Interfaith

Just a quick one today. Work is really piling on so I’m not getting much chance to blog, hopefully after exams I’ll have more time.

I had an interesting conversation with Stuart (President of the Student Humanist Society) about Interfaith. I’ve been very much involved in this kind of thing, much to the surprise of the religionists at the Chaplaincy, as I think the society has in the past come across as very ‘militant’, as much as I hate the expression.

Stuart’s position was that it’s a very useless, facile, wishy washy excercise to have people with totally contradicting beliefs sitting around a table together pretending to be friends, what’s the point? I replied that you don’t have to hold the same beliefs to partake in the exchange of information, and in the meantime we can coordinate joint events together (such as a joint application for funding which we tried a few weeks ago), and learn about religions and cultures we otherwise wouldn’t know about. That’s pretty cool!

Stuart then said that it’s hypocritical to have people working together when each of them believes the others are going to hell! I agree it would be much easier to bash religion if people did think and act that way, but that idea of hell is totally outdated, noone I know thinks of hell as fire and brimstone, it’s a separation from God and all that’s good. The point I pushed most, though is that when religious people look a “heathen”, they don’t think “you’re going to hell”. First and foremost they see another human being, and in that sense they share common ground with humanists. It’s where scripture and practice differ, even if the text says you should be killing people of other faiths, doesn’t mean that’s what you do.

It’s becoming something of a problem, all this interfaith stuff. I’m really mellowing out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not succumbing to any religious belief, I’m just becoming less outspoken on matters of religion and atheism. I may soon be undeserving of the title “not-so-friendly humanist”.

Remembrance Sunday

I didn’t have time to post this on Sunday, but I think Armistice Day is as good a time as any.

It is vitally important that we remember our loved ones who have died, and particularly those who have died in conflict. You may not agree with the war itself, but it’s not the fault of the troops. Many give their lives for their countries, and those who don’t are away from home, away from their loved ones and in the middle of very hostile situations fighting for a cause which they may or may not agree with, and facing traumatic events risking life and limb on a daily basis. As the saying goes, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

I went to the Universities’ service for Remembrance Day. It was held in the Playfair Library at Old College, followed by a parade around the quadrangle by the cadets. It was a fairly impressive affair, attended by representatives from Napier, Queen Margaret’s, Heriot Watt and Edinburgh Universities. Anyone who’s been reading the blog since its beginning may remember that I was very angry at myself for missing the ceremony last year. I suspect at that time I may have been a lot more indignant at what I saw. People may consider this an inappropriate thing to say in a post about such a somber event, but I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not criticising the act of remembrance, and neither am I criticising the University for hosting such an event, just that the type of commemoration seemed inappropriate. I feel obliged to make some kind of comment, although it is not easy to do so delicately. What follows should not be read in an agressive tone, merely a disappointed one.

What astounded me is that it was explicitly a Christian, and more specifically it seemed to me a Protestant affair (I say that because I noticed the version of the Lord’s Prayer was taken from the King James Bible, widely used by Protestants but not much at all by Catholics). Now don’t get me wrong, every other ceremony I’ve been to has been Christian, but they all took place in church, so I wasn’t surprised. Here, the ceremony took place in a library, at an educational institution which is supposedly secular, taken by a chaplain based at a chaplaincy which professes to serve people of all faiths and none, and none of the advertising for the event I saw suggested that it would have any kind of religious flavour, which is why I was so surprised. This is not a criticism of anyone in particular, but does having an explicitly Christian ceremony not undermine the sacrifices of people of other faiths and of no faith whatsoever?

Remembrance Sunday is widely considered a way of remembering and paying tribute to all those who have died in conflict, not just the World Wars, and not just people on ‘our side’. It is unrealistic to believe that all of those people were Christian, indeed if you go to the military cemeteries in Europe (as I did in the Netherlands in 2005), a large contingency of the headstones bear the star of David rather than a crucifix, and I wonder how many of those with crucifixes actually held religious belief. This website suggests that many Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims fought for Britain too. Equally it is not at all fair to presume that only Christians would like to participate in a remembrance ceremony.

I don’t object to religious organisations holding Remembrance Day services, I openly applaud it. But a secular institution like the University, with such a multicultural membership, shouldn’t have any kind of service other than a secular one. Trawling the internet briefly, I can’t find any mention of any kind of non-Christian Remembrance Day service closer than Oxford, and even that still has Christian blessings. You can blame that on secularists, but in my opinion the University service should be one of them. I had previously been impressed with the University that other official ceremonies had no mention of any God or religious belief. If members of the University want to pray, that’s they’re prerogative, but appealing solely to Christians can only contribute to cultural fragmentation. It appears Remembrance Sunday has become a Christian celebration.

I apologise if I have offended anyone, but if you leave a comment I will happily discuss any issue.

Homeopathy 3

Regular readers may be getting more than a little sick of this topic but I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past week or so. Today I’ve had discussions (arguments?) with several people on it, and it’s been good to question my own thoughts. Firstly, one person claimed that it works, and when I brought up all the studies that show it doesn’t, retorted to “it does for some people”. Hmm…

The second conversation was much better. One of my friends said she uses homeopathic remedies and doesn’t care if it’s just the placebo effect (it was in fact her that brought the placebo effect up, not me). She was unaware of just how diluted the remedies are, and seemed a bit less sure of it when I told her it’s really just water, but nevertheless it is a valid objection. Even if we assume it’s just the placebo effect, what does it matter? As long as it works, why do we care? What’s the big objection, and why don’t we use placebos more in conventional medicine, if they’re so effective? Here’s my response:

1. The standard objection is that there are trust and integrity issues with a doctor issuing homeopathy/placebos in place of real medicine. Apparently, though, there is limited evidence that placebos can be effective even when the patient is told it’s a placebo. So this is only a partial objection.

2. Homeopathy/placebo only treats the symptoms. This is highly ironic, since this is the same objection put forward by homeopaths about conventional medicine (apparently homeopathy cures your illness on the mental plane, which is the real root cause of your illness – so basically they mistake an illness for symptoms of some bigger mystery, really scientific). So whilst the symptoms may be reduced via the placebo effect, the underlying cause (virus, bacterium, foreign body, whatever) would still be there, the problem isn’t solved. However, if the problem is just pain from something like arthritis, or a cold, or something which’ll go away on it’s own and isn’t really a serious problem, then if the remedy/placebo speeds up the process or reduces the pain, where’s the problem? It’s not leaving any underlying cause untreated. I suppose what I mean is that if the illness itself isn’t a problem, just its symptoms, then what’s the problem just treating the symptoms? So this is still only a partial objection.

3. Placebos are much much cheaper than conventional medicine. This may seem like a strong point for homeopathy, but it’s not. People spend very good money paying homeopathists to listen to their problems and prescribe these remedies which costs much more than what it essentially is: tapwater. They’re ripping people off, whether they think they are or not. Argubly the same objection can be used against conventional medicine, but I’m not trying to defend CM, some conventional practices are disgusting, I’m objecting to homeopathy.

4. Homeopathy works through the placebo effect, but that’s not how it’s marketed. Allowing homeopaths to market it as something other than what it is is ethically unsound, and promotes bad science. Maybe I wouldn’t have such a big problem with it being a placebo if it was marketed as one, or if it wasn’t marketed as something else. This is kind of linked to no. 1, but I want to place particular emphasis on the fact that I disagree with lies and bad science being peddled to the public.

5. Remember that conventional medicine makes good use of the placebo effect too, in addition to its real medicinal properties.

6. The use of homeopathic remedies to prevent disease puts lives at risk. This example from BBC’s Newsnight shows homeopaths prescribing anti-malaria remedies in place of conventional drugs, people going off to malaria zones and coming back with malaria. Relying on placebos in general is a bad idea.

I think these three posts give a pretty comprehensive insight into my thoughts on homeopathy, but I look forward to Homeopathy 4 when I’ve thought some more about it tomorrow.

EDIT: Hmm… food for thought. If you took a placebo/homeopathic remedy side-by-side with conventional medicine, would the placebo effect reduce pain/suffering further?

Homeopathy 2

So since yesterday I’ve been reading around online a little about homeopathy more generally rather than just about this specific clinic. It’s amazing what you can find out when you’re not reading propaganda.

Until now the only thing I’d read about homeopathy is leaflets from the clinic and from the society of homeopaths itself. They gave the distinct impression (as did Helen Campbell, the homeopath I spoke to on Friday at the clinic) that there hadn’t been much ‘real’ scientific research gone into it (when she asked what I mean by real science, I couldn’t resist replying “you know, chemistry, physics…”). So I was under the impression that since research hadn’t been done into homeopathy, it was unfair to dismiss it out of hand. How wrong I was!!

I’ve now learned that there are loads of studies into homeopathy showing it doesn’t work. Thanks to some of the regular posters over at think humanism I’ve been able to read up on some more information, which otherwise I wouldn’t have known about. This leaflet from sense about science is a very helpful starting point for anyone wanting to find out more, containing references to studies showing homeopathy as no better than a placebo, particularly this one from Shang et al (you may not be able to access it depending on where you are and what entitlements you have), which shows no specific effect for homeopathic treatment over that of a placebo.

This is the summary of a BBC Horizons programme on the subject (the questions and answers section with James Randi is particularly interesting – also if you go on the transcript, about 2 thirds down it tells you about the experiment they did), and Homeowatch has a great collection of materials on the subject, particularly under “articles by various critics”, where I found this very comprehensive analysis. I’m not going to do much in the way of commentary, indeed I’d prefer you read the evidence for yourself as any interpretation I put on it will be biased.

As far as I can see it is an open and shut case. The evidence in favour of homeopathy is very weak, and the evidence against is overwhelming. Not only can homeopaths not explain how it works (which I knew yesterday, but dismissing it based purely on that logic is akin to an argument from personal incredulity), they can’t even demonstrate that it does work, and plenty of studies show that it doesn’t. Until such a time as they can do so clinically (and to me they don’t even seem to be willing to try at the moment), I’m happy to dismiss it as rubbish. I would be particularly interested if they could prove it worked on animals or babies, but so far attempts to do so have fallen flat on their faces. Sorry if I confused anyone yesterday.

Homeopathy

Sorry posting is a little irregular around here but I’ve had essays due in and the blog’s kind of on the backburner at the moment. It’s a pity because I’ve missed a few key events. In short, the society was invited to Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and it was awesome. I just wish humanists had something similar. It appears I’m mellowing out in my relative old age as well, I may soon have to relinquish the title of Not So Friendly Humanist as it’s not that appropriate anymore. I’ve no idea if that’s a good or bad thing.

Anyway, I noticed a couple of weeks ago a set of posters around DHT Basement advertising a homeopathy service running at something called the Edinburgh University Settlement. Apparently that is a charity which isn’t part of the University but has had close links with it since its foundation in 1905, and the homeopathy programme has been running for 5 years. They operate out of the Potterrow Student Union in Bristo Square, so to me it seems like the University is openly condoning Homeopathy, something which obviously as a society we’re not too happy about.

So after reading some of their literature, I went into the Settlement office to speak with someone, hopefully to clear up how closely related it is with the University, but instead the only person who was there was the homeopath herself, Helen Campbell, so she invited me into her office and I asked her lots of questions. First of all, she was absolutely adamant that homeopathy works (my more cynical side is telling me that she would be, seeing as it’s her job), but most of her evidence was very much anecdotal. What she said, however, did seem fairly compelling. For example she told me that once her foot got run over, and through the use of homeopathic remedy, the swelling had gone down completely by the next morning.

So, I’m caught in a bit of a confusing situation. On the one hand I don’t want to be so closed-minded as to dismiss homeopathy totally out of hand. One of my flatmates is very much into her homeopathy, in fact her sister is a practicing homeopath, so I can’t be dismissive, and neither would I want to be. But on the other hand it seems so obviously to be a load of rubbish. A leaflet I read said that the process of dilution and succussion (how they prepare homeopathic remedies) appears to leave the electromagnetic energy signal of the substance on the water in which it is diluted. This balances out the energy signal of the patient which may be out of sync, similar to the way TV aerials work, apparently. Obviously that’s a load of bull, but that’s not to say homeopathy doesn’t work in some other way, which perhaps hasn’t been discovered, even if it’s just by placebo.

I asked the homeopath how she responded to people who claim that homeopathy is just a placebo and that’s why it appears to work, and she said that they obviously just don’t understand, but that doesn’t put her off talking about it, which of course didn’t answer my question. Indeed nobody does understand homeopathy, not even those who practice it!

Of course there’s also the point that homeopathy is very popular in France, and is used side-by-side with what they call “Western Medicine” in Eastern Asia, so I think it’s unfair to dismiss it totally out of hand. What I will say though, is that it is up to homeopaths to prove it is not a placebo, to prove it works, and make some kind of effort to explain how it works, before people will take it seriously in the mainstream. At the moment they seem reluctant to subject their work to any kind of scientific research, thriving in the mystery which surrounds it at the moment, and to let my cynical side through again, making a lot of money from people who like ‘alternative’ culture. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no alternative. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There’s nothing alternative about it. Perhaps it’s because people involved in homeopathy don’t tend to have a scientific background, but to me it seems totally incompatible with the humanist viewpoint.

We hope to do a debate on the subject soon.