World Homeopathy Awareness Week is Coming

It’s time for fantasy unlike anything you’ve seen seen since your last trip to Disney. That’s right, it’s time to discuss the most implausible of alternative health treatments, homeopathy.

World Homeopathy Awareness Week (WHAW), April 10-16, is apparently designed to introduce homeopathy to new, gullible, audiences. This year’s theme is “Homeopathy and Mental Well-being: Body and Mind in Balance”. You can check out the list of activities across Canada including homeopaths that advocate water homeopathy for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and more.

If you’ve been following Science-Based Pharmacy for some time, you probably realize we’re not impressed with homeopathy, or with pharmacists that sell it. For WHAW, we’re going to look at homeopathy from a few different perspectives:  The responsibility of pharmacists, the responsibility of regulators, and the ethical perspective, where SBP will have a guest post from an ethicist. We’ll also look at the science behind a pharmacy product that you might not realize is homeopathy.  In addition to all the activity here, look for a full week of homeopathy-related posts from the team of bloggers over at Skeptic North.

It hasn’t been a good year for homeopaths, with the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee determining homeopathy to be a “placebo”; the 10-23 protesters undertaking a mass overdose of homeopathy (where precisely nothing happened); and New Zealand homeopaths admitting that their products contain no material substances.

In preparation for WHAW, take a look at some of the videos that Science-Based Pharmacy has featured over the past year. (Email viewers will need to visit the website to see the links).

Mitchell and Webb take a look at a homeopathic hospital:

And this video, which puports to explain the mechanism of homeopathy, is a must-see.  And no, it’s not a parody.