It’s like a pantomime, but with Africans dying! The fun never stops over at Jeremy’s blog.
Recently, our intrepid hero met a woman who is dying of aids. He prescribed Androctonus 12C, which is one part scorpion* to one billion quadrillion** parts water. He saw her again yesterday and her condition is much improved you’ll be happy to learn. Jeremy has decided to continue the Androctonus 12C, and why not with results like that?
Inbetween consultations, Jeremy has found time to plead his supporters to start a holy war. This explains the recent uptick in eloquent irrationality in the comments I’m receiving.
* Or scorpion venom, correct me if I’m wrong here.
This is the latest announcement from the DMO, just a few minutes ago:
The government just borrowed money paying a rate of 4.36% shown here as the ‘Yield’. The UK government is borrowing money at a significantly higher rate than the set Bank of England rate of 1.5%, but they are not yet paying an exorbitant rate. The ‘Cover’ is the ratio of bids to the amount of money the government wishes to borrow. It was 1.31 for this auction, which is quite low by recent standards, but sufficient for the auction to succeed. If this number begins to fall below 1 regularly, then the government is unable to borrow money in your name to give to banks who lent money to dodgy Russian oligarchs and then never got it back.
UK DMO: PRESS RELEASE: 19 January 2009 RESULT OF GILT MINI-TENDER: up to £1,250million (nominal) of 4¼% Treasury Gilt 2027 Striking price £98.56 Yield 4.362% Scaling ratio applied to bids at striking price 10% Cover 1.31x Total bids received £1,643 million Competitive bids allotted £1,250 million Residual amount retained by DMO £0 Total amount issued £1,250 million
I got the following comment in reply to a previous post. I googled the text from it, and it turns out that Shelley has been copying and pasting the same comment to quite a few different places, so it’s not exactly personalised for me. What it does give is a great opportunity to point out the basic failures in reasoning that are present in it though! OK so the original is as follows:
Homeopathy works. It works well and much better than conventional medicine. If it didn’t work, it would not last for more than 200 years and have so many followers and supporters around the world. Numbers do not lie (unlike this site). If homeopathy were such crap, why does this site and so many other people, from the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies, make such an effort to fight against it? If it didn’t work, people would not turn to it and it would fissile out, like many medical theories have over the years.
Much of her argument hinges on the following two statements:
If it didn’t work, it would not last for more than 200 years and have so many followers and supporters around the world.
If it didn’t work, people would not turn to it and it would fissile out, like many medical theories have over the years.
These statements exhibit two obvious flaws of logical reasoning. Both statements are examples of argumentum ad populum, where a person concludes that a proposition is true because it is believed by a significant number of people. The first is also an appeal to tradition, where a proposition is considered true because it has been kicking around for a long time. As both statements are logical fallacies, you can just take them out of the argument as if they weren’t there. So which statements does it leave us with? Here is all that’s left, with my comments in italics.
Homeopathy works. It works well and much better than conventional medicine. - Where is the evidencethat this is true?
Numbers do not lie (unlike this site). – Which numbers don’t lie? And which lie have I told??
If homeopathy were such crap, why does this site and so many other people, from the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies, make such an effort to fight against it? Erm, we fight against it because it’s a ludicrous belief system supported by no credible evidence, defended by zealots such as yourself who see nothing wrong with going as missionaries to African nations to spread your fantasies, blind to the unneccesary deaths that result.
Jeremy Sherr has responded that bloggers who criticise him are part of the “Pharmaceutical Inquisition” in his latest blog post here. Martin from the Lay Scientist has done a fantastic job taking to pieces his counter attack in this post that you should take the time to read:
Jeremy Sherr has already begun editing his blog to make our criticisms appear unfounded. We criticise something he has said, he removes it, then acts as if it weren’t there in the first place. Well this doesn’t wash in the 21st century, as we can save the state of your blog, as Rob Hinckley has done here, where Jeremy Sherr made this unambiguous statement:
“I have decided that the main aim is to get out there and cure as many people as possible. I know, as all homeopaths do, that you can just about cure AIDS in many cases. But shhhh… I’m not allowed to say that, so you didn’t hear it.”
For the true obsessive, you can read all Jeremy Sherr’s blog posts in their original form here. Again, thanks go to Rob Hinckley for his diligence and forethought in saving them all in the first place. Not that he needs my thanks of course with all the money that big pharma will be paying him for this. I await my cheque eagerly too!
You actually may not have known that, but it’s true. Homeopathic remedies are simply placebos. Any positive benefit they do have is simply the amazing effects of the placebo. You get better because you think you will. Unfortunately, the placebo effect is of limited use. It might work if you’re suffering from a headache, but not if you’ve been run over by a train. No, for that you need real medical interventions. So I come my second fact:
Homeopathy cannot treat AIDS sufferers
So now to my final fact:
In Tanzania right now is man who is soliciting donations for a charity that wants to treat AIDS and Malaria with homeopathy. Right now he is in Tanzania, offering homeopathy as a treatment to desperately ill people who are have AIDS. His name is Jeremy Sherr.
This is his blog: http://jeremysjournalfromafrica.blogspot.com/
This is his wife’s blog: http://camillasjournal.blogspot.com/
He last posted yesterday, talking about his recent treatments. Having seen 8 patients twice since he has been in Tanzania, he is already convinced of the effectiveness of homeopathy in treating AIDS. He is testing an unproven cure, using a branch of superstitious medicine that repeated clinical trials have shown to be ineffective. He is testing it on the poor and uneducated. He is indulging his own deluded healing fantasies. If it transpires he is encouraging people not to seek or take ARVs, then he is directly responsible for the increased rate of infection and premature death that will ensue.
Homeopathy is not harmless, and it’s not natural. We can’t let the Sherrs get away with the great harm they are causing, simply because they believe they are doing good.
Below is a video that features the Sherrs and their ideas.
