This morning I received an email from a colleague that said this about the New York Times‘s article on King Charles’s cancer diagnosis:
In the NY Times report there is one sentence mentioning that he is using homeopathy as part of his suite of treatments.
UPDATE: My colleague, who is reliable, swears he saw this in the NYT yesterday, and is baffled that the sentence is gone today. Readers with a bent for sleuthing might try finding the original article at an archived site.
Well, I can’t find that sentence in the NYT article this morning, nor in the archived version posted right after midnight. Yet we know the King is an advocate of homeopathy. The Guardian of December 17 last year noted that the King had appointed an advocated of woo, including homeopathy, as head of the “royal medical household”:
Yet last week we heard that the head of the royal medical household is an advocate of homeopathy. Dr Michael Dixon has championed such things as “thought field therapy”, “Christian healing” and an Indian herbal cure “ultra-diluted” with alcohol, which claims to kill breast cancer cells. Methods like these might be “unfashionable”, he once wrote in an article submitted to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, but they should not be ignored.
The link above goes to an earlier Guardian article, noting that the head of the royal medical household is not the same thing as thje king’s doctor:
Dr Michael Dixon, who has championed faith healing and herbalism in his work as a GP, has quietly held the senior position for the last year, the Sunday Times reported.
While Dixon, 71, is head of the royal medical household, for the first time the role is not combined with being the monarch’s physician. Duties include having overall responsibility for the health of the king and the wider royal family – and even representing them in talks with government.
There are a lot of people online who are somewhat gleeful about this diagnosis, saying that they’re hoping that King Charles puts the rubber to the road and uses alternative therapies, like homeopathy, but the Daily Fail and other sites note that even Dixon doesn’t think that homeopathy can cure cancer:
[Dixon] thrown his support behind offering treatments such as aromatherapy and reflexology on the NHS.
In one paper he authored, he referenced an experiment suggesting Indian herbal remedies which had been ‘ultra-diluted’ with alcohol might be able to cure cancer, although Buckingham Palace has staunchly denied Dr Dixon himself believes this can work.
A statement from the palace at the time of his appointment read: ‘Dr Dixon does not believe homeopathy can cure cancer.
‘His position is that complementary therapies can sit alongside conventional treatments, provided they are safe, appropriate and evidence based.’
Dr Dixon, who has reportedly prescribed plants to patients such as devil’s claw and horny goat weed, has also written papers suggesting Christian healers may be able to help people who are chronically ill.
He has a kindred spirit and staunch supporter in the shape of King Charles, who has himself been outspoken on how he believes alternative medicine can help people with illnesses, and was appointed patron of the Faculty of Homeopathy in 2017.
As for me, I have no beef with King Charles, and my first thought when I heard he had cancer was that it was a shame, as he’d waited so long to become King and if he died from this, it would have been a long wait for a short reign. I hope he gets well. What kind of person would want the King to die because he advocates medical woo?
But he should never have promoted that woo, and I’m sure he won’t be using it in his new course of treatment.
I sure hope that King Charles follows the advice of his legitimate doctors and gets scientifically sound medical treatment—which I’m sure he will. It’s too bad that he has muddied the waters with his homeopathy advocacy.
I would never dismiss the efficacy of devil’s claw and horny goat weed, which sound positively enticing. In the realm of alternative medicine, we should not forget the treatment for a stiff neck that King Charles’ predecessor Charles 1 received.
Thank you for my early morning laugh Jon. It was better than coffee for helping me start my day.
I have stage 4 Renal Cell Carcinoma, diagnosed in 2022, but had been growing well before that. No laughing matter as it is incurable and the best hopes is to turn into a chronic disease.
In 2009, I was diagnosed with Stage 1 RCC, but tumour was removed, and that was that. I kept having CT scans years after that, but made a terrible mistake: I only had the abdomen scanned expecting it if it came back to be in the kidneys, but no…went directly into lymph nodes in chest, neck, and also part of mandible. No organs thus far have shown metastasis, save a tiny trace in the lungs. Scans a few weeks ago marked me as “stable”-a very good thing.
I now take an immunotherapy called Keytruda…fantastic drug…and a daily pill called Lenvima which prevents angiogenesis. In 2009 there was in essence no adjuvant therapy after resection.
So, I am unlucky it came back, but fortunate for these 2 medications. And homeopathy and “alternative medicine” are emphatically not on the menu for me!
I am so very sorry. But glad that an immunotherapy has been developed since your earlier 2009 brush and surgery. I had surgery for stage 3b colon cancer in 2009 followed by a 6-month chemo regimen which included weekly blood chemistry workups and was followed with five (?) years of CT scans. I enjoyed having the feedback from regular data and now fear what might again show up out of the blue…like King Charles’ opportunistic discovery last week. I do have colonoscopies on three year centers with one scheduled later this month..so here’s hoping.
I wish you the best with your immunotherapy…a great development and preferable to chemo or radiation if available I believe. And am sorry that you must continue the fight.
Medical woo kills. At the very least it wastes enormous sums of money and contributes to the rise of anti-science & general ignorance.
I’m — not — repeat — not — gleeful about His Majesty’s cancer diagnosis.
Regarding: “saying that they’re hoping that King Charles puts the rubber to the road and uses alternative therapies, like homeopathy”
KC III, a long-time, tireless advocate of crank “medicine” has undoubtedly contributed to a cultural atmosphere that wastes resources and increases morbidity and mortality in his loyal subjects.
So count me in with those who would like to see him go all-in on Dr. Dixon’s treatments to the exclusion of “western industrial medicine”. I think that statements around good ol’ Doc Dixon “doesn’t believe homeopathy can cure cancer” are just window dressing.
Prayer, herbs, and the correct homeopathic formulations, 40 to 100C, perhaps will surely be the remedy. God will provide, if faith is true.
I’m utterly anti-woo (I spent a lot of my medical career arguing with people like parents who refused vaccines for their kids), but when you write:
you go too far for me. There’s really no reason to wish an unnecessary death on anyone.
Insightful commentary on homeopathy from Dara O’Briain.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b6hwyubf2l0hem7/Dara_OBriain_homeopathy.mp4?dl=0
This is my favourite commentary on homeopathy. https://youtu.be/HMGIbOGu8q0?si=YFWPDcrKTz6EVLbN
+mucho!
My favourite commentary on homeopathy is that “it is the air guitar of medicine.”
Aromatherapy and reflexology?
Thoughts and prayers.
I think there is a lot of unfounded speculation about King Charles, his cancer, and his treatment. No wonder he hasn’t said what kind of cancer he has. I do think he has done a lot for the environment and I enjoy his cereal. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/dorset-cereals-changing-the-world-one-breakfast-bowl-at-a-time-7893714.html
I don’t want Charles to die either. Though I’m surprised that Jerry says that it would be a pity if Charles’ reign is short after he has waited so long to ascend to the throne. Jerry, a royalist – I would not have guessed that!
I’m no royalist either but it does seem sad from Charles’s perspective to wait then get sick. I’m sure that’s how Jerry sees it.
Nothing to do with King Charles, but my view is that anyone who practices woo-medicine should be legally obligated to only be treated by woo-medicine.
I know from personal experience how harrowing it is to have someone you love receive a cancer diagnosis, so I wish Charles and his family well in the coming months. But I could do without the over-the-top coverage in the UK news. Even in the Guardian, darn it.
And hundreds of other British people also received a cancer diagnosis on the day that Charles got his, yet almost none of them will be able to start treatment just two or three days later as Charles did, because the UK’s National Health Service has been eviscerated since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Most of them will face waits of months, and for some of them, that will be effectively a death sentence.
Wondering whether inculcating medicine and perhaps medical research with the tenets of DEI philosophy should be included in the types of medical woo.