It’s bad enough when homeopaths take good money from people, claiming they can cure their colds or clear up their eczema with sugar pills. It’s another thing entirely to claim to prevent or treat serious diseases with identical sugar pills.

But this is precisely what the BBC’s Newsnight programme discovered homeopaths were doing. Broadcast in January, Pallab Ghosh exposed the disgraceful behaviour of a north London homeopath and a homeopathic ‘pharmacy’ selling sugar pills as a malaria preventative.

Watch the whole sorry exposure, even if you’ve watched it before:

As Dr Simon Singh said on the programme:

Choice is fine as long as it’s based on accurate information. And the information that’s being given out by pharmacists, by celebrities endorsing homeopathy, by the NHS offering homeopathy — the implication here that homeopathy must be effective otherwise people wouldn’t sell it, profit from it or offer it in the high street. And I am utterly shocked that we have a woman here [Zofia Dymitr, Chairwoman of the Society of Homeopaths] saying that she’s not going to forbid her members from offering homeopathic prevention of malaria to the general public. There are people coming back from tropical countries with multiple organ failure having used homeopathy and yet this woman is not prepared to stop it.

I was here four years ago when Newsnight did your last investigation and BBC Scotland have done an investigation and BBC South West have done an investigation. The BBC are the only people regulating homeopathy at the moment, because the Society itself seems to be oblivious to its responsibility.

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Is ‘homeopathic’ an accurate description of self-regulation?

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are paragons of efficiency and professionalism. They may well have a lot to deal with at the moment, but that does not stop them investigating complaints thoroughly and responsibly. They take the business of regulation seriously and have a well-deserved reputation for being fair, independent and impartial.

That’s how a regulator should conduct its business if they are to be seen as thorough and effective, particularly where there is a need to protect the public from those who would prey on their trust, ignorance or vulnerability.

The ASA have an advantage over the trade bodies that parade their Code of Ethics as banners of respectability to entice the public to believe their members are being properly regulated. The ASA operate at arms length from those who fund them: those who decide on whether an advert is legal, decent, honest and truthful treat all complaints equally, regardless of who the advertiser is or who the complainant is.

It’s a pity the same cannot be said for the ‘regulators’ of purveyors of ‘alternative’ therapies.

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