Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait discusses the court conviction of two Australian parents whose nine-month-old daughter died of eczema — yes, eczema! — because they treated the infant with homeopathy, refusing to seek medical treatment until it was too late. When are people going to realize that drugs that contain only water, and no curative substances, are just placebos? For a scientific report on homeopathy that finds it of no effectiveness, go here.
The court heard the couple took Gloria to various health professionals, but while they abandoned each conventional medication she was prescribed within a short time of starting it, they solidly pursued homeopathic remedies.
The Crown said these did not work, and all the while Gloria’s tiny body required more nutrition than her mother’s milk could provide, and her immune system became ever more depleted.
By the time she died, she was the weight of an average three-month-old, her body was covered with angry blotches and her once black hair had turned completely white.
Gloria had developed eczema when she was four months old, a condition she probably inherited from her mother, which flared and subsided throughout the rest of her short life.
But the couple, who were raised and educated in India where homeopathy is accepted as equivalent to conventional medicine, were steadfast to their homeopathic remedies and ignored completely or quickly discarded other treatment.
The story just makes you want to weep.
I suppose if there is a single positive that can rise, however wearily, from this story, it’s that at least the parents were successfully prosecuted. In so many of the U.S. versions of this case, the prosecutorial ambivalence is palpable, especially when the negligence has religious sanction. Let’s hope this poor, wretched girl’s death can prevent a thousand others.
I don’t live in the UK, but I’ve heard that NHS has Homeopathic Hospitals. If that’s true, hopefully stories like these will convince Britons to stop wasting their tax dollars on such harmful nonsense.
There are NHS homeopathic hospitals, none of whom advocate giving up on conventional medicine; quite the opposite, in fact. As meiske said, the homeopathy had nothing to do with this girl’s death; rather, the rejection of appropriate conventional therapy. Such an approach is not followed in any homeopathic hospital I’ve visited.
It is a sad story fo sure! But the title made me angry a lot. Because it is simly a lie!!! It wasn’t the homeopathy, that killed the girl (!!!), it was the lack of traditional medical treatment. There are cases, when medical treatment is necessary because the demages cannot be stopped with other methods. Homeophaty causes a slow healing process. And in some cases the body simply doesn’t have that much time to wait. Like in the case of this little girl…
Two comments about prevalence of Homeopathy in India:
1. As far as I have seen, homeopathy is *not* accepted as equivalent to conventional medicine. It comes under the category of unconventional medicine (along with Ayurveda, the ancient Indian health/medicine system). And most people I have seen/known/heard of try Homeopathy if everything else fails or if they are very mildly sick (where it could and possibly does show some positive results because of placebo effect).
2. Comparing this case to one where “the negligence has religious sanction” (comment 1 above) is not entirely valid. This is because Homeopathy, even being just as good as placebo (it *is* placebo), has all the appearances of a traditional medicine: you go to the Homeopath, s/he prepares often vile-tasting ‘medicine’ which also have ridiculously complicated names. Even a very rational person who just don’t happen to have access to the information regd. (lack of) basis of Homeopathy could fall into trap. And such a thing is entirely possible in a country where most people don’t have access to science literature and/or internet. Things are bound to change for good as India gets better connected to the rest of world in the coming decades.
Though this particular case is different/special because the father himself was a Homeopath and perhaps severely brain-washed.
There certainly have been cases of negligence based on religious sentiments in India (‘witch-doctors’ and all) and they are very rare and heavily derided upon and sometimes do lead to legal conviction.
A study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that conventional drugs kill about 106,000 Americans a year, and this figure is limited to patients that die in the hospital, so the actual figure is unquestionably much higher. That makes prescription drugs the fourth leading cause of death in the United States (after heart attack, cancer and stroke).
Ref: Journal of the American Medical Association 4/15/98.
Yeah, and because homeopathic “remedies” are just water, there wouldn’t be any adverse drug reactions, just a HUGE increase in the number of deaths due to people being dosed with water rather than genuine drugs. Replace antibiotics with “treated water”? I don’t think so.
The author gave a misleading title for this article.
“… all the while Gloria’s tiny body required more nutrition than her mother’s milk could provide, and her immune system became ever more depleted.
By the time she died, she was the weight of an average three-month-old…”
I read the article and as I understood the reason of her death (and probably for her illness) was a malnutrition. Or – to be more accurate – her parents stupidity.
After I read the comments I have a feeling I am the only one who read the complete article.