The Council was established in 2008, using money from the Department of Health (£900 000) and the King’s Fund (£1 million) with the purpose “to enhance public protection by setting standards” in the area of alternative medicine.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Regulation is something that has been sorely missing from the alternative medicine industry since inception. But wait, before we get too excited let’s examine the “legislation” in more detail.

First problem: A conflict of interest? The CNHC was set-up by the Prince’s Foundation for Integrative Health, in other words, woo ruling on woo. For an hilarious take on this aspect of the policy see this article from the daily mash website.

Second and bigger problem: registering with the CNHC is voluntary. (To add to the incentive, it also costs money). To get on to the government-register, therapists will have to show they have the qualifications and experience, abide by a code of conduct and ensure they have insurance in place.

But importantly, the efficacy of the therapies they are offering will not be addressed. Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter’s Medical School said, “There does need to be more rigour in the regulation of complementary medicine as there will be cowboys out there. However, I have concerns that the regulator does not have mandatory powers and is not looking at the efficacy of these therapies.”

Surely this is just arse-about. Whilst I don’t disagree with the idea of alternative therapists adhering to a code of conduct, I do object to them acquiring some official looking stamp just because they can produce a certificate of attendance for turning up to homeopathy school and pouring water into a little jar. A nod from the government with the addition of a regulator logo to promotional material and shopfronts just adds legitimacy to an industry that sells magic water and farcical “cures”.

Homeopathy is water or sugar pills. Therapeutic touch is made up shit debunked by an 11 year old girl as part of her school science project and published in the Journal of America Medical Association. Ear candles do more harm than good, and are based on lies about the creation of a vacuum and the removal of cerumen or ear wax from the ear canals. Detox can kill you, or give you brain damage.

But let’s not worry about that, as long as you have a certificate in “making-shit-up” we are fine with you chanting or holding your hands over someone’s head to channel energy into their aura. Just as long as you don’t do anything weird like have sex with your patient whilst you align their chakras.

The main plank of the council’s work will be to operate a register of practitioners. It will not judge clinics on whether therapies are effective, but rather on whether they operate a professional and safe business.

Maggie Dunn*, co-chair of the CNHC said the regulator would clean up the industry used by one in five people and she estimated thousands of clinics may go out of business in the process. As applying to the register is voluntary, Ms Dunn accepted that some therapists might not put themselves forward. Ms Dunn said: “It won’t take long for customers to start asking whether a practitioner is registered or searching on our website for ones that are. They will then vote with their feet.”

Whilst some people think those stupid enough to use alternative therapies get what they deserve, I believe governments have some responsibility to protect the public from harm. Especially since (in Australia at least) these “medicines” are approved for sale in pharmacies and drug stores, alongside the science-based medicine, thereby lending them legitimacy.

No one expects (and neither they should) Mr Jo Public to take responsibility for establishing whether these things work or not. If the government is going to set up regulatory bodies at least use them for good, not to give the stamp of approval to magic water and other collective bullshit.

*Interestingly, the board of the CNHC is occupied by woo and lay people. Maggie Dunn was lay Chair of the General Council for Massage Therapy until June 2008; the co-chair Maggie Wallace was lay Chair of the Council of Organisations Registering Homeopaths; Jenny Gordon completed her PhD in 2007 which focussed on the use of reflexology as an adjunct to care in the management of childhood idiopathic constipation. The other members appear to be lay people (solicitors), “consumer champions” and a physiotherapist. Medical doctors are conspicuous by their absence.

It gave Richard Saunders and me a good laugh, so I thought I’d share it with you. During some routine research compiling a list of psychic predictions for 2008 (essentially to see if they got anything right) I came across this little gem. A Google search led to me to a website known as the Australian Psychics Directory which contains several links to promos for Channel 7s reality TV show “The One“.

Links from the Australian Psychic Directory website

When I clicked on the first link, it took me to YouTube and to a channel known as “rachiesyd“. A channel belonging to well, me! The irony is, Richard, who was the sceptical judge on the show and for his troubles earned the reputation of “spook” and “meanie” had himself posted some of the videos when I was overseas earlier this year.

Richard "the meanie" Saunders applauds the psychics for their support of the sceptical community.

Further, the irony is not only contained in the link itself, but also that the psychics are inadvertently increasing the traffic to my YouTube channel. And an evil, sceptical, party-pooper channel at that!

But don’t let the psychics have all the fun, you too can hit up my YouTube channel here where you can see for yourself the video linked to their website and marvel at the 2,200 odd hits it has gotten as a result (ten times more than any others).

Thank you woo woo people, keep it coming!

Disgraced footballer Ben Cousins to undergo drug testing by hair analysis every three months

Celebrity, drug-troubled Australian rules footballer Ben Cousins was back in the news this week. Australians may remember he was sacked by his team in October after being arrested and charged with possession of an illegal drug and refusing to submit to a blood test. This was followed by fleeing from a scheduled stint in rehab in Los Angeles to go on a 5 day cocaine binge.

This week, he was hired by a new football team with several very specific conditions. Thirty year old Cousins remains on a one-month good behaviour trial, and risks instant dismissal if he breaches a strict disciplinary code which includes providing up to three urine samples a week and a hair-follicle test every three months for drug testing.

The hair follicle test to which a news article referred is a legitimate test used to detect drug use and as such will be used to monitor his enforced abstinence. As I described in a previous blog, and in episode 7 of The Zone, when conducted correctly, hair analysis is a high-end powerful diagnostic test, used in forensics and toxicology studies.

Procedures involved in the detection of drugs in hair specimens are either the same or slightly modified from procedures used for the detection of drugs in urine, blood or other biological samples (1). Preparation of samples is critical since hair not only absorbs drugs and alcohol metabolites from the blood but also from the air (e.g., marijuana smoke, pollution).

Simplified structure of hair. Depending on moisture content it contains 65-95% protein (keratin), 15-35% water and 1-9% lipids. From (1).

Hence, thorough washing procedures are required usually with organic solvents followed by extended washing in phosphate buffers (ref. 1 and see table below). Following this, hair is digested to its constituent components, primarily amino acids from the protein keratin. Several methods are used to break the bonds between the amino acids including the use of acid (hydrochloric), alkali (sodium hydroxide) or enzymes. Analysis can then be conducted using gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography, or immunological methods (1), all high-end, complicated chemistry techniques.

I should have guessed it wouldn’t take long for the woo people to jump on this recent publicised use of hair analysis to lend legitimacy to their “quantum technology” allergy testing by hair analysis.

Check out this little gem I found on one woo website. Note these are the same people I watched with disdain work their random-allergy-generator at the recent Mind Body Wallet in Sydney for AU$195 a pop.

“..Hair analysis testing is becoming widely spread as an exceptable (sic) form of testing and measuring. Ben Cousins (the footballer) has to submit a hair sample each week as his testing proticol (sic) for drug consumption”.

I don’t know about you, but I certainly would not trust someone with my health, who a) can’t spell and b) can’t get their facts straight (as stated earlier, the hair-follicle test is to conducted every THREE months, not each week). Further, the test which they use has nothing to do with the techniques which will be employed by the Australian Football League (AFL) to ensure Ben Cousins remains on the wagon. That is apart from the name, since you can be certain the AFL will use real science, not woo (see table, right).

As I have stated before, you can NOT diagnose allergies by stuffing a piece of hair in a beaker and making lights flash and dials flicker. Even if the device allegedly uses quantum technology (which it doesn’t).

Reference: (1) Vassiliki A. Boumba, Kallirroe S. Ziavrou and Theodore Vougiouklakis. Hair as a Biological Indicator of Drug Use, Drug Abuse or Chronic Exposure to Environmental Toxicants. International Journal of Toxicology, (2006); 25:143–163.

* Asterik indicates a complete lack of either washing or digestion of hair samples by a provider I witnessed at the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival in November, 2008, Sydney Australia. I have since been unable to confirm whether woo practitioners undertake these procedures at all.

Thanks to Moose for the tip-off to this story.