A blunt, shit-stained instrument wielded indiscriminately to bludgeon pseudoscience, superstition, blind faith and common or garden irrational bollocks.
Nothing new I'm afraid, just a lazy reworking of my Simpsons Skeptic cards to stick on YouTube. I know there's loads of people I've missed out, but nonetheless it should be a useful introduction to 50 of the most prominent individuals in today's Skeptical movement.
I preach to the choir, so you lot will all be familiar with the phenomenon of Pareidolia. Our brains seem to be hard-wired to recognise face patterns, even when they occur randomly in nature.
Much pareidola is seen around religious figures, Christians claims to see Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich, and Catholics in particular are good a spotting the Virgin Mary. This made me ponder if we are more likely to spot the things that interest us.
I took the following photograph whilst on a walking holiday in the Lake District this summer, perhaps it’s a little telling of my preferences, but to my eyes the tree in the photo reminded me of something that has fascinated and interested me for years.
Psychic bell end, Derek Acorah is to attempt to make contact with late pop star and baby dangler, Michael Jackson as part of two specially-commissioned shows for Sky 1.
Under cover reporters from Science, Reason & Critical Thinking have infiltrated the shows script writing board and can now exclusively reveal an early draft of the show’s script. This early draft features Yvette Fielding as the host although recent press releases cite June Sarpong.
[Derek Acorah, Yvette Fielding and token Skeptic Chris French are seated around a round table in a darkened room lit only by a single dim, un-shaded light bulb suspended from the ceiling]
Derek Acorah: Spirits of the after life can you hear me?
[producer knocks light bulb cable with a stick to cause a small shake]
Yvette Fielding: [small shrill scream]
Derek Acorah: I feel a disturbance in the force.
Yvette Fielding: Who is it Derek?
Derek Acorah: I sense a presence, make yourself known, who are you?
[Dramatic Pause]
Derek Acorah: Hang on, I’m getting something
[Pause]
Derek Acorah: Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009), known as the "King of Pop", [citation needed] was an American musician and one of the most commercially successful and influential entertainers of all time. His unique contributions to music and dance, along with a highly publicized personal life, made him a prominent figure in popular culture for four decades.
Yvette Fielding: [Whispers] Nice research Derek.
Derek Acorah: Spirit of Michael Jackson, use my body as a medium.
[Derek bows head, closes eyes and sits still]
[producer flickers light switch]
[dramatic pause]
[Derek, opens eyes]
Derek Acorah: [in squeaky voice] hello to all my fans in the UK.
Yvette Fielding: [screams]
Chris French: Hello Michael, now that you have passed to the other side, can you tell us the meaning of life?
Derek Acorah: [in squeaky voice] If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.
Yvette Fielding: [screams]
Chris French: Can you tell us which, if any, of the religions are correct? Are you in heaven, or another dimension, or just in Derek’s delusion?
Derek Acorah: [in squeaky voice] My goal in life was to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance.
Yvette Fielding: [screams]
Chris French: Is our current understanding of physics correct, is there a Higgs Boson particle, is the universe finite, are we just part of a multiverse, what happened before the big bang?
Derek Acorah: [in squeaky voice] Go and buy my new single, it’s really good.
Yvette Fielding: [screams]
Chris French: Can you give us any sort of useful information whatsoever?
Derek Acorah: [rises slowly out of seat and moonwalks backward around the table]
The Jack of Kent blog has some excellent analysis on the BCA press statement following yesterday’s High Court hearing where Simon Singh was awarded the right to a full appeal.
I haven’t managed such critical analysis of the press statement, but I have managed to acquire an exclusive photograph of the BCA’s press officer:
This morning I popped into to the Royal Courts of Justice for the Simon Singh / BCA hearing. The purpose of the hearing was merely to establish if Simon could appeal against the meaning of his Guardian article attributed by Justice Eady back in May. A successful outcome would mean that Simon could go forward to a full Appeal to then attempt to overturn Justice Eady's meaning. If this subsequent appeal is successful Simon would then be able to go forward to trial and defend his original article against his intended meaning.
Entering the gothic cathedral of law for the first time was a little surreal as we wove our way through the corridors to our allotted courtroom. I sat at the back of the court with the Singh posse waiting for the Judge feeling not unlike a naughty schoolboy outside the headmaster’s office.
We all stood up as the Judge entered and Simon’s lawyer addressed the Judge. We were under strict instructions of no tweeting, blogging, farting or recording, so I am unable to give you a full transcript, however, please allow me to paraphrase…
Lawyer Dude: “You’re most worthy eminence, sir, your majesty whatever etc etc. We have given you a shit load of documentation explaining why Simon should be given permission to appeal, do you want me to go through the 4 major points”
Justice Law: “Nah, I can’t be arsed to go through all that as you’ve written far too much, anyway I’ve already made up my mind to grant Simon permission for a full appeal and Simon will be allowed to re-argue it was fair comment. Now bugger off and try and write something a bit shorter for the full appeal.
I may not have used the exact words, but you get the general idea. For a more sensible update take a look at
At 2,000 frames per second, this new footage has helped scientists unlock the secrets behind the lizard’s miraculous feats.
Unlike water boatman or small insects, the basilisk lizard is too large and heavy to simply balance on the water tension and has therefore puzzled scientists for many years on how they appear to simply run across the water with a total disregard for the rules of physics as currently understood.
Many theories have been mooted as to how the lizard so effortlessly accomplishes this graceful act including calculating the optimum speed and direction of force ratio to the generation of small water bubbles to increase the time available for each step.
However, scientists at the Discovery institute claim that analysis of the lizards DNA and careful studying of the video footage has finally revealed that the lizard can walk on water simply because it is the son of God.
Further studies have revealed that the lizard can also turn water into wine and make some bread and fish go a very long way. Despite the miraculous abilities of the Jesus lizard, scientists have warned the faithful not to tempt the lizards into performing more useful feats. When quizzed further on why the lizards are able to suspend the natural laws of the universe in order to achieve fancy tricks but not to alleviate pain, suffering, famine and hatred, scientists simply responded: “Lizards move in mysterious ways”.
Introductions: Tessa Kendall gave a brief talk on the current work of the National Secular Society before Tracy King introduced Rebecca Watson who lead the panel in an opening introduction outlining the contributions made by each of the panel.
Opening discussion Rebecca led the discussion on how to promote skeptical content to a wider audience
Question 1: Negative repercussions Does the panel ever worry that their work in scepticism and wide Internet presence might have negative repercussions on their professional day jobs?
Question 2: Hate Mail Have any of you made any real enemies or received any feedback from your blog that's actually frightened you?
Question 3: YouTube Obviously YouTube is a big medium for scepticism. What's your take on the bannings that have been going on?
Question 4: Getting started Its a pretty basic question for a beginner, but other than holding bits of paper up, if you've got a blog, how do you go about getting some readers when you're just starting out?
Question 5: European forum We definitely need something like the JREF forum but more on European topics, because if I make a comment on the JREF about homeopathy they don't even believe their are real doctors in Hungary who practice homeopathy.
Question 6: The term “Skeptic” Jonathan Ross tweeted today that he thought that the term "Skepticism", is a negative and he prefers to think of it as rational thought.
Question 7: Celebrities Many of you, if not all of you have experienced some form of "celebrity" yourselves because of your skeptic work for example at TAM's you sign autographs.
NB These are not official TAM London video's Official TAM London videos coming to the TAM London YouTube channel soon
Additional thanks to Tracy King Tessa Kendall Mark Duwe Chris Blohm Sid Rodrigues
And a special thanks to the so proffesional Rebecca for keeping her knees together throughout.
As you all know, it's conference season, and firmly wedged between the Labour Party conference last week and this weeks Conservative party conference is The Amaz!ng Meeting, or TAM London as its affectionately known amongst us skeptics. TAM is organised by the James Randi Educational Foundation (or JREF), and promotes critical thinking, rationalism and the scientific method. So my wife and I spent a very enjoyable weekend rubbing shoulders with some eminent celebrity skeptics and scientists. Jonathon Ross was there too, but we didn’t rub shoulders with him. We had a number of distinguished speakers address us over the two rational packed days and I thought I’d try and briefly whizz through each of the major speakers of the weekend and indeed our superb master of ceremonies Professor Richard Wiseman.
Richard Wiseman Richard kicked the event off his humorous introductions and punctuated each of the speakers with his unique blend of magic, psychology and comedy.
Brian Cox So, the first speaker to take the stage was particle physicist and ex rock star, Professor Brain Cox. “What’s the point of building a large Hadron Collider” mused Brian. He gave us one answer supplied by a science funding corporation, a single slide of meaningless, uninspiring management bollocks. As a comparison to this, he then went on to show a few simple images; a simple snap from an Apollo mission showing for the first time, the earth beyond the moons horizon; and an image from Voyager, when it turned around to look at us and captured a pale blue dot in a ray of sunlight. Brian accompanied the image with Carl Sagan’s timeless quote which raises more hairs on the back of the neck than any sermon ever could.
Having reminded us of the accomplishments of the Apollo and Voyager mission, Brian whetted our appetite on what we might expect from the LHC. Despite rather clumsily buggering up the machine last year, Brian assured us that they’ve now sussed out that they have to be very careful when sending a shit load of volts through a fairly thin wire. He promised us it won’t happen again, and they’ll be stoking her up again in a few weeks in the hope of cranking up a few particles to within a fraction of the speed of light and twatting them into each other.
It then got a bit technical perfectly comprehensible and enlightening just not dumbed down to the perceived levels TV producers frequently think necessary. By outlining our current understanding of particle physics it became clear how our current unifying theory (Excluding gravity) relies on the existence of the so far undiscovered Higgs Boson particle. It seemed clear from the talk that the LHC will either find the bloody thing, or give us the confidence to admit it doesn’t exit and force us to think up a new theory.
Brian closed off with a few quotes from some esteemed scientist on the LHC, including this quote from himself that he was rather surprised the BBC used verbatim:
“Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat”
Jon Ronson Next up was Jon Ronson with some slightly lighter material. Jon stooped over the corner of the lectern and proceeded to tell us the story of the “Men Who Stare at Goats”. Jon’s best selling book of the same name, and soon to be movie of the same name starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor. The book came about as a true life investigation into the CIA’s secret paranormal research for military purposes. Jon treated us to a brief trailer of the upcoming movie that featured George Clooney as Lyn Cassidy who reasons thus:
“I am made entirely of atoms, and atoms are predominately made of nothing, the wall is also made of atoms and therefore overwhelmingly consists of nothing”
This simple logic did however lead to his perpetual confusion when every time he slammed himself into the wall, he completely failed to pass through it.
Jon talked us through the how his project started as a series of documentary films for Chanel 4 exploring some of the crazy shit going on within US military intelligence. Jon uncovered bizarre psychological experimental warfare techniques from starring at goats in an attempt to make their hearts stop right up to blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Dinosaur, surely water boarding pails in comparison to this heinous violation of human liberty.
Simon Singh As I’m sure you all know that Simon is currently in the process of being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for writing an article in the Guardian some 18 months ago regarding the efficacy of chiropractic treatment for certain childhood diseases. The well now well known and oft repeated paragraph around which the libel case hangs once again is:
"The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments"
For his TAM talk Simon walked us through the genesis of his article, and in fact his book “Trick or Treatment” co authored by Professor Edzard Ernst. It seems as though the starting point was a BBC 2 documentary showing a woman, I believe in China, undergoing surgery without general anaesthetic, but using acupuncture for pain relief.
After further investigation Simon discovered that although she was receiving acupuncture she had also received a couple of drugs stronger in fact than morphine as well as a local anaesthetic. Of course this was never revealed on the documentary film leaving viewers with the impression that complete pain relief for surgery can be easily accomplished by jabbing a few needles around in your appropriate meridians. Hence the motivation to author a book that critically examines the most popular alternative medicines in an unbiased and scientific quest for the truth behind their efficacy.
The second part of Simon's talk focused around the pretty shitty English Libel laws that the ill conceived case has highlighted. Much has been written already about this important case by much wiser men and women than I, so rather than repeat the details now I would rather point you at a few other blogs that can explain it far more eloquently than I can:
In fact Simon kindly paid tribute to this fine list of bloggers and thanked them for their kind support and awareness raising, unfortunately I can remember exactly which bloggers he listed as I was blinded by own name nicely highlighted in the middle. In fact, I’m filling up now just thinking about it, I’m going to have to move on...
Ariane Sherine Ariane Sherine recanted the fascinating story of the Atheist Bus Campaign. Ariane’s beguiling dulcet tones made her an absolute dream to listen to, and she enthralled a packed room of 600 skeptics with tales of how the campaign nearly fell at the first hurdle. But eventually ended up by raising, I believe in excess of £150,000.
Ariane loitered around with the great unwashed skeptics for much of the event and whenever she stood still for a few moments a massive queue of skeptics and Atheists invariable formed behind her, clutching their Godless Crimbo guides in the hope of getting Ariane to scrawl something in the book. She diligently obliged by taking the time to write a lengthy personal message in many books.
I feel a little guilty whenever meeting Ariane, as when I wrote her Simpsons Skeptic Top Trump Card, instead of concentrating on her sterling campaign work or captivating journalism, I opted instead for a few cheap sexist nob gags. The situation is only compounded every time I met her, as on this occasion when I some how ended up talking to her about my cock. My wife tells me that I’m lucky that she’s far too polite to just say "Fuck off you creepy man".
Ben Goldacre Ben Goldacre’s unique mixture of science, stand-up and rabble rousing has made him a firm favourite amongst the skeptical community. The self confessed potty mouthed nerd cheerleader and architect of the Bad Science column in the Guardian, and the Bad Science Book and T-Shirt and tank top, and hopefully soon skeptical action figure, is never short of things to say.
On this occasion, Ben used his platform to remind us to be vigilant of dodgy mainstream science reporting focused on selling papers through inaccurate health scares such as the MMR media reporting debacle, or meaningless equations to tell you about, for example the most depressing day of the year, or attention grabbing headlines like “all men will have big willies” derived by perverting genuine scientific research.
I was also delighted that he took some time to poke a pointy metaphorical stick at Dr Gillian McKeith, or to use her full medical title as Ben always reminds us, Gillian McKeith. For any non UK based readers unfamiliar with the middle class nutritional nut eating advice of Gillian McKeith, I’m always tickled by the fact that both Gillian McKeith and Ben Goldacre’s dead cat Henrietta are both members of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants.
Robin Ince & Friends After a few swift pints next door at the Black Friars pub, we were back to the conference centre for our bangers and mash and an evening of comedy and music with Robin Ince and friends.
I shan’t go through all of Robin’s comedy and musical guest performers of the evening, but I will call out Chris Cox, who pulled my wife up on stage to assist with his great comedy mind reading trick. Despite my wife’s best efforts to derail him, he correctly honed in her selected playing card.
Robin’s in-between sets featured a sterling analysis of the author and columnist Ann Coulter. Now Ad hominem attacks may well be a cheap unscientific attack on an individual rather than an idea, but taking the piss out of Ann Coulter is just so much fun. Actually, Come to think about it, she was taking the piss out of herself, as all Robin did was read Ann’s own words verbatim from her book. They’re just hilarious to the rational and intelligent ear straight as they come out of the book. To bring back a bit of sanity and calm things down a bit Robin closed day 1 as it began by reading from the Gospel of Carl.
George Hrab Geo enthralled us with a set of music and comedy to start of the second day of TAM. I especially enjoyed his story of how whilst driving through his hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, he was cut up by a car emblazoned with a God Fearing Jesus bumper sticker only to pull up next to said vehicle at the next set of traffic lights and spot crazy creationist Michael Behe in the passenger seat.
What to do? You can’t run him off the road, or give him the finger; after all we have our fine atheist reputation to uphold. Quick thinking George however solved the dilemma by rolling down the window and shouting “Boo”. Works for me.
George also gave us a number of songs interspersed with his jolly banter, my favourite of which is the anthem for the 365 days of Astronomy, “Far”.
Glen Hill Next up was Glen Hill, son of Elsie Wright, nee Hill whose famous fairy photographs of 1916 were believed by many to be genuine.
Glen explained how the fairies were drawn, cut out and mounted to indulge the fantasies of her little cousin. Glen then explained how Sir Arthur Conon-Doyle went on to promote the photographs as genuine in an attempt to vindicate his own alcoholic father who experienced hallucinations of little men or faries.
Inspired by the Cottingly fairy pictures I took some similar pictures of my own kids with the aid of Photoshop and a few Google image searches. However, no one considered my photo’s to be genuine.
Glen then moved onto the second half of his talk which was based on his book “ Religion Explained in an Hour”, where he postulated on how he believed the Abrahamic religions were founded on psychotic delusions. Now I enjoy a good bit of God bashing as much as the next rationalist, but I do feel he veered from impartial talk to anti religious rant. Still, it’s all jolly good fun.
Adam Savage Mythbuster Adam Savage told us a few tales behind the making of a couple of the scenes from the Mythbusters TV show.
The main one talked about was his experiment to see how fast you could swim through syrup, deftly accomplished by digging two long troughs and filling them with a suitably viscose liquid. Adam was a great story teller but the anticipated funny punch line at the end of the story failed to materialise.
I had a quick chat with Adam after his talk along with a few other people who lynched him when he came off stage. When I arrived on scene he was being quizzed by a chap doing a piss take of the star trek / comic book guy nerd, with the weird voice sounding not unlike Peter Cook on a park bench enlightening those near by on the length of their intestines. I was about to congratulate him on his amusing nerd pastiche when I realised he wasn’t actually putting it on for comic effect.
Tim Minchin Do I really need to tell you how awesome Tim Minchin is live? As with his appearance at Robin Ince’s 9 lessons and carols for Godless people, Tim totally stole the show.
Anyway, he’s touring at the moment so I don’t want to give away too many spoilers as he did perform a number of amusing ditties from his live set. So I’ll skip the details of his TAM performance. I do however want to briefly mention the animated film to accompany his skeptic anthem, “Storm” that is currently in production.
We were lucky enough to get a quick sneak preview of "Storm". I expected the film to be pretty bloody good, but it’s going to be even better than that, so keep an eye out for Tim Minchin animated film of “Storm” next year when it is due for release.
Phil Plait Bringing up the rear of the conference was the President of the JREF, the incredulous Phil Plait.
As the first TAM to be held outside North America, it was great to teach our American Skeptic friends how to swear properly. After abandoning a few attempts to point out the hilarious differences between American English and English English, Phil went on to win the crowd by liberating his tongue around some good old fashioned British swearing. Phil successfully supplanted a "baloney" for a "bollocks" but failed to score higher in the TAM profanity bingo competition.
Incidentally despite first rate professional swearing from the likes of Goldacre and Minchin, I would have to award the curse of the conference trophy to Ariane’s hate mail author.
Anyway, I seem to have gone off topic in a hopeless attempt to be rude to Phil Plait. Oh, by the way, I had a chat with Phil and he promised to be very rude back to me on his Bad Astronomy blog so I’m really looking forward to fielding some first rate piss taking from the main man.
Where was I, Oh yes, Phil Plait's closing talk. Phil actually gave a superb talk based on his best selling book “Death from the Skies”, after explaining the difference between asteroids and comets Phil explained the reality behind the likelihood of a strike, the consequences of such a strike and some realistic mitigation methods. Phil contrasted these ideas with Hollywood’s perception of such events with a few clips from the very silly Armageddon and the slightly better Deep Impact.
Or if you couldn't be bothered to read all that, you could hear it on episode 4 of the Pod Delusion, availble from iTunes, or the embeded player below.
Benny Hinn was hoping to come to the UK this week and push over a few Christians, but border control told him to bugger off. Apparently religious extremists need a permission slip from their mum before being allowed in the country. Anyway, so you don’t miss out, I made a short video instead...
Just glanced to the bookshelf to the right of my desk, and wrote down all of my favourite science writers on the shelf:
Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Donald Prothero, Richard Feynman, Simon Singh, Marcus Chown, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Phil Plait, Steven Pinker, Ben Goldacre
Those at TAM London on Saturday morning should be able to break the colour code.
I’ve just listened to episode 3 of the Pod Delusion and I reckon it’s the best one yet, I think I might have to up my game a bit in order to stay on the team with these guys. In this weeks Pod Delusion:
Will Howells takes a closer look at Gordon Brown’s keynote conference speech at the Labour Party conference
Simon Howard examines Andy Burnham’s labour party conference speech on hospital parking fees
Tom Morris rips apart Andrew Brown’s recent poor Guardian article attempting to establish a link between the middle classes and the “new” Atheists.
Duncan Stephen investigates this weeks freeview retuning, and reminds us off the sort of shite we can enjoy on freeview
I simply rehashed my iWoo blog and conducted a more detailed review of some iRrational iPhone Apps
And as usual it’s all neatly sewn together by James O’Malley.
You can now download and subscribe from iTunes (Just search the iTunes store for the “Pod Delusion” or listen from here:
It been 30 years since the UK has been graced with a Papal visit. Should the Pope decide to grace the UK with his presence next year, we should ensure that we pull out all of the stops to ensure we have organised some suitable events to celebrate this auspicious occasion. I had a quick think about what we could organise and came up with the following 3 suggestions, but feel free to come up with some more.
Condom Parade
Rather like an American Ticker Tape parade, but with condoms instead of ticker tape. The Condom parade could be arranged for the Pope’s arrival, after his plane has landed and he’s given the tarmac a quick snog, he could be whipped to central London driven by Ariane Sherine in a “There’s Probably No God” Popemobile whereupon he will be showered with condoms. Perhaps one condom for every preventable death would be appropriate.
Celebrity Tag Team Wrestling
Debates where scientific knowledge is pitted against theological viewpoints are always doomed to failure. If scientific evidence, facts and reality can be simply trumped by the God card whenever those facts do not suitably align with the chosen texts and creeds of a given theology, there is little value in holding the debate. Therefore such matters should be settled by tag team wrestling. I think a really good crowd puller would be The Pope and Osama Bin Laden versus Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens at the Royal Albert, who wouldn’t want to come and see the “Papal Brawl in the Hall”. The existence or non-existence of God could be settled once and for all by two pin falls, two submissions or a knock out.
The inaugural “UK’s Credulous Tit of the Year” award
Following the popularity of annual award ceremonies for films, TV, sports and music, The “Credulous Tit of the Year” will be an annual celebration of those individuals who have made a significant contribution to public misinformation. Those individuals who, through rigorous irrationality and uncritical thinking, have shamelessly and successfully aided and abetted the spread dangerous and inaccurate information, superstition and pseudoscience will be honoured in a lavished ceremony and presented with a prestigious Golden Gobshite award. Although Jeni Barnett started the year as the bookies firm favourite with her absurd regurgitated anti vaccination bile, Noel Edmonds and Adrian Pengelly seem to be making a late run for the title. Derren Brown also seems to be rather keen on throwing his hat in to the proceedings. Anyway, who better to host the ceremony than Pope Benedict XVI.
Last week the pointed bearded trickster, Derren Brown, generated a bit of a media storm with a few "Events". The centre piece of this was his prediction of the UK's National Lottery. There has been much speculation in the media and the blogsphere as to how he accomplished this feat, and so to set the record straight once and for all, Derren has agreed to talk to the Skeptic Park kids.
I passed a nice little shop at lunch-time that just happened to sell homeopathic remedies, so I popped in for a nose around and a chat. I expect we’ve all heard stories of how some homeopaths may be willing to sell homeopathic remedies as a prevention or a cure for malaria as an alternative to conventional, proven and clinically tested anti malaria drugs.
I thought that Simon Singh’s recent book “Trick or Treatment” might have made alternative therapists a little wary and therefore unwilling to talk to random strangers in detail and certainly be on guard against making claims that homeopathy can be effective against malaria.
So the question I was wondering was, would a homeopathic retailer be prepared to write a prescription for a homeopathic anti malaria remedy to a random customer who came in off the street wanting to use the remedy in place of conventional science based medicine.
Well here’s a transcript of my conversion:
Crispian: Hiya
Homeopath: Can we help you with anything in particular?
Crispian: Um, I Don’t know. A friend of mine was on Safari last summer, well this summer, and he was talking about it and I looked it up on the web today as I quite fancied it. It was talking about the vaccinations I would need for malaria and stuff like that and I was reading the side effects and there seemed to be quite a long list of the side effects so I thought I’d just wonder around and see if there’s any alternatives basically.
Homeopath: Well we don’t sort of claim… you have to make your own decision um, but in terms of homeopathic remedies as vaccination I mean you have to read up on it, but you can get malaria in potency, you can get.. would you need yellow fever I imagine?
Crispian: I don’t know, it said malaria and there was a few other things on there, Tetanus
Homeopath: Yellow fever, Tetanus, Cholera, Typhoid, you’d need all of those probably
Crispian: So I’d need those from a conventional doctor?
Homeopath: Um. It’s up to you, I mean, you can ...there are homeo .. Um, do you know much about homeopathy? Basically, the homeopathic nosodes they’re called that are made from the actual vac… the germ, if you like. The understanding is that if you take them in potency they’re a very very high dilution it will create the necessary anti bodies in your blood
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: As opposed to taking the Jab. Some people say its good to do that preventatively before you go over, start a week before you go
Crispian: Yeah
Homeopath: Some people say there’s no point in doing it unless you get malaria and then you start taking it. um. My feeling is that you need to kinda educate yourself and take a look and see what you think you want to do. Um. Have you ever taken anti malaria drugs or anything like that?
Crispian: Well I’ve never had anything, it’s just that when I was reading all the side effects it sounded like ..
Homeopath: Where abouts would you be going?
Crispian: I wanted to do what my friend did, he started off in um Zambia and he went down through Tanzania and Botswana and down to South Africa.
Homeopath: Ok. Malaria. It’s a strong malaria zone I’d say
Crispian: Yeah, yeah
Homeopath: I don’t know about yellow fever, I don’t know if it’s a yellow fever zone, I don’t think so. Um, malaria, cholera and typhoid I would say
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: Um
Crispian: So if…
Homeopath: The other thing of course is I don’t think your… nowadays with the legislation in this country, you’re not able to purchase malaria and all these in potency without a prescription so I mean um, I could certainly write you a prescription. I’m quite happy to just write you a prescription if that’s what you need and then take it to a homeopathic pharmacy
Crispian: Oh OK, I couldn’t just pick one up here then
Homeopath: No
Crispian: Is it quite a common thing then or is it unusual?
Homeopath: There’s a huge, as you know, there’s a huge um backlash against homeopathy in this country so some people are… there are lots of sceptics in the pharmaceutical industry and general medicine who are trying to sort of root them out, root us out and um
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: The pharmacies have to have some statutory legislation that um, they’re not able to just sell it over the counter.
Crispian: OK, but I could get a prescription and then that would ..?
Homeopath: I could write you a prescription yeah
Crispian: So would you recommend that I would still need to visit my GP?
Homeopath: You’re GP’s not going to … Oh well, if you need to go for malarium or whatever quinine based drugs for the anti malaria you’ll have to educate yourself on that. I mean, um, it’s up to you. You’re not native to any of those countries so
Crispian: No. I’m from here
Homeopath: So I would suggest that you would be better off to do.. um, what’s your health like? General health?
Crispian: It’s good
Homeopath: It’s Good? Ok. I’d do some other things like um obviously take water sterilising tablets, maybe take some other remedies, take some B vitamins, that would be good. B1 and B12 are very good for malaria zones, its good to take those a couple of weeks before that, strengthen your immune system and um and increase your resistance to infection, things like that. Vitamin C is another thing that you should take. Um
Crispian: So …
Homeopath: I’d just take a good kit maybe and if you want to do homeopathy, then take a kit and learn about how to administer it, I mean I could do a 20 minute appointment with you and I could just take you through things that you need to do
Crispian: You said that it’s diluted, so what sort of level?
Homeopath: Homeopathy. Hundreds and thousands of dilutions. I mean I come from a malaria country and I, personally speaking I always just take the nosodes, and I don’t do inoculations and vaccinations anymore because I just don’t like what they put in them
Crispian: Yeah
Homeopath: And I’m not convinced that they work. That’s my own personal opinion, but you have to do what you feel is right. I’m not saying that vaccinations are bad, but some people, once they’ve taken the vaccination they get unwell for a few days
Crispian: Yeah, that’s what I heard
Homeopath: If you were to do the vaccinations, I’d go to the British Airways travel centre to get them done rather than with your GP because I don’t think GPs are well advised on things like that. I would go to the one on Regents Street, they have a travel centre there
Crispian: OK, but it sounds like I could avoid it altogether, I mean you mentioned the vitamins and the travel packs …
Homeopath: If you’re well educated and informed you could do, but its something you would need to make an informed decision on
Crispian: I’d have to look into it
Homeopath: Yeah I’d go to um, and how long would you be going for
Crispian: Well I fancied quite a while so probably 3 maybe 4 weeks
Homeopath: 3 or 4 weeks you’d be out there?
Crispian: Yeah
Homeopath: When would you be going?
Crispian: Well I’ve not booked it. I’ve only just started looking today because I just happened to see it but well, next summer, I guess next August
Homeopath: Yeah. Well that gives you, you know a good bit of time to you know get fit
Crispian: I just started looking when I was at work and I though that looked quite fun
Homeopath: I’d also possibly try and loose a bit of weight before you go, simply because if you get sick, and if your system is a little bit over, I mean you just need to be fitter and take things like liver cleansing remedies with you as well so if you get, um. Most people just get diagraph or dysentery those are the major fears in that part of the world, diarrhoea and dysentery, so things like tinctures of wormwood, things like that to keep your liver healthy because your liver is your best defence that you have if you get a blood born disease, you want your liver to be on your side. I would get the world traveller’s manual, Colin Lessell, I’ll write it down for you…. It’s called um The World Travellers Homeopathy manual or something, something like that
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: You’ll find it
Crispian: I’ll find it online will I?
Homeopath: Yeah. Its good, it tells you all about the various weird and wonderful ticks and antigens and bacteria that you can come into contact with
Crispian: OK, that’s very helpful, so it sounds like with a bit of research and if I’m comfortable then ..
Homeopath: Yeah, if you want to know more about it then I think we’re obliged to do a 20 to 30 minute consultation before we write the prescription or whatever so you know exactly how to take it and what to do
Crispian: What about the children because I’ve got the family as well so..
Homeopath: Oh, you’re going to take everyone?
Crispian: Yeah
Homeopath: Um, yeah, then I would say that if you want to put them through that as well then I think you need to be very very wised up on how to deal with an emergency if that happens
Crispian: Ok, so I could bring the family, the children in with me as well?
Homeopath: You can certainly book up, and I can take you through the remedies, um it might be worth … this is the travellers kit. Helios, they’re very good. I rate them as a good gift. This is a traveller’s kit of the basic remedies that you might need.
Crispian: OK, so these are 30 C
Homeopath: 30 C
Crispian: What’s that?
Homeopath: That’s 30 dilutions so basically … OK.. So lets see .. think of a herb that you know.. Arnica? Yeah?
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: It’s a flower, it’s a healing herb. What they’ve done is taken the herb, mashed it about put it in some alcohol for various number of days, shaken it and stirred it, taken one drop of that and then put a hundred drops of alcohol with it and then shaken it and that’s become a 1 X. They’ve done that up to one hundred.. up to ten times and then they’ve made it a 1 C and then each time they’ve taken a drop put a hundred drops of alcohol, shaken it and whatever and each time they’ve taken it up step by step by step. So by the time it’s got to 30 C …
Crispian: There’s not going to be a lot left is there?
Homeopath: Well, the original substance has gone, its passed Avogadro’s number but the imprint in the cell is arnica still. Um
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: I mean, if you’ve never taken homeopathy before
Crispian: I haven’t no
Homeopath: I think its worth experiencing it just to see, because there’s no point me telling you and you believing it. Yeah. They say its got the cellular imprint of it and the beauty of it is that it's vibrational, it won’t harm your lungs or your organs in anyway at all like conventional medicine
Crispian: OK
Homeopath: It’s just very very powerful. I’d say that you need to experience it
Crispian: OK. Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll look that up
Homeopath: OK, What’s your name?
Crispian: Its Crispian.
Homeopath: Crispian, I’m xxxxx
Crispian: Nice to meet you, Ill look that up. Cheers
Homeopath: Yeah, Bye
As you can hear the lady I spoke to was very pleasant and helpful and obviously a firm believer in homeopathy. She was keen to explain how it worked and promote other alternative therapies.
Notes: She was careful to state that it would be my own decision and that I need to make an educated an informed choice, and she was careful to disassociate her views from the shop she worked for. She did however:
Clearly offer to write me a prescription for a malaria remedy to be used in place of a conventional vaccination
She advised me not to consult my GP as they are ill advised on such things
She mentioned that she would not personally recommend vaccines as she does not like what they put in them
There’s only a week to go before the start of TAM London. Unfortunately many people may not be able to attend The Amazing Meeting in London as tickets for the event sold out within the first hour of going on sale. However, fear not, for those unable to attend TAM London, there’s plenty of spaces left at TIM London.
Click to enlarge screenshot of the TIM London website.
Special thanks to Derren Brown for auditioning for TIM London last week.
Nothing new I'm afraid, just a lazy reworking of my Simpsons Skeptic cards to stick on YouTube. I know there's loads of people I've missed out, but nonetheless it should be a useful introduction to 50 of the most prominent individuals in today's Skeptical movement.
