Skeptical Reporter for November 16th, 2012

A Chinese senior health official has called on the European Union to impose fewer restrictions on imports of traditional Chinese medicine. Wang Guoqiang, vice-minister of Health, said that the EU should consider the character of Chinese culture and of TCM when making regulations on TCM imports. “Unlike Western medicines, which attach great importance to laboratory results, TCM practitioners can determine symptoms of illness by checking the pulse”, he explained. An EU directive, issued in March 2004 and implemented in May 2011, mandates that herbal medicines be barred from the EU market unless they are licensed by an EU member state. To gain authorization in the EU, herbal medicine makers must pay large sums for registration and collect documentation proving the product has a 30-year history of safe use, including 15 years in the EU.

In Ireland, a claim from TV3 that pregnancy is not “strictly considered to be a health issue” has been dismissed by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland as it upheld four complaints against the controversial Psychic Readings Live programme which the station broadcasts. While TV3 did admit that “the provision of psychic services is not an exact science” it robustly defended the programme in the face of a growing number of complaints which accused it of exploiting vulnerable people for commercial gain. Under the BAI’s code of conduct it is forbidden for psychic services to discuss health matters or to predict the future as a matter of fact. Another complaint centred on a presenter who told a woman she would be married in Asia in three years but before that she could expect her flat to burn down. She was told not to worry because her house insurance would cover it. The complaint said the presenter “cast fear into the caller’s heart” and that the broadcast “amounts to mental and financial exploitation of the vulnerable”. In response TV3 insisted the programme met all regulatory requirements and that it was clearly “identified as an entertainment service at all times”. The station also pointed out that the psychic had “clearly stated that the prediction (…) was being made in his opinion”. However the Compliance Committee upheld the complaint and concluded that “the broadcast as a whole conveyed the message that the service was more than an entertainment service.”

The most well-known brand that produces homeopathic pills, Boiron Laboratories, has released a study on the use of homeopathic treatment of migraine in children. According to the conclusions of the study, the homeopathic pills produced a significant decrease in the frequency, severity, and duration of migraine attacks and, consequently, reduced absenteeism from school. The study has immediately come under fire for being flawed, with Dr. Edzard Ernst, former Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, writing: “To put the result of the Boiron-researchers into the right context, we should perhaps remember that even the most outspoken promoters of homeopathy on the planet concluded from an evaluation of the evidence that homeopathy is ineffective as a treatment of migraine. Therefore it seems surprising to publish the opposite result on the basis of such flimsy evidence made to look impressive by its multi-national nature.  (…) Debunking flawed homeopathy studies is not what I aim for or spend my time on. Yet this study, I thought, does deserve a brief comment. Why? Because it has exemplary flaws, because it reflects on homeopathy as a  whole as well as on the journal it was published in (the top publication in this field), because it is Boiron-authored, because it produced an obviously misleading result, because it could lead many migraine-sufferers up the garden path (…).

A self-styled 'guru' has been sentenced to eight years in prison for cheating three generations of an aristocratic French family out of their fortune by making them believe they were und...