Jessica Ainscough is a model and fashion writer turned “wellness warrior.” She’s an Australian media personality who, in 2008, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that is slow growing but extremely prone to spreading and which doctors recommended be treated by amputating an arm, where the tumor was located.  It’s understandable that someone would want to avoid such radical and disfiguring surgery, but for this type of cancer, such extreme measures provide the best long term prognosis.   Ainscough elected to have intensive local chemotherapy instead, which eventually did eliminate all detectable cancer.   Sadly, it recurred about a year later, as this type of cancer often does.  At that point, her doctors advised her that amputation was the best option for treatment.

The story might have ended there and been the sad tale of a young lady who lost an arm to cancer.   However, due to her poor choices, the story is much much sadder.   Ms. Ainscough decided to decline further treatment.  She instead opted for an organic diet, coffee enemas and various detoxification rituals.   She believes she is “healing” her cancer and that this is an example of her taking responsibility and doing the right thing.

Ms. Ainscough looks pretty good and, according to her, she feels pretty good.   That’s actually not too surprising.  The cancer has invaded her soft tissues and is growing and spreading, but, at least from the sound of it, it has not become debilitating just yet.   The sad thing is Ms. Ainscough seems to be very confident she is getting better because she lacks the most basic understanding of what the condition is and how it needs to be treated.   It’s certainly true that surgery, chemotherapy and radiation are damaging, but that’s because they have to be.  Cancer cannot be “healed.”  It must be killed.  Cancerous cells are damaged cells of ones own body, which grow out of control, due to a breakdown in the function of the mechanisms that control cellular growth.   Cancer is a problem inherent to animal cell biology, it can happen in anyone, for any number of reasons, but usually with no single attributable cause, and when it does, the only way it can be cured is by destroying the cancerous cells.

Ms. Ainscough’s complete lack of even the most basic understanding of how cancer is treated is apparent in some of her statements, such as this one:

Drugs do not cure cancer. They just don’t. Every now and then, chemotherapy and radiation treatments may put a patient into “remission”, but this is not truly healing. This is certainly not a cure. Why? Because cancer is so much more than the tumour it shows up as. The tumours are merely the symptoms. And when you just target the symptom without dealing with the root cause, the disease is going to keep showing up. You can chase the disease around your body with surgery and radiation, and you can douse it with toxic chemicals, but this is not an effective long-term solution. This is why you here so often of people whose “cancer came back”. They didn’t do the work to truly reverse their disease. Cancer is nothing more than your body telling you that something has got to give. It is the result of a breakdown in your body’s defenses after it has endured years of abuse in the form of a toxic diet, toxic mind and toxic environment.

No. That’s not it at all. The tumors are the problem. The tumors are composed of the cancerous cells that are the root of the problem and the reason it often comes back is that it’s so damn hard to get every one of those cells, especially when they start spreading to different areas of the body.   While cancer can be the result of carcinogenic chemicals, it can also be caused by heredity or by the random degradation of genetic material that happens as a result of cellular respiration.

Let me be blunt about the sad truth here.  Jess Ainscough is going to die.   I don’t mean in fifty years either.   The cancer she has now is going to kill her.   It’s too late for her to have a good prognosis, and if she continues without treatment, then the already poor odds are going to get worse.   She may feel okay for the time being, but she will die.  Her only hope is spontaneous remission, which in this kind of cancer is all but unheard of.

I should note that I am not a doctor and I do not have access to Ms. Ainscough’s complete medical information.  However, what I do know is that she claims to have been diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma.   If this is indeed true (and if it’s a lie then she’s downright evil), and if she is not receiving treatment by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, then the cancer can be expected to be fatal.   This has been confirmed by experts I have consulted before writing this.  As one put it “Not treating epithelioid sarcoma is suicidal.”

The thing that really bothers me, however, is that she is working very hard to put out the message that her non-treatment is working and is the best course of action.  She’s been embraced by the media and this idiocy could easily kill others who buy into it.

Via Dolly:

(more…)

Recently came across an especially irritating editorial in the Washington Times and decided I really could not let the contentions stand.

Here it is, by Dariusz Leszczynski:

Helsinki/Finland, January 11, 2012-Epidemiological studies are given the most weight in evaluation of human health effects. Therefore, when researchers started their effort to find out whether cell phone radiation causes brain cancer, epidemiology was given the most of attention – and the most funding.

Well… yes, since Epidemology is the study of health events, disease patterns, health statistics and disease rates and their relation to factors like environment, lifestyle and other causes, it would seem to be the field of study that would apply to such a question.

It’s as straight forward as determining that geology is the appropriate field of science to look to when trying to determine the characteristics of a rock.

However, and please let me play “devils advocate”,

Only if I can play with science advocate.

is the epidemiology overrated?

No.

There, are we done?

(more…)

This is a rarity. I’ve seen something so horrible and I’m so goddamned angry about it that I can’t even think of what to say. It’s astoundingly disheartening to see such a professional, compelling and effective set of lies being purported to further infectious disease.

Hopefully by posting this garbage I can get some sound-minded people to vote it down a bit and make some rational comments to educated those who might believe this dangerous message.

Here it is. The Greater Good: Supposedly a fair look at vaccines, but actually one of the worst pieces of lying propaganda I have ever seen.

This is beyond shameful. It’s a very skilfully made, compelling set of bold faced lies that tug on heartstrings and can easily cost lives. Defeating this kind of propaganda is going to be very difficult. It’s a potent weapon against the war on infectious disease that humanity has fought for its entire history. We’re really going to have to work hard to fight this filth. It may require writing letters to the film festivals and venues that show it.

For a complete and well researched refutation of the film, please visit Science Based Medicine.

Oh, and by the way, there’s no evidence that the health problems of the young lady shown in the beginning are at all related to vaccines. She began to experience health problems which were diagnosed as central nervous system vasculitis and central nervous system lupus “within weeks” of her third dose of the HPV vaccine, but there’s absolutely no evidence the two are related and in all likelihood, the condition had been developing for some time before that. Of course, it’s very sad that she has this condition, but it was not caused by the vaccine. You can read more about it on the Science Based Medicine page.

It is going to be very very hard to counter this kind of media. We’re facing an uphill battle. The major pro-vaccine groups have nowhere near the money necessary to produce a film of this kind of quality and if they did, it would just be portrayed as proof of all the dirty money that big pharma is spending. The only way of combating this is to redouble grass roots efforts, but with this well funded and cunning opposition, it won’t be easy.

In the war on infectious disease, it now seems we have two enemies working in close alliance. One is the pathogenic microbes who seek to invade our bodies and the other is the humans who have defected to their side. I’m not sure anymore which is the tougher one to defeat.

Today I almost plunked down money for a useless product that was being sold to treat a condition it won’t actually help. No, it wasn’t on purpose and in the end, I caught myself but I came a lot closer than I’d have liked to falling for the scam and if I didn’t make it a point to be careful of this I would have.

Today has not been a good day for me. I woke up this morning with an itchy, watering, irritated eye. I wiped it, I splashed water in it and that did not seem to help. By the time I was driving to work my other eye was bothering me. In fact, my eyes were so irritated I could hardly keep them open for long and they were watering enough to make it a bit hard to see, especially with the glare of the early morning sun, low on the horizon. I had to keep stopping the car and wiping the tears from my watering eyes, closing them to regain my vision and returning to the road until they started bothering me enough to stop again.

By the time I was at work, it had become obvious that I was suffering from conjunctivitis, commonly known as pinkeye. The outer layer of my eye, the conjunctiva, had become inflamed and was bloodshot, itchy and irritated. It’s a fairly common condition which can be caused by a bacterial or viral infection. In my case, I’d later find out I probably have a minor viral infection, based on the symptoms. It’s generally not terribly serious and tends to clear up on its own within a couple of days, but it’s annoying and uncomfortable. It’s also fairly contagious, so it’s important to wash one’s hands, avoid touching common surfaces when possible and clean those that are touched.

My condition, however, was bad enough that I figured I should probably see a doctor. I made a call to my doctor’s office and was told that unless it was an emergency they wouldn’t be able to have anyone to see me until later in the afternoon. Of course, it’s not an emergency, so I was agreeable to waiting a few hours to have my eyes looked at.

Given that I had to wait a few hours, I went to my local drug store to see if there were any products that might be able to offer some kind of relief in the meantime. I wasn’t looking for a cure, but as my eyes were pretty sore, I thought that there might be some kind of anti-itch, anti-irritation eye drops that would, if nothing else, at least be soothing to my sore eyeballs.

And this is where I almost got swindled, because as I scanned across the shelf of eyedrop products, something caught my watery, itchy, squinting eyes:

I saw the pink eye and the words “Pinkeye relief,” and immediately thought to myself “Well that’s exactly what I’m looking for!”  I then read the indications, stating that it provided relief from redness, irritation and watery discharge.   Again, I thought it was perfect.

You may notice that there word “homeopathic” is written in thin white font against the red background of a tiny band that runs around the box just bellow the picture of the eye.   I literally couldn’t see this at all in my state.    I was really and truly about to buy this product.  Luckily, I have a habit of looking at the back fine print whenever I buy a health product, and this was no exception.  Despite my irritation, I wiped my eyes and forced them all the way open to examine the directions and active ingredients of the product.  Only then did I actually see the words “homeopathic.”

I’m also lucky in that I know what “homeopathy” means, which many people do not.   The fact that it’s homeopathic means that everything else on the front of the box can be discounted as a lie.  It says “relieves the redness, watery discharge & burning associated with conjunctivitis.”  Well, it doesn’t.  That’s just a bold faced lie.   You might think that it would do so, because it says it does right on the box and most products you find on the shelves of your local pharmacy are required by law to only make truthful statements about what symptoms they can provide relief to, but this is homeopathic, so they can lie.

The active ingredients are belladonna, euphrasia and hepar sulphuris, not because these ingredients actually have been shown to help the symptoms of pinkeye, but because if you put them in a healthy eye, they’ll make it get red, irritated and watery.   However, they’re diluted to the point where there are only a few molecules or less actually present in the final product, so there’s really no effect.   The only thing this product might do to help pinkeye is just provide a little bit of lubrication and moisturizing, which any eyedrop could do.

I was lucky to catch this.  In the end I bought some general purpose anti-itch eyedrops that cost half as much as the homeopathic version and actually have some active ingredients that help provide some itch relief.   They didn’t help all that much, but they seem to reduce the itch a bit.   (Note, this is not a placebo controlled study thus my opinion that they seem to help should not be considered to be an objective fact.)

But still, I was very nearly swindled by an extremely dishonest product making a false claim and sitting next to perfectly legitimate products in similar packaging on the same shelf.

And yes, I’m pissed!

I wonder if they actually picked the font and colors to make it intentionally difficult for a person with watery, irritated eyes to see it.  It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.

I wrote about this kind of thing a while ago, but this is the first time I was almost swindled, because I’m usually very careful about these sort of things.

This has got to be one of the most bizarre, crazy and just plain disgusting stories I’ve heard in a long time.

Chickenpox is a pretty nasty disease to have.  Like most adults, I went through it when I was a child because there was no vaccine at the time.  It was pretty misserable, but I was lucky, because despite missing more than a week of school and being covered with an  itchy, painful rash, I didn’t have any lasting effects.   Some are not so lucky.  It’s fairly common to be left with disfiguring scars, especially on the face, from chickenpox (I know a few people with such marks on their cheeks or forehead).   It’s less common, though not unheard of to have more severe and lingering effects and occasionally even death.

The virus tends to be less severe in children than adults, there was once a custom of intentionally infecting children with the disease.   So-called “pox parties” were held where children intentionally came into contact with others with chickenpox to get the disease when young.  Whether exposing children to the disease intentionally was ever a justifiable idea is debatable (most medical experts think it was always a bad idea), but it certainly is not any more.   These days, there is a vaccine for chickenpox that is highly effective and avoids the discomfort, suffering, dangers and possible disfigurement of the disease.   The vaccine is now part of the normal vaccine schedule and most children receive it.  Chickenpox is therefore far less common than it once was.

But what to do if you’re a vaccine fearing idiot?  Since the antivax crowd seems to think that getting infections is a good thing and boosts the immune system, a pox party seems like it would be right up their ally.  The only problem is that the vaccine has reduced the number of cases of chickenpox enough to make it difficult to find a good pathogen host to infect your kid with.   So what to do?   Why not use social networking to find other like-minded morons around the world and swap spit by mail with them.

The most popular and widely reported on Facebook group for doing this appears to have been recently shut down, but that’s unlikely to actually stop anyone in the long run.

I’m not even kidding…

Via the Los Angeles Times:
(more…)

A cautionary tale of how medicine can become far too accepting of a procedure of limited value and great potential for harm…

First, some background on the lobotomy:

The lobotomy may well be the most notorious and misunderstood medical procedure ever to have been developed.   It’s the butt of many jokes and is portrayed widely in the media as a savage operation preformed on those who were unruly as a means of turning them into dribbling vegetables, incapable of resisting and placid in all respects.  This is partially true, but is an overly simplistic portrayal of what the lobotomy really was and how it was used.

To understand the use of the lobotomy one must first realize the environment it was developed in.  Prior to the mid 20th century, there was very little that could be done for the severely mentally ill. Psychotherapy existed and was useful in helping those with problems like anxiety, phobias and depression better manage their symptoms, but this could do little for the truly insane. For those who suffered from severe delusions, violent episodes, severe depression with suicidal tendencies, extreme bipolarism, there was no effective therapy.

Such individuals were placed in mental institutions, where they were often forced to live the entirety of their lives.   Often miserable places, institutions provided little more than warehousing for many individuals.   Mental institutions were enormous, becoming huge communities onto themselves.  Attempts were made to make life more pleasant by providing  classes and recreation, but the enormous expense of caring for the populations made that difficult to do on a large scale.   The worst cases were often left restrained or locked in padded cells.  With so many completely crippled by mental disease, conditions could easily degrade to the point where wards became filthy and filled with the screams of insane patients.

The origins of psycosurgury can be traced back to the 1880’s, when Gottlieb Burckhardt, a Swiss neurosurgeon began to experiment with operations on the brains of the most severely insane. Small sections of brain were removed in the hope that it might calm the continual mania of the patients operated on. The results were not encouraging, but research continued into the 20th century. It was known that traumatic brain injury, brain tumors or their removal could alter a person’s personality, but only the most basic understanding of the regions of the brain associated with various aspects of thought and emotion existed.

The lobotomy was developed in 1935 by Portuguese doctor António Egas Moniz, who intitially called the procedure the leukotomy. Moniz had become aware of experiments carried out on apes in which portions of the brain were intentionally removed or disconnected. Operations that removed the frontal lobes had a major effect on the learning capacity of the animals, but also made them more placid and less prone to expressions of frustration and emotional outbursts. He believed that doing so on humans might allow those with the most violent psychiatric episodes to lead more normal lives, or at least be more manageable. Early experiments involved injecting alcohol into the nerves that connected the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. This was later replaced by simply cutting the connections.

The belief at the time was that mental illness was caused by areas of the brain becoming too active or the brain being overstimulated and going haywire with out of control signals. It was thought that there was simply too much emotional activity that that cutting away the overly active portions of the brain would relieve this. While this belief is not always entirely false, it’s overly simplistic and does not apply to most cases of mental illness.  While there are portions of the brain that are associated with certain functions or aspects of personality, it is far too complex for a single region to be defined as the source of something like delusions, violent episodes or depression.

Still, the procedure did appear to have some validity. Many of those who received the operation did indeed become calmer and more easy to manage. Contrary to popular belief, it did not necessarily render the individual incapable of speech or basic function, although this did sometimes happen. It seems that overall, the results were highly variable. This is likely attributable to the simplicity and crudeness of the surgery. It involved drilling holes in the head of patients and cutting the pathways by inserting instruments. Exactly what kind of effects this had on the brain could vary quite a bit, especially since the individuals it was preformed on had all manner of conditions to begin with.

Early observations considered the outcome of the procedure to be result in a 33% to 33% to 33% success rate. In other words, roughly one third of patients could be considered to have improved from the operation. One third could be considered to be worse than before the operation and one third were roughly the same. This is hardly a stellar success rate, but given the lack of options for the worst cases of mental disease, it may have seemed worth the risk. There certainly were a few cases of individuals who seemed to gain extensive relief with few complications, but these were relatively rare.

A few individuals died during the procedure.  Others were left completely incapacitated and severely disabled.  Many, however, did retain their basic abilities to communicate and do simple tasks.   Some lost the ability to walk or talk but subsequently relearned it.   A number of reports indicated that the patients became very child-like and lost the ability to comprehend complex concepts.  Lack of emotional responses or social capacity was also reported.   Another effect was the loss of inhibitions.  Many seemed to have no fear or anxiety, even in circumstances where it would be appropriate.  Apathy and social disconnection were common.  Many patients began to overeat and put on large amounts of weight.  Some developed complications ranging from incontinence to lack of balance to sleep disorders.

The psychiatric community accepted the procedure with varying levels of enthusiasm. It gained rapid acceptance across the world, but many remained uneasy about the implications and ethical considerations. It was used primarily on the worst of the worst cases, at least initially. Directors of mental hospitals welcomed anything that could make it easier to manage their overcrowded wards, resulting in an expansion of use that raised questions about whether it was really being used as a last resort. Overall, the procedure was never without controversy, but given the lack of alternatives, it often was considered about the only thing that could be done to at least try to relieve severe mental illness.

(more…)

It’s often argued that alternative medicine is safe because most of the remedies considered to be “alternative” are in and of themselves harmless.   This is certainly true of things like homeopathy, which, if prepared properly, contains absolutely nothing other than the solvent the preparation was based on, which is usually water.    However, it does kill by another means: it displaces real, useful and scientifically valid medicine and leads to people harboring the belief that something will cure them when it won’t, directing them down the wrong road for treatment.    It does not need to completely stop someone from getting real treatment to kill; just delaying real treatment can be enough.

Such would appear to be the case with Steve Jobs.   I do not mean to make light of his death.   While I do think his legacy has become extremely inflated, especially in light of his death, he was, by all accounts a nice guy and certainly a good manager.   He was a great motivator, he had a pretty good sense of industrial design and he helped provide direction for Apple in the mid to late 1990’s when the company was faltering.

Without diminishing the grief his family and friends are surely feeling, we can still look at this death as an example of why alternative medicine is dangerous.   Hopefully it can even save lives.

In 2003, Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.   Pancreatic cancer happens to be one of the most deadly forms of cancer, because it tends to be asymptomatic until it reaches very late stages of development.  By the time most pancreatic cancers are discovered, the prognosis is very very poor.   Once the cancer has metastasize, it becomes very difficult to treat.   Pancreatic cancer is often aggressive and will quickly invade the liver and other organs.  Once this happens, simply removing the tumor does little to stop the spread of the cancer and even the most aggressive treatment with chemotherapy and radiation only results in a long term survival rate of a few percent.

Steve Jobs, however, was lucky.   His form of cancer was slower in progression and less aggressive than most forms of pancreatic cancer.  Even more importantly, it was caught relatively early on in the progression of the disease.  The cancer was discovered entirely by chance.   Steve Jobs had a history of gastric problems and therefore had been receiving periodic abdominal scans. In October 2003, doctors noticed a growth that was confirmed to be pancreatic cancer.

It’s impossible to know with absolute certainty whether the cancer had begun to spread when it was detected, but based on the early stage it was in and the type of cancer, it probably had not. With any form of cancer, delaying treatment can be deadly, but with a form of cancer like pancreatic cancer, it’s all the more vital. As long as the cancer is confined to the pancreas, it can be operated on and the survival rates are very good. Yet the longer the cancer remains, the greater the odds that it has begun to spread to other organs. In 2003, the time bomb had probably not yet gone off, but it was definitely ticking.

(more…)

As most here probably know, Dr. Jack Kevorkian died this year at age 83.   Dr. Kevorkian become famous for his championing of doctor assisted suicide in the United States, where doing so is illegal in most jurisdictions.  Kevorkian is known to have assisted in the suicide of at least 130 persons.   His advocacy for doctor-assisted suicide began in the early 1980’s and the first suicide which he publicly acknowledged participating in was in 1990.

Kevorkian was most prolific in his activities between 1991 and 1998.  During that time he traveled around the United States aiding individuals in taking their own lives.   Kevorkian designed the equipment used, which included an IV drug machine and a carbon monoxide respirator.   He attached patients to the machines but did not take the final step of pushing the plunger or opening the valve.  That was done by the patients, and to some extent, insulated him from being easily prosecuted.   Still, he was in and out of court many times during the 1990’s.   He lost his license to practice medicine and was repeatedly ordered to stop his activities.

Kevorkian loved the attention that the controversy generated.   His court dates became media circuses and he never passed up an interview.  Kevorkian would always say that he was fighting for the right of a person to control their own destiny, die with dignity and relieve their own suffering.   However, many of his antics were not exactly dignified.

In 1998, Kevorkian appeared on the news program 60 Minutes and showed a videotape of the assisted suicide of Thomas Youk, a 52 year old ALS sufferer.   Youk expressed his desire to die and gave his full consent to the procedure to end his life.   In this video Kevorkian did something he had never publicly admitted to before, he pushed the plunger that delivered the lethal drugs himself.   Kevorkian also directly dared authorities to convict him of murder for his actions.   This time he bluffed a bit too hard.  They did and he was sentenced to ten to twenty five years in prison.  Kevorkian was finally paroled in 2007.   Since then he spent a bit less time in the media spotlight.   As a condition of his parole he agreed to no longer preform any kind of suicide service or provide any advice on the matter.

With the recent death of Kevorkian, there has been a lot of talk about his life and accomplishments.   A large number of individuals who identify with atheism, humanism, libertarianism and other related movements have been quick to praise Kevorkian.  Those who believe that a person should have the right to die often cast him as a hero, fighting for a basic human liberty and for the merciful release from pain and suffering.   This is not new.  During his life, Kevorkian was portrayed as a hero by a number of groups and activists.  In 2010, Al Pacino portrayed Kevorkian in the television movie “You Don’t Know Jack,” which showed Kevorkian as a compassionate activist fighting to legalize dying by choice.   Kurt Vonnegut’s collection of short stories published under the title “God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian,” was more of a spoof than a tribute, but Kevorkian seems to have enjoyed the attention anyway.

Sorry, but I can’t agree. I find the man despicable.

(more…)

(Browsers that cannot view embedded content, click here for the original Youtube video.)

You may notice that there’s something a bit off here.   Claims that vaccines are a dangerous conspiracy purported by horrible pharmaceutical companies are usually associated more with the Loony Left of the political spectrum, while Bachman is decidedly on the Loony Right side of the isle.  It’s interesting to note that different ridiculous beliefs tend to come from different sides of the isle.   Vaccine conspiracy theories tend to center on mistrust of corporations and capitalism in general and are often part and parcel of theories of how the military and big corporations are killing us with fluoride, chemtrails and depleted uranium, which means we all need to embrace the “natural way” and move back to mud huts where we can practice free love and drop acid.

You’ll notice, however, that Backmann is not opposed to vaccinations in general, but is singling out one vaccine which apparently has a nearly magical power to steal the innocence of sweet lovely little twelve year old and make them retarded.   The reason that conservatives are so opposed to the HPV vaccine is that it’s seen as somehow encouraging sex or that requiring it is somehow offering a government endorsement of premarital sex.   It’s an extremely warped view when one considers that they’re effectively saying that they are so opposed to what they consider to be offensive forms of sex that it’s worth avoiding a vaccine that could wipe out most cervical cancer.

Her sentiment seems to have been touched off in part by the state of Texas adding the HPV vaccine to the required immunizations for school admission for girls.   This was done by another Republican presidential candidate, Rick Perry.   Some have accused Perry of taking pharmaceutical money for this policy, it really does not change the fact that it’s a good idea to have girls vaccinated.   If he did do so because he was paid off, then all he can be accused of is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
(more…)

Every once in a while (and more often recently) it’s announced that the US government will have to delay or suspend a program or payment because the necessary funds were not allocated to continue its operation or pay for necessary supplies.   This is often the result of partisan bickering and the inability of politicians to agree on necessary appropriations legislation.   In other cases, it’s caused by a clerical error.

The government tends to follow very rigid rules for how funds are allocated, so such budgeting problems can force program suspensions.   Simply having the money is not good always good enough.   A program must also have the approval to spend it and, in some cases, there must be contracts or procedures or suppliers to spend it on.

Of course, it does not just happen in the US; it happens elsewhere too.

A rather amusing story of this type recently came from India.

Via the IndianExpress:

Delay in tendering leads to shortage of homeopathy medicines
Despite having funds for buying medicines for hospitals, the state’s homeopathy department is still to finalise the procedure for drug purchase. While the department is struggling to prepare the rate contracts for drugs, the hospitals are facing constant drug shortage, with no purchase done since April.

A budget of Rs 2.5 crore was approved by the state government for the purchase of homeopathic drugs in the year 2011-12 and the fund of Rs 2.65 crore was granted by the Central government for the same, right in the beginning of the financial year.

However, the tender process for purchase of these drugs is still to be completed. In fact, the directorate of homeopathic medicine has cancelled one tender after opening the technical as well as financial bids, while the retendering process is still on.

The first tender this year was advertised in May. However, due to certain technical flaws, the entire bidding process was cancelled, said V Prasad, Director, Homeopathic Medicine.

However, claims the director, the procedure of retendering is almost complete. “Once the first tenders were cancelled, we immediately went for retendering. Both the technical and financial bids for the second tender were also opened last week,” said Prasad.

Maintaining that the department is doing its best to finalise the process of preparation of rate contract, the director said that within a week, the list of selected bidders will be sent to the government for approval. The approval is done by the High Purchase Committee, which is expected to meet in this month, said Prasad. After the tenders are finalised, the rate contract will be prepared and orders for purchase of the required drugs will be placed.

A shortage of homeopathic medicine? Can’t they just dilute what they have to make more? Oh right, it would cause the medicine to become more potent and could result in an overdose. (sarcasm)

At least it makes me feel a little better knowing that the US government is not the only one with idiotic spending habits. Apparently India has a whole damn department tasked with purchasing magical water from quacks. The statement “Rs 2.5 crore” is an Indian idiom meaning 25 million rupees. It seems that this news story applies to the purchasing of homeopathic preparations within the state of Utter Pradesh. Thus, the budget for such purchases is 25 million rupees from the national government plus an additional 26.5 million rupees from the state government for a grand total of 51.5 rupees for this one state of India. That is just over one million US dollars or about .8 Euro. Still quite a bit considering the this is only one state in India containing less than 1/5 of the national population and the national budget for all healthcare is only about 4.35 billion US dollars a year.

It’s also quite amusing to see that this is actually being taken seriously, as if the shortage of empty pills and overpriced water were some kind of emergency. The press is even reporting it with an apparent straight face.

I do not mean to trash India in this respect, of course. India does have many legitimate, intelligent, honest medical professionals. For those who do practice real medicine and are trying to make a difference in the lives of those in need, this kind of idiocy is enormously frustrating. (I know, I’ve talked to a few of them.) There are indigenous efforts within India to bring a measure of healthy skepticism to medical care, but they face an uphill battle. Homeopathy has become deeply entrenched, and the government of India recognizes it officially as a form of medical care.

Homeopathy isn’t actually Indian in origin, of course. Despite having taken hold in India to a greater degree than just about anywhere else in the world, the lunacy of homeopathy was established in India by of the Victorian-Era British colonists.   It is both ironic and tragic that the quackery of homeopathy would continue to thrive in India and undermine good healthcare even long after the country gained its independence.