Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus: The Dishonesty of Homeopathy the movie

May 10, 2010

What a boxer ideally wants to do in the ring, is turn the opponent into an assistant in his own ass-whipping. That is really what you want the other guy to do, assist you in whipping his ass. -Stanley Crouch

Right now I would take homeopaths and I'd put them in a big sack with psychics, astrologers and priests. And I'd close the top of the sack with string, and I'd hit them all with sticks. And I really wouldn't be bothered who got the worst of it. - Dara O'Briain

It's been said that a sucker is born every minute. That's probably never more true than today, isn't it? Mass media has a reach and power it never had in previous generations. Blogs, Youtube, social media on mobile platforms, to say nothing of more traditional media like cable television. One of the side effects of this expansive pervasiveness of today's media - that is both fantastic and utterly frightening - is that if you want to put something out there: a book, or new gee-whiz gadget, or movie or whatever - you can bypass the traditional means of advertising and sales and set it up all yourself. One need only look at Barack Obama's presidential campaign to see how well it can work.

The flip side of this do-it-yourself-for-a-mass-audience is that you can present just about anything without anyone checking your facts. And those who want to take advantage of the suckers can pretty much make whatever claims they want to in the hopes that their target audience simply doesn't have the energy or will power to do some research. It's not unlike the assessment of boxing by writer Stanley Crouch: they want your help in whipping your own ass...and reaching in your pocket book. 

Why am I on about this? Well I know we've just come through Homeopathy Awareness Week, which thanks to groups like CIF it was turned on its head and the fraud of the entire thing was held up for all to see. But I've a been a little busy of late, so I missed the hullabaloo. But I was recently sent a link to a movie e-begging for funding that highlights just how far people are willing to go to pull the wool over your eyes. It's called simply Homeopathy, being put forward by a group called "Blind Dog Films". You can find their website here. 

This entire effort is worse than just trying to get your money. The film purports to be all about the miracle of homeopathy and how a group of brave homeopaths traveled to earthquake ravaged Haiti to help the people there. Isn't that always the way? The poorest of the poor are suffering beyond all reason, and the vultures come down to pick on their bones. This is not unlike the reports of Scientologists traveling to Haiti after the quake to practice their own brand of quackery. 

I need not go on about the actual science vs. the claims of homeopathy here. Tests have repeatedly shown what homeopathy is. It's water and sugar pills. If there is any effect from it at all it's placebo. QED. What I am interested in his how groups like this Blind Dog Films will use cheap slight of hand to try and convince you that their snake oil claims are legit. 

One of the trailers for the film you will find on the website is the story of film maker Marc Wishengrad, who claims - and you might want to sit down before reading on - that homeopathy cured him of MRSA. For those who do not know, MRSA is a very dangerous kind of anti-biotic resistant bacteria. Essentially evolution at work. The bugs developed defenses to our drugs, making it that much harder to kill an infection. 

Wishengrad's story, in a nutshell, is that he contracted MRSA from touching poison ivy, was treated in a hospital. Shortly after he was released, the MRSA returned in the form of a boil on his leg. He bravely avoided going to the hospital and was treated by a homeopath and within seven days or so, the boil started to heel! Hallelujah and praise Samuel Hahnemann, but isn't homeopathy amazing?! 

The hope here is that you don't actually think about what is being presented to you on film. If you did, the whole thing falls apart like a house of cards in a wind storm. A simply application of Carl Sagan's famous baloney detection kit well help you see right through the slight of hand at work here. First, it's not exactly typical to get a MRSA infection from poison ivy, so all things being equal, he probably got the infection from something else. (From the hospital he was at is a very likely candidate. That's where most MRSA infections happen.) As suspicious as that claim is, let's grant Wishengrad that for the moment. It's the rest of the story where things get really wonky.

While it's true that MRSA can present as a ruptured abscess, notice that Wishengrad never has his blood tested a second time. He CLAIMS that the MRSA has "returned." But there is never any confirmation of this and the boil on his leg while clearly infected doesn't look ruptured. In fact, there is no way to know what that is, especially if you are the viewer. If any part of Wishengrad's story is true, he didn't know what it was either, other than a painfully infected boil or wound. 

So without any actual lab tests to confirm MRSA, the film clip goes to on to insist it is MRSA and the sugar pills Wishengrad was given cured him after a week. Think about that. A week is about as long as your body needs to noticeably recover from minor wounds, cuts or infections. If he kept the area the clean, then all Wishengrad did was allow his body to use it's own healing powers. Period. Nothing magical about it. (One also wonders about the usual homeopathic woo-woo of "like cures like." This implies a homeopath would cure a MRSA infection by introducing diluted MRSA into an infected person's body...The pop you just heard was your higher reasoning centre shorting out.) 

There is one tiny element of truth in this film clip - and its not Wishengrad's hopelessly reckless behavior of not going to the hospital if he actually believed he has a MRSA infection. It's the reason he did not want to go to the hospital - it cost too much under the American health care system. We've all read the stories about how people are crushed under debt after going to an American hospital without health insurance, which seems to be Wishengrad's case. 

In any case, it just shows how much the homeopathy movement, if it can be called that, has in common with intelligent designers, truthers, and birthers. Facts don't matter. Evidence doesn't matter. And when the facts are against them they are willing to try and use cheap tricks to fool into accepting their claims. 

The Romans had a wonderful legal principle summed up in the phrase: "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus". - false about one thing, false about everything. It meant that testimony from someone who falsified their evidence once, would not be considered credible without corroboration. I can think of no better phrase to apply to homeopathy than that.