channel 4 News tonight ran a short feature on the Truth behind NHS's homeopathy budget in which it reveals that nearly £12million has been spent on homeopathy in the past three years. This is taxpayer's money.

The comparison between my proposed treatment and homeopathy isn't completely fair, I admit, because if I were to sell my magic air in a bottle, it would be for profit, whereas homeopathy on the NHS isn't (or is it... I'll come to that later). But as far as the efficacy of the treatment goes, and the plausibility of it working, the comparison is definitely valid.

Let's look at how homeopathy 'works':
1. In 1796 a German Physician by the name of Samuel Hahnemann put forth the idea of homeopathy. His 'theory' was that "like cures like". What that means is that if you are suffering from some particular symptoms, then you could use something that would produce similar symptoms to cure it. Lets say, for example, as a symptom of hayfever, your eyes are continually watering. Onions make your eyes water. Therefore onion juice will cure your watery eyes. The fact that this makes absolutely no sense doesn't really matter, because we haven't even begun with the nonsense yet!
2. These examples of cures will only work if they are heavily diluted (apparently) so they dilute the onion juice in water. They have a special method for doing this: you take a drop of onion juice (or whatever substance produces symptoms similar to the ones you're suffering from) and drop it in a bottle of water. You then shake the water "ten times up and down, ten times back and forth, and ten times side to side". You then take a tiny drop of this solution and drop it into another bottle of water and repeat the shaking process. You then take a drop of that solution and drop it into another bottle of water. Shake. Dilute again. Shake. Dilute again, etc, etc. Eventually, you have repeatedly diluted the solution so many times that by the time you get to the final solution, there is not a single molecule of onion juice mixed into it.
3. "But if there's no onion juice in the final solution, how does it work?" I hear you ask. Well because, according to homeopathy, the water has a 'memory'. Each drop of water that you carry across to the next solution 'remembers' the onion juice.
4. You then drink the 'solution' (which, by this point, is not a solution at all, but pure water) and somehow it makes the symptoms disappear!

Only it doesn't make the symptoms disappear. Homeopathy has been tested again and again and again and again and it has been shown repeatedly to have no effect.

Peter Fisher (I refuse to call him "doctor") of the London Homeopathic hospital claims there is evidence supporting homeopathy. But his evidence has not stood up to the scrutiny that is demanded of all other types of medicine that the NHS provides. There is a clear double standard.

When you want to find out which research is credible, it's usually best to go for people who are doing research independently, rather than people with a vested interest. If homeopathy funding is withdrawn, then Mr Fisher finds himself out of a job, so of course he's going to claim that it works. This is where it gets to the point I mentioned earlier about profit. Although the NHS itself makes no profit from homeopathy, the fact that Mr Fisher has a vested interest (i.e. his job) based on this nonsense, means that he would likely prove very unwilling to openly accept the reality of the double-standard and face the truth. Instead, he would rather continue being paid to do a worthless job. His claim to the efficacy of homeopathy is a bit like a turkey telling you that there is evidence that Christmas is a bad idea. If you wanna know whether it really works, ask somebody with no vested interest either way who is genuinely seeking the truth. What do you find? No effect.

You may ask "what's the harm?"
Well aside from the examples given in the link above, here are my main concerns over the harm done by homeopathy:
1. It takes people away from real treatment
If a person is sick and they need some serious treatment for their condition, homeopathy can be seen as a more attractive solution. Unlike chemotherapy, for example, there are no side effects (of course there are no side effects, you're drinking pure water). Each time a person goes for chemotherapy they come back feeling bad. The treatment is tough and arduous and often painful, but it works. It doesn't save 100% of the lives it cares for, of course not, but the effects are significant and they help, as has been clearly demonstrated by double-blinded, randomised clinical trials. After a homeopathic treatment, you don't feel worse. In fact, the fact that you expect to feel better may actually affect your perception and make you believe you are feeling better. But as your illness progresses, the short term effect of feeling better soon fades away and you have to go back for some more ineffective treatment. The longer this continues, the more the disease progresses and by the time you realise the treatment has failed and you decide to give the conventional medicine a go it may be too late.
2. The money could be put to better use
Perhaps one of the blessings in disguise of the recession is that there will need to be some budget cuts, and spending on useless treatments may soon come to an end. In the meantime, taxpayers are paying for people to go to get this "treatment".... at a cost of £170 per 'episode' of treatment, and a staggering £3,067 average cost per inpatient.
I've heard people say "but if it makes them feel better, then why not just let them do it?" Well a lot of things make people feel better, and they cost a lot less than £3,067. Heroin makes a junkie feel better, but is it really helping them? Chocolate makes me feel better, so should the NHS pay for it? (£3,067 would get me a LOT of chocolate! I'm beginning to like that idea). Perhaps one day "Retail Therapy" will be available on the NHS. "Here's some money, go buy yourself some new shoes." It'll make you feel better for a day or two, just like homeopathy, and then the effect will disappear again... just like homeopathy. The short point is that £12million over those three years could have paid the salaries of around 200 nurses. Instead, it is a lot for the taxpayer to be spending on a few people wearing white coats and shaking up bottles of water when it doesn't do anything.
3. It encourages magical thinking
There's nothing really wrong with having a fantastical imagination. If you want to imagine a magical fantasy world then that's fine! Sometimes it can be nice to drift away into flights of fancy. But when that interferes with your perception of reality, it causes dangerous problems. You need to keep yourself grounded on more serious issues. Breathing in the air from my bottle won't cure your flu, and in exactly the same sense, homeopathy won't prevent malaria (yes, they really do claim this). If you want to imagine it could, that's fine, but don't let that stop you acting in a way that accords with reality rather than fantasy. Also, if you want to pay for it out of your own pocket then knock yourself out! No magician actually does real magic, they perform conjuring tricks and the appearance of the impossible can be an awesome spectacle, and in a situation like this, suspending your disbelief for a moment can bring a lot of enjoyment. But if you actually believe that homeopathy will do anything, you are putting yourself in danger, and this is what the NHS needs to think about. They are putting a stamp of approval on something that simply doesn't work, and that puts credulous people in danger. So yes... the NHS is endangering peoples lives by using homeopathy.

One man interviewed by Channel 4 news said that if the NHS didn't provide the service, the people would go elsewhere and that when they come back to them even more sick, they are even more expensive to care for. If they stick with NHS homeopathy, at least they will be getting it alongside effective treatment. Providing a dishonest service may actually prove cost efficient. How do we "square that circle?"

BY MAKING THE FACTS KNOWN. By teaching people to think critically so that this kind of mumbo-jumbo is never sought out in the first place. So often, education is put forward as the answer to all problems and that's because it really is. Educate people, starting young. Don't teach them what to think, teach them how to think. And then maybe we'll be in a bit less of a mess.


NOTE: It has been drawn to my attention that I've made a slight factual error in my description of how homeopathy works. Once the solution has been finalized you are NOT, in most cases, given the solution to drink. Instead, a drop of the "solution" is dropped onto a sugar pill and you are given the pill to swallow... which only serves to further reduce the possibility of you getting any active ingredient.