Guitars Play In The Background (Just Like The Children)

 

 Come on, admit it - it's better this way: 

 

Although hostility to, and conspiracy theories about, MMR vaccinations are common to many parts of the quack business, homeopathy is notably dubious. In a 2002 study by Ernst and Schmidt, featuring an online query from a fictitious anxious mother, not one out of 77 practitioners advised her in favour of the triple jab. Since when, while Wakefield has been discredited, sympathetic homeopaths have prospered: a few months ago, Ainsworths, the homeopathic pharmacy endorsed by Prince Charles, had to be ordered by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to cease advertising its own, alternative – and content-free – "vaccine" against measles. 

Mercifully for Ainsworths, what is considered dangerous by one part of government can still be cherished by another, and not only via the appointment to the science and technology committee of Britain's foremost adherent of homeopathy and remote healing, the Tory MP David Tredinnick. It was Mr Tredinnick, astrologers will recall, who once had to repay £755 for constellation-based health software he had included in his parliamentary expenses. 

After some recent controversy, when its content was discovered to have been interfered with by one of Prince Charles's many colleges of Charlesology, the NHS Choices' re-re-revised homeopathy page still makes it clear that this branch of magical thinking remains very much a part of the modern NHS. While it asks the public to put science first in organ donation, and swears never again to ignore hospital data, the NHS tolerates, for instance, referrals to the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, where Hahnemann's absurd system is still passed off as respectable treatment. "Medicines which can produce an illness matching the one from which the patient is suffering are prescribed," it informs homeopathy patients, "aiming to stimulate the body's own healing." 

Summarising the discipline as "rubbish", the chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has told Mr Tredinnick's committee: "I am perpetually surprised that homeopathy is available on the NHS." Concerned, perhaps, to make her arcane language comprehensible to Mr Tredinnick and his fellow homeopathy fan, Jeremy Hunt, the outgoing chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, characterised NHS homeopathy, more recently, as "mad". 

With the greatest of respect to the government scientists, "rubbish" and "mad" still seem kindly descriptions of a licensed, potentially harmful idiocy,...

 

 I'd feel pretty weird if they weren't. Like I was one of the people I find myself arguing with:

 

WHEN Tom Kendrick's mum Anstey was diagnosed with breast cancer she refused to have chemotherapy and opted instead for a raw garlic-based diet. 

Three years later she went to her doctor suffering lower back pain, which was diagnosed as secondary cancer and killed her months later. 

Her son is now urging people with cancer not to reject conventional medicine in favour of alternative therapies.

 

 I mean, I don't mind looking stupid. But actually being stupid? I mean, really, really stupid? 

Disco Ball stupid? Uh-uh. 

I'd never make it.

 

While Olympic ski champion Lindsey Vonn is cheering on Tiger Woods again at the Masters, her ex took a shot at the new couple on Twitter. 

Woods was penalized two strokes on Saturday for an improper drop in the second round, hurting his chances to win a fifth green jacket. The problem started when a television viewer called in to question whether Woods had followed the rules. 

Thomas Vonn tweeted, “No problem Masters tournament happy to call in and help. You always have to keep an eye on those cheaters.” He added a smiley face to his comment. 

Somehow, we get the feeling that neither Tiger nor Lindsey is smiling.

 

 But everybody should smile - it really is better this way,...