I know I blogged about this many months ago on Homologous Legs, but I thought that Informal Skepticism would be a good place to bring it up again.
Monkeybiz is a project that helps South African women earn income through making bead art pieces, such as the one in the photo above, in the style of their local beading tradition. Such art pieces are quite popular around the world, and recently my sister was given one of them as a present: I think it’s a giraffe. Anyway, that’s not the problem, that’s good. Helping disadvantaged people in undeveloped nations is a great thing, and should be encouraged. But here’s the problem (taken from this webpage):
Wellness Clinic
We run an HIV/AIDS Wellness Clinic located in the heart of Cape Town, which provides skills training and HIV/AIDS support for low-income HIV+ women. This thriving centre, started in 2003, caters for 60 women once a week, offering them beadwork training, HIV/AIDS counseling, yoga therapy, homeopathic HIV/AIDS treatment and basic nutrition. Exact! Clothing contributes NutriKing, a nutritious vitamin supplement to our clinic each month, and provides us with t-shirt off-cuts for stuffing for our products and our t-shirt project.
(Emphasis added by me, of course.)
Is this a bad thing? We all know, through common sense, a lack of actual data and Steven Novella, that homeopathy is not effective at treating medical conditions such as AIDS, or anything else that the placebo effect can’t take care of). Homeopathic products are little more than, one would presume, freshly oxygenated water (due to all that succussion) and the good wishes of the practitioner. The AIDS treatments given by this “Wellness Clinic” aren’t going to do anything to help the women who are receiving them, so is this bad?
If the location of the clinic was shifted to a First World country with adequate health care and a reasonable standard of living (*cough* Australia *cough*), then the answer to that question may be different. The taking of homeopathic remedies is only really harmful in two ways: one, if the remedies remove the ability or will to take actual effective medicine to treat the condition, or two, if the remedies cost a large amount of money and deprive them of what little wealth they have. Living in Australia, or, sigh, the US, would allow the first reason to not take homeopathic remedies to apply, as health care is good and the accessibility of real medicine is high. But in a nation such as South Africa, AIDS medication is hard to find, and you would have to guess, expensive because of it. So these women aren’t going to get real medication. Thus, getting homeopathy is not removing their ability to get good treatment.
But what about the second reason? We can discount that due to the fact that the clinic offers the homeopathy free of charge. No money is spent by the women receiving the homeopathy on the homeopathy itself.
Ah, a tough dilemma. But wait, there’s one more reason I forgot to give.
Another way that homeopathy could be dangerous is if the clinic itself could reasonably get some actual treatment at some sort of humanitarian discount instead of the homeopathy. Maybe some homeopathic practitioner persuaded Monkeybiz to buy their products? Hopefully not, but I wouldn’t put it past some of the people who advocate alternative medicines: they actually believe that it helps people, and want to do everything they can to show that it does. What’s better then than some cheery AIDS relief in South Africa? Oh, we’re being so helpful, think the homeopathy advocates.
Can you think of a way in which these homeopathic treatments are bad? If you can, please post a comment.
Informal Skepticism 
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November 18, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Rachael Dunlop
Oh how this stuff makes my blood boil. The first red flag should be hoisted with “wellness”, which means nothing scientifically or medically.
Don’t forget that Mbeki is an AIDS denier (i.e., HIV does not cause AIDS) and his government took that platform for many years. I think recently (I may be wrong) they have started to back down a little. I was discussing this with Steve Novella on Friday night. But what remains in the aftermath are charlatans selling vitamin pills and touting them as cures for AIDS.
Go here to see a great article about AIDS deniers and the internet age written by Tara Smith and Steve Novella
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256&ct=1
It is true that poverty is a problem, but several years ago the big pharma (conspiracy! conspiracy!) made available generic drugs to African countries at a reduced price (not reduced enough as far as I understand).
Of course this is bad. I went to a lecture earlier this year where access to HIV pharmacotherapies is now classified as a basic human right, and denial a breach of. HIV has now become as issue of an abuse of human rights and this includes the prescription of alternative therapies – an alternative to what? Something that works? Homeopathy for AIDS? Most heinous.
Homeopathy in liquid form is water, in pill form sugar and water and maybe some binding agents. Nothing else. I detail the dilution process, beyond any remaining active ingredient, in the comments to my recent blog, in response to someone who believes.
Go here http://skepticzone.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/woo-woo-in-australian-pharmacies-an-ongoing-problem/#comment-76 and scroll down to the comments to see the craziness that is homeopathy.
People believe some weird shit, but enforcing it on the sick, desperate ad destitute is in my opinion tantamount to human rights abuse. Disgusting.
Dr Rachie
November 18, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Maria
The very suggestion that HIV/Aids or any other medical condition is treatable with homeopathy is irresponsible and potentially dangerous. It gives the wrong impression both about the ‘remedies’, which have no active ingredients, and about the nature of the condition.
It seems that homeopushers are increasingly getting away with exploiting the ignorance and fears of the most desperate and vulnerable. I agree with Dr Rachie. It’s disgusting.
December 14, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Irving
Okay I can see these points on the side against homeopathy. But when this “wellness” centre obviously states that it is helping women make the most of their current situation by giving them a livelihood and councelling, it seems that homeopathic treatment is simply being used as a form of councelling, to give the women some form of hope or reassurance. What would be morally wrong is if they were informing the women that they were being cured, rather than helped. For the placebo to work, obviously some kind of deception would need to be in place, but as long as they were not preaching the treatment as a “cure,” what is the real harm in giving some impoverished women a bit of hope?
The fact that this centre clearly states it is a “Wellness” centre, and that the clinic provides HIV SUPPORT, and not treatment, is a clear sign that they are merely playing psychologists and helping these people out in another, also important way – through information and hope.