You may recall I wrote a post about Islington Homeopathy Clinic (IHC) and their violations of the ASA Code of Practise. If you don't recall, here it is.
Turns out I'm not the first person to mention this to the ASA as the IHC is already on the ASA's 'Compliance' list. This is a list of all homeopathic providers to check that they are doing what they should be doing, which in this case is not claiming their magic sugar pills can cure serious medical conditions.
Nancy Malik originally said the IHC was 'defying' the ASA. Well it urns out they probably haven't been told off yet, so just one more thing 'Dr' Malik is wrong about. Maybe the ASA's judgment was too watered-down to make them pay attention.
For those that are reading this and it all seems like a bit of a waste of my time, I'd encourage you to think differently. What if the ASA wasn't aware? What if the IHC had already told to desist and hadn't? That would've been a very good thing to tell the ASA about. And even if they already know about it, it's always good to remind them that there are concerned citizens who care about honest advertising. It's rare that a big organisation holds an openly skeptical worldview, the ASA is one of them; let's use that to our advantage.
Sunday 14 September 2014
Saturday 6 September 2014
Marine A: A Bad Petition
If you're a non-UK reader, and statistically you probably are, you may be wondering who Marine A is. Marine A is the code name used for Alexander Wayne Blackman, a former Royal Marine Sergeant who executed a Taliban prisoner in Helmand province on September 15th 2011.
He appealed his sentence for murder and as a result will now serve a minimum of 8 years. This hit the headlines back in May and resulted in this petition calling for his immediate release. I noticed this as it was re-tweeted today by one of my MEPs, UKIP's Mike Hookem. Now I disagree with Mike on probably the majority of policy decisions he and his party ever makes but he (or at least his Twitter feed) seems fairly sensible. The only glaring exception is that petition.
Alexander Blackman, for whatever reason, murdered another human being. Yes, that other human being was a terrorist. Yes, that terrorist would probably have killed Sergeant Blackman. And yes, that murder would have generated outrage in much the same manner that the murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff have. However, just because the executioner was British does not excuse us of our duty to say how reprehensible his actions were.
Those who are saying Marine A should go free (more than 70,000) have forgotten that we live in a civilised country. A country where people have the right to not be killed on the whim of one man, no matter how much of a perceived hero he may or may not be. And I'd greatly like Mike Hookem to be aware that at least one constituent of his is truly horrified at the thought of freeing Marine A early. Give him psychiatric and legal help, send him letters of support thanking him for his service, buy him a beer once he's released. But only after he's served his time, his unnamed and forgotten victim probably deserves that.
He appealed his sentence for murder and as a result will now serve a minimum of 8 years. This hit the headlines back in May and resulted in this petition calling for his immediate release. I noticed this as it was re-tweeted today by one of my MEPs, UKIP's Mike Hookem. Now I disagree with Mike on probably the majority of policy decisions he and his party ever makes but he (or at least his Twitter feed) seems fairly sensible. The only glaring exception is that petition.
Alexander Blackman, for whatever reason, murdered another human being. Yes, that other human being was a terrorist. Yes, that terrorist would probably have killed Sergeant Blackman. And yes, that murder would have generated outrage in much the same manner that the murders of James Foley and Steven Sotloff have. However, just because the executioner was British does not excuse us of our duty to say how reprehensible his actions were.
Those who are saying Marine A should go free (more than 70,000) have forgotten that we live in a civilised country. A country where people have the right to not be killed on the whim of one man, no matter how much of a perceived hero he may or may not be. And I'd greatly like Mike Hookem to be aware that at least one constituent of his is truly horrified at the thought of freeing Marine A early. Give him psychiatric and legal help, send him letters of support thanking him for his service, buy him a beer once he's released. But only after he's served his time, his unnamed and forgotten victim probably deserves that.
Wednesday 3 September 2014
Natural News - Naturally Crazy, Naturally Wrong
And this week's winner of 'Most Disingenuous Headline of the Week' goes to Jonathon Benson of Natural News for the following gem:
'Pregnant women should be injected with mercury, says nurse organisation.'
Even for Natural News, the bastion of crazy that it is, this is really pretty crazy! Fact checking this story started well as Benson chose not to reference the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (ACOG) guidelines, instead preferring four of the seven references to be of the self-fellating kind and linking to other naturalnews.com acrticles. The Yahoo News reference provided does link to the ACOG guidelines however. Are ACOG, who are an organisation that represents two medical specialties and are not in the business of representing nurses (factual error number one), recommending mercury injections?
Of course they are not (factual error number two). That would make them mental. They are recommending that pregnant ladies get flu vaccines as it lends protection to their foetuses which otherwise would be susceptible to flu until 6 months after birth. The vaccines do contain mercury in the form of ethylmercury, which is different to the toxic form methylmercury. This study explains that ethylmercury is removed from the body much quicker than methylmercury and as a result the toxic build up leading to mercury poisoning does not occur.
The rest of the piece simply trots out the same tired vaccine myths, so I'll let John Snyder, skeptic and paediatrician, explain them all a lot better than I could.
'Pregnant women should be injected with mercury, says nurse organisation.'
Even for Natural News, the bastion of crazy that it is, this is really pretty crazy! Fact checking this story started well as Benson chose not to reference the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (ACOG) guidelines, instead preferring four of the seven references to be of the self-fellating kind and linking to other naturalnews.com acrticles. The Yahoo News reference provided does link to the ACOG guidelines however. Are ACOG, who are an organisation that represents two medical specialties and are not in the business of representing nurses (factual error number one), recommending mercury injections?
Of course they are not (factual error number two). That would make them mental. They are recommending that pregnant ladies get flu vaccines as it lends protection to their foetuses which otherwise would be susceptible to flu until 6 months after birth. The vaccines do contain mercury in the form of ethylmercury, which is different to the toxic form methylmercury. This study explains that ethylmercury is removed from the body much quicker than methylmercury and as a result the toxic build up leading to mercury poisoning does not occur.
The rest of the piece simply trots out the same tired vaccine myths, so I'll let John Snyder, skeptic and paediatrician, explain them all a lot better than I could.
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