Zeno's Blog

Phew! This has been a spectacular week or so for alternative medicine.

Firstly, we had the Landmark ASA ruling on asthma and colic. Then we have the spectacle of some of its major proponents being tortured and exposed before the House of Commons Science and Technology Sub-committee looking into the evidence (or lack of it) for homeopathy. Skepticat tells it far better than I could, but the admission by Boots of the absence of evidence for homeopathy and that they just sell the stuff  ‘cos their customers want to buy it has been described as a Ratner moment.

That was Wednesday; but today was another significant day for the regulation of quackery.

The Code of Practice for chiropractors clearly states that claims made by chiropractors have to be:

…consistent with the law and the guidance issued by the Advertising Standards Authority.

There have been several cases where the ASA have found chiropractors to be in breach of this guidance by making claims for all sorts of medical conditions, some serious. Since the adjudications form part of the ASA guidance, you’d have thought that chiropractors would be somewhat cautious about making claims that the ASA either have already rejected or ones not on the list of conditions they will allow (providing the advertiser provides convincing evidence, of course). The only condition the ASA will allow without asking for evidence is migraines (not headaches). Not even lower back pain.

And now there’s another one.

There has been a lot of speculation today after some media reports about Google and the ASA.

One article was in Revolution magazine: ASA imposes paid search tax to police websites and another in the Guardian: Google deal with Advertising Standards Authority will fund regulation.

It is not clear from either of these articles exactly what has been proposed or whether the ASA’s remit is to be extended.

My last post ended:

In the light of this, why are so many BCA members still making such claims?

Oh dear.

I blogged on What the BCA got up to in 2007 some months ago and examined their 2007 accounts, lodged with Companies House.

Their 2008 accounts have just been published. And they make interesting reading. They give details of the BCA’s financial position at 31 December 2008.

After the General Chiropractic Council ‘withdrew’ their What is Chiropractic? leaflet two weeks ago — as a result of a complaint by Simon Perry about its claims for childhood ailments — it took them a week to publish a new version on their website.

It really is just not good enough to supply loads of papers — scientific or otherwise — to the Advertising Standards Authority when your claims are challenged.

In an adjudication published today on an advert for the ‘pro-biotic drinking yogurt’ Actimel, the advertiser (Danone) supplied a plethora of 23 papers to try to substantiate the claims they made in their advert.

You couldn’t make it up!

That’s almost become a overused exclamation in the blogosphere these days, particularly when yet more idiotic woo claims are uncovered. But it also applies to the shenanigans over the General Chiropractic Council‘s Patient Information Leaflet (PIL).

A few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of  the 12 August edition of the Southend Echo, which carried an advert for a chiropractic clinic in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. The paper was folded to expose this advert for the Cliffs Chiropractic Clinic Ltd:

What was strange about this was that it was sent to me anonymously. Through the post. To my home address.

Way back in May, I wrote a blog post about some Advertising Standards Authority adjudications against chiropractors. It’s time we took a closer look at one of them. Well, two separate adjudications upheld against one company, Optimum Health Centres (OHC). (Be warned — it’s a horrible Flash website.)