Companies claiming that homeopathy — an approach to medical treatment which has zero scientific credibility — is an acceptable alternative to vaccination put us all at risk. The Federal Court agrees, having found that claims made by an outfit known as Homeopathy Plus! are in violation of Australian consumer law.
Vaccine picture from Shutterstock
Consumer regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took Homeopathy Plus! to court in April last year, objecting to claims on its web site that whooping cough vaccinations were ineffective and that homeopathy was an effective alternative treatment. The court has agreed, as the ACCC announcement explains:
The Court found that Homeopathy Plus! and Ms Sheffield engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and made false or misleading representations by publishing statements on the Homeopathy Plus website to the effect that:
- the whooping cough vaccine is short lived, unreliable and no longer effective;
- the vaccine may not be the best solution for, of limited effect, and is unreliable at best in protecting against whooping cough; and
- the vaccine is largely ineffective in protecting against whooping cough,
when in fact the whooping cough vaccine is effective in protecting a significant majority of people from contracting whooping cough.
Any penalties or injunctions will be decided by the court in February. In a society which often seems wilfully anti-science, this is a welcome development; deceiving people into believing homeopathy is effective is not helpful.
Comments
17 responses to “Homeopathy Site Busted For Stupid Claims About Vaccination”
Had a severe allergic reaction as a kid to my first vaccination so was never able to be fully vaccinated. This year I went out and got vaccinated for everything. Why – because the small risk to my person is nothing compared to how I’d feel if I inadvertently gave a child an infection that killed them.
Furthermore I can not believe that people with any brains at all would consider vaccination a bad thing. Vaccination is a modern medicine that actually teaches your body how to fight an infection – making it the most ‘natural’ of all medicines prescribed in western medicine.
On behalf of the rest of the “herd”, thank you.
& I couldn’t agree more!
It’s a shame there still isn’t a vaccine for dumb.
Even if there was, the people who need it most are the ones who would refuse to get it 😛
[generic anger/outrage about people who don’t vaccinate]
Have you seen the stuff the anti-vaxxers come up with? It’s utterly insane.
“whopping cough”? 🙂
Whopping cough seem about right. A made up disease with a made up cure!
Clearly you have never witnessed a young child gasping for breath or dying from whooping cough. Ignorance best describes your comment. Look up B. pertusis and then Koch’s postulates.
There’s a different between whopping and whooping, champ.
That’s when your burger goes down the wrong way and you cough it back up again, spraying beef, lettuce and other assorted ingredients all over the person sitting opposite you.
One of the most annoying things is that these homeopathy whackjobs got government funding for treating people. It is snake oil salesmanship of the first order. Search for James Randi’s TED lecture on the pseudo sciences. He ate an entire bottle of “homeophathic” sleeping tablets (100 pills) and never came close to nodding off.
At best these people are whackjobs, at worst they are downright dangerous.
Technically he should have diluted one tablet 10000 times to overdose on it 🙂
I got the whooping cough vaccine when I was young, still ended up with whooping cough. Turns out, you are suppose to get a booster around 18 to 21.
Same here. I got the vaccine as a kid and then got whooping cough at 36. Dr told me that most people don’t get it as adults. I was so sick and honestly thought I was going to die. I would hate to pass that on to a child of any age or anyone with a compromised immune system.
Homeopathy has been thoroughly tested and proven highly effective in only one thing – separating fools from their money.